I’m sorry to say I was disappointed in this book, but at the same time I was not surprised with it. Before continuing I want to be clear that I am writing this review from my viewpoint as born-again Christian. I also see myself as a life-long learner, researcher, professional scientist and engineer, and natural lover of astronomy and many other areas of natural science. In writing this review, it is my intent to provide a critique of the book, and not to present a complete debate on the topic of young-earth-creationism. I am not one to “grind an axe” or want to argue "tit-for-tat". At the same time, writing this has been difficult because I found myself in a position of strong disagreement with the author, both in his presentation of astronomical topics, as well as the logic used in his presentation. I am not a theologian, nor do I have the academic credentials equivalent to the author. I have however, studied the Bible for several years, and I have spent well more than half a century participating in scientific studies, pursuits, and thinking. I am simply applying the life experiences and knowledge that God has given me in this life to provide my assessment of the material presented in this book.
In many ways, I found this book to not be about astronomy per se, but rather it seems written to express a fundamentalist Christian point of view and have astronomical topics as the backdrop. The study of astronomy, for me, is so rich and so wonderful and so multi-faceted, therefore I can’t recommend this book based upon the information presented on the limited astronomical topics here. The argumentative approach and overall tone of the book were not compelling to me. I found many places in the book where I felt the author took far too great of liberties with his conclusions or with his rationale to be viable or convincing to me. I felt he failed to present credible evidence for his view, and really only argued against the views he disagrees with. Also, there are places in the book where I found the author to be overly absolute, to the point of being incorrect or where his argument was grossly incomplete. This repeated pattern only resulted in a progression of a loss of credibility in my eyes.
That said, there are a few areas in this book where I did find myself in agreement with the author, some of which include the following quotes:
- “According to the Bible, God made human beings in His own image (Gen. 1:27). As such, we reflect in a finite, limited way some of God’s infinite attributes.”
- “God has given us the ability to reason — to think some of His own thoughts after Him.”
- “It seems that the more we zoom in on the universe, the more beautiful it becomes, and the more we realize how truly vast and amazing it is. The more we “magnify” the universe, the more amazed we are by its beauty and complexity. The same is true of the Creator of the universe. The more we magnify God, the more we realize just how amazing He is. It seems that God has constructed the universe to reflect this aspect of His character.”
And the gospel message at the end of the book was great!
But beyond these points, this book felt to me like an attempt to win an argument rather than educate the reader. It feels like the author only presented a vary narrow set of things to support a very specific narrative, and did not to look at or even attempt to present the majority of information available on this topic. The resulting conclusions from the set-up and sometimes circular arguments fell short of being convincing to me. In the introduction of this book, the author uses an anecdote involving a magician to make a specific point. I found the use of a magician in this story ironic in a way. When a magician performs sleight-of-hand, we perceive the trick as being “magic”, because the skill of the magician controls what and how we view the trick. The trick is not really “magic”, but rather a manipulation of the situation in order to present the magicians intent. The magician only allows you to see what supports the trick to make it seem “supernatural”. The magician withholds things from your view that would reveal the true mechanisms of his or her act. There may be some things that the magician brings into the trick to distort or alter what or how you see things. The magician may also do things to distract you with things outside the trick, so that you don’t look too close at what is really happening. In reading this book, I observed in multiple places that the author used these sorts of techniques to make his points. While these techniques make for an entertaining “supernatural magic” show, they do not contribute to credible books on science.
At one point in the book the author makes the claim that the universe was created supernaturally, and that it would be foolish to expect natural evidence for something supernatural. Since science is essentially the systematic pursuit of examining naturally occurring phenomena, I quickly realized that this book is not about science at all. The topics presented in this book are truly pseudoscience (I mean no derogatory intent here, just my conclusion).
The author states that the age of the universe is on the order of 6000 years which is based upon a “Biblical World View”. After reading this book, I feel it would be more accurate to say that the author’s conclusions stem from a “Strict fundamentalist interpretation of a Biblical World View.” I say this respectfully, again with no derogatory intent. However, I personally disagree with this interpretation. The overall “Biblical World View”, which is presented cover-to-cover in the Bible, is so strong and so compelling me, I have been forced to re-align my thinking and revisit my life experiences and learnings in light of this view. The Bible contains an exceedingly small amount of information about the origins of the universe, and very little information regarding astronomical concepts. Building such a rigid dogma around such a limited set of information, and leaving out (what I feel is) the true essence of the Biblical World View, appear to me to be a disservice in communicating the message of the Bible. And in doing so a very distorted and utterly incomplete view of Astronomy is presented in this book. I found the cornerstone of the author’s position to be an intellectual cop-out, which does not align with how I believe God intends us to think, as we humans collectively explore His creation.
Portions of the book contain a handful anecdotes where naturally observed evidence might suggest a young universe (or might not), but the book does not even start to acknowledge that science itself is the pursuit of things unknown. Using examples of things that science can not yet explain to justify the presumed "Christian World View" puts God in a pretty small box that is easy for humans to understand and argue about. My thought is that the creator of this universe is far bigger than that.
A quote attributed to Dietrich Bonhoeffer states:
“How wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know."
For me, the pursuit of learning about the nature of the universe, and seeing the depth the Lord has created (in the expanse of space, in the natural laws we discover, and in the vastness of measurable time itself), fills me with awe that I can not express. Participating in the pursuit of scientific observations and study has been exceedingly rewarding for me, and following this path helps me understand the depth and character of God. The deeper we look, the more we find, and every discovery shows us deeper and deeper depth. I have heard it said that God has created this universe as a challenge for us to explore, just so we can know His depth.
Unfortunately, the author puts out the impression of an extremely shallow and limited view of God, apparently in an attempt to justify a fundamentalist narrative. In light of the immense and incredible volumes of evidence that God has provided through His creation for us to study, this conclusion makes me sad.