WHILE THE EARTH ENDURES
Creation, Cosmology and Climate Change
By Philip Foster. St. Matthew Publishing. 248 pages. £10.95
ISBN 978 1 901 546 316
This is a book of two halves! The first is devoted to a critique of young-earth creationism (YEC) and the second to an attack on the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
The author, a retired evangelical Anglican clergyman with degrees in Biochemistry and Theology, rejects YEC as a modern innovation that denies the ‘absolutely overwhelming’ evidence for an ancient cosmos (p.27). However, his case against YEC is far from unassailable. Many of his arguments address side issues or outdated creationist claims. There is virtually no interaction with the up-to-date literature and the author appears to misunderstand the most recent YEC source that he cites (John Hartnett’s Starlight, Time and the New Physics, Creation Book Publishers, 2007). The cosmological model presented in that book is not based on the anti-relativistic ideas of Moon and Spencer (1953), as Foster suggests on p.31, but is, in fact, based on the relativistic theories of Einstein and Carmeli.
Foster believes that the evidence in support of an old earth is qualitatively better than the evidence for biological evolution. Neo-Darwinism is ‘poorly attested’ (p.1), while an old earth is ‘proven beyond all reasonable doubt’ (p.48). In my view, the evidence for an old world is no better or worse than that for biological evolution, and both present serious theological difficulties. Foster is far too uncritical when he attempts to explain how belief in an old earth arose, and the reader is left with the impression that it was arrived at by a wholly objective assessment of the evidence. Nothing is said about the deistic beliefs that shaped the geological understanding of James Hutton (‘the father of modern geology’) nor the expressed desire of Charles Lyell (populariser of uniformitarianism) to ‘free the science from Moses’.
Personally, I found the second half of the book more intriguing and thought-provoking. Here, Foster takes on climate alarmism, with an emphasis on the popular idea that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are causing catastrophic changes to the earth’s climate. Climate change is undoubtedly a reality, but Foster argues that there are major questions about its causes and likely effects that have yet to be answered. Foster documents the rise of the AGW hypothesis and trenchantly argues that it is a politically convenient idea sustained by careless science. He questions the usefulness of existing climate models and the now-infamous ‘hockey stick’ graph of Michael Mann. The author clearly favours the ‘chilling stars’ hypothesis of Svensmark et al and rejects the idea that carbon dioxide can be blamed for the observed changes to global climate.
I do not have the necessary scientific expertise to assess all of Foster’s arguments in this section of the book, and I suspect that some of his claims will prove controversial even among those who broadly share the author’s scepticism about AGW. Nevertheless, this is a well-written book, in a popular and engaging style, and it may motivate readers to study the topics that it covers in greater detail. If so, that will be no bad thing.
Paul Garner,
researcher and lecturer with Biblical Creation Ministries and a Fellow of the Geological Society; he and his wife are members of Cambridge Presbyterian Church
