Science in Christian Perspective

 

 


JASA Book Review For March 1955

The Creations: Facts, Theories, and Faith by Theodore L. Handrich Chicago: Moody Press, 1953, 311 pages. $3.95

This is an attractively bound and well organized volume which considers a number of theories about science and the Bible. The author writes well, but one cannot help but have some misgivings about his formal background in the scientific disciplines related to the subject.

Handrich reveals a serious lack of understanding of natural selection, adaptation, and present-day evolutionary theory. Evolution, as in so many anti-evolutionary writings, is treated almost completely as Darwinianism unchanged. The author believes that "The strongest proof against it is that acquired traits are not transmissable to one's offspring. . ." when evolutionists for over a generation have known this and have developed their theories accordingly.

The discussion of the dynamics of adaptation and selection indicates a total lack of familiarity with the literature in the field of genetics, particularly on systematics and speciation.

The author quotes as "scientists of today" those whose works were published in the twenties and thirties, and relies almost completely upon the Deluge Geology of Harold W. Clark and George McGready Price, quoting errors of fact and fancy without examination of primary sources.

Perhaps the most fanciful of these is the explanation for fossil sequences in geological strata, known as ~~ecological zonation." Briefly, it is the belief that the Flood inundated in orderly fashion each zone of ecologically adapted animal life, these now comprising the various geological strata with their own assemblages of fossils.

Handrich's sincerity and use of scripture and his evangelical stand, this reviewer fears, will lead readers to believe that his science is as sound as his theology.

(Reprint by permission from Christian Life Magazine, Copyright January, 1955, pp. 48-49, Sunday Magazine, Inc., 434 South Wabash Avenue, Chicago 5, Illinois.)