Interesting Books Archives : Proslogion

Science Roots: A Great Companion For Studying Biology

Biology is a vocabulary-driven science, especially in the introductory classes that are required for high school and early college. In the biology course I co-wrote with Dr. Paul Madtes, for example, students are required to learn more than 15 new vocabulary words every two weeks. More importantly, the later vocabulary words require that they remember the definitions of the earlier vocabulary words, so they must keep all of those definitions in mind throughout the entire course. Needless to say, this can be a serious challenge for some students, especially those who don’t memorize things easily.

Is there a way to help students with this potentially daunting task? There is. Most science terms have their roots in Latin or ancient Greek, and those roots appear over and over again in different vocabulary words. If you learn one root word, you end up having insight into multiple scientific terms. Consider the Greek root hypo, which means “under” or “below.” It is used in biological terms like hypodermis (under the dermis), hypothermia (below-normal body temperature), hypoglycemic (below-normal blood sugar), and hypotonic (below-normal solute concentration). Now consider the Greek root hyper, which means “over” or “more than.” With that information, you know what hyperthermia, hyperglycemic, and hypertonic mean. Of course, this isn’t perfect, because there is no hyperdermis. Instead, we have an epidermis, which uses the Greek root epi, meaning “on top of” or “over.” Nevertheless, knowledge of specific Latin and Greek words can really help you master biological language. In fact, it can help you better master the English language in general, since many everyday English words use these same roots.

Of course, the best way to do this is to learn Latin and Greek early in life. That’s why schools used to require all their students to learn Latin at a minimum. Nowadays, unfortunately, schools are focused on producing obedient, subservient workers instead of educated citizens. As a result, only private classical schools continue to require Latin of all their students. Nevertheless, you can still make use of Latin and Greek roots, even if you don’t know the languages. That’s the aim of Science Roots by Nancy Paula Hasseler (2nd edition revised by Stephen J. Nichols).

Students who use this book will make study card for each root, its meaning, and its source language (Greek or Latin). Underneath that, the student will write biology vocabulary words that use the root. The words are written emphasizing the root. Here is an example, which comes from the book’s introduction:

How will the student know when to make a card and when to add words to it? Well, since it is being published by the same company that publishes Discovering Design with Biology (the book I co-wrote with Dr. Paul Madtes), Science Roots is designed for the student to make and add to the cards when they come to the vocabulary words in that biology book. I already encourage students to make notecards for each vocabulary word, so using Science Roots doesn’t produce a lot more work for the students. They need to make notecards anyway, so why not make this kind? It will have additional information on it, and more importantly, it will help them see the connections between the words that they are learning.

If students use Science Roots along with (or before) Discovering Design with Biology, they will not only have a deeper understanding of the language of biology, but they will probably also have an easier time learning all those words!

Perspectives on the Historical Adam and Eve: Four Views

In my opinion, one of the best ways to think deeply about an issue is to read about it from different points of view. Generally, I have to do that by reading many books by different authors on the same topic. In that situation, however, I don’t get to experience any interaction between the authors. That’s what makes a book like Perspectives on the Historical Adam and Eve: Four Views so valuable.

In this book, you have four “heavy hitters” in Modern Christianity, each weighing in with his view on the historical Adam. Dr. Kenton Sparks attempts to persuade the reader that the Genesis narrative is not intended to be taken as history, so Adam and Eve did not exist as progenitors of the human race. Instead, the process of evolution produced the human race the way God intended it to. In his mind, this doesn’t take away from the spiritual importance of the story, nor does it affect any of the important issues in Christian Theology. This is often called the “non-historical view of Adam.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Dr. Marcus Ross argues that the Genesis account is a historical narrative, that Adam and Eve really did exist (only thousands of years ago), and they gave rise to the human race. This is often called the “young-earth creationist” (YEC) view.

In between these two ends of the spectrum are Dr. Andrew Loke and Dr. William Lane Craig. Like Dr. Sparks, they both believe that evolution produced the physical form of human beings, but those physical forms were not human, because they did not have God’s image. God chose two of those non-humans-with-human-form, gave them his image, and named them Adam and Eve. Thus, Adam and Eve were real people who God miraculously turned from “animals” into human beings.

