Intro: Science or Scripture?
I have always loved science. The things I remember most from school is all the science stuff: shark dissections, egg drops, labs where you use a Bunsen burner, titrations, Rube Goldberg machines. I loved science so much, in college I majored in Engineering Physics, which is basically an engineering degree plus a science degree.
But I’m a Christian—which by definition means I love and submit to God’s Word—and the Bible contradicts science, right?
The Bible tells me that in six days God made the heavens & the earth and all they contain—but the science textbooks say the world was formed over billions of years through natural processes.
The Bible says that humans were made on day six, from the dust of the earth, by the very breath of God—but science says that humans are descended from apes
The Bible says that God created all the kinds of animals and plants during the first week of creation—but science says that every living thing evolved from one common ancestor.
In other words, Scripture and science present two contradictory explanations of the world and everything in it. Two competing lenses, two competing views of the world.
Science and Scripture provide vastly different answers to all the big questions about life: (1) where did we come from, (2) who are we, (3) and what are we supposed to be doing here, (4) and where are we going.
Science says that we’re nothing but the product of random chance, bags of salt and proteins that happen to have opposable thumbs and big brains; products of star dust; here today and gone tomorrow. Science says there is no God, no ultimate meaning to life but death, and therefore you and I have no destiny other than to be buried and eaten by worms.
But Scripture says we are made in the image of God, stamped with value, dignity, worth; designed by God to rule over all creation as God's representatives, little-k kings and little-q queens; given glorious purpose of delighting in our Creator; destined for eternity in heaven if we are forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ or damned to hell if we choose our sin over the Savior.
So what is a science-loving Christian supposed to do? One extreme is the ostrich perspective. Bury your head in the sand and divorce science and faith. In the lab, I think like a scientists; at church I think like a Christian. Another extreme is to distrust Scripture, and say that it just isn’t perfectly accurate on things related to history, archaeology, science, etc. That is, believe that science corrects Scripture (in some parts).
I reject both of these views. I believe with all my heart that you can rightly love Scripture and rightly love science together. That’s because God’s Word rightly understood and God’s world rightly understood will never contradict.
A right understanding of God’ Word and a right understanding of God’s world will always be in perfect harmony.
Let me explain what I mean. The Author of the Word and the Creator of the World are the same God. He is both the Author-Inspirer of the Word and the Author-Creator of the World. Because “God is not a man, that He should lie” (Num 23:19) means He will not write something in the Word that contradicts what He does/makes in the world.
For example, He would not say that He raised Jesus Christ physically from the dead if He did not, in actual history, raise Jesus Christ physically from the dead. He would not write in His Word that all humanity is descended from two individuals—Adam and Eve, created from dust—but in the world use the process of evolution to gradually create humanity from monkeys.
Such contradictions would make God a liar. Such a blatant deception would make God untrustworthy and evil, and therefore no longer God.
That's why I say that a a right understanding of God’ Word and a right understanding of God’s world will always be in perfect harmony, because the author of the Word and the author of the world is one. God is the God of one reality. Understanding His Word and understanding His world should lead us to the same conclusion.
But how? Didn’t I just say that science and Scripture have radically different answers to all the important questions about life? Yes. I want to resolve that tension for you today.
I will talk about both Scripture and science today, but we must first start with Scripture. God’s Word is the the lens we need to understand everything else.
I. God’s Word: Our Glasses
2 Tim 3:16 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” This is why we call it God’s Word, because it came from His mouth. This is the very word of God.
The Scriptures are “absolutely inerrant [not able to err] in the original documents, infallible [without any fault], and God breathed.” In sum, whatever Scripture says, God has said—and He recorded it for us perfectly in His book.
When Scripture speaks, God speaks. And what God says is perfectly true, and therefore perfectly trustworthy. The Reformers called this doctrine Sola Scripture, which teaches both the supremacy and sufficiency of Scripture.
1. Scripture is the Supreme Authority
Supremacy means that Scripture alone is the highest authority, the “authoritative, interpretive lens through which we are to view” everything.[1] This is because Scripture is the self-revelation of God.
Psalm 19 gives 8 attributes of Scripture:
v7 Perfect: idea of blameless, without fault.
Sure: idea of reliable, faithful
v8 Right: idea of being straight
Pure: idea without blemish, beautiful
v9 Clean: ceremonially clean, acceptable before God
True: idea of faithfulness, as opposed to being deceptive or false.
Righteous altogether: idea good, virtuous. Notice that together they are righteous. The Word of God is one united, righteous whole.
