Inherit The Whirlwind: The Final Showdown Between Science And Religion

by D.R. Pope

D.R. Pope lives in South Australia. An ex schoolteacher and erstwhile entrepreneur and lover of creative pursuits. "Inherit the Whirlwind" is his long-awaited debut novel. It features an absorbing courtroom battle of ideologies between two powerful forces hellbent on determining the future of mankind. Set against the backdrop of the trials and tribulations of Professor Joe Colliver, a leading bio-engineer and his tormented family. We are drawn into their troubled world as they get caught up in the unfolding drama and their lives descend into physical and psychological turmoil.

The narrative is carried from the viewpoints of two of the central characters. Ben, the son of Professor Joe Colliver, tells of his struggles to cope with his family's disintegration and his own battle with depression, suicidal tendencies and the tragic losses of his soulmate and his sister. Jim Wainwright, an investigative journalist, breaks news of the ground-breaking trial to a captivated world-wide audience in a novel format--through the vehicle of regular blog posts.

Science offers humanity the holy grail of extended life and the promise of earthly immortality. While fanatical religious fundamentalists resort to violence and destruction to protect God's divine plan of Creation, traditional religious leaders and institutions take the legal pathway to thwart science's unholy push to usurp God's dominion.

A take no prisoners clash between science's push for a brave new world, where man creates his own image against the reactionary forces of religion, clinging to a superstitious past locked in the idea mankind must remain set forever in God's image. The novel is full of memorable characters and dramatic events, with many unforeseeable twists and turns which will surely stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.

This story owes its DNA to last century's real-life battle between evolution and religion featured in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee; also dramatically depicted in the movie, "Inherit the Wind."

280 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 7, 2017

Reviews

[Denise Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inherit The Whirlwind: The Final Showdown Between Science And Religion written by D. R. Pope is a wonderfully written story that combines incredible writing and a unique plot to create a novel that will quickly become a page turner. The author’s writing style is easy to read, but the detail included is great and really helps the reader to picture the events and characters like they were right there in the story. There is humor throughout, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The opening of the book starts out with a funny situation where a farmer loses a bunch of oranges behind him which in turn causes the dogs following behind to go sliding everywhere. The descriptions of the oranges alone, proves that the author’s writing skills are superb. The plot is a unique one and takes the reader into the future and into the world of Professor Joe Colliver and his family. Joe is a bio-engineer and is working on lengthening the human life and alternate research such as reanimation. This sparks huge debates in the science and religious communities and the story unfolds by taking the reader through life of Joe’s son, a reporter and the trial to determine morality. I loved that the author gave great points to both sides and really made an effort to debate this topic in a way that should not illicit hard feelings from the reader. This was a fictional novel but with a very nonfiction topic. This was a fantastic book and I highly recommend it.

[The Endless Unread · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inherit The Whirlwind: The Final Showdown Between Science and Religion by D.R.Pope for me is a five star read

This is the author's debut novel. It's a sci-fi with mystery, thriller and suspense.

This book is an extremely interesting and imaginative read. I particularly loved the style of the book and it made sure to grab me from the very beginning and hold my attention to the very end.

It's an extremely fast paced book with full of adventure. The characters were very inventive and they make sure to engage you from the start.

First time reading any of this authors work and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is a well thought out and interesting story. I found myself looking forward in anticipation to the next scene. The story flowed very well and at the end I wanted more. There are many twists and turns. I did not want to put it down

This book can be enjoyed time and time again.I highly recommend it and I cannot wait to read more from this author.

Will definitely recommend to all friends and family

[Nicole Woolaston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me reconsider my beliefs concerning science and religion. The story revolves around a scientist, whose family has experienced a tragedy. His research is being challenged by a group of deeply religious people, in a courtroom setting. I’m a religious person myself, however, while reading this book, I found myself thinking, both sides made several valid points. Even if you believe in life after death, or the existence of a human soul, of you lost a loved one, and science could bring them back to life, what would you do? I really enjoyed reading the arguments from both sides: the “scientific facts” verses chapters from the Bible. This may be a work of fiction, but it raises a lot of questions we as a society may have to face some day. This was an excellent read, and I’m looking forward to reading more from this author.