The difference between these two scholars is how Adam and Eve produced the human race. Dr. Loke champions the view put forth by Dr. S. Joshua Swamidass, that Adam and Eve existed along with the non-humans-with-human-form. Adam and Eve interbred with them, and all members of the modern human race can be traced genealogically back to Adam and Eve, because all non-humans-with-human-form that had no trace of Adam and Eve’s genes ended up going extinct. This is often called the “genealogical Adam” view.

Dr. Craig, on the other hand, thinks that if you go far enough back into the geological record (perhaps 750,000 years ago), you can find the physical form of human beings. When God gave two of them His image, they became fundamentally different from the entities that evolution produced. Thus, they did not interbreed with any non-humans. I wrote about his view after reading his book. This is often called the “mytho-historical Adam” view, because he believes that the Genesis account is a myth that is built around truly historical individuals.

Why do these views exist? Because mainstream genetics claims (I think incorrectly) that it is impossible for the human race’s genetic diversity to be explained in terms of one man and one woman who gave rise to the human race a few thousand years ago. Sparks, Loke, and Craig attempt to interpret Scripture in that light. Ross does not, because he doesn’t think the mainstream view of human genetics is correct on that point.

The book starts with an introduction, and then it is followed with each scholar giving his view. The other scholars’ objections to that view are then given, and then the original scholar offers his rejoinder to the critics. This is incredibly helpful, because it is easier to see the strengths and weaknesses in each of the main essays.

For example, Sparks’s essay states that the best Mesopotamian and Egyptian scholars in the ancient world thought the earth was covered by a solid dome. However, as Craig points out, this is “not merely unjustified but demonstrably false,” and he gives a reference that allows the reader to see why. This is important, because that demonstrably false idea leads some to incorrectly claim that Jewish theologians in the ancient world believed the same thing. In Craig’s essay, he claims that YECs must assume plate tectonics separated the continents after the Flood to explain the distribution of organisms on the planet. In Ross’s objection, he writes, “I have never once encountered a creation geologist who holds this view…” and gives a reference to show that YECs believe plate tectonics separated the continents during the Flood.

To my sincere delight, there was no rancor in the book. Each scholar shows respect to the others and finds some way to praise the others despite their different views. This was both edifying and encouraging. In the end, I thought Dr. Ross’s case was the strongest, but then again, it’s most similar to my view. Nevertheless, reading this book allows a person to see why intelligent, sincere Christians can hold different views on this vitally-important subject.

I will end with a passage from the Afterword, which appears after all the essays and arguments. It is written by Dr. Swamidass, who originated the view championed by Loke. He noted that at a dinner which followed the colloquium in which all these views were debated, Ross was accompanied by several who supported his view. He and his supporters invited Sparks (the one they had the most disagreement with) to join them at their table. The result was a lively conversation that was nevertheless full of love and affection. As Swamidass says:

I left young-earth creationism many years ago. Still, I cannot help but wish that Marcus’s tribe will grow. This type of creationism is far greater than fundamentalism. And if this is what YEC becomes, we would all be better for it.

I could not agree more. As a YEC, I can say that I am saddened by many of my fellow YECs who use insults and invectives to ward off the “heretics.” I have always seen Dr. Ross as someone set apart from that, and I think the YEC movement is better for it. I am encouraged that others are learning to follow his example.

A Schedule for Using Discovering Design With Chemistry in Classical Conversations

As some of you may be aware, I am not a fan of the third edition of Exploring Creation With Chemistry (ECC). Others have also taken a dim view of ECC (see here, here, and here). Because I couldn’t recommend ECC to homeschoolers, I wrote a new chemistry course, whose front cover is pictured on the left.

Not everyone seems to agree with my view of ECC, since there are some homeschooling organizations that still use it. One of those organizations is Classical Conversations (CC). Over the years, I have had many CC mothers tell me that while the CC classes use ECC, they are using Discovering Design With Chemistry at home so that their students can learn chemistry more completely. However, it can be difficult, because the two books cover topics in a different order. Therefore, I have come up with a guide that allows you to synchronize my chemistry course to the CC schedule.

If you would like to use my chemistry course and be synchronized to the CC schedule, click here.