2. Scripture is the Sufficient Authority
Sufficiency means that Scripture reveals all that we need for our salvation and spiritual life. For clarity, this does not mean that Scripture alone contains all knowledge. Only God knows all things. This book is big, but not infinitely big. It also does not mean you only need the Bible to learn how to do algebra, how to bake cookies, or how to get to Timbuktu. No one believes that.
Rather, it means that Scripture stands by itself as the most important, fully reliable source that teaches you everything you need to know about God and how to live a life pleasing to Him. You don’t need science, psychology, some ancient secrets buried at the bottom of the sea, or your grandma’s secret recipes to love God and live for him. You don’t even need a specific Christian book, a particular sermon, or a particular person’s help to be a a faithful Christian. You don’t need any other authority except Scripture to know God and to live for Him. Other things can be helpful, but by itself Scripture is enough.
So, Scripture is both supreme and sufficient.
That means if anything ever contradicts Scripture, you can know for sure that it is wrong, because God never lies.
3. Galileo vs. Geocentrism
Maybe you buy that; maybe you don't. But let’s talk about some history.
Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer, physicist, and engineer who lived in the late 16th to the early 17th century. His experiments and observations supported the theory of heliocentrism, i.e., the sun is at the center of the solar system. This contradicted the Catholic church’s dogmatic teaching of geocentrism, i.e., the earth is at the center of the solar system. Who is right? Obviously, Galileo, not the Catholic Church.[2] We all learn in basic science class that the earth—and all the other planets—rotate around the sun.
But does that mean science proved Scripture wrong? No. The Catholic Church asserted that they taught the truth, but the Bible never teaches that the earth is at the center of the solar system. You can look from Genesis to Revelation; Scripture never teaches that the sun revolves around the earth—not even close. Science did not prove Scripture wrong; science proved the Catholic church's interpretation of Scripture wrong.
Do you remember the key idea? A right understanding of God’ Word and a right understanding of God’s world will always be in perfect harmony. So when science claims something that seems contrary to Scripture, the first question you should ask is, “Am I rightly understanding Scripture?”
Illustration: Ribs
Quick science question: how many ribs do humans normally have? Answer: 12 on each side.
Well, one of my friends’ moms is a Christian. She read that the Bible said God took one of Adam’s ribs to make Eve, and from that fact concluded that the Bible teaches every man has one less rib than women! But is that true? Is every guy missing one rib? No!
But what? Did science prove Scripture wrong? Did science correct Scripture? No, science just correcting this sweet mom’s misunderstanding about Scripture.
So when science claims something that seems contrary to Scripture, the first question you should ask is, “Am I rightly understanding Scripture?” Does the Bible really teach that the earth is the center of the solar system? No. Does the Bible really teach that men have 1 less rib than women? No. I could keep going: you've heard all the arguments from your unbelieving friends:
Does the Bible teach that slavery is good? No.
Does the Bible teach archaeology inconsistent with reality? No.
Does the Bible teach that one ethnicity is superior to all others? No.
So much of the arguments against Scriptures trustworthiness are founded upon blatant misunderstandings. Know the Word. Know what it really says, not just what some uninformed TikToker says it says.
Transition
But let’s say you are trying to figure some issue out and you look at Scripture honestly. You get help from parents, youth leaders, pastors, and you conclude, “Yes, I am understanding Scripture rightly.
God’s Word truly teaches that Adam and Eve were the first humans.
God’s Word truly teaches that Noah’s flood was the entire world.
God’s Word truly teaches that the week of creation was 6 literal days.” —and science says something different, and has lots of data and charts and experiments to support its view.
Now what?
II. God’s World: Scientific Data vs. Scientific Interpretation
On Science
The English word science comes from the Latin word scientia, which means "to know." Science means knowledge. At its core, science is the pursuit of knowledge, the pursuit of the truth. Of all people, Christians should never be afraid of the truth. God is the true and living God (1 Thess 1:9), the only God of the truth.
Yet by definition, the process of science is fraught with error. That’s not a flaw or a critique; it’s baked in as a self-corrective. As a scientist, you come up with a hypothesis, you test it, you record your results, you find out your hypothesis was wrong in some ways and right in some ways, you modify your hypothesis and then repeat the process all over again. Science is always arriving closer and closer to the truth. That means, by definition, that it is often wrong.
Throughout history, scientists have believed in crazy things:
that putting leeches on you when you were sick got rid of the ‘bad blood,’
that the world, that space and air is filled with an aether to allow for the propagation of light,
and most infamously that beyond the edge of the earth there be dragons and leviathans.
