The Pristine DAO: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse Book

Dr. Silver will surprise you and maybe even bring a few mad chuckles out with his wild and sad but true stories of genetic mutations, but it isn't enough to save this book. The first hundred pages are fascinating and then the book slips into his true agenda. Whenever someone attacks something that benefits health and environment (as he does with organic farming), I get skeptical because there's often profit involved. He takes a route I have seen in conservative anti-science lobbying firms: compare natural carcinogens (that occur in lima beans and coffee) to dangerous synthetic ones like DDT. This is an atrocious distortion of the truth. You can't compare a lifelong consumption of a natural chemical to a synthetic chemical that would kill you if you ingested a mg of it. He is also either ignorant of the scholarly research or is lying through his teeth when he argues vitamins are a sham. Why I don't know. Maybe he wants his branch of science to be the only solution.

The book is littered with logical fallacies like weak analogies. Silver tries to equate environmentalists with Christians, but not all environmentalists worship the planet the way Christians worship the Bible. It's really like comparing apples to oranges. He does the same to animal rights activists, but again not all animal lovers are members of Peta. Much of Silver's ideas consist of assumptions and he fails to acknowledge the basis of just ethics. One can be an ethical and responsible citizen, or scientist, without the need to destroy nature or life. That doesn't make them a lunatic. Many scientists are turning to more humane and more reliable means like computer modeling to replace the unnecessary testing on animals. To compare the obstruction of stem cell research based on religious beliefs to the petition to stop biotech corporations from creating Frankenfoods that we all eat is also a weak analogy. I get the sense he has much invested in the industries he defends here in this book.

Worth the read to spark some thinking and debate, and there are some great highlights and points, but the book goes south after page 100.