Coming to Faith Through Dawkins

Years ago, I read Why God Won’t Go Away by double-Doctor Alister McGrath (retired professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University). He ends the book with a story about a young man who credits atheist Richard Dawkins for turning him to Christianity. I still count it as the best ending to any nonfiction book that I have read. The next year, I read another account in which an agnostic became a Christian and once again, Richard Dawkins was instrumental in her faith journey. Well, it turns out these aren’t isolated incidents. I recently completed Coming to Faith Through Dawkins, a collection of 12 essays from a variety of people who all see Richard Dawkins as an important part of their faith journey.

The authors of these essays are from all walks of life and hail from various countries. Two of them have science PhDs, one has a PhD in history, another a PhD in philosophy. Others include an engineer, a theologian, and an artist/writer. Three are from the U.S., three are from South Africa, two are from Australia, two are from England, one is from Egypt, and one is from Hungary. Two of them have been featured on this blog (here and here).

While I highly recommend each essay, I want to concentrate on the one I found the most interesting (and entertaining): the essay by Johan Erasmus. Growing up in South Africa, he said that he was a Christian by default, but by age 10, he started asking questions. In his community, such questions were discouraged, so he started struggling with his faith. However, a perceptive teacher gave him a book with essays by C.S. Lewis. Unfortunately, it was hard for him to read, since it was in English, and his first language was Afrikaans. He writes:

I remember thinking to myself that if I believed one day, it would probably be because of him. Imagine my surprise, then, when I was told at church camp at the end of high school that his Chronicles of Narnia was basically satanic. It turns out, the one guy who was making me hold on to my faith (if only by a thread) was supposedly in cahoots with the devil! An odd strategy for the Prince of Darkness. It seemed unfair to me (and still does, as a matter of fact), that Satan wrote the best books and songs and made the best movies.

Because of his questions and his uncertain faith, he decided to go to university to study theology. However, that didn’t work out as planned. As he writes:

…in order to be accepted by the school of theology, a student is questioned by a panel of professors. One question stood out: Why do you want to study theology? My answer was, “I want to know if it is true.” This, by the way, is the wrong answer. After a minute of awkward silence, one of the professors managed to correct the error and said with authority, “Brother, you don’t study theology to gain faith; you have faith and then you study theology.” Everyone in the room agreed that I was in the wrong place. Luckily for me, the humanities department was far less selective.

While at university, he became acquainted with the works of the New Atheists, including The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. This led him to consider himself an atheist. He tried to discuss atheist arguments with his friends, but most of them didn’t have the ability (or interest) to engage. However, he ended up finding a woman who was back in South Africa after studying theology in the U.S., and when he discussed the works of the New Atheists with her, she said:

You seriously need to get yourself some better atheists…If you are going to be an atheist, at least do it because you were convinced by the likes of Michael Ruse, Thomas Nagel, or Nietzche, but I am going to be insulted if those guys [Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris] put the nail in your Christian coffin.

I couldn’t agree more. The arguments of the New Atheists are simplistic and come mostly from a place of ignorance. As a former atheist myself whose role model was Antony Flew, I find their reasoning insults the reader’s intelligence (with the notable exception of some of Daniel Dennett’s work). This woman put him on a path to find some seriously intelligent discussions of the existence of God, and he ended up becoming a Christian.

Erasmus’s journey from the simplistic nonsense of Dawkins (and Kent Hovind as well) to a serious intellectual analysis of worldviews led him to offer this insightful advice:

Christians as a whole, and the apologetics community in particular, will do well to respect the fact that there are brilliant minds, past and present, who ended up on the side of atheism. You would be a fool to call a Graham Oppy or a John Gray deluded atheists.

Once again, Eramus’s story is only one of 12, all of which are worth reading. When I finished the book, I wondered whether or not Dawkins had seen it and what he thought of it. As I was considering this, I recalled a quote from C.S. Lewis that sums up what Dawkins should learn from the book:

For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John. (C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, Touchstone 1996, p. 99)

Discovering Design With Physics

As I mentioned in my previous post, I haven’t been blogging much because I have been busy teaching classes and writing my new physics course, Discovering Design with Physics. However, that book is now at the printer, so I have more time for blogging. My previous post discussed how I begin and end the course, and now I want to give my readers an idea of what the differences are between my new physics course and the one that is still in print (Exploring Creation with Physics, 2nd Edition).

