Coming to Peace with Science
by Darrel R Falk
As I have
discussed elsewhere <here>, I am not particularly interested in the
“evolution-creation” debate, even though it must certainly be the most popular
debate topic in the arena of faith vs. science.
However, the book “Coming to Peace with Science” provides what I
consider to be an excellent review of the topic from a Christian
perspective. I recommend this book to
anyone who is a Christian who wants to gain a scientifically credible view of
this whole topic. I also appreciate Dr.
Falk’s call for unity in the Christian community.
The basic
premises of the book include the following:
1. Well-accepted scientific theories, such as
evolution and the origins of the universe, do not disprove the existence
of God or destroy Christian principles.
2. The existence of the universe, or of complex
life-forms, or any other natural event, does not prove the existence of
God.
3. Therefore it is entirely reasonable that a
Christian can fully support and use theories such as evolution and still fully
believe in the fundamental principles of Christian faith and in the Bible. Further, Christians can and should recognize
the work of God in the universe, regardless of the timeframe over which that
happened. But creation itself is not the
linchpin of apologetics that many Christians consider it to be. Efforts spent by Christians to disprove
theories like evolution are misguided and deter us from our real purpose.
I feel that
the book provides an excellent review of the scientific evidence as it relates
to this issue, particularly with respect to the age of the earth. In my opinion, this evidence was presented in
a scholarly, yet readable, manner. Dr. Falk
reviews the data from multiple fields, showing how the evidence points to a
universe and earth that are much much older than 10,000 years. His background is biology, so fields such as
the fossil record, diversity of species, and genetic lineage are treated in
much more detail. He has had a lot of
experience teaching these topics to students and I feel that he really excels
here. If you already have a strong
background in these fields, then I doubt you will learn anything new – but the
book is not written for that purpose. It
is really written for Christians who seek to have a solid, academically-based
understanding of the data and evidence that has been collected over the past
200 years or so. If you are looking for
that, I think this book is an excellent place to start.
Dr. Falk also
spends some examining the interpretation of scripture as it relates to these
topics – primarily the first few chapters of Genesis. He believes in the importance of the Bible to
Christian faith and believes in the literal interpretation of the Bible. He reviews various methods of interpreting
Genesis that are consistent with methods of interpretation used in other
passages of the Bible. This part of the
book is a good overview of the general concepts, but I think there are better
books with respect to delving into issues of interpretation in depth.
Finally, Dr.
Falk presents a case that the debate about the earth vs. sun being at the
center of the universe was similar to the present day creation vs. evolution
debate. Specifically, the experience of Galileo
is presented as a case where Christians can learn about important principles in
the faith-science debate. Since I agree
with Dr. Falk on this, I think it is a very useful argument. I’m not sure everyone would agree, but I do
think it is worth Christians learning about the arguments presented by Galileo
and the scripture passages used by the church at the time.
So, I
recommend this book to those interested in the topic.
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