Three Views on Creation and Evolution

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing...
Review: I bought this book expecting a real debate between the three views mentioned, namely, Young Earth Creation, Old Earth Creation, and Theistic Evolution. The reason I found it disappointing is for two main reasons. None of the contributors really talk about the evidences for their position, but instead ramble on about their philosophy of science. Van Till spends most of his time trying to convince people to call his perspective the "fully-gifted creation perspective" instead of theistic evolution. To me, it really was just playing with words in order to avoid the negative Christian response to evolution. Does Van Till believe in Darwinian evolution or not? He says he does, so why not Theistic evolution? His view, as he expresses it, is really Deism, although he protests that it isn't. Read what he says and decide for yourself. My other major complaint with the book was that instead of the proponent of each view responding to the other two views, the responses were made by a third party "panel". I found this to be extremely unsatisfying.
The book wasn't totally without merit, and all three perspectives had some good things to say - but it got lost in a lot of wordiness about "words" which really took away from the book as a whole.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing: avoids some of the major issues
Review: Initially I thought that this book was just what I wanted: a careful presentation of the 'young earth' and 'old earth' creationist positions and of the 'theistic evolution' position. Really, though, the fundamental problems with each view do not seem to be addressed.

The young earth defendants don't justify their viewpoint very well at all. They don't present the Biblical case for recent creationism convincingly -- a case which seems to me to be incredibly weighty; neither do they provide any serious answers to the problem of squaring recent creationism with the generally-accepted results of scientific research.

The old-earth creationist and theistic evolution positions are presented more convincingly from a scientific point of view. But neither author properly addresses the basic problem that, although in isolation from the rest of the Bible, the first few chapters of Genesis could be interpreted as meaning quite a few different things, it is really difficult to sustain anything other than a young-earth creationist position as being consistent with the ways in which the Bible refers back to creation in later books. At least, I think it's difficult, but I am open to persuasion -- that's one reason why I bought the book!

Van Till's presentation of Theistic Evolution, the responses to his presentation and his response to the responses are intriguing, because it seems to descend into a mutual mud-slinging match. It seems to me that behind the responses are two unspoken (but valid!) reservations, which would have been best made explicit. The one reservation is that Van Till doesn't seem to BELIEVE the Bible in the same way as evangelicals do. The other reservation is that Van Till uses some rather odd terminology such as 'fully gifted creation' and 'creaturely' (in reference to matter). I suspect the reviewers avoided using Van Till's terms because, like me, they thought these terms were a bit silly. But the reviewers were too polite to say this.

It's a big relief at the end of the book to find Phillip Johnson's honest appraisal of the current situation. Indeed, he admits he's not quite sure which interpretation to commit to. But I was quite disappointed with the book as a whole.

Rating:
Summary: Good essays, poor commentary
Review: This book consists of essays by proponents of each of the three views (Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, and Theistic Evolution) and commentaries by practitioners of four disciplines: Biblical studies, theology, philosophy, and science. The entire discussion is concluded by summaries by Philip Johnson, an advocate of intelligent design, and Richard Bube, an advocate of theistic evolution.

The result is only partially successful. I am particularly impressed with the essays by Paul Nelson and John Mark Reynolds (Young Earth Creationism) and Howard J. Van Till (Theistic Evolution). Both give lucid and reasoned presentations of their views. I was pleasantly surprised to see Nelson and Reynolds, neither of whom I have read before, forego some of the more common but already discredited scientific arguments for a young Earth. Van Till presents a well thought-out and challenging integration of science and theology.

I am very disappointed by the commentaries, however. My first complaint is that the commentators sometimes seem unwilling to critique the essays primarily within their own expertises. For instance, John Jefferson Davis spends much of his space discussing the fossil record. On the one hand, none of the other commentators talk about this important piece of evidence. On the other hand, I wish the editors could have found someone other than a theologian to do this.

My second, more serious complaint is that each of the four commentators speaks entirely from an Old Earth Creationist perspective. In fact, Walter Bradley (who is supposed to provide criticism from a scientific perspective) uses the space allotted for commentary on the Old Earth Creationist perspective to attack the positions later presented in the Theistic Evolution essay. The reader is deprived of any scientific critique of the Old Earth Creationist view and instead finds a philosophical objection to a view not even presented yet. I find that entirely inappropriate.

As a brief introduction to the thinking in the three perspectives on creation and evolution, the primary essays in this book are very good. They each present some of the strengths and weaknesses of their own positions. These are not explored fully, but each essay is well referenced for further reading. The commentaries could have benefited by a better selection of commentators, however.

Rating:
Summary: Great as introduction/overview/reflection
Review: This book contains three presentations by their proponents of the three main Christian views on origin. Each presentation is followed by an assessment by four commentators (each time the four same). The book does not deal so much with the natural sciences, but rather with the theological and philophical sciences. Nothing new nor difficult, but interesting to reveal the paradigma behind the views, grossly speaking: one specific interpretation of Genesis for Young Earth Creationism, Christian theism for Old Earth creationism, and deism (!) for "Theistic" Evolution, the latter being the most revealing: Van Till does not want to allow for God to intervene in the development of nature, but seems commited to the idea that God winded everything beforehand so as to get the good results, "prior" to t=0: this is remniscent of the clock-world of the deists where God did not have to intervene anymore once he had started the clock. This will be an excellent book for those who want an introduction or overview of the main views among Christians, as well as a reflection.

Rating:
Summary: An exercise in ignorance
Review: This book takes on three views of what is impossible: finding scientific explanation in an ancient book of myths. The myths aren't even original, but "borrowed" from the Egyptians, Medes/Persians, Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Greeks. These "scientists" choose to bury their heads in the sands of self-deception in order to force science to conform to their twisted logic. Actually their logic is non-existant so I guess what does not exist cannot be twisted!

The creation myth that exists in the Genesis is a variation of a Sumerian myth. An informative article on the Eden story can be found here :

http://www.ldolphin.org/eden/

another good site for information:

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/index.htm

Think! Use your brain! Use reason, logic! Don't let yourself get caught in the fallacy of creationism. It is senseless to willfully throw yourself into believing the myths of the ancients. They created the stories because they had no real way to evaluate the world around them except to claim that unseen deities "created the world" with their "powers". Every religion and every culture has a creation myth. Logic tells you that these are untrue, stories created to explain what ancient men were unable to understand. Now in the present there are pseudo-scientists insisting that one of these ancient myths contains actual, verifiable truth. They are either themselves decieved, or THEY ARE LYING. You have to decide for yourself. If you read this book, I am positive that you will see through the fallicious thinking and the extreme stretches of reality. The authors are attempting to lead their readers down a path of ignorance using a fairy tale as a textbook.

Do not fall for their ploy...Use your mind!