In fact, only 60 years ago, the U.S. Surgeon General definitively linked smoking to lung cancer; before the U.S. government was claimed that smoking cigarettes was good for you! By further experimentation, new science proved old science wrong; in many realms, we know much better now than we did before.
But did you catch it? This means that by definition, many things that science teaches today are wrong. In fact, if science continues in its quest for the truth, it will continue to prove itself wrong; when science is at its best, it corrects itself to better agree with reality.
Science is the pursuit of discovering the truth, particularly seeking to explain how the world works. God’s world has worked has been the same since creation. Water, light, gravity, stars, chemical processes have not changed in the past 6000 years.
This means that, for the Christian, the problem with science is not that it seeks to know the truth, or with the specific data that it collects, (like fossils, commits, stars, planets, experiments, etc.) The problem of science is not the data. The problem is the interpretation.
And you and I both know there is a big difference between data and interpretation.
Illustration: Messy Room
Let’s say this weekend you go home and your room is a mess. It looks like a hurricane came through. Dirty clothes are under the bed. Papers are all over the desk. The pictures on the wall are crooked, the posters are torn, and your stuffed animals have been murdered, their fluffy innards scattered all over the room. That’s the data. No matter who walks in the room—you, your mom, your brother—you all see the same thing.
But who made the mess? There are multiple interpretations of that data: it could have been a literal hurricane, it could have been your little brother, it could have been your dog. Or maybe it was just you—you’re a messy slob!
But how do you know which interpretation is correct? Not by the data, but by information outside of what you can observe. Was there a hurricane? Do you even have those in your home town? Was your younger brother home last week or was he at camp? Do you even have a dog? And most importantly, what did your room look like before you left?
In the same way, both Christians and unbelieving scientists look at the same world, gather the same data. But we can come to very different interpretations depending on information that is outside of what we can observe.
For example, Christians assume that there is a God, and that He made the world and everything in it. Unbelieving scientists assume there is no God. Either way, you can’t do a science experiment on that. That is something that science cannot test.
In philosophical language, these assumptions are called presuppositions, things you assume are true without full rational proof. And these presuppositions, these different lenses, are what drives different people to look at the same data and yet come to very different interpretations.
Transition
Next, let’s focus on two assumptions that unbelieving scientists make, to reveal them and critique them. And I will ultimately argue that God’s Word as our lens to look at all scientific data leads to better interpretations of God’s world.
A. Uniformitarianism vs. Catastrophism[3]
Uniformitarianism: uniform means the same.
little things happens very slowly over long periods of time.
assumes that the world has basically been the same, not much change except on grand time scales.
Catastrophism
lots of stuff happens very quickly over short periods of time.
assumes that normally there are very few changes, but that there are special periods of time (catastrophes) where the world changes really, really quickly
But which is accurate?
I am 5’ 9”—a total of 69 inches. How did I get to this height? Did I grow uniformly at 2” per year? No, I gained all of my height before the age of 19. And from 19 to death, I will be slowly shrinking.
Newborn humans double in weight every few weeks. If we continued at that pace, we'd all be like a thousand pounds. In the teenage years of puberty, we all go through the most catastrophic change in our lives. Voice changes, height changes, body changes, hormonal changes. Human growth is in a sense, a catastrophe. And that’s normal.
So what better describes human growth? Uniformitarianism or catastrophism?
But now think about the Earth. Can you think of any catastrophes that could change the physical world quickly? Floods, wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, meteors, volcanic eruptions, mass extinctions. Hurricane rainfall wipes out entire bridges and towns, volcanoes destroy entire mountain sides, tsunamis level entire coastlines. Fires tear through a forest, avalanches carve valleys, ice burgs tear through continents. Even if you haven't experienced them, you know their power.
Contrary to what many scientific theories assume, catastrophism matches the scientific data better than uniformitarianism. A biblical interpretation of the scientific data says that the world had “growth spurts” of sort.
This totally changes the "required" timeline of Earth's history. And to give just one example of that, let’s look at tectonic plates.
1. Tectonic Plates[4]
Scientists postulate that long ago, all of the continents were together in one mega continent called Pangea. You can kind of visualize how everything would mash back together, right? The current speed of the plates is about 10 to 160 mm/year. That is 7e-10 to 1.13e-8 mph. Really, really slow.
To oversimplify the argument, the uniformitarian view assumes that this rate has been constant over a long period of time. So, it measures how far the continents are currently away from each other, then divides that distance by the current rate of movement, and—boom—you need billions of years.
