The Genesis Enigma: Why the Bible is scientifically accurate from 2009 is an intriguing book and is a bold endeavour but unlikely to find many advocates. If you’re a six-day young earth creationist then ‘there’s nothing to see here’. Dr Parker is a staunch advocate of evolution and research leader at the Natural History Museum in London.
What’s more interesting is that Dr Parker isn’t a Christian and from evidence in the book is moving from atheist to deist or theist position. However his attempt to reconcile scripture and evolution quickly ran foul of ardent evolutionists who want no entente cordiale with divine revelation.
Parker’s bold attempt seems to have been influenced by conversations with John Lennox and Alister McGrath amongst others and some deep reflection while visiting the Sistine Chapel. What he sets out to do is match the verses of Genesis 1 with the evolution of life on earth and it’s here that he gets into trouble with basic exegesis.
There’s plenty of times where his scheme is just plainly forced but nowhere more evident that on the fourth day. In Gen 1:14-19 it seems at pretty much every level that this is talking about the creation of the sun and the moon. For Parker trying to keep his chronology in tact this can’t be so because the sun came before the earth and anyway the author of Genesis accounted for that back in Gen 1:3-5.
So what is Parker’s solution? It is, he says, the evolution of vision – the beginning of sight in the pre-historic trilobites and just as it happens that fits in very neatly with his theory (the light switch theory) to explain the Cambrian explosion which remains a matter of some debate and not quite the closed book that Parker presents.
However, it all falls really because Gen 1:14-19 isn’t talking about the evolution of vision but the creation of the sun. Anyway that small fact doesn’t stop Parker from ploughing on and in it all gives an evolutionary tour of life on earth and then attempts to reconcile science and religion. I said it was bold.
I’m all for his conclusion that Genesis is divinely inspired (although the conclusion that the final redactor was Ezra is interesting) and that science and religion need not be enemies and that there are things which science can’t explain and that atheism is empty and cold in comparison to faith in God but sadly his means of getting there will leave most people unhappy. Indeed I think there are plenty of areas where Genesis and science are in remarkable agreement without the need to do utter violence to the biblical text.
There are a few other shortcomings to the book, firstly it’s somewhat hubristic of Parker both to showcase his own evolutionary theory as a clear solution (when it isn’t) and that somehow all this is new (which it isn’t either). The tone and style are supposed to be some sort of ‘come with me on a unique adventure’ and seems to have been written with clear hopes of a TV series in mind.
Those things aside what stands out is the utter contempt he has for creationism and this is in itself very interesting (I shall reserve those thoughts for another post) because Parker is not opposed to religion but is opposed to bad science which is what he accuses the creationists of.
In the end it’s a book which is a bit like my old maths exams sort of the right answer but with horribly wrong workings out.
*For a good volume on Christians views on creation and evolution read this one
Any more?
“Darwinists are celebrating this month the 150th anniversary of the publication of their hero’s breakthrough book, On the Origin of Species. Christians who respond with ridicule of Darwin get nowhere—but understanding a few terms of the debate can help to start a dialogue.”
Do read the whole thing
Nick Spencer has written a fascinating article for Third Way on the faith (or lack of one) of Charles Darwin. Essential reading I would argue.“Ultimately, Darwin is too complex and too subtle a thinker to be either deified or demonised. As the historian John Hedley Brooke once observed, we should be careful not to pigeon-hole the man who wouldn’t pigeon-hole pigeons.”
HT: Faith Central
I had quite low expectations of this little 40 page booklet when I picked it up but John Blanchard‘s Evolution: Fact or Fiction? surprised me. It attacks atheistic evolution and evolutionary theory by using the words of evolutionists. He hoists them on their own petard (great phrase) and argues for greater confidence in the Bible, although he doesn’t attempt to lay out how the Bible interacts with science, although it seems as though the author excepts that the universe is incredibly old.
He has four main points of attack. First up is fossils. Essentially the fossil record doesn’t offer any evidence and the event known as the Cambrian Explosion is held up as evidence against evolution.
Secondly, he argues that humanity while similar is so substantially different than any other life form that evolutionary hypothesis falls short. Thirdly, that the missing link remains missing but that more importantly the idea of ‘spontaneous generation of life’ is a greater leap of faith than it is of science or even to believe in a God. There remains no convincing explanation for how life began.
