Here are some notes and comments on a few key books the open minded (if any) may wish to consult. They are not all written from a creationist viewpoint, my comments are as unbiased as everyone else's, read the books and make your own mind up.

One small speck to man        Vij Sodera
The Blind Watchmaker          Richard Dawkins
Science versus Evolution       Malcolm Bowden
The Origin of Species            Charles Darwin
The Voyage of the Beagle      Charles Darwin
Dawkins' God                        Alister McGrath
Evolution-the Fossils say No   Duane Gish
The Case For a Creator          Lee Strobel
Darwin's Black Box                 Michael Behe
From Darwin to Hitler            Richard Weikart
The Politically Incorrect guide to Darwinism and Intelligent design   Jonathan Wells
The Wedge of Truth           by Philip Johnson

One Small Speck to man-the evolution myth. Vij Sodera

"Few people fully realise that to accept that we are modified apes requires us to accept an even more fantastic series of propositions. Look at a particle of dust on the table in front of you. Is it possible for such a particle, being composed of simple molecules and after existing for a few billion years, to join with other simple particles and to acquire consciousness - to ultimately peer down on another dust particle and to contemplate its origins? Yet inherent in the theory of evolution by natural selection is the assumption that not only is evolution possible, but that it actually happened. In other words, spontaneously, without the action of any outside influence whatsoever, simple molecules dissolved in water became living cells, some of which became fishes, some of which became amphibians, some of which became reptiles. Some reptiles became birds and mammals. Some mammals became monkeys, some of which became apes, some of which became you and me.

However, to question is the foundation stone of all science, and, only by being willing to look at the evidence objectively, and by being willing to challenge established dogma can we hope to get to the truth of the matter.

So, was our great, great...great grand father an ape? This is the question that this book sets out to answer. "

This richly illustrated book provides a unique insight into the living world. And it will make you think. As the author says, "Question everything".

Vij Sodera is a remarkable and passionate man who has spent his adult life working as a doctor and travelling and studying to investigate the claims of Darwinism, which he comprehensively demolishes in this attractive and beautifully illustrated science book. To visit the author's web site, view chapter summaries and order your copy click here

The Blind Watchmaker  by Richard Dawkins.

The title of the book is a riposte to William Paley's 1802 book 'Natural Theology' (republished as Paley's Watchmaker). The central premise of Paley's book was that if you found a watch lying on a heath, with all its complicated internal working and useful purpose, you would never believe that it had made itself of come about by accident, but you would very reasonably assume that it had been made, by a watchmaker. If someone told you that not only had it come about by accident, but could also reproduce itself, you would laugh.  'And yet, this is atheism' Paley wrote. Although written well before Darwin's time, Paley was clearly writing against the atheistic supposition that life had come into being without a creator. This idea was not new, Darwin did not invent it but with a lot of help from his friends gave it a cloak of scientific respectability.

Dawkins sets out to demonstrate that far from being unlikely to the point of impossibility, that it is inevitable that life will eventually assemble itself given the right conditions. To demonstrate this, he used 2 examples. The first is a word game which is designed to reach the phrase  'methinks it is like a weasel' by apparently random changes. This is achieved, apparently (to the credulous reader) randomly, in 60 or so stages by a computer. An intelligently designed computer (there is, nor could there be, any other kind). Grand, but it's not a biomolecule assembling itself, it's a word game which Dawkins has set up so that it can't fail to reach the 'target phrase'! Each letter when it falls into it's preordained place, sticks there. The 'experiment' is fixed to deliver the intended result. It's a joke without a punch line. But then this is from a grown man who still thinks that the babyish question 'Who made God?' is witty and clever and likes to compare people who question Darwin 'tantamount to child abusers'.

The next wheeze is a computer with a programme that draws symmetrical doodles. Dawkins is really pleased with these, he calls them biomorphs and has given some of his favourites names-fox head, jumping spider, scorpion, tree frog etc. He apparently invites readers to assume that since an intelligently designed computer programme running on an intelligently designed computer can produce doodles, some of which look like (to an intelligently designed brain) animal silhouettes, that life from non life really isn't much of a problem.

I really don't know what more needs to be said-this is the best that the world's foremost advocate of atheistic evolution can do.