But the catastrophic view asks,
“Well, what if the continents moved really fast, and then basically came to a stop? What if there was a bunch of water on the earth swirling around—say, during a global flood? Wouldn’t that force the continents to “float”, and enable them to move very quickly?” After the waters receded, the continents would settle, with maybe a tiny bit of residual movement which we see today.”
Again, we’re looking at the same data—a world that looks like a jigsaw puzzle. But these interpretations are vastly different. One contradicts the biblical worldview, but the other fits without any contradiction. To be clear, the Bible does not teach about tectonic plates and I don’t know for sure if this is what happened. But if Scripture is the Word of God and therefore perfectly true and trustworthy, it is my starting place; therefore I must ask, “How do I make sense of everything through its lens?”
Tectonic plates is merely one way in which the scientific data can be interpreted in a way consistent with Scripture—and, in my opinion, be more convincing. An interpretation that looks at the data through the lens of Scripture actually makes matches reality.
Let’s look at another example.
2. Grand Canyon[5]
To explain the Grand Canyon, the uniformitarian view says:
The story begins almost two billion years ago with the formation of the igneous and metamorphic rocks of the inner gorge. Above these old rocks lie layer upon layer of sedimentary rock, each telling a unique part of the environmental history of the Grand Canyon region.
Then, between 70 and 30 million years ago, through the action of plate tectonics, the whole region was uplifted, resulting in the high and relatively flat Colorado Plateau.
Finally, beginning just 5-6 million years ago, the Colorado River began to carve its way downward. Further erosion by tributary streams led to the canyon’s widening.[6]
But how does a catastrophic view differ? The scientific data shows that almost the entire continent of the United States is covered in multiple sediment layers, indicating a humongous water event. Hm, and I read in Gen 7:11.
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.
In addition, although the uniformitarian view says that the Colorado river eroded the canyon over 5-6 million years, an analysis of the walls of the canyon show that there is not much evidence of gradual erosion. Instead, the walls look stable, implying maybe all the erosion happened at basically the same amount of time, or at the very least that the erosion rate now is not that same as it was before.
There are even single fossils that traverse multiple erosion layers; how would a fossil be formed across millions of years? In addition, wouldn't millions of years of sediment entirely fill up the mouth of the Colorado river? All that rock and dirt carved out of the plains has to go somewhere!
There are just too many problems with the uniformitarian view. Things just don't add up.
I’m not a geologist, but imagine we got in our time machine and went back to the time of the global flood. Well, bad idea, because we'd die, but if we had the eyes to see, I imagine we'd see the following—a catastrophe.
The swirling waters of Noah’s flood pick up soil, rock, and everything else in its path.
As the waters move, it deposits layers of sediment. The immense pressure at the bottom of the worldwide ocean flattens the layers of dirt into big sheets of rock on the surface of the earth. Scripture says the global flood lasts for a year. That's more than enough time entire continents to move, to practically run across the globe.
Continental drift and underwater currents create underwater features which will emerge as valleys, mountains, and canyons.
When the flood ends, continents rise and the water rushes off the land, causing catastrophic erosion, leaving behind river systems, lakes, valleys, and canyons like the Grand Canyon.
Water is crazy powerful. Even massive water dam failures today quickly creates canyons and giant fissures in the earth.
Unbelieving scientists assume uniformitarianism and are thus locked into a worldview that cannot see clearly. But through the biblical lens, we can see that catastrophe also has a role to play. Right now, most things change slowly; but that does not mean it has always been this way. Many things can happen quickly. I am convinced many geological things did.
3. Dinosaurs[7]
Whenever I talk about these things, the most common question I always get is about dinosaurs. The uniformitarian view teaches that dinosaurs lived millions of years before humans appeared on the scene. According to this view, by the time the first humans lived, dinosaurs were rotting in the ground to become oil for our cars and mineralizing into fossils to become displays for our museum. According to this view, no human has ever seen a living dinosaur.
But Scripture teaches that God created all the animal-kinds on day 6 of creation. That includes dinosaurs. That means according to Scripture, dinosaurs and humans have always coexisted. Two passages in Scripture may be speaking about dinosaurs in Job's day: Behemoth (Job 40:15-24), Leviathan (Job 41:1-34).
Well, who is right? Let's look at the data. We don't have living dinosaurs today; all we know about dinosaurs is derived from fossils— old mineralized bones. At least, that's what we thought until it was discovered that a Tyrannosaurus Rex leg bone had preserved soft tissue. Think about that; real dinosaur flesh, like yours and mine—preserved in the dirt, able to be studied right now.[8]
How does that happen? Can flesh survive millions of years without decomposing? How would you even test that? What if dinosaurs were not wiped out millions of years ago but only thousands of years ago, specifically during Noah's flood? Again, Scripture doesn't explicitly give us the year of the flood, but if Scripture is true—and it is—this perspective makes good sense of the things we see today.
All over the world there are archaeological sites have called dinosaur graveyards—jumbles of fossilized dinosaur bones all mangled together. Different species of dinosaur, different sizes. How do you think that happened?
Most likely explanation: they all drowned at the same time, and were buried in a flood, and then fossilized together. The fact that such dinosaur graveyards all over the earth implies... a global flood.
Transition
A right understanding of God’ Word and a right understanding of God’s world will always be in perfect harmony. As a Christian who loves science (... not a Christian scientist; that's very different), I am always seeking to bring my understanding of God's world into conformity with truth of God's Word.
B. Naturalism vs. Supernaturalism
The second assumption that unbelieving scientists often make is called naturalism.
Naturalism teaches that everything has a purely earthly explanation and cause, apart from the divine. Where did we come from? What is our purpose? We can’t ask God, we can’t ask religion, we can’t ask history, our only answer can be what we see. It assumes, from the very start, that there is no divine power.
The opposite worldview is called supernaturalism, which teaches that God is real and that He meaningfully interacts with the world that He made.
To be clear, the supernaturalist perspective does not say, “Oh, why do my hands get warmer when I rub them together? It must be God. Why is the sky blue? Eh, it must be God. How does a seed become a tree? Eh, God.” That’s not supernaturalism; that’s just super lazy.
Instead, supernaturalism says, “God has made our world with order such that we can rely upon certain things consistently happening the same way. If I pick up and drop this marker 100 times, it will fall 100 times. Why is that? How do we accurately describe His world? While there are times where He does miracles (i.e., breaks the “laws of nature”), God has established the rules of His creation, and they are consistent and dependable.
Naturalism, on the other hand, rejects God’s involvement. In modern science, the most radically naturalistic theory is evolution, the belief that through time and chance every species arose from one common ancestor.
Are evolution and the Bible compatible?
God Created Kinds, not Species[9]
Evolutionary theory teaches that there is no God and therefore no creation event. Instead, life spontaneously arose, and from that single organism everything else evolved into all the life forms we see today.
But in Genesis 1, Scripture says God made creatures that would reproduce “after their kind” (Genesis 1:12, 21, 24, 25). God also commanded Noah to take the birds and animals “after their kind” (Genesis 6:20, 7:14). The important thing to note is that “kind” in Genesis doesn’t mean “species.” Instead think, dog-kind, horse-kind, fern-kind, etc.
The kinds God created can adapt according to God’s original design. Over time, animals make micro-adjustments to adapt to their environment: a different color of camouflage, a different diet, a different shaped beak. This has been demonstrated scientifically, and is completely compatible with a biblical lens.
But, since creation, the creature still reproduces “according to its kind.”
Not fish-kind + time -> bird-kind.
Instead, bird-kind -> bird-kind. It might a a big bird or a small bird, a dumb bird or a smart bird, but it is still a bird.
This is what the tree of life looks like from a creationist perspective: ::image::
This differentiation and diversification is not evolution—i.e., Darwinian, atheistic, macro-evolution. Instead, this is speciation, which leads to many distinct species and expands the "kind" to includes lots of different species.
dog-thing -> wolves, foxes, dingos, great danes, shiba inus, etc. But... still a dog-thing.
cat-thing -> lion, tiger, lynx, bob cat, tabby cat, stray cat. But... still a cat.
Again, Christians and unbelievers have the same data. The question is how do you interpret it? I contend that a biblical worldview actually leads to a better explanation of the data than the atheistic worldview.
But that brings up the most controversial question of all. What about us? What about humanity? Where did we come from?
Descended from Adam, not Monkeys[10]
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Matthew 19:4-5 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
Acts 17:26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place,
Scripture teaches clearly that God created one man and one woman on day 6 of creation. That means that Scripture's teaching is incompatible with Darwinian evolutionary theory. Scripture teaches that from the beginning, humans have always been humans.
Darwinian evolutionary theory has designated many humanoid fossils as “pre-human," as our prehistoric ancestors in the evolutionary process on the way to homo sapiens sapiens.
