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Review Summary: Yes - the Bible does teach Creation |
Date: 2007-12-15 |
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Details: I have to give this book 5 stars just for the concept of letting the Bible speak for itself about creation. I don't know how God did it. But the Bible is clear that He did and that He did it in 6 literals days. Christians are too busy trying to explain from a scientific view how God created everything. That is silly. You can not prove or show from science how God created everything any more than you can prove or show from science how "Jesus Walked on Water", how "Jesus Turned the Water into Wine", or how any of the other miracles in the Bible were done. All I know is that He did and the Bible is clear that He did.
I think that the concept of letting each book of the Bible speak for itself about creation is what we should be doing. Morris has done us a great service by pointing us back to the Bible and reminding us that creation is throughout the Bible. Genesis is only the beginning, but don't forget about all the other books of the Bible that speak clearly about a Creator and a Creation - also without ambiguity.
To me the greatest verses in the Bible about Creation are found in 2 Peter 3 (verses 3-7) 3 First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
Peter's point is that everything has not always been the same! The basis of science is "uniformitarianism" - all things have always been the same. Science is all about noticing patterns in nature, so we can understand how things work. That is why we believe the sun will come up tomorrow - it always has. But that is also Science's weakness and that is why science cannot give you all the answers. The problem with science is that it does not account for God and His power. That is partly what Peter is saying - there are clearly 2 times in history that science can not explain and they are the Creation of the world and the Flood of Noah's time. It is interesting that Peter says that everyone knows this and yet they "deliberately forget" this. There are 100's of other events that science cannot explain (for example, the 10 plagues in Egypt, the miracles in the OT and the many miracles in the NT). Creation, the Flood and miracles are not science; they are the power of God. So that is why I like the concept of this book so well.
If I were not a Christian, then science would have all the answers for me. But I am, and I believe only the Bible can explain creation, the flood and the miracles. That is something science cannot do.
Thank you Dr. Morris for bringing to the front the real issue.
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Review Summary: Masterful Biblical Commentary |
Date: 2007-08-25 |
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Details: First, let's talk about what this book is NOT:
* It is NOT a book intended for a reader that rejects (or doubts) the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible.
* It is NOT a book that attempts to use scientific techniques to examine the physical evidence (fossil record, geology, astrophysics, biological chemistry, etc.) with which all theories of origins (whether creationism or naturalism) must reconcile.
* It is NOT a book primarily intended for a non-Christian reader
Instead, the book is primarily a biblical *commentary* for someone that is already a student of Scripture. It examines each and every book of the Bible, aimed at those who operate from a Christian framework and worldview, and addresses three fundamental questions:
1. Is a literal 6-day "fiat" creation and a relatively young (i.e. 6,000 year old) earth the only reasonable interpretation of Scripture, or can Scripture comfortable accommodate a universe that is billions of years old, life on earth that is approaching a billion or more years old, and development of life that occurred through gradualistic, macroevolutionary processes (i.e. "theistic evolution")?
2. Does the Bible treat the Genesis flood account as a literal, historically accurate event that was truly global in scope or is it merely allegorical, intended to impart some deeper spiritual lesson(s)?
3. Do either 1 or 2 *matter* in terms of the way a Christian lives? In other words, are they foundational or peripheral in matters of faith and conscience?
Thus, if you pick up this book looking for a deep (or even shallow) scientific treatise you will be sorely disappointed, for this is neither the author's intent nor purpose. He is trying to address, in substantial and exhaustive depth, the question "what does the BIBLE teach about creationism?" ... not "what does SCIENCE say about creationism?" (he addresses that question in his other books).
Hence the title: *BIBLICAL* Creationism
It is noteworthy that critics of this book ALWAYS start with the premise that an old earth and macroevolution are indisputable scientific "facts" and as such, the Bible can only properly be interpreted in light of these "truths." They don't just posit that the earth is old and that macroevolution is fact, they INSIST upon it. Their resulting exegesis of Scripture becomes a tortured attempt to take plain meaning and contort it until the "biblical" evolutionist can have his cake and eat it too. Notice that the critics don't attempt to argue the Scripture. They try to discredit Morris's commentary based on science, rather than using what should be the absolute bedrock of the Christian faith: the Scriptures as the inspired, inerrant word of God. Then, they lament that a literal interpretation makes the fundamental Gospel message so unreasonable and hard to believe that it becomes entirely discredited, suggesting that literalists bundle the equivalent of a "flat earth" with the salvation message, destroying its intellectual and scientific pallatability.