Blind people can't make watches, Dicky, especially if as well as being blind they have no fingers, arms, memories, plans, brains or watch parts, don't  know what a watch is, have no components, oh, and they don't exist. You really need to talk to your Darwinist BBC chum David Attenborough-he still hasn't got out of the habit of calling animals 'creatures' and still refers to 'design' in some of his nature documentaries, I can see why it must be such a hard habit to break.

Malcolm Bowden has written an excellent appraisal of Dawkins' 'Blind Watchmaker' and has neatly dissected his rhetorical tricks in his book 'Science versus Evolution' ISBN 0-9506042-6-7. From the back cover..."The book is a very comprehensive examination of the evolutionist's evidence and sets out clearly the many errors, inherent weaknesses and inadequacies it contains. Avoiding scientific jargon and with many exploratory diagrams, the counter evidence is presented in an easily understandable style. The layman will be able to refute, with fully referenced sound scientific facts, the various arguments put forward so very confidently by evolutionists."
David Watson writes 'He is adept at uncovering false analogies, straw men and the special pleading by which evolutionists deceive a gullible public.' Monty White adds 'One is left wondering how any self-respecting scientist could possibly believe in evolution after reading this book.' Bowden has also meticulously researched the Piltdown man scandal and reached shocking and sinister conclusions about what really went on behind the scenes and the subsequent cover up.

Malcolm Bowden is not a man to pull his punches, I am indebted to him for the appendix on rhetorical tricks and deceptive debating stratagems used by evolutionists, which he said he had to expand after reading Dawkins, from which I have freely borrowed. His other books include 'Ape men-fact or fallacy', 'The rise of the Evolution Fraud' (meticulously documenting the activities of the people who worked together to promote Darwin's ideas and see to it that they succeeded in forcing evolutionary belief on the science establishment) and 'True Science Agrees with the Bible'.
 

Of the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in The Struggle For Life by Charles Darwin, 1859.

Although belief in life developing from non life goes back to the ancient Greeks, and natural selection had been described in 1835 by the creationist Edward Blyth writing in the magazine of Natural History (Darwin cribbed the idea from him and never gave him any credit), this is the book that started the ball rolling. Its heavy going due to the plodding style and tortuous arguments (such a contrast from the racy and interesting 'Voyage of the Beagle', but then that book dealt mainly with facts rather than speculation, whereas Origin is the other way round). Nevertheless it should be read by anyone serious about the evolution/creation debate.

Much of the book is taken up with statements of the fairly obvious, such as observations of reafforestation with and without grazing animals excluded, and experiments Darwin carried out like floating a dead pigeon on a pond for a few weeks then cutting it open and seeing how many seeds in it's crop germinated (thus proving that a dead bird might float the sea and bear seeds with it across water to distant lands). One tends to think, yes, a very good bit of experimental science which helps us understand how plants might spread from one body of land to another, but how does this explain the origin of species?

In my copy of 'origin of Species' the note TBI (true, but irrelevant) has been scribbled frequently in the margin. But every time Darwin spells out a science fact that you may not have thought of (certainly his 1857 audience mostly wouldn't have) but which makes sense, he is winning your confidence as he prepares to spring his big story. The big story was that the observed variations we see in species like dogs, cattle or pigeons (when selectively bred by intelligent humans who have a goal in mind) can be logically extended to suppose that all organs and plants and animals arose by millions of gradual random changes from a common single celled ancestor. Darwin does not say anything about where the single celled ancestor came from, and he admits his total ignorance of the means by which features pass from one generation to the next (he hadn't read Mendel). But he believes it happened. He really believes, and invites you to. That's about it, apart from waffle, speculation, stultified prose, irrelevancies and the excuses offered to cover the lack of fossil evidence (it is still lacking).

Difficulties with the theory? nah! Just IMAGINE them away!