I wrote Exploring Creation with Physics, 2nd Edition almost 20 years ago, and while the material required for a college-prep physics course hasn’t changed since then, there have been some new developments in physics that are worth addressing. For example, over the past 11 years, the Voyager spacecrafts left our solar system. That is not only interesting in and of itself, but it is also a dramatic demonstration of Newton’s First Law of Motion. After all, they have been moving at roughly the same velocity since 1989, despite the fact that they haven’t used their fuel for propulsion since then! As another example, Pluto lost its status as a planet about 17 years ago. Thus, in this new physics book, it is not listed as one of the planets in the solar system.

More importantly, I decided to take a completely different approach in writing this new book. The “traditional” approach to physics is to start with the definitions of displacement, velocity, and acceleration. From there, you use equations to analyze motion in both one and two dimensions. After that, you then discuss Newton’s Laws, which actually dictate the behavior you have been using equations to analyze. That’s how I wrote Exploring Creation with Physics, 2nd Edition, because that’s the way every text from which I taught did it. However, I have never been happy with that approach. So for the new book, I decided to discuss displacement, velocity, and acceleration in the context of Newton’s Laws. That means the students learn about displacement and velocity in the context of Newton’s First Law, and then they learn about acceleration in the context of Newton’s Second and Third Laws. That way, the students learn why the motion being analyzed actually happens. The PhD physicist who reviewed the book for accuracy told me that this was a more satisfying treatment of motion.

In addition, I decided to take a new approach with the experiments as well. In the previous book, the students did several experiments where they were measuring things like acceleration, velocity, the period of a system’s motion, etc. Since those experiments involved measuring short intervals of time, the students had to repeat the experiment several times and then average the results so as to reduce experimental error. That is an important technique to learn, but it is also time-consuming. In the new physics course, the students do fewer experiments like that. They still learn the technique, but since they don’t use it as much, the experiments are not as repetitive or time consuming. Of course, that doesn’t mean there are fewer experiments. In fact, there are six more experiments in the new course compared to the old course!

Also, since I have been teaching physics for many years since the first book was written, I have learned better ways to communicate some of the more difficult concepts in the material. As a result, students will understand the material better. To ensure this, I field-tested the course with more than 70 students. They regularly communicated with me regarding how they were learning, and they even offered some excellent suggestions which led to some changes in the text. I have something very exciting to share about the results of that field test, but I am not at liberty to do so at this time. Be assured that I will do so when I am allowed.

Finally, my publisher has given me assurances that the student text will always be published as a hardcover book, since we encourage parents to use it for all their children over the course of many years. This is important, as there are some homeschooling publishers who have been producing their student texts as softcover books, which I think is unfortunate.

Of course, you might be wondering whether or not you should get this new text if you already have Exploring Creation with Physics, 2nd Edition. The new course is most certainly better than the old one for the reasons mentioned above. However, the old one is still a very good course. Thus, it really depends on how much strain the cost of the new course will put on your budget.

How I Begin and End My New Physics Book

Dr. Alfred Kastler (left), Dr. Isidor Isaac Rabi (middle), and Dr. Nathan T. Brewer (right)

My blog has been mostly silent because I have been teaching classes and working on my new physics book, Discovering Design with Physics. However, classes are winding down, and my new physics book is at the printer. I will have a more thorough post about the book itself next week, including how it is different from my old physics book. For right now, however, I thought my readers might be interested in how it begins and ends. The introduction to the student text begins this way:

Have you ever taken something apart in an attempt to figure out how it works? I have. Usually, I end up ruining it and not learning much. On the rare occasion when I am successful, however, I get a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. In some ways, that’s what the subject of physics is all about. We try to “take the world apart” to see how it works. We look for laws and equations that allow us to analyze processes that occur on a very small scale (like electrons traveling through a conductor), processes that occur on an everyday scale (such as baseballs being hit by bats), and processes that occur on a very large scale (like planets orbiting the sun). If we can properly analyze these processes, we can start to understand how the world works.

