Biblical Creationism [Paperback]

Certain individuals seem to make a hobby of rubbishing books they have not read by authors they dislike. This is an unfortunate irritant we must live with, alongside the benefit of internet book reviews.

Many Christians think that since science has 'proved' evolution, the Biblical creation account must be myth or allegory. However, by examining the many references to Genesis and Creation throughout the Bible, this book shows that such a view is not easy to reconcile with the scriptures. In fact, to anyone who holds that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, belief in evolution or an old earth is untenable.

Many people avoid the issue, by trying to come to some sort of compromise, or more likely, not thinking too much about it.

Be warned, this book could be dangerous. Armed with the Bible's references to a recent creation, you will soon reduce a progressive creationist to bluster and reference to scientific 'facts'. The more committed someone is to a compromise position, the more aggressive they are likely to be. Be careful talking to your vicar/pastor!

Understanding the reality of a recent 6-day creation, brings new understanding to the whole of God's Word, to the Gospel, and to evangelism.

Morris takes us through the many passages in the Bible that speak about creation, the curse and the flood, from Genesis to Revelation, including the teachings of Jesus, the disciples and the apostle Paul. One cannot really make sense of any other of the central doctrines of the Bible, such as sin, death as a result of sin, the need for salvation, the physical encarnation of Jesus, His physical ressurection, the promise of a new heaven and earth without curse and death, apart from the doctrine of creation and the fall.

As I read this book I took the opportunity to read and mark all the quoted texts in my Bible and even found more interesting texts. I had never studied the biblical doctrine of creation before, and I must say that the simple reading of the relevant biblical texts is quite conclusive: theistic evolutionism and progressive creationism just cannot be made compatible with the Bible.

If Jesus, the creator Word, can get himself a new ressurected and special body in a matter of seconds, he can create the whole universe in six days. The opposite also makes total sense.

What's more, when Jesus multiplied the fishes and the loaves of bread and ressurected Lazarus, he didn't need trial and error nor randomness. He just did it right there. After all, the Bible makes it clear that he his the creator and sustainer of the universe, just by his Word. I just don't see why I should have more confidence in human scientists then in their creator.

It takes a lot of argumentative acrobatics to even try to harmonize the hipothesis of evolution with the Bible, but in the end it just won't work. The Bible presents a creator that knows exactly what to do and how to do it. Random mutations is just not his way of creating things. Nor mutations nor natural selection are able to generate all the complex specified information present in living organisms.

The reading of this book made it clear to me that there are good and irrefutable theological reasons to support the biblical model. It also made it clear to me that we are dealing with an whole powerful God that is not very impressed with the science of the guys at Harvard, MIT or Oxford. The Bible says, in the book of Eclesiastes, that there are things that God has done that will never be understood by human beings, no matter how hard they study them.

But what about scientific reasons? In my opinion, you have to start by accepting the biblical account by faith, puting aside all materialistic and antimetaphysical assumptions. No doubt about it. But it is not a blind faith. There are good a priori reasons to this faith. I don't advocate just any kind of blind faith.

But once you accept the biblical notions of special creation, fall, curse, flood, Babel, dispersion and speciation, you will find that it makes sense of the origins of matter and life, the fine tuning of the universe, the fossil record, living fossils, good and bad design, DNA, homology, mutations and natural selection, speciation, irreducible complexity, complex specified information, apes and men, cave men, the emergence of languages and races, the ice age, continental drift, plate tectonics, radiometric dating, etc.

Most of all, it makes sense of the rational, moral and spiritual nature of man and of his longing for God and for eternity.