We are belatedly posting this review of Paul Garner’s book, The New Creationism, because it has only just come to our attention. It appeared in The English Churchman (No. 7773, 14-21 August 2009, p.8). The reviewer is Rev. John Dunn.

This book is in the Young earth creationists (YEC) camp and presents overviews: Part I deals with cosmology; in Part II the author argues for a literal understanding of Genesis 1, and in Part III the science of biology is covered. The conclusion, Part IV, looks at the flood and the aftermath. The writer is clearly very able and covers his chosen subjects with clarity.

This is a standard YEC, Whitcomb and Morris approach, although updating the material certainly and giving corrections to the W&M view whilst at the same time including much new data. The 6 pages of bibliography point the reader only to that literature which supports the YEC position. Anyone wishing to get a handle on the overall debate will not find this helpful. As this book is an introduction to the topics covered then the wise and discerning reader seeking to be more widely informed will want to read around the subject and also examine other points of view, particularly regarding matters of interpretation of Genesis, otherwise this book will remain only club chit-chat and the reader will not be aware of the range and depth of the problems. Nonetheless, for those who hold to a YEC position then this book is as good as it gets. The author is to be commended for his breadth of reading and his fine ability to present difficult material in a readable and compelling manner. There are many commendatory comments by names well known in the YEC camp, but despite the strings of degrees attached to the many names it is over the interpretation of the data that the essential differences are to be found. Again, one needs to beware of the statement, Peer Reviewed; after all, if one wants the ooohs! and aaahs!, only friends are invited to look at the wedding photos.

Report by Paul Garner

In October I was in Poland again for a series of creation meetings in the cities of Gdańsk, Toruń and Poznań. In each place, the topic under discussion was ‘The Ice Age and the Genesis Flood’. My talk addressed the evidence for recent glaciation, the challenge of explaining the initiation of widespread ice sheets, and the role played by the Genesis Flood in a creationist understanding of the ice age.

The first meeting was in Gdańsk where I spoke to about 60-80 people in a packed student club. There was a good spirited question time afterwards, with a number of people probably being exposed to creationism for the first time.

In Toruń the organisers had booked a room in the university, only for the room to be withdrawn when local atheists protested. Fortunately another venue was found at short notice and people were redirected there. In the event, ours was the first public meeting to take place in a brand new lecture theatre in the city’s Hebrew Institute, and it proved to be an excellent venue. We were warmly welcomed by the institute’s director and I also had the opportunity to speak to a reporter from a local radio station.

In Poznań I spoke at a public meeting in one of the city’s university lecture halls. Many students attended as well as local Christians. One group of young sceptics asked many questions, leading into a discussion about radiometric dating. Afterwards, one of them came to ask for my email address so we could continue our dialogue. A Christian student thanked me for being willing to engage publicly with sceptics in this way.

Dr Geoff Barnard was also in Poland at the same time, speaking in a number of cities including Zielona Góra. Our itineraries were coordinated so that we could cover a lot of ground in a short time, although unfortunately we didn’t have an opportunity to meet up during the tour.

Once again we are grateful to our translators and hosts for making these meetings possible. Those of us that have taken part in these tours over the last few years have come to love the country of Poland and its people and we pray for lasting fruit and spiritual blessing to follow.

Photos: Preparing to speak in the student club in Gdańsk (top right) and answering questions after the lecture in Poznań (bottom left). Left click on images for larger versions.

On 30 September, Paul Garner led members of the Mumbles Creation Society on a field trip to the Vale of Glamorgan coast. In the morning, the party visited the famous unconformity between the Carboniferous Limestone and the overlying Jurassic rocks at Ogmore-by-Sea. The Sutton Stone member at the base of the Jurassic sequence has generally been regarded as a shoreline-beach deposit laid down over a period of several million years. However, it was controversially reinterpreted by the late Derek Ager (University College, Swansea) as a mass-flow unit deposited rapidly during a single, major storm. The party examined the evidence supporting this catastrophic hypothesis and noted that much could be said in its favour.