[Abode · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inherit The Whirlwind: The Final Showdown between Science and Religion was an outstanding read on about every level. I wanted originality and I got it. Suspense & mystery, I got those as well. This was a can't put it down thrill ride. Many interesting, innovative twists and turns in this great story of the many troubles and tribulations of a bio-engineer, Professor Joe Colliver and his family.
The plot is very well conceived and cleverly executed.
The characters are very realistic and you feel you begin to know them. Pope is such an amazing author. His writing style is so simple yet so engaging, you will love the unique warmth he brought to this thriller novel.

[Irma Inge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not just one of the most interesting, one of the most well-written, one of the smartest books I've read lately. Inherit The Whirlwind: The Final Showdown Between Science And Religion has become very important to me. D. R. Pope is a truly talented writer. In his book there is everything that the most demanding reader needs - an excellent plot, a unique story, philosophical reflections, interesting characters, sensible humor, and much much more. I could not tear myself away from this book. I will surely re-read it again and will look forward to new books by D. R. Pope.

[Stephanie Davies · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Inherit The Whirlwind: The Final Showdown Between Science And Religion' is set in a science fiction world in which cancer has been cured, people can back-up their memories, and potentially live forever. One Australian scientist and his son face off against all of Christianity as they battle in court for the right to bring Holly Colliver - their daughter and sister respectively - back to life. As the courtroom scenes begin to wane but tensions with the religious sect rise, they suddenly find themselves embroiled with a group of underground scientists. But have they been rescued from the religious zealots, or kidnapped for their own nefarious purposes?

This book immediately appealed to me as a fan of Frank de Felita and the 'science vs religion' genre of fiction. However, the story was more of a spiritual or inward journey than plot. Certainly there were events, and unexpected twists, but the majority of the book reads more like a conversation, or a work of philosophy. You can see that weighty ideas have been examined from every possible angle before being offered to you as offhand statements from the characters, who act as vessels for their very separate messages.

Chapter One is a slow-starter, but Chapter Two is fast-paced and delivers, and you will feel you're in capable hands. The book shuffles between first- and third-person narrative, with blog entries for the majority of the middle of the novel. Using these, the author first spoon-feeds the reader a lot of the backstory with a series of interviews, ensuring we know what sort of world this novel is set in. The blog entries were an interesting idea but don’t really sound all that different to the narrative voice, and they feature huge chunks of back-and-forth conversation in much the same way as the other scenes do.

The whole story is almost entirely dialogue, especially these entries which I suppose are supposed to be transcriptions but mostly read like the rest of the book. Even sections where the blog author isn’t present, he writes “I was told it went something like this:” and then quotes full speech. Elsewhere, characters shout complex philosophical speeches to one another in the heat of argument, or escapees are stopped in their tracks by an enemy delivery a paragraph-long soliloquy (why didn't they just jump in the chute in the time it would have taken him to finish?).

Here's an example:

”'Christ, if it's not holy rollers trying to corner the afterlife for me,' I shouted, 'it's you with your scientific certainty trying to keep me captive to this crappy world. I don't want to live forever in this space-time continuum. I've exhausted all my possibilities in this dimension. I want to go back to an earlier fork in the road, to a time before the mistakes I've made on this current path compounded to cripple my hopes and dreams. I want to try my luck on a different path within this same embodiment, and take my chances by engaging in the collapse of a different quantum potential.'”

Can you picture someone yelling that in the heat of a family argument?

I thought that the story was most gripping when Ben (the son, and the guy yelling above) is alone, toward the end of the story. I suggest sticking with it all the way to the end if you can get past the sameness of the court room scenes. The last section of the book was entirely unexpected and escalated from there. I enjoyed every minute of it.

