Book Review

Is Belief in God Good, Bad, or Irrelevant?
By Preston Jones and Greg Gaffin
Reviewed by Casey

A just finished up this book which was recommended to me by my friend Jock Murray. I brought with me to Africa. It’s an interesting concept. It’s basically documentation of an email conversation between Preston Jones, a history professor and Christian at John Brown University, and Greg Gaffin, lead singer and songwriter for the punk band Bad Religion who also has a Ph.D. in zoology. Preston is a fan of Bad Religion and decides to email Greg and spark up a conversation. What follows is their back-and-forth on the merits of religion, the use of science, and how those play together.

Greg is pretty jaded and bitter and way too smart for me. When he’s writing about scientific things it’s all stuff I know nothing about. Preston was patient and handled himself well.

All in all, it’s an interesting concept, but not the type of material that I am often interested in. It definitely stretched me to think about new things. My struggle was that often Greg didn’t make much sense, at least to me.
If you are into some of the struggles and dialogue between religion and science, you may enjoy it.

Overall Grade: B-