Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?
- ISBN13: 9780825462924
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Addressing the controversies surrounding the evolution vs. creationism debate, Creation or Evolution? seeks to shed light on this often murky issue, without giving in to common presuppositions…. More >>
Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose?
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I enjoyed this book. Its great merit is that it affirms both great science and great faith. The one can, and does, benefit the other. Alexander takes us back to the idea of the scientist as one who explores the workings of God’s universe. This book gets us away from the sterile either/or thinking of the evangelical atheists and the militant creationists.
The book echoes echoes thoughts from Michael Ruse (Can a Darwinian be a Christian?) who from a philosophical background shows that Christian faith and evolutionary biology are compatible, and Francis Collins (The Mind of God) who also has no problem reconciling his biological knowledge and his belief in God.
Alexander is particularly good at showing how DNA changes can generate genetic diversity which is the substrate for evolution. He also shows how natural selection is likely to be a conservative force on most occasions.
Alexander takes evolution back to its original role as a biological theory that explained the formation of new species from existing ones. As such evolution is a powerful theory, with great explanatory power. His account of species formation, and the examples provided are excellent.
Alexander is also good at showing how the idea of evolution has been exteneded to ends far beyond its biological use. The right with its belief in survival of the fittest businesses and individuals, the left with its idea of human perfectibility and inevitable historical progress, the Nazis with their idea of “lives not fit to be lived”, the atheist materialist who must deny any idea of design or purpose all use evolution far beyond its intended, or valid, remit.
This book is both an excellent account of evolution, and a demonstration that science and religion can be successfully and effectively pursued together.
The two possible areas of weakness in the book are the section on the origin of life and its summary dismissal of the arguments of intelligent design.
Overall however this is a useful book, and one that allows scientists to get on with studying evolution together whatever their religious differences may be. It helps to build a very powerful bridge across the false divide presented by those who prefer to talk about, “science versus religion.”
Rating: 5 / 5
This book is primarily for Christians who are seeking a better understanding of the current creation-evolution debate. The author, who is the Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge, begins by assuming that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God.
Dr. Alexander then tackles his subject systematically, starting with biblical interpretation, then the biblical doctrine of creation, then three chapters on “What do we mean by evolution?” His discussion of the supporting evidence for evolution is the best and most up-to-date that I’ve yet seen in the popular press. He then spends a chapter defending evolution against common objections, such as:
* Evolution is a chance process and this is incompatible with the God of the Bible bringing about his purposeful plan of creation.
* The theory of evolution is not truly scientific because it does not involve repeatable experiments in the laboratory.
* Evolution runs counter to the second law of thermodynamics.
* Perhaps God makes things took old, although in reality they are much younger, in order to test our faith.
* What use is half an eye?
* Surely if evolution were true, God would have simply told us so in his Word so that we don’t need to have all this discussion.
* Perhaps God made the original kinds by special acts of creation which then underwent rapid evolution to generate the species diversity that we see today.
In bringing together Adam & Eve and evolution, he presents the same five models (A-E) that he described in his paper at the joint meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation and Christians-in-Science in Edinburgh in 2007. He favors his Model C, in which “God in his grace chose a couple of Neolithic farmers in the near East . . . to whom he chose to reveal himself in a special way, calling them into fellowship with himself – so that they might know him as a personal God.” Model C is consistent with the historical and biblical records. So is a local flood saving those who “walked with God.” The calling of Adam & Eve to be the recipients of God’s specific commands set the pattern for all the other specific people subsequently called by God for God’s specific purpose, including Abraham, Moses and Mary.
In his discussion of death before the Fall, he makes the point that “nowhere in the Old Testament is there the slightest suggestion that the physical death of either animals or humans, after a reasonable span of years, is anything other than the normal pattern ordained by God for this earth.”
Chapter 14 (Intelligent Design) does as good a demolition of ID as science as I have seen anywhere, and better than most. He also describes Simon Conway Morris’s concept of evolutionary convergence (“Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe”).
There is a brief discussion of accommodation (God giving his Word in language that his people could understand), with virtually no mention of Ancient Near East cosmology, which is treated very well in Gordon Glover’s “Beyond the Firmament,” or the problems of scientific concordism (the Bible teaches the facts of science), which is treated very well in Denis Lamoureux’s “Evolutionary Creation”. It also has a relatively weak discussion of how we know that the earth is very old, but after all, he is a biochemist. Despite these minor shortcomings, this is an excellent book for Christians, especially Young Earth, Day-Age and Progressive Creationists, who have doubts about their current position but greater doubts about the compatibility of the Bible and biological evolution.
A friend of mine used to say that you have to tell someone something three times before they really get it. If you’re like that (or if you’re over 65 like me and can’t remember what you read last week), I highly recommend reading this book plus Gordon Glover’s “Beyond the Firmament” and Denis Lamoureux’s “Evolutionary Creation” in order to “get it.”
Rating: 5 / 5