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Author: Jerold Lynn Dixon

ISBN: 978-1-4520-3634-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4520-3635-9 (e)

Publisher: AuthorHouse


In this self-styled "Consumer Reports" evaluation of God, the Earth, and the human race, there's not a passing grade in the bunch. God is someone who doesn't know the first thing about designing the human body, the Earth's potential for success is quashed by a penchant for earthquakes and hurricanes and by being increasingly populated by humans, and as for them, well, the less said the better one might say in a manner of speaking.

In fact, author Dixon has a fair amount to say about us humans and particularly how he would go about fixing us if he had God's unlimited powers. It's hard to argue with the author's list of body-design defects; indeed, one might add teeth and spinal cords to it. However, given some of the author's more extreme proposals for improvement, e.g., internalizing all genitalia, and, like Macbeth, murdering sleep, the reader might well be happy to leave omnipotence where, if anywhere, it is.

Dixon's observations, opinions, and suggestions range from the prosaic, to the outrageous, to the wildly contradictory. Within a relatively short reading time, we are advised to eat in moderation with natural sweeteners, not to worry about the allegedly non-existent AIDS virus, to make early and irrevocable decisions as to one's future fertility, and to resist all governmental influence on our lives except, of course, for laudable state restrictions on one's right to decide something as presumably inconsequential as whether to have children. In addition to the AIDS analysis, the author's credentials as credible scientist are severely compromised by his assertion that the distended bellies of starving children are caused by the unaccustomed gorging of food and that diabetes is related to eating too many desserts.

Other inconsistencies involve the author's rejection of the notion of private property and his excoriation of thievery, which is conceptually based on it. At one point the Randian (Ayn, not Paul) notion of limiting government to national defense, the domestic police force, and the administration of the judicial system is extended to environmental regulation, a rather recent preoccupation, and building bridges and highways. Ayn Rand meets Al Gore meets Barack Obama.

Then the author writes, ". . . failing to believe something does not make it any less a fact." True enough, but by the same token, a statement, totally unsupported by logic or common sense, does not make it a fact in the first place. Dixon himself seems to acknowledge this early on when he states that his book should be taken only as one man's opinion. There are times when "just kidding" would seem a more appropriate disclaimer.

Against this backdrop, the fact that the author is a childless bachelor, a deist, a nudist, and a Libertarian with decided anarchistic leanings seems somehow natural. On the more centrist side, he is an accountant, who is willing to share the amount of his accumulated savings if not the savings themselves, and a guy that favors buxom women. These biographical details are for the most part laid out in a chapter entitled, "It's Not About Me."

The author's views on the politics of war are also rather exotic. I suppose one can find those who will agree that 9/11 was an act of retaliation by U.S.-oppressed Muslims, and there are certainly those who promote the author's basic isolationism. He may have greater difficulty collecting adherents to the notion that the American Civil War could have been settled by negotiation and that Pearl Harbor, being way out there at sea, was not a legitimate reason for the U.S. to attack Japan. I'm not sure even Ron Paul, the author's political hero, would go along with that.

The author's discussion of the differences between the sexes makes one long for the original Mars/Venus analysis.

All of this could be enjoyed as a good natured, occasionally provocative iconoclastic exercise but for the author's dogmatic rejection of the legitimacy of all religions (and non-religions) other than Christianity and his belief that life on this "most popular planet" is harmed, rather than enhanced, by diversity, whether that diversity is expressed in gender, race, or language. One need consider only the kind of music that would be generated by the homogenized neo-humans Dixon favors to be willing to pay the admittedly high price diversity often exacts.

A kind of mutual admiration relationship exists between the author and the editor of this book, the latter having penned a foreword, which for some reason is called a forward. This is the sole indication that an editor was involved. The punctuation features an array of misused apostrophes, exclamation points, comma/semicolon confusion, and chaotic capitalization. The editor's expressed curiosity about what "without further adieu" means might be satisfied by understanding that the expression is, "without further ado."

Perhaps most seriously, the author has not been discouraged by his editor or by anyone else from using folksy and often self-congratulatory references to how much the reader is going to enjoy and profit from the book. These are matters that most readers would prefer to discover, if discovery there be, for themselves.


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