As you start “taking apart” the world in this course, you should be struck by how intricately designed everything is. The world runs amazingly well, because all its parts have been designed to work together. As French physicist and Nobel Laureate Alfred Kastler states:

The idea that the world, the material universe, was created all by itself, seems absurd to me. I only conceive of the world with a creator, therefore a God. For a physicist, a single atom is so complicated and so rich in intelligence, that the materialistic universe has no meaning.
(Fabre-luce Alfred, L’été de la résurrection, Grasset 1971, p. 105, translated from French by Fernando José Walsh)

I hope that as you read this book, you will come to see the truth of Dr. Kastler’s words.

After spending 16 chapters “taking apart the world,” I end my discussion of physics this way:

You have reached the end of this high-school physics course. You have learned a lot about how God’s creation works, and I hope that this has given you a deeper sense of awe for our Creator. That’s certainly what studying physics has done for me. As I learn more and more about the intricacies of how the world works, I cannot help but be filled with wonder for its Designer.

I think Dr. Isidor Isaac Rabi, who won the 1944 Nobel Prize for physics, said it best:

Physics filled me with awe, put me in touch with a sense of original causes. Physics brought me closer to God. That feeling stayed with me throughout my years in science. Whenever one of my students came to me with a scientific project, I asked only one question, “Will it bring you nearer to God?”
(“I. I. Rabi As Educator and Science Warrior,” Physics Today, 52(9):38, 1999).

I think that’s a great question to ask of any endeavor you wish to pursue.

It’s important to note that many other scientists share Dr. Rabi’s view. Homeschool graduate Dr. Nathan T. Brewer is a nuclear physicist whose research is focused on creating new elements. He says,

The world is absolutely breathtaking, and studying the world’s beauty fuels my faith.
(https://blog.drwile.com/dr-nathan-t-brewer-homeschool-graduate-and-nuclear-physicist)

As you continue to study more of the amazing creation that God has given us, I hope you end up agreeing with Drs. Rabi and Brewer!

William Lane Craig on Adam

In September of last year, a reader asked me to review William Lane Craig’s In Quest of the Historical Adam: A Biblical and Scientific Exploration. Well, I finally got around to reading it, and I have to say up front that I was disappointed. Not with his conclusion; I predicted that ahead of time. I was disappointed with Dr. Craig’s intellectual inconsistency. I expected more of a philosopher with his credentials and track record.

But I am getting ahead of myself. In the first part of the book, Dr. Craig spends a lot of time comparing the Genesis account to creation myths of the Ancient Near East (ANE). He claims that there are many parallels between the ANE myths and the Genesis account. To demonstrate this “fact,” he discusses a lot of those myths. The problem is, they sound nothing at all like the creation account of Genesis. Consider the following:

In the Sumerian myth Enki and Ninmah 24-37 we read that Enki enjoins the mother goddess Namma to knead clay so that the birth-goddesses could nip off pieces with which she could fashion human beings. How is the story of God’s forming man from the dust of the earth in Gen 2 functionally distinct from such a story simply in virtue of the fact that Yahweh is the sole diety? (Chapter 3)

I don’t know about you, but I find quite a bit of functional distinction. For example, Yahweh had actually made the dust. There is no indication that anyone in the Sumerian myth made the clay. This is a huge distinction. Yahweh is the Creator of everything in the Genesis account. In the ANE myths that Dr. Craig discusses, there is no sense of the gods (or a single god) being the creator of everything. Also, people have experience using clay to make things. The Sumerian myth makes it sound like the gods are doing typical human activities, but they just have some magic added in. That’s not the way the Genesis account reads at all. Nevertheless, based on what I would call very questionable “similarities” Dr. Craig decides that the Genesis account has all the trappings of a myth. However, since it does have historical overtones, he says that the Genesis account belongs in a category called “Mytho-History.”

Of course, he takes great pains to reiterate what C.S. Lewis made abundantly clear quite some time ago: The term “myth” does not mean the story is false. Myths can be used to teach deep truths. It just means that the setting and many of the details aren’t meant to be taken literally. In Matthew 13:3-9, for example, Jesus tells the story of a sower who is planting seeds. He doesn’t intend for you to believe this sower actually existed. Instead, he wants you to hear the truth in his story. In the same way, the Genesis creation account is mythical but teaches a very important truth.

