Customer Reviews

Astronomy and the Bible,: Questions and Answers

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As a scientist who is also a Christian, I have found it unfortunately difficult to find literature that appropriately deals with scientific facts from a biblical viewpoint. This book is a prime example of what I wish I could find in other scientific fields (including my own). The book deals with a number of current and relevant scientific issues (astronomy, meterological) and gave a balanced biblical perspective. The author of the book was willing to delve into some difficult issues and give a response that was reasonable and concise.

Donald DeYoung does not hold back from challenging some Christian thought that delves more on superstition and rumor than on facts. I was both intellectually challenged and encouraged to search scripture for truth revolving around the gospel. In my perspective, this book is a rare find in its readability and scientific basis. It would be a terrific study tool for teenagers college students in Christian schools and for those who are mere laymen in the field of Astronomy.

We are often exposed to "scientific" articles, books and television programs that ignore and even mock the Bible's clear teaching concerning the Creator. Because of this, Christians are sometimes intimidated, especially in a culture which insists that science is the sole propriety of secular humanism; but if the study of Physics, Biology and Astronomy should do anything to the Christian, it should inccrease our own sense of wonder and awe for the One who simply spoke the vast cosmos into existence by His powerful Word (Hebrews 11:3, Psalm 33:6). Instead of avoiding these subjects, Christians must understand that genuine science is the propriety of God, and is therefore to be enjoyed by His children, both for personal edification, as well as for outreach and evangelism to the lost. With this in mind, there is a great need for scientific works that can be used by brethren in order to increase their understanding of the sciences in an age of scholastic misinformation.

One such book is Astronomy and the Bible, Questions & Answers, by Dr. Donald B. DeYoung.

Dr. DeYoung is Chairman of the Department of Physical Science at Grace College, Winona Lake, Indiana. He holds a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics, as well as an M. Div. from Grace Seminary. DeYoung's approach to the subject of Astronomy is clearly Biblical. Refreshingly, he deals with many of the sticky questions that normally surround modern cosmology, but with the priority of Biblical authority. Within the brief span of just 176 pages, DeYoung manages to raise and answer one hundred popular questions dealing with Cosmology and Physics. In particular, he addresses the most common questions dealing with:

* Geocentricity (Is the earth at the center of the universe?).
* The Anthropic Principle (a term which speaks of the uniqueness of earth's habitable environment).
* What is the big bang?
* What is the age of the universe?
* Should man be in space?
* What is background radiation?
* What's wrong with studying astrology?

This small sample of his one hundred questions provides a preview of DeYoung's very helpful review of Cosmology and Physics. Many of the questions that he raises are designed to bust certain modern myths. Others are designed to clarify matters that are often misunderstood in the popular culture. I find that his simple answers are thorough enough, and yet simple enough, to equip believers for personal edification as well as for sharing the Gospel with others. You don't need a Physics degree in order to read and understand this book! At the same time, this work will certainly challenge your thinking about many discussions that have fallen prey to secular humanism. I offer it to you with my highest recommendation.

Having attended public schools, I learned everything from an evolutionary perspective. We homeschool, and in teaching our children creationist science, I wanted a foundation of knowledge. One thing I really like about this book is the ease of reading. The author does a great job of teaching and explaining in this book through question and answer format.

I also appreciate the author's honesty that science cannot explain everything. The following quote, while lengthy, really shows the tone of this book and the author's heart:

"Science alone will never have final answers regarding the true origin and purpose of the solar system. Only in Christ the Creator 'are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge . . . ' (Col. 2:3). This does not mean that we must abandon our search for scientific knowledge. It does mean that we must maintain a posture of reverence and spiritual humility in this search. After all, this is God's universe, and it reflects his attributes of perfect power, wisdom, and love."

I have not only received a foundation of knowledge, but been led to consider our Creator with awe and wonder.

Other reviews of this book--the ones that are highly critical--are critical for one reason--they don't agree with the author's stance on a relatively young earth. I've stuidied this subject quite a bit and honestly I'm not sure what to believe about "young" or "old". But then, I wasn't there.
I love DeYoung's book however because it answers so many questions in readable fashion. The non-scientist can easily grasp the basic concepts and terms we so commonly hear. It is not overly religious (that's an opinion!) but does assume that there is a God (that's not an opinion!) and that he is the God of the Bible. All books on astronomy espouse philosphical viewpoints--either the viewpoint of athiesm or that "God did it" or something else. I happen to believe the Bible, so although I'm not altogether convinced that God created the earth in 6 days that were precisely 24 hours in length, I am PLEASED by the author's God-centered conception of creation. He writes as one who knows his subject and understands the kind of questions students are asking. The book is well organized and indexed so you can find what you're looking for quickly. I would recommend it as a beginning point for Christians.
I wouldn't recommend it for the athiest. The athiest should read anything written by Phillip Johnson on the subject of inteligent design.

