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Darwin’s Sandcastle: Evolution’s Failure in the Light of Scripture and the Scientific Evidence
Why are brilliant and logical scientists not reasonable on the question of the ultimate cause of the unity, diversity, and complexity of life on Earth? We wrongly think that an accurate view of life’s origins can be deduced by science and logic alone apart from faith and humble submission to God’s Word. Without the light of God’s Word, unbelievers have built up an edifice, a theory of life’s origins known as Darwinian Evolution, which they believe is an impregnable fortress. In our Darwin-dominated society, blind chance, mutation, and natural selection have received most of the glory for the unity, diversity, and complexity of life on Earth. It’s about time this philosophy is seen for what it is: a sandcastle on the beach, in the face of the rising tide.
256 pages, Paperback
Published September 15, 2023
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70 people want to read
About the author
Gordon Wilson
77 books38 followersDr. Gordon Wilson is a Senior Fellow of Natural History at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and the author of The Riot and the Dance, a biology textbook. He writes regularly for Answers in Genesis and has also taught biology at Liberty University and Lynchburg College. He and his wife Meredith have four children and a growing number of grandchildren.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 17, 2023
As a review, I would like to post my "Publisher's Preface" printed in the beginning of the book. It's less of a review, and more of a preface, but I think will help you understand why I think this book is so important.
Publisher's Preface:
I remember sitting on the floor of the New Saint Andrews library surrounded by notes from Dr. Wilson’s biology class, drilling a classmate on class, genus, and species of various critters. I chose this liberal arts college because I wanted to read great books and grapple with the ideas of the ages past that formed who we are today. What was I doing memorizing that Diptera was an order in the class Insecta, or that Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell? I loved what I was learning, partially because of Dr. Wilson’s contagious love for all things living and crawling. But it took me a while to understand why it was part of the curriculum.
But the answer lies in the very definition of a liberal arts education. We were not at New Saint Andrews College to become biologists. We were there to understand how God’s world works, our place in it, and how to take leadership and dominion in that world. We were there to learn how to be free people.
There is a very real kind of slavery that both the uneducated and narrowly educated share. The uneducated simply don’t have the knowledge or intellectual authority to push back against “experts,” even when they can feel something doesn’t add up. The narrowly educated have what Einstein described as the common condition of seeing a thousand trees, but never the forest, something he observed frequently, even in professional scientists. Because we have abandoned classical liberal arts as a culture, we are largely a nation of uneducated or narrowly educated people. Few of our scientists (Christian or secular) and even fewer of our laypeople have the ability to think in an integrated, cross-discipline fashion. The result is that Christians in particular are unequipped to answer “the specialist.” Phrases like “trust the science” or “the science says” hold an illegitimate grasp on the uneducated and narrowly educated alike, and greatly hamper the advance of science itself. A colleague of Gordon Wilson at New Saint Andrews, Dr. Mitch Stokes, explores the pitfall of narrow, specialized education in an essay for Roman Roads Press titled “What does Jesus have to do with STEM?” which I recommend to anyone seeking to further understand this concept.
The long term solution to this problem is the renewal of classical learning at a generational level grounded in an evangelical and lively faith. But in the short term, books like the present provide a kind of layman’s handbook to the big picture on this topic which is closely guarded by “specialists.” See the forest and not just individual trees, understand the big picture of the arguments and science involved in the Creationist position, confident in your faith and convictions. Gordon Wilson has dedicated his life to helping people navigate in a world of scientific idolatry, not by being anti-science but on the contrary by teaching good science at an approachable level.
As someone who personally knows the author, studied under him, experienced his immense love for God’s creation, watched him debate Evolutionists, and encourage and admonish Christians who disagree on these subjects, I can think of no better person to write this book. If you want to hear his voice and see the joy he takes in God’s Creation, I also encourage you to watch the Riot and the Dance nature documentary which he narrates.
Daniel Foucachon, Publisher
Publisher's Preface:
I remember sitting on the floor of the New Saint Andrews library surrounded by notes from Dr. Wilson’s biology class, drilling a classmate on class, genus, and species of various critters. I chose this liberal arts college because I wanted to read great books and grapple with the ideas of the ages past that formed who we are today. What was I doing memorizing that Diptera was an order in the class Insecta, or that Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell? I loved what I was learning, partially because of Dr. Wilson’s contagious love for all things living and crawling. But it took me a while to understand why it was part of the curriculum.
But the answer lies in the very definition of a liberal arts education. We were not at New Saint Andrews College to become biologists. We were there to understand how God’s world works, our place in it, and how to take leadership and dominion in that world. We were there to learn how to be free people.
There is a very real kind of slavery that both the uneducated and narrowly educated share. The uneducated simply don’t have the knowledge or intellectual authority to push back against “experts,” even when they can feel something doesn’t add up. The narrowly educated have what Einstein described as the common condition of seeing a thousand trees, but never the forest, something he observed frequently, even in professional scientists. Because we have abandoned classical liberal arts as a culture, we are largely a nation of uneducated or narrowly educated people. Few of our scientists (Christian or secular) and even fewer of our laypeople have the ability to think in an integrated, cross-discipline fashion. The result is that Christians in particular are unequipped to answer “the specialist.” Phrases like “trust the science” or “the science says” hold an illegitimate grasp on the uneducated and narrowly educated alike, and greatly hamper the advance of science itself. A colleague of Gordon Wilson at New Saint Andrews, Dr. Mitch Stokes, explores the pitfall of narrow, specialized education in an essay for Roman Roads Press titled “What does Jesus have to do with STEM?” which I recommend to anyone seeking to further understand this concept.
The long term solution to this problem is the renewal of classical learning at a generational level grounded in an evangelical and lively faith. But in the short term, books like the present provide a kind of layman’s handbook to the big picture on this topic which is closely guarded by “specialists.” See the forest and not just individual trees, understand the big picture of the arguments and science involved in the Creationist position, confident in your faith and convictions. Gordon Wilson has dedicated his life to helping people navigate in a world of scientific idolatry, not by being anti-science but on the contrary by teaching good science at an approachable level.
As someone who personally knows the author, studied under him, experienced his immense love for God’s creation, watched him debate Evolutionists, and encourage and admonish Christians who disagree on these subjects, I can think of no better person to write this book. If you want to hear his voice and see the joy he takes in God’s Creation, I also encourage you to watch the Riot and the Dance nature documentary which he narrates.
Daniel Foucachon, Publisher
May 18, 2025
Great book! Left me wanting more, and thankfully he gives recommendations on several other resources & books for further study.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews