📖 Is Genesis History?: What God's Creation Reveals 🌌🔬

Introduction

A couple years ago the documentary "Is Genesis History?" was released. This documentary aims to defend the truth of the Christian worldview by defending the historicity of the early chapters of the Bible from a scientific perspective. The documentary attempts to accomplish this by demonstrating evidence in support of intelligent design and a young (~6000 years old) creation. As those who follow this blog know, I do not hold to the view that the universe is 6000 years old, as Del Tackett and the other contributors to "Is Genesis History?" do, yet I affirm the historicity and scientific accuracy of the Genesis accounts of origins.

Because many people (including those in this documentary) believe that the historicity of these early chapters and a young earth interpretation of them cannot be separated, a friend has asked me to offer some comments in the way of clarifying this common misunderstanding and some other concerns in the movie. There is much unnecessary confusion and heat in the Church concerning the debate over origins, so I am hoping to provide a charitable critique in the context of Christian unity and love.

Book Review: Navigating Genesis 📖

Introduction

I was introduced to astrophysicist Dr. Hugh Ross (president of Reasons to Believe) in the early 90's but did not really begin investigating his model of origins until the mid 2000's when my view of origins and my Christian worldview was beginning to be challenged by observations of scientists in many different disciplines. I was hit by the higher critics who wished to interpret Genesis in a metaphorical (and not historical) light. Some of their points seemed valid, but others were questionable. I found Dr. Ross' approach of integrating all of Scripture with all the sciences quite intellectually attractive. It offered the possibility to reconcile the findings of modern science and the research of the higher critics with the Genesis accounts. However, before I was willing to change my view of origins from young-earth (universe is 6,000 - 10,000 years old), despite the observational evidence, I had to see a proper interpretive treatment of the Genesis accounts of creation that recognized them as historical events, granted the poetic writing style, understood the ancient cultural context, and consistently preserved all the essentials of Christian theology (including original sin and Christ's atonement). All those requirements have been satisfied, and "Navigating Genesis: A Scientist's Journey Through Genesis 1-11" (paperback, Kindle, GoodReads, Small Group Study, Dr. Ross' Response to AiG) shows how it is accomplished through a careful examination of the Genesis accounts.