Darwin includes a chapter on difficulties with the theory, but this is false modesty inserted as an emollient to give the appearance of humility and persuade the naive reader that the due process of science is being followed. Reading between the lines, he doesn't believe there are any difficulties, he has persuaded himself he is right and that the difficulties (even the ones he acknowledges are overwhelming) can just be 'supposed' away. He uses words like 'suppose' quite often. He wriggles and squirms around the 'difficulties' but doesn't satisfactorily answer any of them. His self referential and circular reasoning as he tries to wish away the impossibility of the vertebrate eye arising by various gradual changes over millions of generations is a masterpiece of evasion which should be read by all aspiring politicians and criminal defence lawyers, it is reminiscent of Tony Blair on Iraq. In the end he just says he doesn't see any problem with the eye in all its complexity coming into being by millions of gradual changes (from a starting point, although he avoids this inevitable consequence of his thought, of dirty water and lightning).

Darwin must have known even then (when so little was known about biochemistry and the cell) that he was speculating way beyond what the evidence could support. Natural selection, his only agent for change, explains small variations within species or even perhaps families of plants and animals, but to achieve large changes through many successive sequential small changes, say from reptile to bird, the putative evolving organisms would have to pass through many, many stages which were neither one thing nor the other, so had no selective advantage, so they would be selected against. This was clear even then, and clear in terms of Darwin's own theory, so although Darwin is less to blame than modern scientists who are aware of the irreducibly complex nature of cell biology and the DNA check and repair mechanism which is only explicable in terms of intelligent design and also an effective road block against evolution, Darwin certainly had no excuse for refusing to address the issue of useless intermediate structures.

Useless intermediate structures which natural selection would have eliminated

His avoidance of the problematic area of origin of life from non life, massive an omission though this is, is more excusable than his avoidance of the issue of the useless intermediate structures which would have been necessary for his hypothesis to be true (species occurring through natural selection for beneficial traits which had arisen by an  process that was at that time unknown but which we now realise could only have been random mutation). Such structures, if they existed (for which we have no evidence) were neither one thing nor the other. Since the book is supposed to be about natural selection, this is an extremely grave omission which should have sunk the theory at birth. Why does he not offer any explanation of how partly formed structures could offer selective advantage? To take the much proclaimed supposition that birds evolved by innumerable gradual changes from reptiles, a structure that is neither scale nor feather, neither reptile claw nor bird wing, neither reptile heart/lung nor bird heart/lung etc etc is useless so could not confer any selective benefit. Natural selection would therefore act against the wasteful, inefficient not feather not scale, not fin not leg, not gill not lung, not arm not wing, etc. It must be constantly repeated, natural selection is a demonstrable science fact which even the most radical Biblical literalist young earth creationists accept. It eliminates less fit structures and organisms.  IT CREATES NOTHING. This failure to address the problem of non-advantageous intermediate structures is an absolutely vast, gaping hole in Darwin's theory IN IT'S OWN TERMS which should have led to it being laughed out of sight had not there been such a willing audience who wanted to get rid of the idea of a creator God and replace it with, well, absolutely anything.

Natural selection is a useful concept, and may even have led through adaptation to environmental changes to new species (as with dogs, carp, grasses, rattlesnakes, oak trees, finches etc) but the cardinal error of the book is the great leap of faith which asserts that given enough time, enough generations, one kind of animal would turn into completely different kind. We do not see this in living or fossil animals, there is no evidence to prove that it has ever happened, or that it could happen.  It bears repeating that Darwin never saw one kind of animal turn into another, and to this day neither has anyone else. It is faith, not science.

He knew, and said, that for this supposed transformation from a common ancestor to all living things, the only real proof (since we cannot see it happening today or travel back in time) would be large numbers of intermediate forms in the fossil record. He lamented and made excuses for the absence of these intermediate fossils and predicted that they would turn up. After 150 years of massive world-wide effort, mostly done by people who wanted to prove Darwin right, the intermediate fossils predicted by and necessary for his theory are still absent. They are the only possible direct evidence of evolution, given the fact that we do not see species 'morphing' into other species. When does absence of evidence become evidence of absence?

