Book reviews 6/26
It was time to finally work through several books that have been collecting dust on my bookshelf for the past couple years. These are all based on faith, science, creation, evolution or whatever combinations you want to make out of them. I find it fun, while somewhat exhausting, to deep-dive into a single topic like this, even if it doesn’t necessarily lead me anywhere. This round-up was no exception, and was a fine example of Solomon’s wise words:
12 My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Ecclesiastes 12:12 (ESV)
The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions (Karl Giberson, Francis S. Collins)
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This book is published by the BioLogos Foundation, which “explores, promotes, and celebrates the integration of science and Christian faith.” Their basic belief is in “theistic evolution,” which the book summarizes as “the belief that God created life using natural processes, working within the natural order, in harmony with its laws.” The book is written in a Q&A format, covering many of the basic questions one might have when trying to understand how to integrate the teaching of the Bible with what science tells us. However, because of the nature of the book, it simply didn’t have much detail to work with. The book serves more as an introduction to this topic, so might be used to determine where you want to go next in a deep-dive, such as Collins’ The Language of God.
Creation as Science: A Testable Model Approach to End the Creation/Evolution Wars (Hugh Ross)
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Now that’s a bold subtitle… ending those wars? This book, on its own, certainly does not do that… though I should point out that the author does promote his other books to help fill that gap. There’s some good discussion in here on the Reasons to Believe group’s approach, which is to develop a model of creation based on the Bible, with an “old earth creationism” (OEC) starting point. In other words, yes God created everything, but no the six days were not really days. The book lists several of the things that fall out from this, but really doesn’t provide much detail. Again, that’s what their other books are for, apparently.
The Cell’s Design: How Chemistry Reveals the Creator’s Artistry (Fazale Rana)
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This is another book published by the Reasons to Believe folks, and is definitely more jam-packed with details, since it focuses on one small part of the creation/evolution topic. Here we skip past all the debate of transitional fossils and focus in on the microscopic world of the cell. I found it put words to some of the thoughts I had when I saw this animation provided in the documentary, Expelled. It’s difficult to read about the complexities of the cell and believe random processes resulted in what we discover the closer we look at life.
Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters (Donald R. Prothero)
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I don’t like focusing on one side of an issue. That’s probably one of the many things people find annoying about me. It’s hard to debate with someone when they mess around with both sides of the argument. ;) Anyway, I was disappointed that Prothero spent about half the book slamming creationists and the Bible, rather than stick to the topic inferred by the title. If he truly felt science and all the evidence was on his side, why in the world didn’t he let it speak for itself? There’s good detail in here, but I would have much preferred a better focus on fossils… at least a 90/10 split rather than the seemingly 50/50 split.
Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (Michael J. Behe)
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I understand Behe fits in the “intelligent design” camp of the creation/evolution debate, not necessarily directly stating God as Creator, but that there is evidence life was designed. His book does a great job detailing out his main arguments against evolutionary theory explaining everything in creation, with a major focus on his idea of irreducible complexity. He does a good job putting things in layman’s terms, while also providing deep-dive detail where it makes sense.
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood (Walt Brown)
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You can actually read this entire book at Walt’s Center for Scientific Creation website, however I found it much easier to have a copy in-hand. Now, don’t take my 5 star rating to mean I agree with the entirety of what I read in here. That rating reflects the sheer amount of detail Walt provides in his book, as well as the tremendous scope of all the “discoveries” of science that he attempts to explain in combination with a literal reading of the Bible. This would be the “young earth creationism” (YEC) side of the debate, though Walt does detail out some more compelling theories than I have heard from more mainstream folks in that circle, such as Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis. No matter what side of this debate you fit in with, I think this might be one of the more interesting books you could read.
I have a few final thoughts. I’m not done figuring out exactly where I fit in along this spectrum of creationist theories. However, I do think we lose something trying to take the BioLogos approach to fit everything in the Bible into what the scientific community has “discovered.” What do we do when science appears to find something that goes against what God says in His Word? Are we to force some twisted understanding on the text in order to make things fit? If we do that in one area, how do we know when to stop? You can’t miss God telling us in the Bible time and time again that He created the world. Just read the last several chapters of Job, or any of the Psalms, if you want a small taste. He also tells us He has revealed Himself in creation, so we should expect that the more and more we study the world around us, we will see the wonder of God revealed. I don’t think we’re meant to understand everything. He also tells us He uses the foolish in this world to shame the wise. Well, I’m OK being a fool in this area, believing God’s Word over man’s. Perhaps I’ll outline my thoughts from a Biblical deep-dive some day if anyone is actually interested.
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June 27th, 2011 at 10:17 pm
Fool here too Jeff. Thanks for the reviews. I started Behe’s book and never finished it. That’s what I do with most books. :( Oh well. What I read was intriguing.
September 11th, 2011 at 2:13 am
I still have hope that Nick will someday like to read (since you told me you never liked to at his age; and now look what you’re reading). I admit, the books you review are tempting for me to want to read, but in the end, I’m always more interested in the saints books – real life testimony. I guess it’s that simple minded girl that never left me.
September 20th, 2011 at 7:27 am
“What do we do when science appears to find something that goes against what God says in His Word?”
My advice: stick with the Word. The Roman Church got in trouble with Galileo and here’s the important part: they got in trouble because they sided with the scientific community of the time. G had like 5 trials and only one of them was before the church; the others were before the scientific community.
I’m pretty happy with my cosmological position: young earth and old universe.
Basically what most christians do not take into account in their models is the effect of relativity. Time is relative to an object’s mass and speed. I have no problem with God creating the heavens and earth in what would locally be seen as 6 days (the Bible is written for earth). But 6 local days does not address how fast those heavens were “thrown” out into space. It does not address where earth is positioned in the universe.
We just know that it takes a certain amount of time for light to travel from some distant galaxy to get to earth. God could either have created those galaxies in their current positions or God could have thrown everything away from the earth which means the earth was traveling fast relative to everything else. Thus 6 days could easily mean billions of years for everything else.
Review the twins paradox from ye olde physics books.
It’s the evolutionists that are playing bait and switch. The physicists say the universe is billions of years old which is true from what we can measure. But the evolutionists take the age of the universe and then assume the earth is the same age when a simple intro to physics will tell you that earth time and universe time are not the same.