This handy little question and answer book is a revised and updated version of an earlier work under the same name. It features 100 interesting questions from the world of astronomy, physics, and creation. The book is divided into six chapters that organize the questions into separate categories such as "The Earth and the Moon," "The Stars," and "Technical Terms and Ideas." Every question features informative and helpful yet short and concise answers that reflect a broad knowledge of the world of science and the message of the Bible. Some example questions include: Do all the planets ever line up? Is there a time problem with moon dust? Which stars are named in Scripture? An excellent way to enjoy the book is to read one or two questions every day; star charts located at the back of the book allow the reader to also enjoy the night sky itself. All will benefit from reading through this book, whether homeschoolers, astronomy lovers, or creation enthusiasts. It is written in a way that everyone from children to trained scientists can understand and appreciate. The book contains a glossary of important astronomy terms as well as four star charts for night sky viewing all year long. The author espouses the creation worldview and makes the case that the Bible's implied timescale is the best for understanding our universe.

ASTRONOMY AND THE BIBLE is a book that attempts to answer various questions about astronomy, but from the perspective of a creationist scientist. Basic astronomical issues such as eclipses, solar systems, stars, auroras, satelittes, etc. are covered as well as more in-depth issues such as what powers the sun. There are also a variety of issues the book discusses that aren't directly related to astronomy, but that are addressed, such as the origin of the Jewish Star of David and what Bioshpere II is.

ASTRONOMY AND THE BIBLE is written in a fairly easy-to-read style that the average person can understand. It isn't very detailed and the book is written from a creationist perspective, so the majority of the scientific community would disagree with many of the explanations offered (God and science don't mix in the secular world). This book would, however, be a great read for anyone with a Biblical worldview who is trying to figure out how the celestial bodies of the universe fit into their worldview.

Fantastic information, I was surprised how quickly I received the book & was pleasantly surprise that the condition was better than it was listed as being. Very satisfied.

I write this as a person both trained scientifically (I'm an electrical engineer) and trained theologically (also have M.Div.). This book is but one from a group of so-called creation-scientists. As a minister/scientist, I have to say this book, and others like it, are unhelpful. I believe that science and theology must go together - and have preached that they must, and that they very well do go together in a beautiful and meaningful way. But to do that, one has to have a mature enough faith to realize that the Bible is not a record of scientific fact.

As far as creation-science books go, I give this one two stars becuase the author clearly understands science, and uses some good scientific data and honesty, much more so than others of his ilk. However, whenever he makes a very valid scientific point, he then careens off into a bizarre creationist perspective that makes no sense. As any good scientist knows, one collects data, and then draws conclusions. One does not, as the creation-scientists do, make a hypothersis and then find the data to prove it (in their case, they are always proving that everything in the Bible is literally true, no matter how obviuosly it isn't, and so comletely ignore any discoveries that are in disagreement no matter how often that data has been reproduced, and instead focus on data that was gathered through questionable proceeses, or interpreted in questionable ways, usually having been done a fair distance in the past with imprecise tools). These are scientific shennanigans that any junior high science student would be able to pick up on as just plain wrong. I am saddened that Christians are out there who are so literally married to the idea that the Bible is a scientific textbook. The Bible is TRUTH, but it is not always FACT, and there's a big difference. The author re-arranges and re-numbers scientifically valid data to "prove" his point. There is absolutely nothing theologically wrong with admitting that the stars are billions of years old, billions of years away, and that the universe is even older than that. Please stop trying to force science to fit some misinterpreted Biblical claim (a claim which the Bible doesn't even make, which a close reading of the Bible will show you). There is some truly valid and well-thought scientific theology being done, especially from the Center for Theology and Natural Science at the Pacific School of Religion. If you want theological science, go there - their scientists are able to see and interpret scientific data in a scientific way, and are not clouded by forcing data to fit a Biblical model which doesn't even exist to begin with.

Read this book if you are interested in what the creation-scientists are doing. But don't read it because you are looking for scientific method and process. It ain't that at all. This book serves only to further make Christians look silly in the eyes of their non-Christian peers.

