|
| Christian news worldwide |
 Home |
 Archives |
 Subscriptions |
 Adverts |
 Find a church |
 About us |
 Contact us |
 Site Map |
 PrintableVersion The Genesis enigmaAuthor on a journeyTHE GENESIS ENIGMA The book blurb claims that contemporary science has an understanding of origins which corresponds in unerring detail with the creation account in Genesis. This certainly raises expectations, as the emphasis is rather different from much of what we hear today. So many Christians in science insist that the text tells us only why God created, whereas science tells us how. However, the book chapters make it clear that these first impressions are misleading. The author’s approach to the Bible is indistinguishable from that of theological liberals. ‘General messages can be taken from the various fables . . . the precise wording of the text is irrelevant as long as its message gets through’ (pp.242-3). Such an approach to Genesis allows the author to link the initial creation of light with the Big Bang theory of origins and the subsequent evolution of galaxies and stars. The creation of plants bearing seed on Day 3 is associated with the evolution of single-celled photosynthetic cyanobacteria in the Precambrian. The creation of the lights in the firmament on Day 4 is explained in terms of the origin of vision in animals in the Cambrian period of earth history. And so the story proceeds. According to the author, it is ‘remarkably accurate, as if the modern scientific story of the universe and life were being narrated’. According to this reviewer, the book’s central thesis reveals the workings of a vivid imagination rather than a mind intent on understanding the meaning of the biblical text. The author goes as far as defending deism: there is a God who is the source of all energy, who brought the universe into existence and who established the laws of nature. After the creation event, the universe evolved via the working of natural law and chance to produce galaxies, stars, planets, life and everything. Darwinism is presented as the theory that explains the origin of complexity, humankind and altruism. When natural law fails as a mechanism, chance takes centre stage and ‘improbable things happen’ (p.109). The author has no time for Darwin doubters: creationists produce ‘claptrap’ and Intelligent Design is pseudoscientific, concocted theory and flawed logic. Although God is portrayed as intervening in the writing of Genesis 1, a lengthy appendix rejects Moses as its author and advocates the JEPD theory of multiple authorship (much beloved by liberals but demolished in critiques by evangelical scholars). The best that can be said is that Andrew Parker is on a spiritual journey that has taken him a significant step away from scientific materialism. However, one step does not get him to the destination! Most of his thinking is identical to that of his copper-bottomed materialistic colleagues. This mindset affects his science, his interpretations of history, his understanding of philosophy and his approach to the Bible. He acknowledges the influence of Professor John Lennox ‘over many a lunch and coffee’ and says ‘John drew the little religion within me to the tip of my tongue’. We should pray that Lennox’s book God’s Undertaker will make an impact. It has been well received in creationist and Intelligent Design forums, and is to be warmly recommended. Lennox’s book will take readers in a radically different direction from The Genesis Enigma. Dr. David J. Tyler, © Evangelicals Now - February 2010 |
|