Now, even though Dr. Craig thinks the Genesis account is mythical, he says we have to take its historical overtones seriously, especially when we read the New Testament. In the book of Romans, Paul writes of Adam as a real, historical person. So based on the New Testament (not the Genesis account), Dr. Craig says that Adam must have actually existed. However, since the Genesis account is mytho-history, we can’t assume that he was created exactly as is discussed in the myth or that Eve was actually made from his rib. The details of the account are mostly mythological; his existence is the important historical element.

With this conclusion, Dr. Craig decides to go searching for Adam using the historical and scientific tools we have at our disposal. Not surprisingly, he slavishly follows the scientific consensus, up to a crucial point. Thus, as far as Dr. Craig is concerned, the earth is billions of years old, biological evolution happened essentially as the High Priests of Science have proclaimed, and the standard tales told by anthropologists are true. Based on all this, Dr. Craig concludes:

Adam, then, may be plausibly identified as a member of Homo heidelbergensis living perhaps >750 kya. He could even have lived in the Near East in the biblical site of the Garden of Eden – though vastly earlier than usually thought, of course. (Chapter 12) [Note: kya means thousand years ago]

Of course, the basic concept here is neither new nor surprising. Lots of Christians have decided to accept the scientific consensus and say that God used evolution to produce the human race. However, most who accept this view think that Adam and Eve are mythological beings; they didn’t actually exist in history. Dr. Craig comes to a different conclusion. How? By being utterly inconsistent.

He accepts the scientific consensus on the age of the earth, biological evolution, anthropology, etc., etc. However, he then throws scientific consensus out of the window by writing:

Such an identification is fully consistent, both temporally and geographically, with the data of population genetics, which does not rule out the existence of two heterozygous, sole genetic progenitors of the human race earlier than 500 kya. (Chapter 13)

What does he use to back up this idea? A reference to the journal BIO-Complexity, which is well outside the scientific consensus! Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against that journal. In fact, I think an incredibly important genetic study can be found in it.

Here’s the problem: The scientific consensus says that there is simply no way evolution could produce the genetics of the human race from just two people. At minimum, it needed to start with a group of 2,250 people. However, since Dr. Craig wants to believe that Adam existed in history and is the father of the human race, he must believe that the scientific consensus is invalid on this point. As a result, he looks outside the scientific consensus to find science that backs up his view.

Now to be sure, he tries to justify this view by reporting that a few consensus-driven scientists (like S. Joshua Swamidass) say that if you push Adam’s existence far enough back in history (more than 500,000 years), then science cannot rule out the possibility that he and Eve could be the genetic origin of all humanity. However, the vast majority of geneticists would disagree with that. Thus, it is still an idea that is well outside the scientific consensus. Indeed, S. Joshua Swamidass himself doesn’t agree with it.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I have no problem with going against the scientific consensus. Indeed, nearly every important scientific advance that has happened was the result of doing just that. What I am saying is that if Dr. Craig has the courage to question the scientific consensus when it comes to the genetics of the human race, perhaps he could find the courage to question the scientific consensus when it comes to other issues, such as the age of the earth and biological evolution. If he does that, he might find a much more satisfying way to believe in a historical Adam.

NOTE (added 8/1/2023): Swamidass suggested this link to help clarify the issue.

Postmodernism Redefined

I am not a fan of postmodernism, at least as it is generally defined. Because of this, I have written a couple of posts (here and here) that portray it in a negative light. A frequent commenter on this blog, Jake, took issue with my negative portrayal and suggested that I read Postmodernism Rightly Understood by Dr. Peter Augustine Lawler.

Since I appreciate Jake’s excellent comments and have learned from him on more than one occasion, I wanted to read the book, but it took me a while to get to it. I finally did read it last week. It was an interesting book that discussed several important authors and their ideas. Some of the authors (like Walker Percy, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Allan Bloom) were familiar to me, but others weren’t. As a result, I learned a lot and was exposed to several new ideas. However, I think the book misses the mark.

Now, of course, I am practicing philosophy without a license, while Dr. Lawler is a trained philosopher with lots of experience. Thus, you can take this criticism for what it is worth. Nevertheless, I don’t think this book is a defense of postmodernism. It is more of a discussion of anti-modernism, and based on Lawler’s obvious admiration of Walker Percy (who definitely deserves admiration), it is more a defense of Thomism.