Fourthly, the brute fact of matter. Where did it come from? Was it just there? How is simply accepting that as a fact any different from the acceptance as brute fact of the existence of God. Fifth comes the argument of irreducible complexity and lastly the argument that people hold on to evolution so passionately because they reject God so fervently.
At 40 pages long you can’t expect too much but the strength of the various cases is using the admissions of known evolutionists to undermine their own case. I’m pretty sure there are good counter arguments but if you wanted to introduce someone to the idea that the case for some aspects of evolutionary theory as not as strong as popularly supposed then this may be a good and inexpensive option to begin with.
I mentioned recently this event and recently I was sent details of another event in Shrewsbury. Prominent creationist John Mackay (not having found an atheist/evolutionist willing to debate with him) will be doing a presentation called ‘Was Darwin right?’ on Saturday 14th February at Shrewsbury Abbey.
Here for more details on the event
Here for more on John Mackay’s group Creation Research and here at Evidence Web
The following is a Sky News report featuring John Mackay from a couple of years ago
01.02.09
10.30am @ North Shrewsbury Community Church I’m speaking on ‘Understanding Genesis Part 1′
4pm @ Shrewsbury Evangelical Church, Paul Yeulett on ‘It is better to believe in Creation rather than evolution because…it is more trustworthy’
08.02.09
10.30am @ North Shrewsbury Community Church I’m speaking on ‘Understanding Genesis Part 2′
4pm @ Shrewsbury Evangelical Church, Paul Yeulett on ‘It is better to believe in Creation rather than evolution because it is more realistic’
14.02.09
3pm @ Shrewsbury Baptist Church, David Robertson, author of The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths will be speaking on ‘Our Confidence in God the Creator’.
5.30pm @ Shrewsbury Baptist Church, Dr JH Peet, author of In the Beginning God Created will be speaking on ‘Our Confidence in the early chapters of Genesis’.
7.30pm @ Shrewsbury Abbey, John Mackay on Was Darwin Right?
15.02.09
4pm @ Shrewsbury Evangelical Church, Paul Yeulett on ‘It is better to believe in Creation rather than evolution because it is more dignified’
22.02.09
4pm @ Shrewsbury Evangelical Church, Paul Yeulett on ‘It is better to believe in Creation rather than evolution because it is more hopeful’
23.02.09
7.30pm @ Prostar Stadium, Martin Charlesworth on ‘Darwin in context: his contemporary critics and their debates’
24.02.09
7.30pm @ Prostar Stadium, Sylvia Baker on ‘Linnaeus, Darwin & Mendel: their message for the 21st Century’
25.02.09
7.30pm @ Prostar Stadium, Geoff Barnard on ‘Does the genome provide evidence for common ancestry?’
27.02.09
7.30pm @ Prostar Stadium, Forum with Stephen Meyer
28.02.09
10-4pm Creation, Design & Evolution: Church Leaders’ Conference @ Trinity Centre, Vicarage Road, Meole Brace, SY3 9HU
5.30pm @ Prostar Stadium, Andy McIntosh on ‘Design, Information and Thermodynamics’
7.30pm @ Prostar Stadium, Stephen Meyer on ‘Signature in the Cell: DNA and the evidence for Intelligent Design‘
Links:
Honest to Darwin full programme
For other events celebrating Darwin and evolution check out Darwin’s Shrewsbury
Three Views on Creation and Evolution is another in Zondervan’s excellent Counterpoints series (I’ve several of them on my shelves although only reviewed one other on this blog on remarriage and divorce).
It’s the closest to a debate format that I’ve found in print. Advocates state their position and then the others each have a turn to respond to the points made. This book was slightly different in that after the three positions were stated, four other writers were invited to respond to each chapter from a different viewpoint and two further writers summarised the debate at the end, giving a total 10 contributors!
Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds spoke up for Young Earth Creationism, Robert Newman for Progressive (or old earth) creationism and Howard Van Till for The Fully Gifted Creation (or theistic evolution) view. Then after each view Walter Bradley, John Jefferson Davis, JP Moreland and Vern Poythress weighed in with comments and at the end Richard Bube and Phillip Johnson summarised.
