Book Review: GENESIS versus DARWINISM: The case for God in a scientific world
by Desmond Ford PhD, MSU PhD, Manchester
Genesis versus Darwinism: The case for God in a scientific world
I'm giving a review plus sample quotes from the book.
Overall this is a Creationist book but of a different stripe than what I am used to seeing. It is both a theological work with a particular spin on Genesis and a review of the state of the current Creation vs Evolution disagreement. He discusses a lot of history of the dispute surrounding the Institute for Creation Research and overturns its accusations against Science through bad reasoning and through obscurring facts about geology, completely dismissing Henry Morris. He distances Creationism from all of the chicanery of The Genesis Flood and the circuit-rider creationists. He produces his own claim in its place that Evolution doesn't, to him, make sense or pass his inspection and works out his own scheme. He also discusses a Genesis that is literary rather than literal. You could say he's moving the goalposts of the conversation about Creationism vs Darwinism, so that while the public is still trying to deal with nips and slanders by ICR it now has a new surprise visitor standing behind it. What this book represents is an evolution in the Creationist's argument toolkit for some. I think we will be seeing more of this kind of creationist while the Henry Morris type fades, so collectors hurry up and buy up any used copies of the Genesis Flood. Its a collector's item.
On page 104 he dismisses Morris's book "...the authors of The Genesis Flood have written on the basis of their belief in the Holy Scriptures as the reliable Word of God. This belief I share. Second, it is my sincere conviction that it is a fundamental and extremely dangerous mistake to think that our belief in the reliable Word of God could ever be based on or strengthened by so-called scientific reasoning." new paragraph "Writing a book with such significant claims or conclusions requires a thorough knowledge of the geological sciences and their principles. Neither author--one a theologian, the other a civil engineer, is a geologist. Everybody knows that in the present state of scientific development it is practically impossible for one person to master more than one branch of science...."
page 105 "The actual situation is that the geological time-scale is based on a factual superposition of rocks yielding a factual superposition of paleontological criteria, which has been proved to be the same all over the world."
page 145 he comments about properly interpreting Genesis 1: "Most of all we have never known an omnipotent God, who is an omnipresent Spirit, to use vocal cords and condescend to the activities of a surgeon, a gardener, a walker and a seamstress. But all these are to be found in Genesis chapters 1-3. God is a spirit according to John 4:24. The second commandment implies that. Therefore he has no vocal chords or physical parts such as we know--hands, feet, buttocks, etc."
page 236 concerning Paleontology "Despite the bright promise of paleontology providing a means of 'seeing' evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most significant of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediaries between species, and paleontology does not provide them."
page 305 "At first we may feel disconcerted by the idea that the Bible could omit so much of human history. Surely it would be good to know more about the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons. We forget so easily that early populations were considerably less than a fragment of one percent of today's population. Have we fully understood the way in which Christ concentrated the history of many centuries into a story of just nine verses?..."
by Desmond Ford PhD, MSU PhD, Manchester
Genesis versus Darwinism: The case for God in a scientific world
I'm giving a review plus sample quotes from the book.
Overall this is a Creationist book but of a different stripe than what I am used to seeing. It is both a theological work with a particular spin on Genesis and a review of the state of the current Creation vs Evolution disagreement. He discusses a lot of history of the dispute surrounding the Institute for Creation Research and overturns its accusations against Science through bad reasoning and through obscurring facts about geology, completely dismissing Henry Morris. He distances Creationism from all of the chicanery of The Genesis Flood and the circuit-rider creationists. He produces his own claim in its place that Evolution doesn't, to him, make sense or pass his inspection and works out his own scheme. He also discusses a Genesis that is literary rather than literal. You could say he's moving the goalposts of the conversation about Creationism vs Darwinism, so that while the public is still trying to deal with nips and slanders by ICR it now has a new surprise visitor standing behind it. What this book represents is an evolution in the Creationist's argument toolkit for some. I think we will be seeing more of this kind of creationist while the Henry Morris type fades, so collectors hurry up and buy up any used copies of the Genesis Flood. Its a collector's item.
On page 104 he dismisses Morris's book "...the authors of The Genesis Flood have written on the basis of their belief in the Holy Scriptures as the reliable Word of God. This belief I share. Second, it is my sincere conviction that it is a fundamental and extremely dangerous mistake to think that our belief in the reliable Word of God could ever be based on or strengthened by so-called scientific reasoning." new paragraph "Writing a book with such significant claims or conclusions requires a thorough knowledge of the geological sciences and their principles. Neither author--one a theologian, the other a civil engineer, is a geologist. Everybody knows that in the present state of scientific development it is practically impossible for one person to master more than one branch of science...."
page 105 "The actual situation is that the geological time-scale is based on a factual superposition of rocks yielding a factual superposition of paleontological criteria, which has been proved to be the same all over the world."
page 145 he comments about properly interpreting Genesis 1: "Most of all we have never known an omnipotent God, who is an omnipresent Spirit, to use vocal cords and condescend to the activities of a surgeon, a gardener, a walker and a seamstress. But all these are to be found in Genesis chapters 1-3. God is a spirit according to John 4:24. The second commandment implies that. Therefore he has no vocal chords or physical parts such as we know--hands, feet, buttocks, etc."
page 236 concerning Paleontology "Despite the bright promise of paleontology providing a means of 'seeing' evolution, it has presented some nasty difficulties for evolutionists, the most significant of which is the presence of 'gaps' in the fossil record. Evolution requires intermediaries between species, and paleontology does not provide them."
page 305 "At first we may feel disconcerted by the idea that the Bible could omit so much of human history. Surely it would be good to know more about the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons. We forget so easily that early populations were considerably less than a fragment of one percent of today's population. Have we fully understood the way in which Christ concentrated the history of many centuries into a story of just nine verses?..."
