Review: The Case for a Creator
by Lee Strobel (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2004). Reviewed by Islwyn Rees, May 2007.
Christian authors like Lee Strobel of the Willow Creek Association have used the Intelligent Design theory for Christian evangelism. His best selling 300 page paperback is one of a flow of Intelligent Design materials in the creation/evolution debate and has had wide circulation here in the UK. His book is based on interviews with Jonathan Wells, Stephen C. Meyer, William Lane Craig, Robin Collins, Jay Wesley Richards, Michael J. Behe and J.P. Moreland. The back cover tells us to “join Strobel as he re-examines 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.”
Strobel claims that “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.”
Lee Strobel was educated at Yale Law School and was an award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune. Converted from atheism to Christianity through the influence of his wife, Strobel, like Kevin Logan, uses his journalistic skills to make the debate accessible for those not into science speak. Strobel is not concerned with the differences between ‘Young Earth’ creationists or Intelligent Design theorists. His focus is on leading scientists who are seen to conclude that only Intelligence can produce the ‘finely tuned’ universe and the ‘finely tuned’ world in which we live. Unlike Logan, who endeavours to remain impartial in presenting both sides of the debate by leaving it to his readers to make their own mind up over the issue, Strobel is more persuasive. He uses his interviewees for evangelistic purposes. If the universe, this world and all life on it came about by Intelligence, then shouldn’t integrity demand that we look where this Intelligence has revealed Himself, and respond appropriately?
Strobel admits to being a spiritual sceptic until 1981when his explorations about life brought about his conversion to Christianity. In his book he takes the approach of an investigative journalist interviewing leading scientists about their views of the origin of life, including Michael Behe. While Behe confesses in his ‘runaway best-selling’ book, Darwin’s Black Box, to not being a ‘Young Earth’ creationist, the amazing descriptions he gives of the world of biochemistry and the arguments he presents for ‘irreducible complexity’, that everything had to be in place at the same time for organisms to function at all, aids Strobel in compiling his book, The Case for a Creator. It is intelligent design that he uses and the conclusions of the likes of Strobel’s scientists have brought them into serious conflict with Darwinism. “Intelligent Design” theorists see Darwinism as a failed system of belief. And not just in America, but going on the evidence of the furore that has taken place in the media here, and gaining ground in credence in the UK according to the poll taken by MORI in January 06, and in The Guardian report of the 15th of August, 2006, the Intelligent Design theory is something that has spread beyond the USA.
Revised 02/05/07
