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Title: Frightening portrayal of the future
Review: The first time I read this book was for a social studies project in ninth grade. At the time, I found it disconcerting for its view that religion and traditional values are futile, and that humanity will eventually become God-like in its ability to surmount nature. Looking back now from the perspective of another ten years of education - I can see that this book is a late 20th century manifestation of the deterministic narrative of perpetual progress through reason alone that was perfected by Hegel, Toynbee and Marx in the last century. History has shown that human progress is not always inevitable, and that both traditional values and religion are resilient in the face of change. Jefferson believed we would all be Unitarians by the second American century. Evangelicalism is on the rise in America in the early 21st century. All in all, this book is interesting but frightening - if only for what it says about the "progressive" movement's grand design for humanity.
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