After lunch the group examined the Triassic breccias seen filling fissures in the Carboniferous Limestone a little further west along the shore. Again, evidences of rapid erosion and deposition were noted. In the evening, Paul spoke to a public meeting organised by the Mumbles Creation Society at Castleton Chapel. His talk described recent research which challenges the idea that the Coconino Sandstone of central and northern Arizona is a windblown desert deposit. Instead, Paul argued that the Coconino Sandstone was deposited by rapidly migrating sand waves during the global Flood.

The photographs show (top) the Jurassic cliffs at Ogmore-by-Sea and (bottom) the Triassic breccias containing angular clasts of Carboniferous Limestone. Left click on the images for larger versions.

Paul Garner’s book, The New Creationism, has been reviewed in the latest edition of Origins magazine (July 2010, Number 53, p.23) published by our sister organization, the Biblical Creation Society (BCS). The reviewer is Professor Colin Reeves. You can find out more about BCS, including how to become a member, here.

There is certainly no shortage of books on creation and evolution, but most are sadly rather predictable, contenting themselves with a tour through the manifest flaws of Darwinism. In some cases this may be coupled with an analysis of Genesis 1-11, leading to conclusions that reflect the writer’s stance on the meaning of the word ‘day’ (Hebrew: yôm) in Genesis one, the status of Adam and Eve, the purpose of the genealogies etc.

Paul Garner’s book does all this, extremely competently and very readably, but it also does something more. He sets out his case for a 6 (24-hour) day creation week and for reading the genealogies as actual history, so that he stands unequivocally for a ‘young earth’ position. But thereafter he does not leave matters at the level of a critique. Rather he is concerned to build scientific models on the basis that the early chapters of Genesis are true history. In this he is not alone, of course, and much of the work he reports has been done by others. (Not all, I hasten to add, since Garner is a scientist who is prepared to get his hands dirty – literally so in the case of his geological research). What is impressive, though, is the way he has been able to synthesize and explain some of this technical work with great clarity and lucidity.

The areas of science covered in this work concentrate on cosmology, biology and geology. The degree to which progress in scientific model-building has been made by creationists varies quite substantially, but Garner describes several cases where it is nevertheless significant. Indeed, scientific models have been developed to such an extent that it is impossible to give more than a flavour of what are quite specialized theories, requiring graduate-level physics, biology, geology etc. But whether it is Humphreys’ time-dilation model of cosmology, the implications of the RATE¹ project’s work on radiometric dating, Oard’s ice-age model or the relevance of catastrophic plate tectonics, Garner manages to help the reader understand the principles of some advanced technical ideas. There is also a handy glossary of most of the necessary technical terms in case readers get lost. Other topics covered include the origins of life, language and culture, some novel ideas on speciation and understanding the fossil record in the context of the Genesis Cataclysm. Where scientists differ in their theories, he gives a fair and balanced account of their reasons for this.

There is very little to criticise here; some might complain that the title is not very informative – but the subtitle deals with that problem. It is questionable whether biblical quotations should have uniformly been taken from the King James Version, since this slightly obscures the argument for universal animal vegetarianism before the Fall (p.158), for example. A more comprehensive bibliography would also have been useful – it is limited to major works – as it can be hard work tracking down the complete reference for a citation that has been made more than once (e.g., try finding the original citation for note 4 on p.212). And some of the references are rather cryptic – does everyone understand what TJ means, for example?

Despite these slight – and mainly editorial – blemishes, they cannot hide the fact that this book is a tremendous achievement. It is very accessible to non-scientists, and it should encourage the Christian layman that it is possible to do origins science on the basis of a creation model, rather than trying to accommodate the assumptions of neo-Darwinism in some form of ‘theistic evolution’. For those readers who are scientists (and especially students who plan to follow a scientific career), it should arouse an interest in scientific research that operates on the assumption that Genesis is valid history. There is clearly much more to be inferred and revised, as Garner is also concerned to acknowledge that scientific models cannot have the status of the Bible. They are always provisional, and open to correction or even complete overthrow, even when they are built on biblical foundations. So this book manages to be both a satisfying survey of current creationist research, and a stimulus towards future developments. It is highly recommended.

Footnotes

1. RATE stands for Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth.

On Saturday 15 May, Calvary Evangelical Church in Brighton hosted a debate between Dr Steve Lloyd of BCM and Dr Ard Louis of the University of Oxford on the question ‘Creation or evolution: do we have to choose?’