Of course, it’s easy to get lost in the language of philosophy, so let’s make sure we are all on the same page. When it comes to philosophy, modernism suggests that we should ignore traditions (both religious and social) and the inherent biases that come with them, and we should try to judge the world critically. The more unbiased we can be in our judgments, the better. If we do that, we will be able to control our own destiny.

Continue reading “Postmodernism Redefined”

How I Address the Age of the Earth in My Courses

My publisher has been getting several questions about how I address the age of the earth in my science courses. This probably stems from the fact that there is a lot of misinformation going through the homeschooling community regarding my position on the issue. I thought I would try to clear things up with a post.

First, my position on the age of the earth hasn’t changed in more than thirty years. I turned from atheism to Christianity in my late high school years, and at that time, I was happy to believe what my teachers told me about the age of the earth. It was more than four billion years old. I was told that we knew this because of radiometric dating methods, which involved studying the relative amounts of radioactive atoms in rocks and fossils. This “fact” of science was later reinforced when I went to university, so I was still happy to believe it.

Then I started my Ph.D. program in nuclear chemistry. I learned about radioactive decay in detail and started doing experiments with nuclear reactions. Most of my work was done at the University of Rochester Nuclear Structure Research Lab, which also had a group that did radiometric dating. I never did any of that work myself, but I watched them do their experiments, asked them questions, listened to their presentations at the lab, etc. Based on what I learned there, I decided that I couldn’t put much faith in the ages given by radiometric dating.

This caused me to question the age of the earth from a scientific perspective. Theologically, I wasn’t committed to any age for the earth. Certainly the most straightforward interpretation of Genesis is that the universe and all it contains was created in six solar days, and that leads to a young-earth view. At the same time, however, there were early church Fathers (as well as ancient Jewish theologians) who didn’t interpret the days in Genesis that way. So I attempted to investigate the subject with an open mind. I found that in my view, science makes a lot more sense if the earth is thousands of years old rather than billions of years old, so I started believing in a young earth. The more I have studied science, the more convinced I have become that the earth is only thousands of years old.

Continue reading “How I Address the Age of the Earth in My Courses”

A Frustrating Book, But A Good First Step

A new, honest book about the creation/evolution controversy with the church.

When the creation/evolution controversy comes up in Christian circles, it is often accompanied by a lot of strife. Some Christians think that evolution comes straight from the Devil, while others think that when Christians refuse to accept the fact of evolution, they are harming the cause of Christ. Unfortunately, most of the major Christian organizations that focus on the subject fuel this acrimony. As a result, when I heard that the Colossian Forum had convinced Dr. Todd Wood (a young-earth creationist) and Dr. Darrel R. Falk (a theistic evolutionist) to write a book about the subject, I was intrigued. I actually pre-ordered a copy of the Kindle version, but later was happy to find that the publisher had sent me a free paperback copy to review.

The book, entitled The Fool and the Heretic, is made up of chapters written by Dr. Wood (the “fool”), chapters written by Dr. Falk (the “heretic”), and short interludes written by Rob Barrett of the Colossian Forum. There are also discussion questions at the end of each chapter. Drs. Wood and Falk are diametrically opposed when it comes to the question of origins, and that becomes clear right up front. Indeed, the first chapter (written by Wood) is entitled “Why Darrel is Wrong and Why It Matters,” and the next chapter (written by Falk) is “Why Todd is Wrong and Why It Matters.” Because of those titles, I almost named this review, “Why Todd, Darrel, and Rob are all wrong and why it matters,” because that’s the main conclusion I was left with when I finished the book.

Both initial chapters present the standard view from each camp. Dr. Wood says that Dr. Falk is wrong because when you try to interpret the first eleven chapters of Genesis to be anything other than historical narrative, you end up doing great theological damage to the rest of the Bible. Dr. Falk says that Dr. Wood is wrong because the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, and when Christians reject that evidence in order to hang on to an outdated view of Scripture, it ends up causing great damage, especially to those who are interested in pursuing the truth. They will eventually encounter this overwhelming evidence, and it will produce a crisis of faith, which sometimes results in leaving the faith. Of course, neither of those assertions is new, and in my view, neither of them is correct.

Continue reading “A Frustrating Book, But A Good First Step”