`New evidence' fails to persuade

The Divinity Code, by Ian Wishart (Howling At The Moon Publishing Ltd, $29.90). Reviewed by Peter Dornauf.

The title of Ian Wishart's latest book cashes in on the current fascination for things biblical linked to codes. It's a clever marketing ploy since the work only marginally addresses such matters.

In fact, the book is a rather old-fashioned polemic for conservative Christian religious belief. The tabloid subtitle "explosive new evidence" turns out, unfortunately, to be a bit of a fizzer. Most of its content is a rehash of tired old arguments trying to prove the existence of God that have been worked over for centuries and found generally wanting. Wishart tries to dress them up, latching on to the most recent attempt to discredit Darwin beloved of the American right, intelligent design (ID for short).

This is a religious refashioning of much older endeavours to prove that nature and the cosmos must be the work of a creator. Wishart tries hard with this revisionist approach, but eventually shoots himself in the foot in trying to make the evidence fit. Earthquakes and volcanoes are, for example, God having fun playing tenpin bowling with the planets!

The author tries again with a long discredited apologist stratagem, biblical prophecy.

These chapters may sound plausible to the unsuspecting reader unaware the writer plays fast and loose with the facts.

The most disturbing section of the book however, one that would have ordinary theologians blushing into their hymn books, is Wishart's attempt to explain the hoary old problem of evil concomitant with a benevolent God. It's the devil's fault, apparently. And when it isn't, the God-instructed genocide of the Old Testament, for instance, it was to let nothing infect the spiritual purity of the Jewish race carrying the line of Mary leading to Jesus.

Fundamentalists will applaud this stuff but others will blanch at the crude moral sensibilities implied. The sneering and sometimes triumphal tone that often comes through in the text will not endear the serious reader, but this is not a balanced, scholarly work. Wishart has specific designs on us, polishing one side of the apple furiously.

Peter Dornauf is Hamilton writer, artist and teacher.

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