The discussion was chaired by Professor Richard Vincent, Associate Dean of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School until his retirement in 2008. Each speaker gave an opening presentation with Dr Lloyd going first. There was then an opportunity for the participants to respond to one another’s opening remarks. Finally, questions were invited from the audience.

You can now listen to a recording of the debate on the UCCF’s ‘Be Thinking’ website.

The annual joint meeting of the Creation Biology Study Group (BSG) and the Creation Geology Society (CGS) took place at Truett-McConnell College, Cleveland, Georgia, on 29 and 30 July 2010. Twenty two talks were packed into two days. The biology abstracts from this year’s conference can be found on the BSG website (see Occasional Paper 17) and the geology abstracts will shortly be available on the Cedarville University website. Here are some brief summaries of the presentations.

Biology talks:

I. Demme presented an intriguing study of Genesis 2:5, arguing that the Hebrew text refers to the absence of thorny plants and cultivated crops in the pre-Fall world.

K. P. Wise expounded the biblical concept of man’s ‘dominion’, suggesting a plethora of practical implications for bioethics and environmentalism.

J. Bartlett offered some thoughts on how creationists can develop an approach to biological causation that goes beyond the merely physical.

G. Wilson cautioned against the premature ‘lumping’ of species into holobaramins in the absence of clear synapomorphies uniting them.

R. W. Sanders presented a statistical analysis suggesting that the Verbena family is a holobaramin.

T. C. Wood explained that new baraminological studies using cranial and postcranial characters did not falsify his original hypothesis that Australopithecus sediba was a member of the human holobaramin.

T. C. Wood also argued from species and genus counts that that there has been a lack of speciation in most terrestrial mammal families, but spectacular speciation in a few, concluding that any theory of speciation must account for this fact.

J. Bartlett suggested a quantitative approach to discriminating between genetic changes that are part of an organism’s overall design and those that are a result of the curse.

J. W. Francis described his experiences using halobacteria in the undergraduate research setting, and suggested that they might provide a good model for investigating the origin of natural evil.

Geology talks:

A. A. Snelling reported radiocarbon dates of ~30-50 ka from the Permian coals of the Sydney Basin, Australia, consistent with dates obtained from US coal beds of various conventional ages.

S. A. Austin proposed that submarine liquefied sediment gravity currents, such as the one that formed the Whitmore Nautiloid Bed within the Redwall Limestone, were a major mechanism for the transport and deposition of sediments during the Flood.

D. D. Stansbury complemented Steven Austin’s talk by discussing field evidence for flow transformation within the Whitmore Nautiloid Bed as it is traced into southern Nevada.

A. Hutchison described some potential mechanisms for rapidly precipitating salts in near-critical and supercritical submarine environments, which may provide alternatives to the conventional ‘evaporite’ hypothesis.

A. A. Snelling documented the occurrence of polonium radiohalos in multiple, sequentially intruded phases of the Bathurst Batholith, New South Wales, Australia, suggesting that the entire complex was intruded and cooled within days to weeks.

M. J. Oard suggested that dinosaur tracks and eggs could be explained by animals seeking refuge on surfaces briefly exposed by short-lived sea level oscillations early in the Flood.

M. R. Ross critically reviewed a number of materials available for teaching young age geology in the classroom, and outlined a coordinated plan for the development of more suitable resources.

S. Gollmer presented results from climate modelling efforts which were aimed at better understanding the rapid build up of ice sheets after the global Flood.

S. Cheung explained that the conventional eolian interpretation of the Coconino Sandstone is being challenged by the persistent presence of dolomite at multiple localities in central and northern Arizona.

J. H. Whitmore argued that clay content is a critical factor in the formation of desiccation cracks, and that the sand-filled cracks in the Hermit Formation (below the Coconino Sandstone) cannot be the result of desiccation because the Hermit does not contain enough clay-sized material.

J. H. Whitmore presented data on grain size sorting from >500 modern windblown sand samples. Fine to very fine modern dune sands tend to be well sorted and this feature ought to be observed in ancient eolian sands too.

