Xlibris

This book is a modest effort to put scientific research in a Biblical context. The necessary conclusion is simple: it is quite possible that God did things in a manner that even the most devout human minds overlooked. Nothing science has ever discovered is absent from Scripture. A hundred specialists may dredge up millions of pages on the details. Hopefully, this book will open the door for them. After reading this book, one evangelical Christian pastor responded:

The strength and beauty of Genesis is that every discovery human science has established in the last hundred years or so was already in the Word. It is only our limited human understanding that failed to appreciate it. How did Moses know that the entire process of Creation began with a tremendous burst of light?

C.S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters that, if someone prays for something and it doesn´t happen, then that is one more proof that petitionary prayers don´t work; if it does happen, he will, of course, be able to see some of the physical causes which led up to it, and therefore decide, "it would have happened anyway." Thus, an answered prayer can be as good evidence that prayer does not work as an unanswered prayer. It is similar in questions of creation and science.

Galileo Galilei wrote in his Letter Concerning the Use of Biblical Quotations in Matters of Science “the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word, the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God’s commands.”

• The first chapter, The Place of the Earth, reviews past misunderstandings. The most important point in this recap of history: the theologians who insisted that the earth IS the center of the universe were motivated by the highest purpose. They put the authority of Holy Scripture first, and the observations of science second. With 20/20 hindsight, we can see that it was their own human eyes that were poor witnesses, not their faith. This chapter includes a readable discussion on Biblical authority, starting in 1381 with Thomas Wycliffe’s translation of a Latin Vulgate Bible into English.
  
• The second chapter, Let There Be Light, is nearly self-explanatory. It reviews some of the latest astronomical observations of electromagnetic radiation from the original burst of light with which our universe began, in relation to the opening verses of Genesis and other Biblical revelations.
  
• The third chapter, The Fall of the House of Ussher, examines a more controversial understanding of Scripture. The “Ussher” referred to is, of course, the Anglican Bishop who ventured to calculate the age of the world in the 1600s. It is important to understand the church he represented, its relation to other Protestant faiths, the many non-Biblical sources and methods he relied upon, and the manner in which his writings were erroneously added to certain Bibles by enthusiastic publishers. Bishop Ussher was attempting to apply rational human reasoning to the Word of God. That, of course, is an error, and in his case, a tragic error that led to profound misunderstanding of Scripture.
  
• The next chapters include Let The Waters Bring Forth Abundantly, and Man Became A Living Soul, followed by God Saw the Light - That It Was Good. Each looks into the first three chapters of Genesis, with some reference to Chapter 5 and to the Epistles of Paul, to find a depth of meaning that would have been entirely possible for God, although very difficult for our human ancestors to contemplate. God is much more than an oversized magician waving a magic wand and saying "abracadabra" over a pile of dust.
  
• In between are chapters that consider some thorny side issues, which do have surprising Biblical answers. Adam Gave Names to Every Beast examines the verses in Genesis that give rise to this title - where they appear in the story of Creation, and what they mean following the account of the six days in which God created the heavens and the earth. Back to the Fossil Record puts biology and geology into a Biblical context, without the slightest need to deny the findings of either, or to question the authenticity of Genesis. East of Eden lines up recent archaeology and paleontology with events in the second and third chapters of Genesis. This leads to conclusions that are not (yet) taught in Sunday School, but proceed respectfully from the Biblical text.
  
• Two closing chapters begin with The Evidence of Things Unseen. This examines exactly what the respective roles of science and religion are. The starting and ending point is that science deals with what can be established by human sight, by human reasoning, with instruments made from material substances by the hands of man. Religion teaches revealed truth, that could never have been found by human effort or reasoning. While each can illuminate the other, neither can prove or disprove the other, and both are ultimately consistent.
  
• Infinite Possibilities and Eternal Truths concerns the real difficulty for falliable human beings: trying to fathom the sheer depth and complexity of the Created universe, while finding simple guides to life and salvation from our oldest and most sanctified source.

Four to five hundred years ago, the Roman Catholic Church, as well as Martin Luther and John Calvin, denounced the theory that the earth revolves around the sun, as "contrary to Holy Scriptures." Why did these learned fathers of the Church deny the new heliocentric theory? Because they BELIEVED that it contradicted Holy Scripture. They BELIEVED that the authority of Scripture would be forever undermined if such a theory were accepted. Obviously, they were wrong. Today, very few people insist that the sun orbits the earth. Billions of people, who know the earth orbits the sun, affirm the authority of Holy Scripture. How is this possible? We have recognized that Scripture does not say that the earth sits motionless at the center of universe. Greek philosophers did, some Christian philosophers did, but the Word does not.