A fistful of books

I've been looking for concise books that would introduce the main issues of origins for (particularly older high school age) Christians.

I contacted a couple of creation organisations, and got either directed to their website, or recommendations for massive tomes, or nothing!

Then, in a recent 'specials' leaflet from one such organisation I saw what looked like the books, and bought them.

All good.

Here they are:

The Dawkins Proof by Barns

Taking aspects of Dawkins' book The God Delusion and uses them to provide evidence for God that Dawkins must rely on to prosecute parts of his argument. Irritatingly quotes from the AV, for some reason. NASB would be far better.

Evidence for Creation by de Rosa

A brief but sufficient survey of the basic evidence for Special Creation.

Six-Day Creation by Burney

Examination of the defined duration fiat creation of the Bible. Another irritation, he adopts the tedious Puritan authorial habit of enumerating points in ordinals (firstly.....sixthly.... ninthly...), when the modern pattern of simply numbering paragraphs would suffice.

World Winding Down by Wieland

Overview of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and its application to information theory.

Did God Use Evolution? by Gitt

Another tedious presentation, yet with good content from a largely scientific point of view. He doesn't really deal with the theological reasons very well, although he does touch on them relevantly.

Foolish Faith by Judah Etinger

An apologetics summary covering origins, the Bible and faith.

What is design?

Design naturally implies teleology: to achieve a future state to meet a prior purpose.

Design can therefore be characterised in these terms, but what about design itself.

Thus this comment to a video by Behe:

I think his definition of design needs work.

Design features the bringing together of components, whether they be parts, assemblies, systems, or systems-of-systems to interface in a way not predictable by the components themselves. That is, that cannot arise from the operation of the component taken in isolation.

With parsimony this is the mark of mind. Coordinated across components it denies random 'trials'.

The other problem that foolish 'component' level natural selection skips over is the concomitant change in interlocking supporting systems, themselves not dependent on the primary function in question, but are essential for the function in question.

The eye for instance. To work it would need continuous congruent changes in the skeletal system, muscular system, autonomic nervous system, and its component parts, the endocrine system, the brain's 'software' to turn the electronic signals into smoothed images, the balance system and its multiple parts, the blood supply, the operations of eyelids, tears, the presence of eyebrows, motor coordination (e.g. for throwing a ball at a target).

All these complex systems, sub-systems and 'systems-of-systems' (system congregates) must be coordinated and in step to allow the eye to function and to be 'selectable'. Darwinism is early-Victorian gross morphology fantasy that is at best naive, at worst ignorant, implausible and finally impossible.

What's wrong with theistic-evolution?

What we need is a simple, clear statement that goes to the heart of the question.

Here it is:

Theistic evolution merges the creator with the creation to the point of indistinguishability.

The creator is taken into the creation and rather then 'theise' the creation, is engulfed and depersonalised by evolution. He becomes invisible and subject to nature, tinkering with it, not defining it.

It represents a direct contradiction of all that Genesis 1 stands for:

• creator emphatically distinguished from creation
• creator creates thoughtfully and in order
• creator completes the creation as a functioning thing.

It also represents a direct contradiction for what Genesis 3:8 teaches:

• creator seeks fellowship with his creation as a person to other persons.