J. H. Whitmore described preliminary data on grain size sorting and rounding in the Coconino Sandstone based on almost 60 thin sections from eight locations. The sand grains in the Coconino tend to be moderately to poorly sorted and subangular to subrounded.

P. Garner summarised many features of the Coconino Sandstone that are difficult to reconcile with an eolian origin, and suggested that these are typical of Permian cross-bedded sandstones generally. He proposed that these units were formed by rapidly migrating subaqueous sand waves during the Flood.

Next year’s conference – under the title Origins 2011 – will be held in Rapid City, South Dakota, on 27-30 July. It will be a special event to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Genesis Flood. However, there will probably be at least one field trip and some special meetings for the general public as well, so the whole thing may run from 26-31 July. Mark your diaries now!

Photos courtesy of Todd Wood: (left) Paul Garner delivering his talk about Permian cross-bedded sandstones and (right) Todd Wood speaking about Australopithecus sediba. Left click on the images for larger versions.

In July, Paul Garner was in the USA for another season of fieldwork with his colleagues, Dr John Whitmore (Cedarville University) and Ray Strom (Calgary Rock and Materials). For the last four years the team has been studying the Coconino Sandstone of central and northern Arizona, a rock unit that most geologists think was deposited slowly in an ancient desert. However, Paul and his colleagues think that it was laid down rapidly in an underwater environment, consistent with the Genesis Flood.

During their latest trip, the team studied the Coconino Sandstone at Buckskin Gulch in southern Utah, around Holbrook, Sedona and Chino Wash in Arizona, and along the Hermit Trail and the New Hance Trail in Grand Canyon. For the last three days of their fieldwork, they were joined by Dr Leonard Brand (Loma Linda University) and two students studying with him over the summer. Dr Brand is well known for his field and laboratory studies (e.g. Brand 1979) suggesting that the fossil trackways in the Coconino were made by animals moving around underwater.

The team also had the opportunity to sample modern windblown sand dunes in Wyoming for comparison with the Coconino, as well as a number of other putatively ‘windblown’ sandstones in the geological record. These included the Weber Sandstone (Pennsylvanian-Permian), the Cedar Mesa Sandstone (Permian), the White Rim Sandstone (Permian) and the Navajo Sandstone (Jurassic).

The team had a close encounter with a rattlesnake in Capitol Reef National Park and were caught in a thunderstorm while hiking in Grand Canyon. However, they managed to complete their field studies without mishap. Many samples were collected and field measurements taken, adding significantly to the growing evidence that the Coconino Sandstone – and by extension other similar ‘windblown’ sandstones – was laid down rapidly underwater and not in an ancient desert.

The photographs show (from top to bottom): (1) Paul Garner (right) and John Whitmore (left) recording strike and dip measurements; (2) The contact between the Coconino Sandstone (above) and the Hermit Formation (below) in Buckskin Gulch; and (3) The rattlesnake encountered in Capitol Reef National Park. Left click on the images for larger versions.

Paul Garner is currently in the USA for another season of fieldwork on the Coconino Sandstone project, taking in the Coconino and other Permian sandstones in Arizona and Utah, and modern windblown sand dunes in Wyoming. After that, he’ll be attending the Creation Biology Study Group/Creation Geology Society annual conference at Truett-McConnell College in Cleveland, Georgia. While he is away he will be blogging about his trip and uploading a few photographs at The New Creationism. The first three entries can be read here, here and here.

Paul Garner’s book, The New Creationism, has received another positive review in Horizons (No. 173, September/October 2009). Horizons is the magazine of Melbourne Hall Evangelical Free Church in Leicester. The reviewer is Tim Oldridge.

In my opinion this is a ‘must read’ for all Christians. The title might suggest that the book is about ‘the new heavens and the new earth’ referred to in the book of Revelation. But this is not the case. Paul Garner, in an easy-to-read style, presents a comprehensive, understandable overview of the origins issue. This he does by an up-to-date survey of current scientific thinking that supports the biblical account of the origin of our universe. He systematically works through the claimed major scientific evidences that are today arrayed against those Christians who desire to be faithful to God’s Word. He starts with an unwavering commitment to the plain reading of the opening chapters of Genesis, and presents his detailed case in support of the Bible-believing position against the backdrop of what those chapters clearly teach.

