God, Science and the Cosmic Jigsaw

God, Science and the Cosmic Jigsaw, Jonathan Kingsley, Llumina Press, 2003

Many people are looking for something "more" out of life, like a closer relationship with God. The problem is that they are reluctant to give up their belief in the scientific view of things. They feel that a deeper faith in God is supposed to equal acceptance of creationism and rejection of evolution. This book shows that there is a middle path, that faith in God and evolution can go together.

Take Creation according to Genesis, for instance. The earth was formed before the sun, moon and stars. From a scientific standpoint, they should have been combined in Day 1 (you can't have the earth without the rest of the universe). Otherwise, Chapter 1 of Genesis sounds a lot like evolution, as long as you consider that a "day" could equal millions of years.

In Genesis 1:26, God says, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness." Whose image? Who is He talking to? It suggests that there was a race of beings in Heaven, before man was created. They were the authors of Genesis. In Genesis 2, Adam and Eve were created, and were told to stay away from the fruit of the tree in the center of Eden. They didn't, and the rest is history.

In Genesis 3, Eve is tempted by a serpent to eat of the forbidden tree. The author's interpretation is that this was not some sort of talking snake, but had to do with the discovery of sex between Adam and Eve. The author also feels that the two are part of a designer race, who aren't supposed to sexually reproduce. After the two have intercourse, and discover that they are naked, God decrees that, from now on, woman shall experience pain in childbirth, and that man's days on earth shall be numbered (implying that they weren't numbered before). After son Cain kills son Abel, Cain moves away, and starts his own family, eventually founding the city of Enoch. This means that there were other people on earth, created by evolution. The interbreeding of Divine Man and Evolutionary Man (for lack of better terms) is what causes God to create the Flood that, among other things, made Noah famous.

This book is about more than just the Book of Genesis. It does a fine job at showing a middle ground between evolution and creationism. Mercifully, it is light on the jargon, but it will still give the reader a mental workout. For those looking for a closer relationship with God, this is very much worth reading.