But what makes a human a human? Is it skeletal structure, bone density, cranial features? No. God defines what is a man, and it does not come down to physiology or ability, but to the inherent stamped image of God.
Humans have not always looked the same, and I don't think that ancient humans were identical to us in every way (height, skull shape, bone density, etc.). Even today there is lots of variation between skeletal structures. I mean look around. There are some really different kinds of skeletons in here. And last time I checked, we are all humans! What makes us human? God has stamped us with his image; we are made to be like him and to belong to him.
As an aside, some practical implications of this:
a newborn baby is just as human as you.
a newly conceived zygote is a human, just like you.
a person with a cranial deformity, a genetic abnormality, a learning disability, is a human just like you.
Going back to the so-called "pre-human fossils." Some of these individuals were undoubtedly human-kind. They may look different than us, but they are still humans. And, some of these so-called ”pre-humans fossils” may just be monkey-kind, misclassified by scientists with a bias.
Transition
My point in bringing up these examples is to demonstrate that Christians don’t need to fear science, ignore science, and run away from science. In fact, I would contend that Christians who hold to the biblical framework, who go to God’s Word first and then use it as the lens by which to interpret everything in God’s world, must go study science.
Christians who think biblically make really good scientists, because they can see the data more objectively and understand God's wonderful world. They can glorify their Creator and give Him the credit He deserves for making such a wonderfully complex world, to display His goodness, His power, and His might.
We might be ridiculed for loving Christ and rejecting the scientific consensus. But for the sake of the truth—the truth of the Word and the truth in the world—we must believe what God of this one reality has said.
III. Conclusion
I have only scratched the surface. As a takeaway, remember this: God’s Word is the lens through which we understand everything, even God’s world. When we do that we can see the scientific data clearly, and come to biblical, scientific interpretations. Christians have been working on this for decades, and all the so-called “scientific” objections have good biblical, scientific answers. You can love this book and love science, to the glory of God.
IV. Resources
Websites
Is Genesis History: www.isgenesishistory.com
Their documentary ([available here][7]) is the best, most succinct presentation of how a biblical framework can convincingly accommodate scientific data.
Answers in Genesis: www.answersingenesis.com
short articles on a variety of topics. Useful for a quick answers and introductory material
Ark Encounter: www.arkencounter.com
a life-size replica of Noah’s Ark. It has as good presentation of how Noah and his family could have take care of all the animals and survived the flood.
Institute of Creation Research: www.irc.org
short articles on a variety of topics. They try to be more scholarly in their approach.
Books
This blog post from Is Genesis History lists 10 of the best resources on Scripture & Science: [https://isgenesishistory.com/ten-books-to-understand-genesis/][8]
Garner, Paul. The New Creationism. Welwyn Garden City, UK: EP Books, 2009.
An approachable resource that begins with a literal 6-day creation and then fits science to the biblical worldview. He covers lots of different topics that address everything you need to know at a basic level.
Kelly, Douglas F. Creation and Change: Genesis 1.1-2.4 in the Light of Changing Scientific Paradigms. Revised&Updated edition. Fearn, Ross-shire: Mentor, 2017.
I haven’t finished reading this one yet, but it’s been called the best single book on both Scriptural and scientific arguments for a six-day creation.
Morris III, Henry, John D. Morris, and Jason Lisle. Creation Basics & Beyond. Dallas, TX: Institute of Creation Research, 2013.
A good compilation of scholarly work dealing with specific scientific and theological arguments. More scientific than most.
Mortenson, Terry and Thane H. Ury. Coming to Grips with Genesis. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 2008.
Another compilation of scholarly work dealing with specific scientific and theological issues regarding Genesis and the age of the earth. More theological than most.
Miscellaneous
Ordered from most approachable to most difficult.
[https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/christian-and-science][9]
[https://carm.org/about-science/can-a-christian-have-faith-in-science-and-god-at-the-same-time/][11]
[https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/1348/science-and-scripture][12]
[https://www.ligonier.org/learn/collections/reformed-approach-to-science-and-scripture][13]
[https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/does-science-really-contradict-scripture][14]
Something to think about
What if, before the flood, reptiles lived as long as humans (hundreds of years!)—or even longer? They’d be huge! Fossil record shows that what we call dinosaurs (“terrible lizard”) existed all over the earth.
Footnotes
Jonathan Gibson, review of Creation and Change by Douglas F. Kelly↩︎
For more on this, see [https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/christian-and-science][1]↩︎
https://answersingenesis.org/geology/grand-canyon-facts/when-and-how-did-the-grand-canyon-form/↩︎