Equipping Students with the Truth

 

Have you taken a look inside a high-school earth science textbook lately? Claims about “deep time” still permeate the pages: Earth is 4.6 billion years old, the ancient supercontinent Pangaea began to break apart 200 million years ago, Grand Canyon formed millions of years ago, and so the story goes.

Burdened with a passion to provide solutions, Roger Patterson, author of the best-seller Evolution Exposed: Biology, spent months reviewing the three most popular earth science textbooks in U.S. schools (by Holt, Glencoe, and Prentice Hall). His goal was to expose the old-earth assumptions and then counter them with the biblical interpretation proposed by modern creation scientists. The result is Evolution Exposed: Earth Science.

Using the same format as Evolution Exposed: Biology, this easy-to-use reference book documents, page by page, the textbooks’ evolutionary content and then gives the biblical science interpretation. It also points readers to other Bible-based resources. Patterson worked in close cooperation with geologist Andrew Snelling and astrophysicist Jason Lisle.

Interestingly, one of the evolutionary textbooks acknowledges the crux of the problem. “As late as the turn of the nineteenth century, the majority of the world believed the Earth was only 6,000 years old,” but then the idea of uniformitarianism changed that belief. This belief—that the same slow geologic processes have operated throughout earth history—is the source of the debate. Is the present really the key to the past? Or did unique events (such as the Flood) occur in the past, never to be repeated again?

As a former teacher in government schools, Patterson was trained in the evolutionary perspective and understands what students face today. Now a young-earth creationist, he has dedicated his teaching skills to giving the glory back to God. Patterson’s newest book shows that the earth and space have an awe-inspiring story to tell, if interpreted properly through the lens of biblical history.

Whether you’re teaching a class, taking a class, helping another student, or enriching your own personal understanding, this book lets you compare the biblical and evolutionary interpretation of earth history side by side. The detailed explanations show the power of the biblical starting point to make sense of our world.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n4/equipping-students