Saturday, October 20, 2018

Roundup on creationism

To my knowledge, these are the most competent books of their kind:

Old-earth creationism

C. John Collins, Reading Genesis Well: Navigating History, Poetry, Science, and Truth in Genesis 1-11 (2018)

Vern Poythress, Interpreting Eden: A Guide to Faithfully Reading and Understanding Genesis 1-3 (2019)

New-earth creationism

Leonard Brand & Arthur Chadwick, Faith, Reason, and Earth History: A Paradigm of Earth and Biological Origins by Intelligent Design (Andrews University Press; 3rd ed., 2016)

John Byl, God and Cosmos (2001)

Jonathan Sarfati, The Genesis Account: A theological, historical, and scientific commentary on Genesis 1-11 (2015)

Andrew Snelling, Earth's Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation, & the Flood (2014)

Kurt Wise, Faith, Form, and Time: What the Bible Teaches and Science Confirms about Creation and the Age of the Universe (2000)

Todd Wood, Human Genesis [working title (forthcoming). Will concentrate on human origins from a creationist, biblical, theological, and scientific perspective.

Darwinism

Douglas Axe, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed (2017)

Robert J. Marks et al. Introduction To Evolutionary Informatics (2017)

Stephen C. Meyer, Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design (rev. ed., 2014)

Stephen C. Myer, The Return of the God Hypothesis (2021)

J. P. Moreland et al. eds. Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique (2017)

Ransom Poythress, Richard Dawkins (P&R 2018)

12 comments:

  1. In addition to books, some of Jonathan McLatchie's webinars critique Darwinism. And McLatchie is a sophisticated critic of Darwinism in his own right.

    Jay L. Wile has an interesting blog from a creationist standpoint.

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  2. Good list! If I could add:

    Darwinism

    Gauger, Ann, Axe, Douglas, & Luskin, Casey. Science and Human Origins. Good response to human evolution.

    Swift, David. Evolution Under the Microscope. Somewhat dated, but still good. If I'm not mistaken, I believe Jonathan McLatchie found the book formative when he was an undergraduate student.

    Darwinists contra Darwinism

    Muller, Gerd, & Newman, Stuart (eds.). Origination of Organismal Form. Two secular scientists in the third way of evolution.

    Noble, Denis. The Music of Life: Biology Beyond the Genome and its accompanying sourcebook. Oxford professor respected for his pioneering work in systems biology (among other things).

    Piantadosi, Claude. The Biology of Human Survival: Life and Death in Extreme Environments. Piantadosi is a secular critical care physician, and an evolutionist, but his book unwittingly demonstrates how complex humans are, how there are incommensurable trade-offs in tweaking human anatomy, physiology, and the like, how dependent humans are on their enviroment.

    Shapiro, James. Evolution: A View from the 21st Century. An incisive critique of neo-Darwinism primarily from molecular and cellular biology. Shapiro is a secular scientist and evolutionist, but his criticisms against neo-Darwinism are devastating, though Shapiro stops shy of abandoning neo-Darwinism.

    Debates

    Dembski, William, & Ruse, Michael (eds.). Debating Darwinism: From Darwin to DNA.

    Pennock, Roger (ed.). Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives.

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  3. The classic Michael J. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution is also interesting as an introduction to the theme.

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    Replies
    1. I certainly respect Behe and his irreducible complexity argument. But I think it could be improved
      For example, Triablogue has mentioned Doug Axe on this point:

      http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/03/functional-coherence.html

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  4. "Todd Wood, The Quest: Exploring Creation’s Hardest Problems (2018)"

    It appears this book no longer exists?

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    Replies
    1. He tells me this should be available at Amazon.com in late November, give or take.

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  5. I have an early copy of the Quest. Todd recommends the following YAC books, with his comments:

    Wise (2002) Faith Form and Time. It's old, but it has a good overview of the entire creation model.

    Wood & Murray (2003) Understanding the Pattern of Life. Yes, this is mine, but it's a helpful but very, very dated overview of created kinds and biology. Think of it as an update to Marsh's book.

    Garner, Paul (2009) The New Creationism. Also out of date, but another useful update on the creation model.

    Snelling (2009) Earth's Catastrophic Past. Again, this one is out of date, but it's still a good update of Price, Clark and Whitcomb and Morris.

    Brand & Chadwick (2016) Faith, Reason and Earth History, 3rd Edition. A much more recent work focusing mostly on biology and geology from two seasoned creationist researchers. Highly recommended.

    Me: The last one can be downloaded for free if you look around Is Genesis History website. The reason Todd keeps saying the good books above are out of date is that a lot of action happens in the key journals and conference proceedings. A lot of significant stuff gets published there that doesn't make it into books (at least quickly). Some key bases are: Answers Research Journal; The Journal of Creation; Proceedings of XXth Conference on Creationism; Creation Biology/Geology Society etc.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, Henry! All that's quite helpful.

      For Faith, Reason and Earth History, I found it on the Is Genesis History website here (epub). Likewise, it's currently available on Amazon Kindle for free here.

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  6. I recently listened to a 4-5 hour Youtube treatment of Danny Faulkner vs. Hugh Ross on the Old Earth/Young Earth debate, with a panel review. It seemed to me that the panelists soundly rejected Faulkner's views on YEC. But I was disappointed in the arguments expressed by Ross and the panel.

    Are there other solid thinkers out there that deal with this exhaustively?

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    Replies
    1. There are really two separate issues: the exegetical issue and the scientific issue. Ross is an astrophysicist, so that's his field of expertise. He's not a trained exegete.

      In addition, the creationist debate is interdisciplinary, so no scientist is an expert on all the many related fields.

      If you grant certain assumptions, then the scientific evidence generally favors old-earth creationism, although there's the problem of tissue preserved in fossilized dinosaurs.

      However, this isn't strictly a scientific question inasmuch as science deals with natural forces and processes operating on their own. But God doesn't have to operate within that framework. And there was no framework to begin with.

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