I recommend this one for open-minded people, possibly if you're after a book that will make you think about big ideas but want a little bit of science fiction-y fluff as an aftertaste.

[Elizabeth Newton · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm sorry to say, this is one of the most frustrating books I have ever read. Let’s say straight up that I’m a Christian, but I didn’t dislike this book just because I don’t agree with a lot of its content. I picked this book up because I quite enjoy good debates and discussions about science and religion and the subtitle on the cover of this book suggests that that’s what this book is but in a fiction setting. So I was interested. But in no way is this a proper debate between science and religion. Firstly, the “Christian-side” of the argument is so very weak that if I only had this to go on, I would probably swap sides. I felt extremely let down by the spokespeople who are supposed to be representing my faith in this story. They had next to no intelligent responses to any of the questions and challenges from the “Science-side” and all they ever seemed to tell everyone is that they are blasphemous sinners who will be judged and thrown into hell. The Christians in this book are written as name-calling, violent, hatred-spreading, gullible, brainless, narrow-minded, self-righteous, fire and brimstone preaching arsonists. Even descriptions of Christian characters in the narrative are designed to make you not like them. This book is so outrageously biased. It saddens me that Christians like the ones portrayed in the book may be the only type of Christians that D.R. Pope has ever encountered. This is his experience of church and Christians and religion. Very sad.

The “Science-side” characters completely misunderstand and misquote scripture and there are no decent, intelligent Christian voices to defend the faith.

Ninety percent of the arguments made against religion are because of the faults of people. A big part of how we experience God in this world is through people. And instead of seeing God, quite often we’re just seeing people. So when we see people stuffing up, we think we see God stuffing up. People do wrong things and we blame God. I have so many possible answers for Pope’s science characters but none of them are sufficiently voiced by the Christian characters. A bishop who comes onto the witness stand, instead of actually giving an intelligent statement which actually addresses what’s just been said, he just says “The level of your blasphemy is astounding.” Is that supposed to make him feel guilty or something? They either give a very un-researched, cop-out kind of answer, or revert to the religious jargon - God will one day judge you for your blasphemous ways. If you just open up your heart to Jesus, He will forgive you and accept you into his eternal kingdom.... Which is true… but we want a debate here. They simply don’t answer the questions! I am far from a good apologist but I could come up with much better responses (or at least some response) to Pope’s supposed ‘experts’ including a pastor (who didn’t even recognise words of Jesus when she saw them), and one or two witnesses who have PhDs in theology and New Testament. They never explain the meaning or context of the scriptures being brought up for scrutiny. They either say “Oh, that’s Old Testament” and fob it off as irrelevant, or continually give more scriptures that would appear to contradict the in-question scriptures and try to preach as they would to their church of people who already believe. The apologist in the book is supposed to be “The leading light of apologists everywhere”, but I doubt whether his dialogue is actually written by one. So often, the response is “It’s the word of God and He is God – He must know what He’s doing.” That’s all very well for believers to say, but as an apologist argument – you have failed! This is not enough of a reason for why innocent children die and for why people in the Bible committed genocide and other despicable acts. If this really was the only answer, then God is an evil god.

I don’t feel that the “Science-side” is fairly represented either. They are equally annoying repeating the same stale arguments, such as comparing the Bible to Harry Potter. They also seem to have insufficient research, making the claim that Jesus Christ never existed. This is a pretty bold claim and may lose the “Science-side” some credibility among historians – Christian and secular alike. They also only ever attack the religious reasons why not to allow transhumanism, where there could have been an opportunity to really go into a lot of cool science. Similarly, the “Christian-side” only ever (except on one occasion) argue against transhumanism with religious arguments, where there could be several other great reasons against it which have nothing to do with religion.

