Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? [Paperback]

Denis Alexander (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 2008

Dr Denis Alexander is a neuroscientist who believes passionately in both the biblical doctrine of creation and the coherence of evolutionary theory. His book draws on the latest genetic research. What do we mean by creation and evolution? What are the common scientific objections to evolution? Is evolution atheistic? Who were Adam and Eve? Can the concept of the Fall be reconciled with evolutionary theory? How could a God of love create a world where animals kill each other? What about intelligent design? The author concludes that the question in the title is a false dichotomy: we do not need to choose, since both are true. 'Nature is what God does' - Augustine.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr Denis Alexander is joint editor of the journal Science and Christian Belief'. He is the Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St. Edmund's College, Cambridge, to which he was elected a Fellow in 1998. His major scientific interests are in immunology and neuropsychology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Monarch (August 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1854247468
• ISBN-13: 978-1854247469
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,438,722 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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53 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We do not have to choose, August 4, 2008

By 

Paul R. Bruggink (Clarington, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (Paperback)

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."

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A neat "both/and" solution, February 2, 2009

By 

Dr. Nicholas P. G. Davies (Halifax, UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (Paperback)

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."

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Reasonable Treatment, April 16, 2010

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M. Edwards (Taichung, Taiwan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? (Paperback)

Maybe I could give this fine book a five except I'm not smart enough to process a lot of the science that is related here! Anyway, I'll attempt a humble review. In his thought-provoking work "Proper Confidence", the late Lesslie Newbigin draws some conclusions which I think also relate to Denis Alexander's excellent book: (1) "To look outside of the gospel for a starting point for the demonstration of the reasonableness of the gospel is itself a contradiction of the gospel, for it implies that we look for the logos elsewhere than in Jesus" (p. 94); (2) "Our lives are shaped not by the confidence that we know enough of the laws of nature to chart our course with certainty, but by a faith (which can always be questioned) in the one whose story it is" (p. 73); (3) "As a Christian, my understanding of the truth must be constantly open to revision and correction, but--and this is the crucial point--only and always within the irreversible commitment to Jesus Christ. If that commitment is questioned, then I am once again a clueless wanderer in the darkness, bamboozled by the products of my own imagination." (p. 70)

In the spirit of Newbigin's conclusions above, Alexander approaches the scientific task with a firm faith in God as the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. He speaks passionately throughout this book of "God's patience and his power in bringing the present created order into being through the evolutionary process." (p. 190) "There is nothing in the created order without exception that is not created and sustained by God." (p. 320) And "it is not particularly helpful to think of God as tweaking the occasional mutation here, or bringing about the extinction of a species there, because the unavoidable implication from such a suggestion is that then God is less involved in some other aspect of the process. If the immanence of God in the created order means anything, then it means God's working through all the processes of the evolutionary process without exception, in the billions of years when (to our minds not much was happening on the earth and things were very small, just as much as in the Cambrian explosion when life became more diverse and interesting (again to our minds) and as much again as in the relatively rapid process of evolution that led eventually to our own appearance on the planet. In other words, God is the author of the whole story of creation, not just of bits of it." (187)

In spite of his strong faith, or perhaps precisely because of it, Alexander comes out strongly against insecure "fundamentalists [who] do a disservice to the gospel when as sometimes happens they adopt a style of certainty more in the tradition of Descartes than in the truly evangelical spirit." (p. 70) Sometimes? His postscript is especially scathing of the attitudes of many well-intentioned Christians toward science, quoting Augustine as others such as Francis Collins have done in recent years.

On the other hand, Alexander comes out just as strong against Richard Dawkins and his ilk with their unscientific, illogical propagandistic style: "if the `evolution' word is linked with the `atheism' idea long enough, then eventually people will think that one implies the other." (p. 180)

An early conclusion drawn midway through this book states "the geographical distribution of species, the existence of ongoing speciation events, the fossil record, comparative anatomy and, above all, genomics, all provide an immense array of persuasive data in support of common descent with variation." (p. 137) Alexander moves on from there to examine different biblical creation perspectives and related theological questions, concluding with a vague but helpful discussion of the present understanding of science on the "Origin of Life" issue. In summary, definitely read this book, but you'll need to read it multiple times and/or several others as well to even begin to get a grasp of the issues.