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The New Creationism

Building scientific theories on a biblical foundation

The Bible gives better science?

THE NEW CREATIONISM
Building scientific theories on a biblical foundation
By Paul Garner
Evangelical Press. 242 pages. £8.95
ISBN 978-0-85234-692-1

I set myself the task of first reading the book Why Evolution Is True (Oxford University Press) by Professor Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, before reading this book by Paul Garner, which comes from a creationist point of view. It proved an interesting experience.

First of all, while Coyne seeks to attack creationists and makes some telling points which need answering, he totally ignores some of the central difficulties for his position, like the origin of DNA and of the first living cell (as complex as New York City). Garner on the other hand does not shy away from the difficult questions which face the creationist position. Second, while Coyne betrays a misunderstanding of what creationists are saying and deals in cartoon caricatures, Garner is careful and civil towards those he opposes. Third, reading Coyne’s book I realised afresh that the problem with atheistic evolution is that it has to explain absolutely everything and it is simply not capable of bearing so great a burden.

Paul Garner’s book is a tour de force. The author is a Fellow of the Geological Society and, while he looks at questions of biology and cosmology with great acumen, nevertheless it is in the crucial geological area that his book is especially strong. It would be impossible in a short review to cover all the points the book addresses, so let’s cut to the chase.

Time spans

Perhaps the main practical conflict between the Bible and the current scientific establishment is in the area of time spans. Has the earth been around for billions of years or just thousands of years? In a series of intriguing chapters, the author encourages his readers to see that biblical assumptions are not just defensible but actually give a better interpretation of the observational data.

* Astronomers have long been puzzled by finding ‘mature galaxies’ on the edge of space where, on the usual theories, they ought to be observing the young universe. But this becomes straightforwardly explicable if creationist cosmologies based upon (Einstein’s) time dilation are somewhere near right. Also some creationist cosmologies obviate the need for dark matter, that ever-elusive substance essential to the more generally accepted cosmologies.

* The old age of the earth is assumed to have been established by radioactive dating. But not only do these dates tend to disagree (a fairly well-known fact), but now the measurement of helium (the product of alpha particle decay) trapped in the rocks is giving a totally different answer to the age of the rocks, in terms of thousands rather than millions of years.

* If the geological layers represent deposits of material separated by millions of years, why is the junction between these layers often so smooth? Why is there so little sign of the erosion which must surely have taken place in the millions of years between their being laid down? It seems to make more sense that they were deposited quickly, soon after one another, as might have happened following Noah’s Flood.

* The Flood itself (sadly written off even by many Christians) gives a much more plausible explanation of the onset of the ice age, the geological effects of which are well known.

So perhaps a straightforward reading of the early chapters of Genesis is not so ridiculous as many would have us believe. All this is very exciting for those who have found it impossible to see a jump in literary genre from myth to history at the end of Genesis 11.

Humility

Garner concludes the book quite humbly. He does not pretend to have all the answers. ‘Successful theories in cosmology, geology and biology can be constructed on the basis of what Scripture reveals to us. Of course, most of these creationist theories are in their infancy, and much work remains to be done to test and develop them. Nevertheless, when we take into account the fact that creationists have generally lacked the resources and manpower that evolutionary scientists have available when developing their theories, the scientific fruitfulness of these ideas has proved to be very encouraging.’

John Benton