Evolutionists, when confronted with the observable fact that apart from minor variations within species which are accounted for by Mendelian genetics, we do not see evolution in action, reply that of course this morphing between different kinds of plant or animal happens very, very, very gradually over millions and millions of years. If this were true, then allowing for major fossil producing events say every couple of ten thousand years or so, the fossil bearing rocks ought to be packed with intermediate kinds, in fact the intermediates ought to be more abundant than 'fixed' species that we recognise. The reverse is true, with only a tiny number of disputed intermediate kinds to set  against the millions of fossils which are of clearly defined species (sponges, ferns, shellfish, arthropods, fishes etc) when considered with an open mind can usually be ruled definitely as one kind or another.  They are still missing despite a gigantic, global, determined and well funded effort to find them. What we find in the fossil record is large numbers of animals and plants of all kinds appearing suddenly without ancestors (see Cambrian explosion). After this there are extinctions (and supposed extinctions-see coelacanth) and stasis, more in keeping with the Creation and global flood model.

Mendel-a proper scientist who only wrote about what he observed in his experiments and who founded the science of genetics

While Darwin was hurriedly writing his book to get it into print before Wallace beat him to it (Wallace had independently reached similar conclusions), Gregor Mendel 's work on plant breeding appeared. This, unlike 'Origin of Species',  was firmly based on experimental and repeatable science and has proved to be an enduring foundation of genetics. Mendel demonstrated the extent to which species tend to breed true and although variations did appear, left to breed without interference there was a strong tendency to return to the norm for that species. This suggested that natural selection was essentially a conservative process, not a means for producing new kinds of plant of animal.  Mendel's work is not mentioned by Darwin in Origin of Species, whether he had read it or not at the time is unclear, probably not but who knows?

The success of the philosophical speculations in this book can best be explained by the rising tide of materialism, revolution and atheism in Europe at the time, it certainly does not establish any scientific case beyond the banal. Natural selection had been written up by the creationist Edward Blyth 24 years earlier, and Darwin had studied his work, as well as that of Wallace and others who had written up the idea of natural selection that would forever be associated with his name. People WANTED (and still want) an explanation of the natural world that excluded a supreme deity, so they could get rid of the restricting idea of God and follow their autonomous desires to do as they pleased. Malcolm Bowden has written this up in his 'Rise of the Evolution Fraud'. Those who wanted a watered down Christianity included many compromising, jobsworth churchmen, some of whom were much more quickly won over to the new belief system than scientists, many of whom dismissed Darwin's speculations as nonsense.

In 2009, this book and its author will be celebrated. As we have shown, his theory should be called a philosophical speculation since theories are supposed to be consistent with a large body of evidence, be falsifiable (in other words, be subject to realistic tests which in theory could prove them false) be the best explanation to fit the available facts, and make predictions which are later fulfilled. Evolution, as an explanation of unguided molecules to man progress, fails all these tests.

Natural selection DOES fit these parameters and has useful, albeit limited, explanatory power, and although Darwin did not discover natural selection he deserves credit for writing it up, but the assumption that natural selection acting on naturally occurring variations could explain molecules to man 'evolution' is entirely inconsistent with the observed facts and would have been completely discarded long ago if it were not such a cherished belief, getting rid as it does of the necessity for a creator. Will the 2009 Darwin Day celebrate scientific integrity and truth, or a deeply flawed idea which is protected from criticism because it  'liberates' men from the idea of a Big Scary God?

Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. This fascinating book is more of a travelogue and anthropological commentary than a biology treatise, well worth a read for anyone interested in the life and times of Charles Darwin. Darwin writes about his adventures on board the Beagle as Captain Fitz Roy's companion. He wasn't the ship's naturalist as is commonly supposed, the ship's doctor was. Darwin's only qualification was in theology, but he certainly got stuck in to the nature with enthusiasm.

Clearly Darwin had a wonderful time, writing in chapter 1 he says “Delight is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist who for the first time has wandered by himself in a Brazilian forest. The elegance of the grasses, the novelty of the parasitical plants, the beauty of the flowers, the glossy green of the foliage, but above all the general luxuriance of the vegetation, filled me with admiration……To a person fond of natural history, such a day as this brings with it a deeper pleasure than he can ever hope to experience again.” It is difficult for us today to imagine how marvellous an adventure it was to go round the world on a sailing ship, used as we are to excellently filmed colour wildlife documentaries on TV.

