Recommended Reading

Monthly book reviews

R.H. Brown heads the Geoscience Research Institute.

THE CREATION EXPLANATION

Robert E. Kofahl and Kelly L. Seagraves, Harold Shaw Publishers, 340 Henderson Drive, Wheaton, Illinois 60187, 1975, 255 pages, $7.95, hardbound.

This book deserves consideration as the best general treatment of scientific creationism that has yet reached the public market. It gives more effective treatment of physical science considerations than has been previously avail able in comprehensive works on natural science from a conservative Biblical viewpoint. Many readers will consider the approach taken by the authors to scientific data to be more one of removing obstacles to the expression of faith, rather than an inductive development that builds toward faith. Throughout the text the reader encounters frequent appeals to accept the Bible as God's word and find eternal life in Christ. The sale of this book will probably be largely confined to creationists who are looking for greater assurance in their own faith and for more effective re sources with which to establish faith in others.

The senior author holds a doctorate in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology and is currently science coordinator for the Creation-Science Research Center in San Diego. The junior author is director of the Creation-Science Research Center and holds a doctorate in religious education.

An impressive collection of examples that indicate that both the inanimate and the animate world are an expression of intelligent design is given in the first chapter. For many readers these examples will be worth the price of the book.

The authors work within the popular view among conservative Christians that the entire uni verse is included within the six-day creative epoch described in the first chapter of Genesis (p. 181). They suggest that the sun, moon, and stars may have been in existence since the beginning of Creation week, but were not established on a basis suitable for marking off periods of time until the fourth day (p. 223).

Among the wide range of valuable material presented in the chapter on the age of the earth is a well-prepared statement of the requirements for a natural process of change to be a suitable basis for the measurement of time. Not all readers will be in agreement with the contention that "the genealogies of Genesis and 1 Chronicles are demonstrably in complete at certain points" (p. 181), particularly with respect to the fifth and eleventh chapters of Genesis. An incompleteness that permits placement of Creation week as much as perhaps 20,000 years in the past (p. 181) is far beyond the limits permitted by many potential readers who may be inclined to allow for some deletions. The basic position of the authors appears to favor placement of Creation week in the time range between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago (p. 154).

The suggestion that helium is produced within Earth's crust by cosmic rays, as given at the top of page 186, will not find support among nuclear scientists. Reactions of this nature are limited to the upper regions of the atmosphere, where the primary cosmic radiation is absorbed. It is unfortunate that the reader who may wish to further investigate the helium problem is not given a reference for the statement attributed to Dr. Ferguson.

The treatment of radiometric dating in this book is in many respects the best that has been presented in a creationist book avail able for general circulation. Individuals who wish to improve their understanding of the C-14 dating technique may find the discussion on pages 205-210 particularly helpful. The implications concerning radiometric age data for the moon that are presented on pages 202 and 203 are not consistent with the recent summary by Prof. S. E. Church (S. E. Church, "Radiogenic Isotope Re search," Reviews of Geophysics and Space Physics, 13(3):98-101, 1975, 150-159).

A reader who is not a specialist in the scientific areas that are touched in a book such as this one may come to an incorrect conclusion that certain "proofs" (it would be better to say "interpretive viewpoints") are firmly established, when actually there is significant difference of opinion among the best-qualified scientists who share implicit confidence in the Biblical witness concerning Creation, the Flood, and chronology. Conspicuous examples in this book are the presumed evidence for reversed geological strata (pp. 47, 48), fossil pollen in Pre-Cambrian sediments (p. 53), and footprints of antediluvian man (p. 54). Many individuals who have investigated these topics feel that while respect should be given to the conclusions conveyed by Kofahl and Seagraves, efforts to develop confidence in the direct testimony of the first eleven chapters of Genesis are handicapped by presentations that do not give adequate recognition of uncertainties in the evidence and of alternate interpretations that are in agreement with the specifications given by Moses.

Readers who secure a copy from the first printing will encounter a few errors that may be described as typographical—for example, temperature for temperate on page 51, use of biophysics as a synonym for physiology on page 177, and three in place of tree on page 209.

Space limitations prevent including in this review an outline of the valuable material on cosmology, geology, paleontology, biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, and anthropology that is included in this book. The tentative model for harmonizing the first eleven chapters of Genesis with scientifically observable features that is presented in Appendix A will for many readers justify the entire cost of the book.

Robert H. Brown


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R.H. Brown heads the Geoscience Research Institute.

September 1976

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