Adult non-fiction, Book Reviews

Darwin's Sandcastle

Evolution's Failure in the Light of Scripture and the Scientific Evidence by Gordon Wilson 222 pages / 2023 In the protective bubble of my Christian high school I was a confident six-day creationist – I realized that anyone who believed everything came from nothing was too stupid to take seriously. Then I went to university, and I realized that the very non-stupid professors I was meeting all seemed to have one thing in common: they thought evolution was so. And some had reasons that I'd never heard of, and others even offered problems with six-day creation that I'd not heard of, and had no way to answer. I went from thinking evolution was kooky to being worried it might be credible. It took me quite a while to come to one final realization – that brilliant people who deny God can use their giant brains to blind their own eyes. That was startling to me at the time, though it might not be as much so to today's younger generation who have lived through medical, psychological, and governmental experts saying boys can become girls. I think as bad as the transgender madness is, the silver lining for God's people is that this is really an eye-opener – via this craziness God has made it obvious to anyone with eyes to see that the smartest people in the world can turn themselves into absolute dimwits if they try really hard. For myself, coming to that understanding would have been a lot quicker, and less traumatic, if I'd had this book. What Dr. Wilson does here, as his brother details in the foreword, is help readers understand:

"...the biblical worldview not only accounts for the exquisite engineering of the falcon's eye, but also the stubborn blindness of the scientist studying the falcon's eye. The Christian faith accounts for what the falcon can see and what the scientist cannot see. Both phenomena require an accounting; both demand an explanation. We should stagger under the weight of two things – one being the wisdom and knowledge of God, and the other being the mystery of lawlessness."

Contents Wilson is offering an impressive and succinct Creation Science 101 here, equal parts evolutionary takedown, and creation science build up. serving as a helpful primer not only on the problems with evolution, but outlining some of the building blocks for doing good, biblical, creation-based science. So, what's all inside? Here's a few of the arguments he makes: He starts with Scripture, since God was there in the beginning, and secular scientists were not. So, is it possible to incorporate millions of years into Genesis? Wilson shows how the text won't allow for it. He asks, where did all the information come from? Information is not something that chance can come up with no matter how much time is given. He highlights the brilliant design evident all around us - God's fingerprints really are everywhere. Wilson also addresses some of the most common objections to creationism, including: "The problem of pain" as we see it in Nature - why are some killing machines just so well designed if we have a loving God Who crafted this? Why do we see similarities across certain species if there is no evolutionary common descent? What about "vestigial" or left-over organs from our earlier evolutionary incarnations? And what about Junk DNA? Junk in our DNA makes sense if we're just a result of a random process, so isn't that evidence for evolution? Secular dating methods, and how the timeline they give that doesn't fit with the biblical account. Conclusion What I love about Wilson is he doesn't overstate his case. He's confident in God's Word, but he knows there are some difficulties creationists have to deal with, and he knows too, that evolutionary theory is both dreadfully wrong, and has had a lot of brilliant minds propping it up over the years, so there is still some heft to it. What he's crafted here is a book that sums up the bare minimum our children should understand about evolution and its attacks on God's glory before they finish Grade 12. I think this could be a wonderful text to work through in our schools, but otherwise, a great one for parents to read through with their kids before they send them off to any sort of secular (or even most Christian) universities. Gordon Wilson is  also the driving force behind a series of Christian nature shows – both TV episodes and movie-length documentaries – collectively gathered under the name The Riot and the Dance. You can even watch the first TV half-hour episode for free here, and you really should; it's amazing to see what God has done, and so encouraging too, to hear Him given the credit for it that is His due. You can take an extended peek inside the book by clicking here. And you can get a taste for the man himself in this 30-minute lecture below on his books and Young Earth Creationism.