The Spiritual Realities: Volume 1, The Spiritual World and How We Access It Book

When I think of the late Dr. Henry Morris, I usually think of his book The Genesis Flood. Once upon a time, creationists were in denial about fossils and other "evidences" of an old earth. With that book, Dr. Morris, an engineering professor, helped to popularize the idea that the Genesis flood could account for the fossil record and much of the geological record. Proponents of biblical creation have become exceedingly sophisticated in their scientific arguments for the biblical creation and global flood accounts, and the creationist movement owes much of that to his leadership.

While the title of the book focuses on God's plan for the world He created, the basic theme of this book appears to be our responsibility to God as created beings. For example, there is a chapter on God and the nations acknowledging that God sets temporal and geographical boundaries for the nations and listing various criteria God uses in judging them:

• How do they comply with His standards of righteousness?
• Do they seek Him?
• How do they treat His chosen nation, Israel?
• How do they respond to His message of salvation, which is often referred to as the gospel?
• How do they steward His creation (Gen. 1:28), a responsibility Dr. Morris refers to as the Dominion Mandate?

In short, how do the nations respond to God as their creator and master?

I was particularly fascinated by Dr. Morris' take on the Dominion mandate. We Christians are regularly reminded of our duty to obey the Great Commission, to speak out about God's message of salvation, but we often forget that we can honor and glorify God in our secular occupations. This isn't exactly a new problem, as shown by the establishment of monasteries and convents by the medieval church in an attempt by some to become more holy by separating themselves from the affairs of daily life. To properly steward God's creation, we have to understand it; hence, science and education are vital elements in living out the Dominion mandate.

Because God's role as creator is central to the book and because much of modern science and culture denies creation, a substantial portion of the book is dedicated to the alleged conflict between religion and science, especially the portions of science related to evolution. In general, people associate evolution with biological evolution, but there are two more aspects of it: cosmological evolution and geological evolution. In this book, Dr. Morris addresses all three aspects at a high level.

At this point in the review, I consider it necessary to make a distinction between applied science and forensic science. Applied science deals with how things work and is easily benchmarked against test data and observations. It has also been wildly successful in the development of modern technology. Forensic science deals with how past processes produced the present and not so easily benchmarked. Scientists propose ideas about past processes and make predictions about the present effects of that past. For example, proponents of the big bang predicted the existence of cosmic microwave background radiation. The subsequent detection of this background radiation was viewed as validating the theory. The fundamental flaw in this approach is that there can be multiple possible explanations, and reasoning to the best explanation is as much influenced by philosophical considerations as by scientific considerations. And here lies the fault line between proponents of creation and proponents of evolution. Creationists do not dispute scientific evidence; rather, they dispute the interpretation of that data, and their efforts are showing ever increasing levels of sophistication.

The dispute between creationists and proponents of evolution is hardly the only conflict within science. Often proponents of evolution disagree among themselves regarding the exact mechanisms evolution might employ and tear each other's ideas apart. Such disagreements do not inherently disprove evolution, but they do expose weaknesses in its ideological structure, and Dr. Morris exploits these weaknesses to good effect in his argument that evolution is fundamentally flawed and that Christians should not capitulate to such a flawed idea as easily as they often do. Evolution is a direct challenge to the biblical creation account and ultimately to biblical authority itself. If I cannot trust the Bible to accurately describe creation, how can I trust its theological assertions that are not verifiable at all?

One aspect of the book that thoroughly impressed me was the shear number of biblical quotes and allusions. Dr. Morris was an engineer, not a theologian; yet, the book is as much theological as scientific. Although I didn't agree with all of his theological arguments, I found it inspiring to see a non-theologian, an engineer (For the record, I am an engineer, myself.), as competent with biblical interpretation and application as he was with scientific and technical matters, his area of expertise.