The chapter titles cover the key issues in the origins debate, and many of the questions most asked by Christians and non-Christians alike. The opening chapters deal with the creation of the sun, moon, and stars with a reminder of how well designed is our earthly home. The pivotal questions of time are next treated – the biblical case for literal creations [sic] days and 6,000 or so years for earth history are resoundingly established; the present-is-the-key-to-the-past philosophy is shown to be contrary to the evidence of catastrophic formation of sedimentary rock layers; the radioactive clocks in rocks have run fast and therefore cannot yield absolute ages of millions of years; and yet there is robust evidence that the solar system, the earth and mankind are young. Paul Garner then goes on to discuss the origin of life, diversity by design, similarities and relationships, defects and degeneration, and embryonic recapitulation and vestigial organs. The global Flood catastrophe is defended biblically. The book then goes on to describe how the fossil record is explained by the Flood. Furthermore only the Flood can explain the single ice age that occurred as an immediate consequence of it.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The scientific facts concerning the macrocosm and the microcosm are both astounding and ‘mind blowing’. For instance the temperature at the core of a star is sixteen million degrees Kelvin (room temperature is approximately 300 degrees Kelvin). Stars like our sun ‘burn’ their nuclear fuel at a staggering rate, transforming five million tons of mass into energy every second. Our sun is one of about 100 billion stars that make up our galaxy, the Milky Way. Our galaxy is one of about thirty galaxies in a cluster called the Local Group. This cluster is about ten million light years across. Astronomers use the word ‘local’ in a different way from its normal use! A large and famous cluster, containing many thousands of galaxies of different types, is the Virgo Cluster, about forty million light years away…and so on. Truly ‘mind blowing’!

In one sense, as Christians, we do not need any other book than the Bible to read of how the world was created. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God (Hebrews 11:3). But ‘The New Creationism’ is a fascinating, useful up-to-date text book which deals with the complexities and origins of our world and gives strong and robust answers to those people who hold to evolutionary processes and ‘Big Bang’ theories. I put the book down marvelling at the wonders, beauties, and diversity of creation and worshipping our great creator God who is blessed for ever (Romans 1:25).

‘O LORD, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.’ Psalm 104:24

‘Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.’ Revelation 4:11

The latest edition of the Bible League Quarterly (April-June 2010, Issue 441, pp.397-398) carries a warmly positive review of Paul Garner’s book, The New Creationism. The reviewers are Richard and Ruth Ward. The Bible League has kindly given us permission to post their review here. You can find out more about the Bible League, its publications and other resources here.

Bible-believing Christians accept, by faith, the early chapters of Genesis as a true record of the events of creation and of a universal Flood destroying all but eight of mankind for sin. But how do we reconcile this with the findings of modern science, and have we answers to give to those who question our faith? Paul Garner addresses these issues simply, firmly believing the literal account in the Bible, to show that the conflict is not with modern discoveries but with their interpretation by those with an evolutionary mind-set.

Many books have been written to highlight the problems of evolutionary theories. The aim of this book is more positive: it is “to show that rigorous scientific ideas about the past can be built upon the historical foundation provided in the Bible.” Paul Garner does this successfully by summarising the work of modern-day scholars based on biblical foundations. The style of the writing is winsome (though conventional theories are criticised where required); it flows easily, shows the excitement of the author and avoids hyperbole.

There are no scientific blunders or misrepresentations of the opposing theories, so this book could be given to anyone studying science or geography without fear of embarrassment. Relevant GCSE and A Level examination questions could be well answered using the information in this book and the very useful glossary of scientific terms.

The topics covered include: cosmology (Big Bang and origin of stars), the solar system, the changing ideas of the age of the Earth since 1700, geology (the author’s forte) and radiometric dating, the origin of life, the effects of the Curse, the global Flood, the ice age, humans and apes.

The author includes and explains, with the aid of clear simple diagrams, enough science to show the logic of his arguments. There are extensive end-notes for each chapter, both to show the sources used and, together with the bibliography and list of websites, to direct the enquiring mind to more depth and detail.

Scripture quotations throughout are from the Authorised Version. We highly recommend this book.