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by Charles E. Kupchella (Author)
Casparians have come back to Earth to reconnect with the people their ancestors had shaped and nurtured here -- genetically and other ways - over the eons. They engage a young Pennsylvanian to help them, telling him they are in the final stages of an effort started by their people millions-of-years earlier to refine humankind on Earth with the ultimate goal of partnering in civilizing the cosmos. In the beginning, Chuck is really only a semi-willing study-subject. But in his initial encounter and in a series of follow-up encounters over the next sixty years -- including a visit to Casparia -- Chuck learns amazing things about space, time, creation, genes, souls, prayer, miracles, the Bible and the afterlife and gains a totally new understanding about the origin of humans on Earth and the very foundations of morality. Eventually he comes to see the need to free Earthlings from the bonds of superstition and gets involved ever more deeply. The Tree Shack uses the cloak of fiction to address very real and deep questions such as, why humans? Why religion? Where does morality really come from? Why are so many sure that the supernatural is at work beneath it all? The Tree Shack is, in a way, one agnostic's answer to The Shack. Whereas Young's book uses fictional characters to explain who God is and why he/she/she made things the way they are with all the evil and craziness in the world, The Tree Shack uses fictional characters to offer arguably even-more-plausible explanations for how thing got to be the way they are - with humanistic rather than theistic reasons why we must do better. Despite the many and varied theistic explanations for it, human nature will probably always be a profound wonder. Who are we, how did we get here, and why? Are we entirely a God's doing or are we a work in progress driven by something perhaps more tangible - something natural rather than supernatural? The Tree Shack suggests some answers quite different from those most people blindly accept. While The Tree Shack is a light and pleasurable read, it is so much more; it is also an unflinching look at some profound, age-old questions and old answers that always leave at least one more "why."So what if humans from another galaxy engineered the evolution of human beings on Earth and shaped us in their own image? What if our general view of God is actually derived from aliens having been mistakenly identified as spirit-world gods by primitive earthlings? How might this have happened and how might it have evolved into today's religions and into today's views of God, souls, angels, and the afterlife? The Tree Shack explores these and other compelling "what-if" questions as it examines the grabbing power of religion, the human inclination to believe in a supernatural realm, the biological foundations of morality, and the trajectory of human evolution. Although it may well be hard to take lovingly-held beliefs and upend them to think from a completely different point of view, it is worth the ride, and in Kupchella's book, it also happens to make for a really great read. His story-telling ability is only outmatched by the intellectual level of the questioning that is a driving theme below the more visible layers of the story. The tale is of an otherworldly plausible way in which Earth came to be. In The Tree Shack, the basis for morality, ethics, and the genesis of humankind is found not in the supernatural, but in the essence of the physical universe and in our very essence as human beings.
Author Biography
Charles E. Kupchella was born in the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania. He is the oldest of six brothers in a coal-mining family. Kupchella has a bachelor's degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD in physiology from St. Bonaventure University. A true Renaissance man, Dr. Kupchella worked as a musician throughout college, with his group making a record and playing back-up to a touring American Bandstand dance group in Pennsylvania. In college, he held a draftsman gig at a construction firm, and even worked in the mines during the summer before his senior year. During his career, Kupchella served as president of the Kentucky Academy of Sciences, the American Association of Cancer Education, and the University of North Dakota. Having authored several works of nonfiction, Kupchella decided to indulge his creativity in a new way-writing fiction that combines a great story with compelling human questions.
