Customer Reviews

Holman QuickSource Guide to Understanding Creation (Holman Quicksource Guides)

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If you have read Whorton's book "Peril in Paradise", you know the wonderful way in which he presents Bible and science discoveries. The same is true for Hill Roberts website Lord I believe.com. Both men are working scientists and Bible scholars who love Gods word and see His hand on creation. Although both men are Old earth creationists, they have done a very respectful job of presenting both the Young and Old earth positions, as well as the Theistic and naturalist evolution explanations for creation. The book also contains a detail review of relevant Bible scripture and several ancient creation myths. This is an excellent reference book on creation...the best I have seen.

I found this book extremely balanced, informative, and broad. It does a great job of briefly addressing almost all common questions that Christians interested in science may encounter. It does not deviate from a position of the Bible being the infallible Word of God, but examines all popular worldviews and exposes the strengths and weaknesses of each. You will probably learn some weaknesses of your own worldview, as I did, but the authors do not intend to convince you of any view in particular. The book is strongest in its balance and educates impartially. An absolute must read for the scientific believer.

It's hard to find a good introductory book on Genesis, creation, design and evolution. Many books are often over-specialized in science or theology. Some don't cover enough of the issues. Many creationist books are one-sided and unscholarly. In this well-designed book, all these topics are surveyed at a decent, but not overwhelming, level of detail. There is an amazing scope of subject matter here, virtually every topic of these issues is visited. I don't buy the "design can identify the designer" argument on page 285. Does not forensics and archaeology do this all the time? This "weak" version of design is meant to placate those who claim design is disguised creationism. The book could probably benefit from more references and an index, but this is probably the best intro book you will find. Of course, you may want to further your studies after reading the book. On Genesis: The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis, A Matter of Days: Resolving a Creation Controversy; On design: The Creator and the Cosmos: How the Latest Scientific Discoveries of the Century Reveal God, Why the Universe Is the Way It Is, More Than a Theory: Revealing a Testable Model for Creation; On evolution: Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Origins of Life: Biblical and Evolutionary Models Face Off.

I've bought a lot of theology books in my time. Some end up on my shelf, and I tell myself I will read them some day. Some, I read a chapter or two and then watch as it descends to the bottom of the pile by my bed. This one, I read straight through, and was sad when it ended so soon.
In my denomination, to be a deacon or elder, you must subscribe to the authority and infallibility of scripture. But my denomination understands that there are several ways that men of faith have read Genesis, without compromising infallibility. This book presents all of these ways fairly, and shows the strengths and weaknesses of each perspective without making fun or judging anyone. Not that the authors have no opinion on these things. It's pretty clear that they are coming down on the old earth, local flood, no macro-evolution side of these debates. But they present all points of view respectfully.
The book was very informative for me. There are about 5 camps in the intramural debate, and I had only really been exposed to two of them.
The book also spends some time on the varsity debate, by which I mean the debate between Creationist of any stripe and Naturalists (Atheists) who say there was no God involved in the process at all. This was very solid material as well, but it is a "Quicksource" guide, which means it's a short summary overview of our best arguments.
Any Christian who feels their faith is challenged by the assertions of naturalists, or who feels locked into a view of Genesis that just won't fit with their own observations of nature, should read this. There is strength here for your faith that will not bind your conscience.

This book is an easy read, with illustrations on at least every other page. It compares three scriptural models of creation: Scientific Creationism, Progressive Creationism, and Evolutionary Creationism, and it comes down in favor of Progressive Creationism. It advocates both the concordist (there is a correspondence between Scripture and science) and the accommodationist (God can and sometimes does accommodate his revelation to the limited knowledge of the recipients in order to communicate effectively) views of scriptural interpretation.

The authors emphasize the fact that the creation story is told a number of places in the Bible, with a matrix of six biblical creation accounts (Genesis 1, Genesis 2, Job 38-42, Psalm 33, Psalm 104 & Proverbs 8) on the horizontal axis and ten creation events on the vertical axis, with specific verses in the matrix, accompanied by some well-written commentary, particularly on Psalm 104.

There is a good discussion of the evidence for an old universe and an old earth, a local versus a global flood, and the anthropic principle. It was therefore surprising to see a very incomplete discussion of biological evolution. There is some minimal mention of the fossil record, but other lines of evidence for macroevolution and common descent, such as from morphological similarity, embryology, vestigial structures, biogeography, and pseudogenes are not even mentioned. The authors' conclusion is, "While there is overwhelming evidence of microevolution, the case for naturalistic macroevolution suffers from a lack of support from the fossil record."

On the positive side, the above shortcoming makes this a particularly good book with which to introduce Old Earth Creationism to Young Earth Creationists, since going directly from Young Earth Creationism to Evolutionary Creationism (a.k.a. theistic evolution) in a single bound is probably too big a leap for most Young Earth Creationists anyway.