I think a courtroom setting is a great idea, but it doesn’t work brilliantly. First, the Bible is used in court to ‘swear’ on (even though within its pages it says not to swear on anything) and so the judge is unfairly biased towards the “Christian-side” and there are all sorts of issues about whether scripture is sufficient evidence in court – it just sounds all very unrealistic. Also, where there was an interesting question being asked, I am thinking of a great response, but before I knew it, the plaintiff lawyer is calling out objection and we never hear a response – silencing the Christian side of the argument again.

It’s ironic that the “Science-side” keep complaining that the Christians use scripture to prove scripture, when they themselves are also using scripture to try and ‘prove’ how evil God must be. That’s not the only irony in this book. It’s interesting that an anti-religious group still find the necessity to worship something. And lastly, if the universe is a self-aware sentient life form, isn’t it just a God-replacement or even… just… still God? People experience God in different ways and this doesn’t mean there are different gods. Just some thoughts to ponder.

Other problems I had with this book were that the dialogue seemed very clunky and unrealistic. There are long paragraphs of things characters say, when in real life, big speeches like that are not natural. The main characters are Professor Colliver and his son Ben, but most of the book is spent not developing them, that near the end, where the plot suddenly does focus on them more, I found that I didn’t really care much what happened to them.

D.R. Pope clearly has an agenda and it seems a very angry one. I would love to be able to meet up with him over a cuppa and have a good discussion about how science can support the Christian beliefs and possibly shed some light on some of his many hangups on Christianity and religion. And I promise, I wouldn’t mention hell or blasphemy once.

[Ivan Hecimovic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inherit The Whirlwind: The Final Showdown Between Science And Religion is a book written by D. R. Pope. The first thing that is difficult to do with this book is to decide whether it is a fictional or non-fictional. The main reason for that is that as we read the book, we (or at least I) get that feeling that the author is constantly trying to combine these two elements.
Many people think that science and religion (or a belief that there is something that created both world and the universe) are two different things. It is modern nowadays to conclude that science is more, how to say- precise or that it has a lot more “solid ground’’ when it comes to explanation of things like the world itself and (r)evolution of living beings or creation of them. Thanks to many different aspects and influences, people connect God with religion and since they cannot and do not know how to really interpret the meaning of, for example the Bible, it is much easier to conclude that there is no such things like God, or “god.’’
This book tries to explain the difference between science and religion, sort of speak, with the author using a “real life’’ experiences. Is religion bad thing? How bad is it? Is science an “eye-opener’’ for people and for the world? The book touches and wants to explain as much segments connected with these two topics as possible and the best thing about it is that it gives you something to think about. My opinion is that this is a good recipe for success, so I’m giving this book a thumb up.

[Moná · Rating 4 out of 5]

The inner war of the people has gone far beyond the typical good versus evil. Now, it’s humans created by God versus man-made clones, replacing and dehumanizing the population of the world. Many people are against the theory, while others feel it could be the next best thing for them, building a stronger belief of potentially living forever on Earth. In “Inherit the Whirlwind,” author D.R. Pope writes from multiple views of individuals, those who are siding with religious beliefs, and those siding with intellectual geniuses of the scientific community. Those who believe science is more sound than what higher power allows are trying to demonstrate that the religious mass is beguiled and gullible. I personally believe everyone is entitled to his or her views as that’s what makes everyone different, but the issue would be if these clones will be considered superior to natural born humans. Reason being, men are not perfect and flaws are what makes us special. Scientists want to produce replications of people who can afford this treatment, preserving memories, generating organs with biogenetics and a 3D printer. This can very well become us versus them in a way to bring in a new world or destroy our current one. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is religious or into science, I’m sure there are arguments suited for everyone to agree or disagree with.

[Jimmy Jefferson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The final battle fought over religion vs eternal earth life

I always enjoy a good book. The author of this one took a good storyline and developed some great characters while spinning a story that goes back to the start of time. There has always been religion and battles from outsiders and other religions. This story puts the religious path of God against the immortal earth life of science. An epic battle between two huge forces. Who, if anyone, will be the Victor. I reccomed this read. Follow your favorite characters on a journey to what could be immortality. Great easy fun read.