The beauty of the format is that allows the proponent to advocate, and then you immediately follow that up with alternate views – the ‘what about this?’ retort. I find this helpful because an argument may seem compelling until you’ve heard the rebuttal. In most books there is no rebuttal. So it’s excellent for allowing you to form a view.
It seemed to me that a majority of contributors held the Progressive (old earth) view and supported some form of Intelligent Design all with varying views as to the limits of biological evolution, but overall there was a greater advocacy for this view.
The introductory chapter by JP Moreland was quite hard going and dense with concepts and arguments that weren’t easy to grasp. Not one for the laymen but after that the book had greater pace and was more accessible to the non-scientist like myself. This is one of the greatest challenges on this debate is to how to have any kind of discussion that involves the non-expert given that it can be incredibly technical. The book largely avoids technical discussions and when it does engage in it, there is some help at hand.
In my view, the weakest arguments and case were put forward by the Young Earth Creationists, the Biblical argument was disappointingly brief and I have heard others put forward more compelling arguments. My sense was that others holding this view would be disappointed by the quality of the defense. It failed to convince me, and as the authors themselves recognised, of all the positions young earthers have the greatest amount of work to do to offer convincing science in the widest number of areas – cosmology, physics, geology, biology and not to mention theology.
I thought the case for Progressive Creationism (old earth) was much stronger, bolstered as it was by the various proponents of Intelligent Design. I was also impressed by the Fully Gifted Creation argument, it has, I think, the harder time of making good Biblical interpretations but it certainly isn’t an impossible task.
The issue is for a Christian, given that the doctrine of God creating the universe is of fundamental importance, is what sort of creationist are you? I am now clearer as to what I am not and some steps along the way to being clearer about what I am. I have some more reading to do but I recommend this book for the thoughtful reader as a starting place of investigation into this important but complex issue.
Saturday 14th Feb 3pm David Robertson, author of The Dawkins Letters: Challenging Atheist Myths will be speaking on ‘Our Confidence in God the Creator’.
At 5.30pm Dr JH Peet, author of In the Beginning God Created will be speaking on ‘Our Confidence in the early chapters of Genesis’.
Also during February special Sunday services will be held with the theme ‘It is better to believe in Creation rather than evolution because…it is more trustworthy (1st), it is more realistic (8th), it is more dignified (15th) and it is more hopeful (22nd).
túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.
HT: APOD
He writes,
“It seems odd that Christians might have a problem with the idea of God working through a process, because the idea is so familiar in our daily walk with God. Physically we have been created by God through a lengthy process of development, “knit together in our mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). Knitting takes time!”
Read the whole thing here
Anyway, today on BBC news was this article on the rise of creationism in the UK (Luke Wood share his thoughts on the article here), with some interesting links including to this article on how creationism should be discussed but not taught as science and the recent apology by the Church of England to the long dead Darwin.
It’s a debate I’ve tried to avoid. I’m not a scientist – I just about scraped a C in biology and physics at GCSE and about all I can remember is photosynthesis. So for me any discussion on the science is about choosing which experts to listen to.
From a theological point of view, I’ve also tried to avoid it. Some years ago, the church I went to invited young earth creationism’s leading defender Ken Ham to speak. I didn’t quite know what to make of it. I don’t buy the arguments that if you don’t accept a literal reading of Genesis and therefore by default a young earth perspective that you’ll end up morally debased and have no basis for defending the historical resurrection. I’ve also never seen it as significant, why debate an event no one was around to witness, why not just get on with living the Gospel of Jesus Christ? It wasn’t therefore, for me, a Gospel issue. We could agree to disagree and still think of the other side as Christians. The important point is that God created. The issue in Genesis, it seemed to me, was not when or how but who.
But I think with the bicentenary approaching, I can’t sit on the fence for much longer or avoid the debate forever. So, first stop is Denis Alexander’s new book Creation or Evolution. I’ll let you know how I get on.
Francis Schaeffer’s Pollution and the Death of Man
Matthew Sleeth’s Serve God, Save the Planet
Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth
On Global Warming:
“It seems that the consensus is that global warming is real and man-made, although every now and then I come up against skeptics (some more believable than others). To be honest, I’m not sure I really need to know. Most of the “good for the environment” things you can do have merits of their own irrespective of whether the planet is in immanent peril or not.”
