The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God
- Book Review,
by Lee Strobel
From Publishers Weekly
Strobel, whose apologetics titles The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith have enjoyed strong popularity among evangelicals, approaches creation/evolution issues in the same simple and energetic style. The format will be familiar to readers of previous Case books: Strobel visits with scholars and researchers and works each interview into a topical outline. Although Strobel does not interview any "hostile" witnesses, he exposes readers to the work of some major origins researchers (including Jonathan Wells, Stephen Meyer and Michael Behe) and theistic philosophers (including William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland). Strobel claims no expertise in science or metaphysics, but as an interviewer he makes this an asset, prodding his sources to translate jargon and provide illustrations for their arguments. At times, the interview format loses momentum as seams begin to show between interview recordings, rewrites, research notes and details imported from his subjects' CVs (here, Strobel's efforts at buffing his subjects' smart-guy credentials can become a little too intense). The most curious feature of the book—not uncommon in the origins literature but unusual in a work of Christian apologetics—is that biblical narratives and images of creation, and the significance of creation for Christian theology, receive such brief mention. Still, this solid introduction to the most important topics in origins debates is highly accessible and packs a good argumentative punch. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Book Description
Lee Strobel investigates the latest scientific discoveries to see whether they form a solid basis for believing in God.
From the Back Cover
"My road to atheism was paved by science . . . But, ironically, so was my later journey to God." —Lee Strobel During his academic years, Lee Strobel became convinced that God was outmoded, a belief that colored his ensuing career as an award-winning journalist at the Chicago Tribune. Science had made the idea of a Creator irrelevant—or so Strobel thought. But today science is pointing in a different direction. In recent years, a diverse and impressive body of research has increasingly supported the conclusion that the universe was intelligently designed. At the same time, Darwinism has faltered in the face of concrete facts and hard reason. Has science discovered God? At the very least, it’s giving faith an immense boost as new findings emerge about the incredible complexity of our universe. Join Strobel as he reexamines the theories that once led him away from God. Through his compelling and highly readable account, you’ll encounter the mind-stretching discoveries from cosmology, cellular biology, DNA research, astronomy, physics, and human consciousness that present astonishing evidence in The Case for a Creator. Also available in mass market and audio CD editions.
About the Author
Lee Strobel, educated at Yale Law School, was the award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune and a spiritual skeptic until 1981. He wrote the Gold Medallion-winning books The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith. A former teaching pastor at two of America’s largest churches, he and his wife live in California.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Case for a Creator Copyright © 2004 by Lee Strobel
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Strobel, Lee, 1952- The case for a Creator : a journalist investigates scientific evidence that points toward God / Lee Strobel1st ed. P. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-310-24144-8 (hardcover)ISBN 0-310-24050-6 (softcover) 1. GodProof, Cosmological. 2. Religion and science. I. Title. BT103.S77 2004 212'.1dc22 2003023566
This edition printed on acid-free paper.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version. NIV. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.
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Interior design by Michelle Espinoza
Printed in the United States of America
04 05 06 07 08 09 10 /. DC/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
1 WHITE-COATED SCIENTISTS VERSUS BLACK-ROBED PREACHERS
The deadline was looming for the Green Streak, the afternoon edition of the Chicago Tribune, and the frenzied atmosphere in the newsroom was carbonated with activity. Teletypes clattered behind Plexiglas partitions. Copy boys darted from desk to desk. Reporters hunched over their typewriters in intense concentration. Editors barked into telephones. On the wall, a huge clock counted down the minutes.
A copy boy hustled into the cavernous room and tossed three copies of the Chicago Daily News, hot off the presses, onto the middle of the city desk. Assistant city editors lunged at them and hungrily scanned the front page to see if the competition had beaten them on anything. One of them let out a grunt. In one motion, he ripped out an article and then pivoted, waving it in the face of a reporter who had made the mistake of hovering too closely.
Recover this! he demanded. Without looking at it, the reporter grabbed the scrap and headed for his desk to quickly make some phone calls so he could produce a similar story.
Reporters at City Hall, the Criminal Courts Building, the State of Illinois Building, and Police Headquarters were phoning assistant city editors to dope their stories. Once the reporters had provided a quick capsule of the situation, the assistants would cover their phone with a hand and ask their boss, the city editor, for a decision on how the article should be handled.
