GETTING THROUGH TO THE WONDERFUL YOU
Charlie W. Shedd, Fleming H. Revell Company, Old Tappan, New Jersey, 128 pages, $4.95.
Charlie Shedd, Presbyterian clergyman and popular writer for Christian families, calls his new book "a Christian alternative to transcendental meditation." He had been practicing what he calls "word focusing" on single Bible words for twenty years before TM started sweeping the country. "Word focusing is a meditational approach that concentrates on a single word." Dr. Shedd concludes, "I believe there is only one way to counteract evil this is with something better, and the Christian says there is nothing better than the inner life with Christ developed to its maximum." Titus A. Frazee
"EVOLUTION: POSSIBLE OR IMPOSSIBLE?"
James F. Coppedge,The Zondervan Corp., Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1973, paperback edition, 276 pages, $3.95.
Investigations in molecular biology have produced insights into the basic chemical nature of cell behavior that are becoming increasingly recognized to give Creation a clear scientific ad vantage over evolution in ac counting for the origin of the various types of organisms. Dr. Coppedge has provided the most comprehensive and responsible treatment of this subject from a creationist viewpoint that has become available up to the present. Through an attractive style, clarification of technical concepts, and impressive illustrations he has succeeded in making the subject matter both understandable and interesting to an uninitiated reader.
The traveling amoeba is an ex ample of the illustrations utilized in this book. An amoeba, presumed to move so slowly as to re quire fifteen billion years (the age of the universe according to current evolutionary viewpoints) to cross one hydrogen atom (one hundred millionth of a centimeter), could transport two thousand million million million (2 by 1021) complete universes, one atom at a time, across the diameter of the universe as presently understood (about thirty billion light years) in less than the time in which all the atoms of the universe combined into basic organic component groups interacting with each other at the rate of ten thousand million million (10 16) combinations per second could be expected to produce by chance a single combination that would be a usable gene of average size for the smallest theoretical living thing.
Dr. Coppedge has given a service of extraordinary value in his fair and competent handling of the insight current knowledge of molecular biology gives concerning the origin of life and the possibility for development of organisms by random atomic and molecular activity.
In chapter twelve the author steps out of his molecular biology specialty and borrows from the extant creationist literature material that is related to other scientific disciplines. The reader should be cautioned regarding use of this material, for much of it was accepted without thorough evaluation.
Examples to which particular attention should be called are the following: Whereas the discovery of pine-type pollen in the lowest Grand Canyon formations has been reported, up to the present subsequent attempts to provide confirmation have been unsuccessful; human footprints that have been reported in Cambrian strata appear to be only chemical stains that have a wide variety of shapes and penetrate through several successive layers of rock without the evidences for compaction and plastic flow that would be associated with actual footprints; whereas there are unquestionable dinosaur footprints in strata exposed by the Paluxy River the supposed evidence for associated human footprints is highly questionable; a mechanism is known for removal of helium from earth's atmosphere, and the low level of helium is consistent with the absence of hydrogen in the atmosphere; the discussion of radio-metric ages for material from the moon is not consistent with the reports in the research literature; many believers in a "6,000 year" age of the earth find fully adequate evidence for thrust faulting that probably occurred in connection with the breakup of earth's crust during the Flood.
Readers should obtain great benefit from the general material in chapter thirteen, "Examples of Phenomena Unexplainable by Evolution," and chapter fourteen, "Increasing Your Certainty."
R. H. Brown
A HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATORS
Elmer L. Towns, Editor, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1975, 330 pages, $12.95.
This is a compilation of resumes prepared by twenty-two authorities. The editor himself, Elmer L. Towns, was responsible for four of the chapters. The volume deals with twenty-six out standing leaders in religion, philosophy, and education from the time of Christ until John Dewey. In each case a summary is given of the life of the individual under consideration. This is followed by a general exposition of his religious thought and philosophy. Special attention is given to the contributions of the individual in the field of education, with emphasis on its relationship to religion.
The book can be of great value to ministers and theologians as a source book for general information on the life and thought of the men depicted. For educators the book is almost a must because of its wealth of summarized information on religious education. The reader will discover that what is thought to be "new" in 1976 has already been thought of centuries before.
Walton J. Brown
