This is a great book...with all of its formal information it is still very understandable. Tells me so much, some of which I have learned over the years but so much more also. If you believe that we are not alone in this wonderful Universe..reading this book will help make so many things clear. V

Don't let the main title fool you; it is the subtitle that describes the book. What if you believed in the literal truth of everything in all of mankind's ancient myths? What if you also believed in the existence of Zecharia Sitchin's undocumented planet that travels around the sun on a 2300 year elongated orbit, where humanlike life has somehow managed to evolve? Then you could write a scientific (!) book like this.

It seems that the inhabitant's of Sitchin's imaginary planet (Nibiru) landed on earth some 300,000 years ago and injected some of the proto-humans with their DNA. Then 100,000 years ago they moved some of their own people to earth to mine (did you guess it?) gold in Africa using the altered humans as slave labor. To help their operation they acted as gods. In the process they passed some knowledge to humans, helping advanced civilizations develop in such lost land masses as Atlantis, Mu, and Lemuria. Then around 11,500 BC a large planetoid passed near earth causing a change in its axis. This resulted in the melting of the poles and a giant flood that raised the water level by some 300 feet, causing the infamous flood and destroying these advanced civilizations. Before they escaped in their spaceships, some of the aliens advised a few selected humans (like Noah) to build vessels and survive the cataclysm. After the flood the aliens returned from their spaceships, settled in various geographic areas and played God. Soon they started fighting with each other using humans as personal armies (for example the Israelites invading Canaan). About 2,000 BC, after nuclear weapons were used to destroy towns like Sodom and Ur, the aliens called it quits and returned home. To compensate for their departure, the humans who were left alone created the world's modern religions.

Although the author purports to list much substantiating evidence, the entire story falls apart from internal inconsistencies. Even if humanlike people could subsist on a planet like Nibiru, staying away from the Sun's warming rays for millennia at a time, they could not have evolved there. Humans share 96% of the DNA with chimpanzees. The idea that the inhabitants of Nibiru were sufficiently close to humanoids to mix their DNA with them so that they could later intermarry is rather preposterous. Although he says that the aliens left earth, he maintains that some still advised humans, like Gabriel speaking to Mohammad, and someone else perhaps fathering Jesus. I am not saying that aliens have never visited earth; only that his particular story does not appear credible.

The last third of the book consists of a (perhaps justified) attack on the actions of human religions that are based on memories of the aliens and expect (or at least preach) their return. He proposes that they should be replaced by an almost theistic naturalism that he maintains had existed on earth before the aliens arrived.

Yes, the book is definitely science fiction, not science; but if you like the genre it is rather interesting. It may also contain some truths and pearls of wisdom, but unfortunately they are too well hidden among the rest of the fanciful tale.

(The writer is the author of Christianity without Fairy Tales: When Science and Religion Merge.)