[Ian Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is really a religion/antireligion polemic. It starts off with a spearfishing expedition where the partner of one of the main characters is killed by a shark. We then move on to Professor Joseph Colliver who is working essentially to avoid death by taking memories and inserting them into clones. The connection here is vague. The lab is destroyed by arson, his daughter dies, and the Professor is going to try and restore her. An injunction is taken out to prevent him doing this, and what follows is a court case reported in a series of blogs, which is a rather novel way to write a novel. (Sorry about that!) What this degenerates to is a series of arguments about whether there is a God, and what the bible means. Interestingly, this is an injunction, and both sides seem to ignore the actual issue. The bible is irrelevant in many ways because it says nothing about this sort of issue, and in any case, an injunction has to deliver reasons why the action under attack should not be pursued. Also, the judge starts out by declaring bias for one side, and so the first move should be an appeal to a higher court to have him removed. The court procedures would never be let happen, so the whole thing is something of a parable or allegory, and at the end it becomes a sort of satire. The end more or less comes out of nowhere.

The question then is, does it work? For me, I thought the author was too busy getting his own opinion over, with the result that the characters are really just posters. I was also disappointed by the ending, which went off on another tangent, and in my opinion, descended to the silly. As for the argument about science versus religion, I would dispute much of the science side. The proper argument, in my opinion, is they are separate and do not intersect in any way. Science has absolutely nothing to say about religion, and none of the physics quoted in the book made any point, and in general was to vague to be useful, or wrong.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Religion versus science. Talk about a subject I refuse to debate with anyone save a very select few... D.R. Pope brings us Inherit the Whirlwind, a novel containing subject matter sure to turn even the most congenial dinner guests into UFC contenders. At least no one would say the dinner party was boring, right?

The opening of this novel is a first person account concluding with a character eaten by a shark. After this the story is told through blog posts where we are introduced to Professor Joe Colliver, a scientist working on delaying death and even resurrecting the dead by the use of clones. This, unsurprisingly, angers and terrifies the religious folks. What follows is a legal battle for the Professor to continue his work closely watched and reported to us via blog posts.

I think this novel has potential. The telling of the story through the blog, the hefty topic at the center of the story, and the talent of this author should have come together making this book fantastic. Somehow the characters felt flat, neither religion nor science was given its due diligence, and many of the legal aspects were simply unbelievable and silly. I don't have adequate words for the ending, it was so much less than it could have been.

[Melissa Hernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I finished this, I came out having many many fixed feelings. I enjoyed reading most of this story. The beginning and middle of the story were, I thought, pretty interesting. It was interesting to see how trying to bring someone back from the dead leads to the question of humanity through the science and religious viewpoints. It was interesting to think because if humanity can end up there, what does that mean for us as humans. Do we lose our humanity? Faith? While the middle of the story, the testimonials between the two sides, felt rather long, it was interesting to see what was brought up. The way the story was told, through different viewpoints, was good. I enjoyed seeing through the eyes of more than one individual. Now when we get to the ending, I don't know what just happened. I thought it was going to end in a certain way, and instead, we get this random tangent of an ending. It was connected to the overall story in a small way. It didn't feel like it should have been a part of it at all. It felt rushed. I had to do a double take to make sure I was still reading the same book. If we remove that, then it was a decent story. Did leave me thinking about how bringing people back from the dead questions humanity.

[Pegboard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inherit the Whirlwind promised to be interesting from the beginning, but after that I did not care much for the story line. On one point, the author makes Christians look foolish and the cause of all wars while promoting science. Then he turns it around and reveals the scientists want to control mankind and turn the resurrected humans into robotic creatures.
The scientific ideas are fascinating, but the repulsive at the same time. If you like controversial, this would interest you. The thought of a father wanting to bring his daughter back is a lifelong desire for those who have lost a child, but in the end it will be regret to the whole family. Plus, the ratifications to the entire world when they have to deal with a superhuman that may never die. If Holly did die, would they just clone her again?