He wrote of his stay near Rio, ‘In England, any person fond of natural history enjoys in his walks a great advantage, by always having something to attract his attention; but in these fertile climates, teeming with life, the attractions are so numerous that he is scarcely able to walk at all.’ His notes are suffused with his sense of wonder at nature coming through, and carefully observed writing about giant butterflies, vampire bats, skunks, condors and their lice, pumas and jaguars (and their victims’ remains) monkeys, fireflies, gigantic ant’s nests, puffer fish, sharks, booby birds, sundry invertebrates ands plants. He also recorded extensive notes on the humans he travelled and lived with.

Many birds are described in detail, it is clear that Darwin’s knowledge of them was encyclopaedic.  Here we see Darwin thinking about bird populations on islands, a theme he was to return to as part of his later speculations about change occurring over time in isolated populations. He wrote of the local populations as he travelled through South America, gauchos, villagers, soldiers and slaves. He describes local customs and hospitality, hunting with the gauchos and a humorous incident in which he accidentally caught himself and his horse with the throwing balls (bolas). Many interesting anecdotes are recounted and the difficulties are mentioned, including a degree of lawlessness and the worrying knives and daggers which many men seemed to carry with them and were not infrequently used in fights. Clearly the journey was accompanied by some degree of personal discomfort and risk. There are many descriptions of hardship and discomfort, danger from potentially hostile Indians and hunting Jaguars and Pumas as well as mosquitoes and hunger and thirst. His descriptions of the Gauchos hunting and beef butchery and cookery are fascinating

He records examples of the cruel treatment of slaves which he observed in Brazil, clearly Darwin (in as far as we can tell from what he wrote in his journal when nobody had heard of him, so most likely he was writing very honestly) was clearly moved with anger by the ill treatment of his fellow humans and was a concerned and compassionate man who protested against mistreatment of others just because they were considered ‘barbarians’. He protested against the cruel killing of Indians and the prevailing attitude that justified this as ‘they breed so!’, expressing outrage that ‘in this age, such atrocities could be committed in a "Christian civilised country."’ He described while travelling through Argentina finding hanging from a tree the skeleton of an Indian with the dried skin over bones. He was clearly sickened by the approval his travelling companions expressed at this ghastly sight. There are many references to genocidal wars and bloody revolutions going on in South America during his time there, and it seems likely that this would have impressed him very deeply along with the flora and fauna he observed. He made the remarkable observation, regarding Paraguay, and lamenting its wars, revolutions and economic failure ‘That country will have to learn, like every other South American state, that a republic cannot succeed until it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.’ Very true words; it is interesting to look at them from the context of a 2006 Britain in moral decline which has now largely abandoned Christianity, (Islam, which has never accepted evolution or any form of pluralism and which unlike Christianity does not doubt itself, is growing fast) and in which the murder of pensioners by teenagers is commonplace, crime, drug abuse and marital breakdown are rampant, nobody trusts our politicians and we have to import foreign workers since so many of our own young people are too vain and lazy to do honest work.

He obtained the head of a Mylodon, a giant extinct quadruped, and noted that the bones were so fresh that they contained by analysis 7 percent animal matter and when placed in a spirit lamb burned with a small flame. This certainly suggests that the fossils of these gigantic extinct creatures may not have been millions of years old. (it is interesting to compare this with the recent wet material obtained from a T. Rex thigh bone in the USA-see Answers in Genesis for more details).

He brought his able and enquiring mind to bear on questions such as the amount of food it took to support a large animal and made the interesting observation that, should whales have been extinct and nobody had ever seen one, and the fossilised skeleton of a Greenland whale be found, nobody would have believed that its diet consisted of small invertebrates living in icy cold arctic seas? This is an interesting observation which can be rightly applied to other fossils about which unsupported assumptions are made, remembering also the coelacanth.

