The Serpent's Promise: The Bible Retold as Science - Hardcover

Jones, Professor Steve

3.31

248 ratings by Goodreads

9781408702857: The Serpent's Promise: The Bible Retold as Science

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408702851 ISBN 13: 9781408702857

Publisher: Little, Brown, 2013

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The Bible was the first scientific textbook of all; and it got some things right (and plenty more wrong). Steve Jones' new book rewrites it in the light of modern science. Are we all descended from a single couple, a real-life Adam and Eve? Was the Bible's great flood really a memory of the end of the Ice Age? Will we ever get back to Methuselah given that British life expectancy is still rising by six hours a day, every day?

Many people deny the power of faith, many more the power of science. In this ground-breaking work, geneticist Steve Jones explores their shared mysteries - from the origins of life and humankind to sex, age, death and the end of the universe. He steps aside from the noisy debate between believers and unbelievers to show how the same questions preoccupy us today as in biblical times - and that science offers many of the answers.

Erudite and accessible, The Serpent's Promise is a witty and thoughtful account of the ability and the limits of science to tell us what we are.

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Review:

With sensitivity towards religion and sardonic wit, geneticist Steve Jones delivers a masterful scientific take on biblical events (Nature)

Brilliantly told . . . highly entertaining and informative . . . one of the best books I have read (Biologist)

Witty, urbane and erudite (Independent on Sunday)

[A] treat, a tale from an experienced writer who is always interesting . . . The Serpent's Promise is not simply a continuation of an ancient confrontation on evolution between scientist and believer: the events chosen by Jones reflect well the breadth and quality of the questions asked in the Bible . . . Whatever your own starting point, you will need to read the evidence set out in this important book to judge for yourself its outcome (Bryan Lovell The Times)

Steve Jones is a master of deadpan one-liners that illuminate biological realities even as they make you laugh . . . Faith for him is by and large a vice, evidence a virtue. Sardonic and self-deprecating in a way that is, perhaps, characteristically Welsh, he is not angry in the way of so-called New Atheists . . . he is sensitive to the strength and power of religious ceremony (Caspar Henderson Sunday Telegraph, Book of the Week)

Erudite and accessible, The Serpent's Promise is a witty and thoughtful account of the ability and the limits of science to tell us what we are (New Statesman)

Book Description:

Britain's favourite geneticist, Steve Jones, updates the Bible from the point of view of modern science.

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