In a mailing-list flame war on creationism at MIT (of all places!) about eight years ago, I wrote (something like), "Anyone who knows anything about astronomy and has half a brain can figure out that creationism is false." Now why would I write such a thing? I was refering, of course, to young-universe creationism, the idea that the universe was created about 6000 years ago. Now, here we have an astronomy book which tries to argue that creationism is at least respectible, and *assumes* that the Bible is accurate.

This book does contain quite a bit of information on astronomy. As such, it could be a good introductory book. Unfortunately, the science is contaminated with creationist propaganda and superfluous Bible references. Only someone already knowledgeable in the field would be able to separate these tares from the wheat of science. I strongly recommend some other book on astronomy, preferably secular. "The Physical Universe" by Frank Shu, for example.

This book is better than "Starlight and Time" and "Tornado in a Junkyard," which I've already reviewed on Amazon.com. In "Starlight and Time," Russell Humphreys completely disregards all physical consequences of his white-hole theory. In "Tornado in a Junkyard," James Perloff distorts or disregards pretty much everything known in modern science. Here, Professor DeYoung gives plenty of accurate information, but also some distortions.

DeYoung does tell us about the immense distances involved in the universe. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. The Andromeda galaxy, he says, is about 2.9 million light-years away. The large Magellanic Cloud, where Supernova 1987A occured, is about 180,000 light-years away. There are many many galaxies much farther away. The most distant objects, the quasars, are billions of light-years away.

The speed of light is one light-year per year. Since we can see things billions of light-years away, the universe must be billions of years old. So what's the problem?

The problem is that creationists come up with all sorts of crackpot theories to explain how we can see distant objects even with a young universe. DeYoung presents five such theories on pp. 89-90, including one detailed in "Starlight and Time." Four of them predict enormous physical phenomena that are absent in nature. The fifth theory is that God created the light while in transit when it created the universe 6000 years ago. That theory is a variant on "Last Thursdayism," the idea that we were created last Thursday with our memories completely intact and everything around us matching.

The two problems with the "Last Thursdayism" theory are that it's completely unverifiable and unfalsifiable, and it means that God committed an enormous fraud on us by creating massive evidence of a history that didn't occur. DeYoung tries to answer whether Supernova 1987A actually occured, under "Last Thursdayism." The obvious answer is no, because it would have occured long before the creation of the universe. God would have had to make the explosive light, the matching neutrinos, the light from the prior star that exploded (a blue supergiant), the light from the remains of the supernova, etc. in flight. But DeYoung makes a convoluted attempt to argue that the supernova actually did occur -- something to the effect that it happened in God's imagination, and God is truth, so it happened.

DeYoung tells us that many different estimations of the age of the universe give widely varying results, from thousands of years to billions of years. The problem is that the young-universe estimations have been thoroughly debunked. (See any typical anticreationist book, or www.talkorigins.org.) Those estimations have used absurd assumptions and have disregarded well-established basic science.

DeYoung believes that a "vapor canopy" of water existed above the atmosphere before the flood (p. 88). Genesis 1 states that God created a "firmament" in the sky, separating the waters above from the waters below. However, in the fourth day, when God created the sun, moon, and stars, God set them in the firmament. That means that the "vapor canopy" existed not only above the atmosphere, but beyond all the stars as well.

In fact, the world-view of Genesis 1 is either geocentric or flat-earth -- most likely flat-earth, because nothing in Genesis 1 portrays anything more than a "heaven above" and an "earth beneath." (Exodus 20:4) The sun and moon are small balls of light, and the stars are tiny points of light, which can fall to earth (Revelation 6:13). I've not seen anything in the Bible that unambiguously identifies a round earth. That includes Job 26:7, which DeYoung cites as indicating a round earth (p. 17). On the other hand, there are a few indications that the earth is flat: Isaiah 40: 22, Matthew 4: 8.

I agree with DeYoung, that the six days of Genesis 1 are literal days, contrary to the claims of Hugh Ross and others that days refer to ages or eons. Genesis 1 has day and night created before the sun, moon, and stars; and vegetation created before the sun. What this means is that the author of Genesis 1 didn't connect daylight with sunlight, and that Genesis 1 is simply wrong.

Contrary to DeYoung's claim on p. 17, "When the Bible touches on scientific subjects, it is entirely accurate," the Bible is frequently wrong. There is NO science in the Bible.