Writing about a poisonous snake, Trigonocephalus crepitans, Darwin remarks that is appeared to be intermediate between a rattlesnake and ‘the viper’ (rattlesnakes are of course vipers so presumably he must have meant some other particular viper which is not here named). He went on to say ‘I observed a fact, which appears to me very curious and instructive, as showing how every character, even though it may be in some degree independent of structure, has a tendency to vary by slow degrees. The extremity of the tail of this snake is terminated by a point, which is very slightly enlarged; and as the animal glides along, it constantly vibrates the last inch; and this part striking against the dry grass and brushwood produces a rattling noise, which can be distinctly heard at the distance of six feet….The Trigonocephalus has therefore in some respects the structure of a viper, with the habits of a rattlesnake; the noise however being produced by a simpler device.’ Here we see perhaps the beginnings of Darwin’s idea that there was no true fixity of species and that it was possible as it were to ‘morph’ from one animal to another by numerous slow changes over aeons.  He wrote later in Origin of Species that he thought the Creationist belief that every single type of animal had been created exactly as it was and had never changed at all was inconsistent with his observations of small differences like this between 'related' vipers, and he proposed an alternative explanation, which was that variation had occurred with descent from common ancestors. It is of course one thing to propose a couple of dozen localised rattlesnake sub-species descending with variation/adaptation from a common rattlesnake ancestor, quite another to suppose that all snakes, lizards, turtles etc, let alone birds, fish, mammals and all the rest were descended from  a single ancestor. But one can see where Darwin was coming from with these observations about similarities between animals belonging to the same group. Of course, he never saw any animals with features between groups, as they have never existed.

Visiting the Galapagos islands, we see the clearest evidence of the nascent theory of natural selection (variation within a kind) in his observations of finches with different shaped beaks. He wrote of the differently beaked finches, 'Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends.' I return to my abbreviation TBI (true, but irrelevant).

Further observations are made of Australia, which he didn't like much, and the book closes with a chapter including the interesting statements 'The march of improvement, consequent on the introduction of Christianity throughout the South Sea, probably stands by itself in the records of history.' Thinking back to his comments deploring the cruel treatment of Indians in South America. One can only speculate what Darwin might have thought if he had foreseen what results the widespread adoption of his story of origins would have on men's beliefs and consequent behaviour.

In the penultimate paragraph of 'Beagle' Darwin notes, '..as the traveller stays but a short time in each pace, his description must generally consist of mere sketches, instead of detailed observations. Hence arises, as I have found to my cost, a constant tendency to fill up the wide gaps of knowledge, by inaccurate and superficial hypotheses.'

Ahem, yes Charles. Thank you for, on this occasion, being so honest. Some of us had noticed this 'constant tendency to fill up the gaps of knowledge' in your and your disciples' writing, otherwise known as confabulation. Highly forgivable in a travel book, especially such a good one as 'Beagle', less so when we are talking about the origin, and therefore destiny, of the human race.
 
 
 

Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe Professor Behe of Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, wrote this book to show that Darwinism is not consistent with what we now know about biochemistry. He introduces the concept of irreducible complexity, using a mousetrap as an example. An ordinary mousetrap consists of a base plate, striker plate, spring, restraining wire and one or 2 other bits. Unless they are all present and correctly assembled, and the mousetrap baited and set correctly, it cannot work. It is therefore impossible to envision the trap coming together one piece at a time without a designer, since none of the intermediate stages work at all. There is no gradual development which can be envisaged, it is all or nothing.

He then turns to several biochemical systems including the bacterial flagellar motor, protein transport, DNA metabolism and the clotting of blood which are several orders of magnitude more complicated than the mousetrap. If ONE molecule is out of place in ONE of the subsystems of the clotting cycle, it is compromised or fails entirely. It therefore could not have developed gradually, even if there had been an invisible designer at work, the intermediate stages simply have no function and do not work. This is fatal to Darwinistic evolution. Darwin wrote in 'Origin' that if any organ could be found which could not possibly have come about by many gradual changes, his theory would 'Fail utterly.'

Behe searched the world evolutionary literature and found not one single abstract, book, paper or talk setting out a sequence of biochemical progress whereby you could theoretically get from the starting point to any known biochemical process by gradual changes. He said that since the biochemical Darwinism had not published, it should perish. His work clearly fulfills Darwin's test of falsification where he said in Origin that if it could be shown that if any complex organ existed which could not possibly have come into being by many gradual changes then his theory would fail utterly. This has now been fulfilled not for one case but for all, since irreducible complexity applies at the biochemical level to all known biological structures and processes.