I agree. And one of his final points is worth thinking about too…
“Second, I think the reason so many Christians care so little about environmental issues is nothing to do with their eschatology but rather because of syncretism. We have made it possible to mix Christianity with secular materialistic consumerism.”
Sadly, this is probably true too. But do read the whole thing.
I also came across this on MSN listing 21st Century Lifestyle Sins. Interesting choice of word, sin still has some resonance today it seems. I am regularly committing sins 2,6,7,9,11 & 12.
“Stopping climate change is not the reason we should be attempting to live more simply in the first place. The point about, say,…travelling by public transport instead of your own private car…is that such actions have their own intrinsic worth. Such green practices express a level of esteem for the world around us and the community we live in.”
From a short article in Faithworks magazine (summer 2008) p9. Catherine von Ruhland is the author of Living with the Planet: Making a difference in a time of climate change
If you want the opposite view on climate change read this. Can’t say I agree, but we must read the views of the doubters…
So what can we do to be a part of something that liberates creation from its bondage to decay? Small things like this idea for book addicts like me. I’ve been mulling over what we could do as a household to change our lifestyle habits to better respond to the challenges creation faces. Aiming for zero landfill waste, might be the thing. Which with child number one on the way will be a challenge.
Recent changes include signing up to a new energy tariff – Betterplan from SSE, that rewards customers for consuming less. I now have an energy monitor that shows changes in energy consumption. It’s both cool and disturbing to see how much energy the kettle requires…and how much it costs. We’re composting, recycling more than ever and we’re about to begin growing some of our own veg.
If I remember I’ll write something on parenting, because it strikes me that if I don’t learn how to live more sustainably then my children won’t either and what I’ll do is raise more people who consume at levels the planet can’t afford. So perhaps the most profound thing I can do is to raise environmentally aware kids!
So this is the fiction book I read, not what I’d normally choose but there it was on my shelves unread and now it isn’t. Christian fiction isn’t always that great but Peretti is a decent writer and Monster isn’t bad. Whatever you think of his plot devices, he writes with good pace, reasonable dialogue and vivid descriptions so the pages turn quickly and easily. There are some good twists and turns and there’s a fair bit more blood and gore than you may have expected.
However the central plot device requires a healthy imagination, not necessarily a bad thing. At the heart of it, he makes a point which is that in evolution mutation doesn’t improve upon the original, seeking to score a fiction point for the creationists. There’s also Bigfoot. Anyway, it was OK and I although I think I still need a bit more fiction in me I’m reading for some more serious stuff too. So job done.
Serve God Save the Planet was part of our holiday reading and both the better half and I found it refreshing to read of Americans that cared. Sleeth has done some drastic trimming of his families lifestyle (although to be fair it did sound a bit bloated), now living in a house that is smaller than his previous garage! For those new to the whole issue of changing lifestyle to care for the gift of creation this is an excellent place to start, same goes if you want a straightforward reminder of the basics.
There are great chapters on enjoying creation, turning off the TV, having a genuine sabbath, doing work that exercises the body, raising families, thinking about our homes, respecting the gift of creation all told with humility and warmth. Lessons have been learnt and learnt well.
However I believe, despite chapter 6 (‘Too Much Stuff’) that this former doctor has misdiagnosed the problem. He approaches the issues firmly from the ‘creation care’ angle, so we must change the way we live in order to respect creation and to give it a chance of recovering. However becoming green consumers, still leaves us as consumers. Consumerism isn’t simply dangerous because it leads to a damaged environment (although I believe that is the case), it’s dangerous because it seeks to satisfy needs that only God can meet, it seeks to give us identity and worth outside of our relationship with Him. It’s dangerous because in essence it’s greed.
I think Matthew Sleeth sees these things and knows them so this criticism in no way reduces the value of this gem of a book, but I think we’ll see a generation emerge that will attempt to have its cake and eat it – to preserve both the environment and lavish lifestyles because they won’t see (or will refuse to see) that wealth is deceitful and we have been deceived.
Still this is a book to be recommended to all would consider their lifestyle against the life of our planet. For more info on this author go here
I believe Jesus when he said 'life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions'. I believe he offers something better. This blog is mostly about that search.
I'm also a husband, a father, church planter, keen runner, reader, and motorcyclist. These and a few other things make guest appearances from time to time.
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