The cops were chasing a car and it hit a bus, one of them called over to the city editor. Five injured, none seriously.
School bus?
City bus.
The city editor frowned. Gimme a four-head, came the order code for a three-paragraph story.
Four head, the assistant repeated into the phone. He pushed a button to connect the reporter to a rewrite man, who would take down details on a typewriter and then craft the item in a matter of minutes.
The year was 1974. I was a rookie, just three months out of the University of Missouris school of journalism. I had worked on smaller newspapers since I was fourteen, but this was the big leagues. I was already addicted to the adrenaline.
On that particular day, though, I felt more like a spectator than a participant. I strolled over to the city desk and unceremoniously dropped my story into the in basket. It was a meager offeringa one-paragraph brief about two pipe bombs exploding in the south suburbs. The item was destined for section three, page ten, in a journalistic trash heap called metropolitan briefs. However, my fortunes were about to change.
Standing outside his glass-walled office, the assistant managing editor caught my attention. Cmere, he called.
I walked over. Whats up?
Look at this, he said as he handed me a piece of wire copy. He didnt wait for me to read it before he started filling me in.
Crazy stuff in West Virginia, he said. People getting shot at, schools getting bombedall because some hillbillies are mad about the textbooks being used in the schools.
Youre kidding, I said. Good story.
My eyes scanned the brief Associated Press report. I quickly noticed that pastors were denouncing textbooks as being anti-God and that rallies were being held in churches. My stereotypes clicked in.
Christians, huh? I said. So much for loving their neighbors. And not being judgmental.
He motioned for me to follow him over to a safe along the wall. He twirled the dial and opened it, reaching in to grab two packets of twenty-dollar bills.
Get out to West Virginia and check it out, he said as he handed me the six hundred dollars of expense money. Give me a story for the bulldog. He was referring to the first edition of next Sundays paper. That didnt give me much time. It was already noon on Monday.
I started to walk away, but the editor grabbed my arm. Look be careful, he said.
I was oblivious. What do you mean?
He gestured toward the AP story I was clutching. These hillbillies hate reporters, he said. Theyve already beaten up two of them. Things are volatile. Be smart.
I couldnt tell if the emotional surge I felt was fear or exhilaration. In the end, it didnt really matter. I knew I had to do whatever it would take to get the story. But the irony wasnt lost on me: these people were followers of the guy who said, Blessed are the peacemakers, and yet I was being warned to keep on guard to avoid getting roughed up.
Christians . . . , I muttered under my breath. Hadnt they heard, as one skeptic famously put it, that modern science had already dissolved Christianity in a vat of nitric acid?
IS DARWIN RESPONSIBLE?
From the gleaming office buildings in downtown Charleston to the dreary backwood hamlets in surrounding Kanawha County, the situation was tense when I arrived the next day and began poking around for a story. Many parents were keeping their kids out of school; coal miners had walked off the job in wildcat strikes, threatening to cripple the local economy; empty school buses were being shot at; firebombs had been lobbed at some vacant classrooms; picketers were marching with signs saying, Even Hillbillies Have Constitutional Rights. Violence had left two people seriously injured. Intimidation and threats were rampant.
The wire services could handle the day-to-day breaking developments in the crisis; I planned to write an overview article that explained the dynamics of the controversy. Working from my hotel room, I called for appointments with key figures in the conflict and then drove in my rental car from homes to restaurants to schools to offices in order to interview them. I quickly found that just mentioning the word textbook to anybody in these parts would instantly release a flood of vehement opinion as thick as the lush trees that carpet the Appalachian hillsides.
The books bought for our school children would teach them to lose their love of God, to honor draft dodgers and revolutionaries, and to lose their respect for their parents, insisted the intense, darkhaired wife of a Baptist minister as I interviewed her on the front porch of her house. As a recently elected school board member, she was leading the charge against the textbooks.
A community activist was just as opinionated in the other direction. For the first time, she told me, these textbooks reflect real Americanism, and I think its exciting. Americanism, to me, is listening to all kinds of voices, not just white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants.
The school superintendent, who had resigned at the height of the
controversy, only shook his head in disdain when I asked him what he thought. People around here are going flaky, he sighed. Both poles are wrong.
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