As Morris shows, there really can be only one possible interpretation without creating hopeless contradictions within the Bible and undermining many of its other messages. So, in many ways, this book is as much about one's willingness to accept the inerrancy of Scripture as it is about creationism.
My only criticism is that Morris at places overreached where it was wholly unnecessary by taking a few marginal passages of scripture and suggesting they were discussing creation when it was far from clear. However, this does not undermine the overriding strength of the book's conclusion. There are literally HUNDREDS of scriptures that directly and indirectly deal with a creation that occurred in six normal "solar" days, treating it as absolutely foundational to our understanding of the nature of God, the person of Jesus Christ, and His redemptive work. When the student of Scripture attempts to "reconcile" the Bible with evolution rather than reconciling the Bible with ITSELF and with authentic physical facts, he will go sadly and seriously astray from "the faith of our fathers."
That is Morris's message, and he communicates it most convincingly here. |
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Review Summary: Good Zeal, BAD Science |
Date: 2005-04-21 |
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Details: This book is revealing a Typical Young Earth Creationism (YEC). These people have a good and great zeal to defend the Christian Faith. I commend them for that. But I must say in a loving way that their method is UNSCIENTIFIC. It is misleading and untruthful. We cannot defend truth by using part-truth. Either way, this is still lying! How can anyone defend a good cause with bad tools? This will destroy the Christian witness of the gospel.
As a theologian and Scientist I must refute the young earth creationist movement. Many Christian Leaders and Theologians are opposing young earth creationism because of their lies. The scientist community (including Christian scientists) rejects the kind of pseudoscience promoted and distributed by YEC.
Today, the evidence against Young Earth Creationism (YEC) continues to accumulate. This leads inevitably to a general conclusion against all Christianity. I am so grieved when I see atheists laughing at the kind of science that is propagated by YEC. Christ's name is being hurt. Why do young earth creationists have to twist facts and lie so much? Well the answer is simple. They do NOT have ANY evidence in science whatsoever! Then, they have to invent it somehow.
This is how they do it. They Say God created the universe (this is right). By using Usher's Genealogy they believe the Bible says the earth is young. (The Bible does NOT say that) Then they say: "We have to prove what we believe by means of science (after all God created science)". But the Science is not helping them. Then they are forced to dig around to find any flaws in science that they can use and abuse. They continue by accumulating anything they can find to make a case (bits and pieces of unresolved issues, like little discrepancies in scientific data and so on). By using scientific language (and their degrees in science) they go out of their fields of expertise and continue their propaganda by misinterpreting and manipulating scientific data, twisting and ignoring facts, misquoting various writers, using the wrong tools for different kinds of measurements, etc. This is lying. If they find one discrepancy out of, lets say one hundred, they choose to ignore the 99 in order to stress the one that fits their theory. This is NOT integrity. Do you call this science?
By doing sound apologetics we need to bring the unbelieving scientists to faith in Christ. Unfortunately this kind of YEC propaganda is doing exactly the opposite. One day they will be held responsible before God. Zeal is not enough; you need wisdom too. |
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Review Summary: A good book with one flaw |
Date: 2004-07-11 |
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Details: This is a good book that clearly shows that creationism is an important part of Christianity instead of just a few contradictory sentences that can be easily abandonded. I just think that Morris goes too far when he claims that every single reference to creation in general supports the idea of creation having happened the way told in Genesis 1. If you use common sense and think critically, this book certainly is worth reading. |
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Review Summary: Creation from Genesis to Revelation |
Date: 2003-06-25 |
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Details: To those who believe that they can perform an exegetical lobotomy on the Bible and discard the first eleven chapters of Genesis this book comes as a disapointment. 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. |
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out of 8 Reviews
