I recently finished reading The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel. I’ve read through about half of The Case for Christ, so I already knew this book would be a fun read.
Strobel’s style simply has a way of sucking the reader right into the story. In all three of his “Case” books, he’s traversed the globe interviewing experts in several different fields of study. Rather than simply regurgitating the interviews, he vividly describes the settings and relates his own thoughts as he’s travelling from interview to interview. You really get the feeling that you are there on a quest for truth right alongside him.
All in all, this was a great book. There’s a plethora of current scientific research that points to God, and Strobel lets the evidence speak for itself as often as possible. He doesn’t refer to the Bible very often in this book, mostly because he is really only concerned with the scientific evidence. Those who believe science can’t account for God will either hate this book or find it extremely intriguing.
I’m a full-on creationist myself, believing the world was literally created in seven days around 7,000 years ago. One thing that irked me about this book is that the scientists interviewed often talk about events that supposedly happened tens of thousands of years ago. I’m willing to accept the fact that current science doesn’t seem to support a literal interpretation of the creation as it is told in the Bible, and I can’t in all honesty condemn Strobel for not saying more about this in his book. His aim is not to explain exactly how the creation happened, but whether or not there was a creation at all.
After interviewing eight scientists (one of them twice) in several fields ranging from astronomy to physics to molecular biology, Strobel concludes that the majority of recent developments in science point emphatically to a creator, but he goes one step further.
Many scientists embrace “Deism”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism, a belief that an intelligent creator designed the universe, but built it so that it is self-regulating, and requires no additional intervention to continue running in order. They posit that God started the ball rolling, but has kept His nose out since then. Strobel refutes this idea by showing through reason and science that God cannot be the impersonal God of Deism. On the contrary, He is personal, creative, caring, and continues to work in our universe.
One of the things I most loved about this book is the number of different angles Strobel approaches each interview from. He was an atheist for many years before becoming a Christian, and evolution and random chance seemed to him to be the best explanation for the world around us. He seems to understand well many of the arguments atheists utilize against creationism (though I’m not an athiest, so I can’t tell you if he really asked the tough questions). The scientists interviewed field all of his “devil’s advocate” questions without blinking. They have a ready answer for every one of his arguments.
This book has served to strengthen my faith in creationism and in our Creator. I’m not sure if it would convince an atheist, but I would recommend it as food for thought to anyone who is seeking. The book doesn’t get preachy, but encourages the reader to really study the sum of the evidence and come to their own conclusion. Strobel is confident — and so am I — that anyone who is willing to examine _all_ of the evidence will reasonably conclude that God is real, that He is personal, and that He cares for us and longs for us to discover Him.
I, like Strobel, embarked on my own quest for the truth of our origins. I read the book, and at first I believed the scientific experts he interviewed. Upon further study I found that he only interviewed “experts” who already were established Intelligent Design proponents. This left me puzzled, so I did some more digging, and found that all of the “experts” were part of a political action group whose main stated agenda is to promote christianity and stifle what they believe to be secular science (The Discovery Institute).
The other thing that upsets me is that these so called experts never take other religious doctrine unrelated to christianity into consideration. Therefore the information in this book is SOLELY theistic and not scientific in any way. There may well be a God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, however this book does nothing to support it’s claims, and actually is nothing more than a complete wash designed to promote theories that are not based on real science, and not held by the VAST majority of scientists (40 percent of which claim to be christian). It’s your life so live it because it may be the only one you have.
It is also interesting to note that all book reviews done on this topic seem to start out the same way — “I found this book interesting because I was introduced to many topics of biology I was unfamiliar with.” That should be an immediate red flashing light to anyone looking for an honest review of a book that is supposed to be about science. Strobel, like Kevin Trudeau, is simply a man with views unsupported by science, who has a way with words. Pat Robertson might as well be the messenger, and we all know how unbiased and credible he is (chuckle). I still believe in A creator but not necessarily yours, and remember to enjoy life instead of watching everything you do in order to score points for heaven that may not be there.
In case you are wondering about my credentials, I hold a masters in biochemistry from the University of Missouri, in addition to bachelors degrees in Anthropolgy and Archeology.