A fuller review of Darwin's black box appears on the Biblical Creation Society web site to read it click here

Evolution-the fossils say no-Duane Gish. They sure do, check it out. Sound, comprehensive evidence presented in a readable style showing that the fossil record  testifies to the sudden appearance in the deepest rocks, without 'ancestors', of multitudes of complicated life forms followed by extinctions (mainly through catastrophic mud slides consisted with a world wide flood) and stasis. Darwinism requires fossils to gradually morph from one kind into another over millions of years, but the rocks show instead sudden appearance followed by stasis and some extinctions, which is inconsistent with gradualist evolution but compatible with sudden mature creation followed by a global flood. See chapter on fossils.
 

The Case For a Creator  Lee Strobel. Lee Strobel was an atheistic journalist who began an investigation after his wife Leslie gave her life to Jesus and he noticed she became a much better person. Like many others before him, he then re-examined the evolution he had been taught, bringing a journalist's craft to bear on key 'evidences' of evolution such as Haeckel's embryo drawings (I heard last week that these proven fakes are still on display in a prominent London Museum) (PS I later heard they were removed after representations from Truth in Science), the Miller-Urey 'life in a test tube' experiments, the fossil evidence and interviews with many scientists including Michael Behe. The book does not read like a science textbook but has a racy style which carries the reader along and presents the facts and arguments in an accessible way. I would recommend this book to an open minded sceptic, which is what Lee Strobel was when he started his journey of discovery. Having started his exploration of the facts as an atheist, Strobel is now a convinced Christian who now believes that he was lied to all his life by the establishment. Zondervan ISBN 0-3100-25913-4

From Darwin to Hitler by Richard Weikart  (associate professor of modern European history at California state university)
ISBN 1-4039-7201-X

This is a scholarly study of the intellectual foundations of Hitlerism which are found in or developed from Darwinism. The book is in four main sections and is supported by 66 pages of references.

1) Laying new foundations for ethics
2) Devaluing human life
3) Eliminating the "Inferior Ones"
4) Impacts-Hitler's ethic.

"In this compelling and painstakingly researched work of intellectual history, Richard Weikart explains the revolutionary impact Darwinism had on ethics and morality. He demonstrates that many leading Darwinian biologists and social thinkers in Germany believed that Darwinism overturned traditional Judaeo-Christian and Enlightenment ethics, especially those pertaining to the sacredness of human life. Many of these thinkers supported moral relativism, yet simultaneously exalted evolutionary "fitness" (especially in terms of intelligence and health) as the highest arbiter of morality. Weikart concludes that Darwinism played a key role not only in the rise of eugenics, but also in euthanasia, infanticide, abortion, and racial extermination, all ultimately embraced by the Nazis. He convincingly makes the disturbing argument that Hitler built his view of ethics on Darwinian principles rather than nihilistic ones. From Darwin to Hitler is a provocative yet balanced work that should encourage a rethinking of the historical impact that Darwinism had on the course of events in the twentieth century." (review downloaded from site linked to below. I have read the book and I broadly agree with this review, and wonder why we have waited so long for a serious scholar to do this research given the obvious influence of Darwin on Hitler's racial supremacism and ideas about the 'Struggle for life' and the right of the strong to supplant the weak regardless of morals.  SH)

for further details about the author responses to his critics click here

Dawkins' God by Alister McGrath. Reflections on the UK's best known Christian-baiter who also occasionally does a bit of science, McGrath used to enthusiastically share Dawkins' atheism, until he saw what miserable tyranny it caused when put into practice on a large scale and became exposed to serious Christian writing at Oxford which showed him that it had been a caricature of Christianity which he had formerly rejected. The real thing, as he writes and I have heard him lecture, proved much more interesting. He did, and still does, admire Dawkins' skills as an explainer of science (he expresses no view on evolution in this book), but laments his crude hostility and seething hatred towards religion, especially Christianity. He refers to reading some more recent Dawkins having enjoyed his earlier books, but laments '...the same plodding rhetoric and tired old clichés that I knew well from my schoolboy days.' He expressed interest in how Dawkins gets from Darwinism to an 'atheistic world view which he preaches with messianic zeal and unassailable certainty'. McGrath demonstrates in a lucid and readable style that when Dawkins attacks Christianity, he fails to use the same scientific rigour that he applied for example to his doctoral thesis on chicks pecking. His so-called science of memetics is shown to be neither original nor valid, having no particular explanatory power, and resting on Dawkins; desire to develop a science of ideas based on comparing ideas (memes) with genes. His obsession with himself is exposed (very gently I might add. Someone who likens teaching children both sides of the evolution debate to child abuse perhaps doesn't deserve as polite and balanced a reviewer as McGrath).

