{"id":410,"date":"2006-08-30T17:45:52","date_gmt":"2006-08-31T01:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=394"},"modified":"2006-08-30T17:45:52","modified_gmt":"2006-08-31T01:45:52","slug":"book-review-david-snoke-a-biblical-case-for-an-old-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2006\/08\/30\/book-review-david-snoke-a-biblical-case-for-an-old-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review &#8212; David Snoke, A Biblical Case for an Old Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm.amazon.com\/e\/cm?t=httpwwwdavido-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as1&#038;asins=0801066190&#038;fc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;lt1=_blank&#038;lc1=0000ff&#038;bc1=ffffff&#038;bg1=ffffff&#038;npa=1&#038;f=ifr\" style=\"width:120px;height:165px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In this book, David Snoke, a professor of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh, presents a case for a \u201cday-age\u201d view of Genesis 1.  Snoke\u2019s twin goals are to establish that the \u201cday-age\u201d view is a valid alternative for Christians who hold to Biblical inerrancy and to argue for a concordist understanding of the Genesis texts and modern science.  He succeeds admirably at the first goal, but is less persuasive concerning the second.<\/p>\n<p>The book is organized into nine chapters and includes an appendix with a \u201cliteral\u201d translation of Genesis 1-12.  The first two chapters identify Snoke\u2019s underlying assumptions and recite the scientific evidence for an old earth.  Snoke does an excellent job of explaining why and when extra-Biblical evidence can be used to interpret the Bible, and provides a calm, concise summary of the physical evidence against the young earth view.  These chapters are particularly useful and admirable because they avoid the argumentative tone that so often creeps into this sort of discussion.<\/p>\n<p>After laying this groundwork, Snoke responds to two key objections against the old earth view:  the problem of death before the fall and the relationship between the creation week and the Sabbath.  His insights concerning animal death before the fall are particularly helpful.  In particular, he suggests that the wild, untamed aspects of creation, including things such as carnivorous animals, may have served before the Fall as a reminder to Adam and Eve of God\u2019s power, and as a sort of warning about life outside the protected confines of Eden.  Just as Aslan in C.S. Lewis\u2019 Narnia books is not a \u201ctame Lion,\u201d he notes, these aspects of creation that don\u2019t seem \u201cnice\u201d to us remind us that God is also a \u201cdangerous\u201d God.<\/p>\n<p>After presenting his Biblical case for an old earth, Snoke turns to the case for a concordist view of science and scripture.  He defines \u201cscience\u201d as \u201cnothing but a way to organize and analyze the things of the world around us,\u201d and concludes that since the Bible also makes observations about the physical world, there should be areas of overlap where \u201cthings in the Bible are open to scientific investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Many readers will take issue with this definition of \u201cscience,\u201d as well as with the expectation that the Biblical text is presented in an objective, narrative form that can be correlated with modern scientific propositions.  Many readers also will question why Snoke discounts Darwinian evolution based on an a priori reading of the creation story concerning Adam and Eve, while remaining willing to consider alternative interpretations of related texts that superficially seem to suggest a recent creation.  Nevertheless, on the question of the age of the earth, this is a fair and well-balanced book that deserves a wide reading, particularly in the evangelical community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this book, David Snoke, a professor of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh, presents a case for a \u201cday-age\u201d view of Genesis 1. Snoke\u2019s twin goals are to establish that the \u201cday-age\u201d view is a valid alternative for Christians who hold to Biblical inerrancy and to argue for a concordist understanding of the Genesis [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,26,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books-and-film","category-science-technology","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-6C","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}