Mind stretchers: Books that provide seven good innings on the treadmill [Marvin Olasky'

AS THE NEW BASEBALL SEASON BEGINS, I'VE grouped some of the books read over the past four months into—what else?—innings. The creation/evolution debate of course comes first. Species of Origins: America's Search for a Creation Story, by Karl W. Gilberson and Donald Z. Yerxa (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), provides a sensible overview of the debate. Thomas Woodward's Doubts About Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design (Baker, 2003) is a cleverly written history of the ID movement's rise. William Dembski's The Design Revolution(Intervarsity, 2004) answers tough questions about the theory that is blasting a hole in Darwinism.

On to the second inning: How is that creation/evolution debate faring right now in the schools and universities? Mr. Dembski is also the editor of Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing (ISI Books, 2004), 15 essays that display the academic firepower that the ID movement is beginning to bring to bear. With the hardest fighting going on in public schools, John Angus Campbell and Stephen C. Meyer have produced a handy guidebook to the major flashpoints: Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (Michigan State University Press, 2003).

Third inning: What happens after the Creation? I've found the Bible and classic commentaries by Matthew Henry and John Calvin most useful, but sometimes dipping into a different theological tradition can help make new what has grown overly familiar. David Klinghoffer's Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism (Doubleday, 2003) provides an interesting Talmudic perspective on the Genesis account, and Leon Kass's The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003) shows how a leading neoconservative interacts with the text. Their sometimes fanciful interpretations need to be read skeptically.

Fourth inning: Given mankind's desperate need for Christ, what's the best way to evangelize? Intervarsity Press covers the evangelism spectrum in three books: Going Public with the Gospel, by Lon Allison and Mark Anderson (2003), offers a tough approach. Finding God in the Questions, by ABC News medical editor Timothy Johnson (2004), provides an inoffensive way of starting discussions. One Faith: The Evangelical Consensus (2004), by J.I. Packer and Thomas Oden, is a compilation of the creeds arrived at by a host of conferences over the past three decades.

Fifth inning: Now we're in the middle of the game and looking for advice on how to get through it. Hugh Hewitt's In, But Not Of: A Guide to Christian Ambition and the Desire to Influence the World (Thomas Nelson, 2003) makes an excellent gift to a new college graduate. Armey's Axioms (Wiley, 2003), by former House majority leader Dick Armey, pithily presents modern proverbs and stories behind them, including "You can't stand on principle with feet of clay," "You can't get ahead while you're getting even," and "You can't get your finger on the problem if you've got it to the wind."

(OK, at the risk of not completing the game, here are some more good ones: "If you make a deal with the devil, you are the junior partner.... The wise hen doesn't cackle until the egg is laid.... You can't hunt with the big dogs dressed as a bone.... Don't go back and check on a dead skunk.... There is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule.")

Sixth inning: We do get kicked by mules all the time, and it's called war. For a human-interest story within an inhumane war that led to 600,000 American deaths, check out Gordon C. Rhea's Carrying the Flag (Basic, 2004), which effectively focuses on one 40-year-old South Carolina soldier during the horrific Virginia fighting of May 1864, which reached its low point at the Bloody Angle. For a moving contemporary account of what U.S. parents go through when their children are in danger in Afghanistan or Iraq, see Frank Schaeffer's Faith of Our Sons: A Father's Wartime Diary (Carroll & Fraf, 2004).

Seventh inning: The worst fighting in our culture war now concerns homosexuality, and some liberal denominations are leading the retreat. That's too bad, because Robert A.J. Gagnon's The Bible and Homosexual Practice (Abingdon, 2001) shows how firmly and emphatically the Bible condemns homosexuality. So, for that matter, does considerable social-science research, as co-editors Peter Sprigg and Timothy Dailey show in Getting It Straight: What the Research Shows about Homosexuality (Family Research Council, 2004).

Species of Origins: America's Search for a Creation Story, Doubts About Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design, The Design Revolution, Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing, Darwinism, Design, and Public Education

An interesting selection but I'm not much of a fiction reader anymore. Back in my teens I enjoyed fantasy & sci-fi but this compilation sounds rather more boring than what I preferred.

Actually, our designed world is not science fiction. It's science fact. Darwin's "science" is a laughable nineteenth century hoax, and any scientist worth his salt knows it because there is no evidence for transitional forms of life in the fossil record -- or more importantly -- before our very eyes.

For the cultural crusader out there, the quasi scientific notion of evolution should not be confused with actual human progress in the sociological arena.

Any social progress made in the world is largely due to the civilizing influence of Judeo Christianity: for example the universal condemnation of slavery.

In other words, we have not "evolved" as a race of people, we have simply allowed the sanctifyng work of Christian ideals to permeate our institutional mindset.

Even to an old biologist like Aristotle, who knew nothing of the intricacies of God's prooftext - DNA - that the universe was designed, the idea of evolution was preposterous.

In other words, we can use our own reasoning to figure out that chaos is not a creative process -- and that the chances are that the world was created by chance is as likely as taking a mechanical wrist watch, smashing it, throwing the pieces up in the air and hoping that it will miraculously come back together as a working timepiece by the time it hits the ground.

That's a FACT you can bet your eternal soul on.

While Darwin's observations about the mechanics of natural selection are demonstrable, that does not mean his leap of faith in extending that model to the entire developmental history of species is a satisfactory theory. It has serious problems that, as research progresses, have not been addressed and appear to be casting more doubt upon his extension.

A credible effort to break out of that intellectual straitjacket to posit and test other ideas does not warrant flippant denigration. In that process one may find a broader and more interesting universe than we might have supposed. It is in the best tradition of the scientific method and I see little reason why such work doesn't warrant attention.

My opinion is that we may never know how the world came to be and that such ignorance may yet come to be seen as a blessing. To solve all such problems would leave us a mighty boring world. As it is, we have the exciting prospect of continuing research and discovery into ever more complex and inscrutable problems, no matter what the field.

Either way, creation or evolution are both founded in faith. One renders us as animals, free to behave as we wish as long as we get away with it. The other nurtures us as human beings, mandated by God to obey His Laws on pain of damnation. Guess which one is the demonstrably superior model for a species as a whole?

It is my observation, having worked in nature for a number of years, that every individual, regardless of species competes in its own interest and attempts to modify its habitat to meet its own preferences as an individual at the expense of its competitors. Unfortunately for our model species, as the population of individuals succeeds, they become succeeded. The modification of habitat critically depletes key resources that supported the existence of the species and it crashes. Manfred Eigen (a Nobel winner in chemistry in 1967) and Ruthild Winkler proved it mathematically.

Given that evolution, as a model, while individually preferable is collectively destructive to any species, perhaps there is more to the story of God's Laws than you have perhaps considered.

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