 McGrath is extremely well qualified to write this as he produced a doctoral thesis at Oxford in biochemistry after a degree in chemistry, published plenty of science, then was ordained as a minister. He is a clever, witty and incisive man and has exposed Dawkins as the infuriated, ignorant boor he is on the subject of Christianity, which as the book demonstrates he has not understood, as shown by an ignorant and misleading citation of the early Christian writer Tertullian. As McGrath writes, 'perhaps Dawkins is too busy writing books against religion to allow him time to read works of religion'. I highly commend this book to people who are sick of Dawkins' curses and sneering and would like to hear from another Oxford professor who has not been browbeaten and overawed by this relentless self promoter and slogan monger. Blackwell publishing ISBN 1-4051-2538-1

The Politically Incorrect guide to Darwinism and Intelligent design   Jonathan Wells  1-59698-013-3

This is a contemporary book which gives an up to the minute overview of the debate from an American perspective. Not a study guide, more of a blog in print, it is particularly well worth reading for the insight it gives into the dirty tricks and bullying which the American Liberal Left is using to silence Darwin dissent, which they call 'teaching creationism'. Written in a racy tabloid style, there are lots of handy little bites of information in the margins, exposing the real facts behind the icons of evolution and supposed evidence for evolution we have all been raised on and told not to question. I would say it is a very good introduction to the subject for the bewildered but open minded who doesn't want too much hard science, and looks more at the politics than any other book mentioned here.

The book has it's funny side, as on pages 92 and 93 he examines the famous evolutionist canard that a group of monkeys given enough time would produce the works of Shakespeare. A computer simulator showed this wasn't so, but of course (see Dawkins above) we can't rely on them, so some students from Plymouth took a computer keyboard to some monkeys (6 crested macaques) in a zoo, suitable protected but usable. They hit it with rocks, shit and pissed over it, pummeled on the keyboard, and after a month had produced the equivalent of 5 pages of script, mainly consisting of the letter S, with little use of the spacer bar and nothing remotely resembling a word.

Predictably, the Liberal Left hates it, as you can see from the reviews on Amazon.com

The Wedge of Truth by Philip Johnson

The title comes from a mental picture of finding your way across a mountain pass which is blocked by a log too heavy to lift, but which can be split by a wedge. Johnson's big idea is to split science from naturalism, and he examines this idea in depth. There is not so much science here, that's been done elsewhere-no sense in undue repetition, it's more a book of science philosophy, as he examines the underlying non-evidence based assumptions of materialist scientists, which prevent them from considering the possibility that they might be wrong about Darwin, God and origins.  He hopes that once it becomes possible to expound and popularise the distinction between empirical, experimental and sound theoretical science and the philosophical assumption of materialism, which by definition excludes a Designer/Creator God even if all the evidence points that way, the Darwinist synthesis will begin to unravel.

I wish I could share his optimism on that point-it is rational, but Man isn't, certainly not when he is faced with decisions that might take him out of his comfort zone. As a doctor who has told drunkards they will be dead in 6 months unless they stop drinking, and then seeing them dead in 3 months, and I could go on, I am not impressed by men's ability to make wise decisions or act upon reason and evidence, even when it's in their best interests to do so. Even Dawkins is bemoaning the fact that people are turning to superstition instead of science after abandoning God. A memorable phrase suggests that when Darwinism unravels, the next really big question we will have to address is how did we maintain the deception and resist the evidence against it for so long.

I'm afraid I think that the dark answer can be found in Romans chapter 1 verses 18-26 and John's Gospel where we read that men preferred darkness to light because their deeds were evil. No, I mustn't be so pessimistic.  But I can't help it. I think the world's on it's final descent and I between militant Islam, the storm clouds gathering around Israel as the prophets foretold, rampant materialism, Russia and China pumping up the military volume, global resources running out and the church so weak, I don't see a golden age of reason ahead of us even if we do reject the Darwin mythos. But we still should, it sucks.

any further book reviews will probably be posted on my blog  http://www.questiondarwin.blogspot.com rather than here