Gospel

The Writing Apologetic* Ministry of Edgar Andrews

*Apologetic: Here meaning having to do with the defense of, or reason for, the faith that one holds.

I first met Professor Edgar Andrews in 1999. I recall him, distinguished, articulate, erudite—in many ways, just what you might expect a professor to be. At the time, he was chairman of Evangelical Times and Evangelical Press. I had just relocated to England and was finding my feet in a new climate, adjusting to a new work situation, meeting new friends, discovering the joys of navigating around English traffic roundabouts (“Who gives way to whom, or do you just pray and take a chance?”) and experiencing many other new things. Our pathways would cross at occasional board meetings and when he would come to the Faverdale office in Darlington to oversee the production of the monthly paper.

We enjoyed good interactions whenever we met. I knew Prof. Andrews was much more than a brain on legs, but I always felt somewhat in awe of his great intellect—a man who knew so much about the science of materials, and yet who was at home with English literature, history, theology, ancient Greek, and many other disciplines.

I had first known of him through various of his writings, and in South Africa had enjoyed selling his books in several of my sales initiatives through Reformation Heritage Trust, subsequently renamed Barnabas Book Room. Always solid in their content, always clearly written, always with modern application, his books resonated with me and with the reading clientele Sue and I served…

So when Edgar contacted me again some years after I moved to the USA, I was delighted to have the opportunity of working with him again on some new projects. One of his earlier publications, Who Made God?, had captured the imagination of the reading public, selling tens of thousands of copies. “I’ve been working on a new book, one on the origin of man, titled What is Man—Adam, Alien or Ape?—do you think you could help promote it?” Edgar asked me. His explanatory email was predictably through in his description of the text and his plans for promoting it internationally. Of course, I was delighted to do so, and once it was in print, it was my pleasure to review it in these words—which you may read on Amazon HERE. (It’s a very good book—as I think you will see from my review notes.)

My Amazon Review Notes

A sequel to his bestselling book, “Who Made God?”, Edgar Andrews’ book “What is Man?” is a carefully thought-through, well prepared, wittily and engagingly written piece.

The author’s background in both arts and science (he is a well-rounded intellectual) eminently qualifies him to write both at length and in depth in areas of science, philosophy, literature, art, and the Christian faith—the latter from a well-informed perspective of faith. He engages robustly with some important minds along the way.

While Professor Andrews might be described as a “brain on legs,” he is a very capable communicator, taking complex concepts and subjects, breaking them down into bite-sized examples, making judicious use of illustrations to simplify them (yet without being simplistic) and then drawing lines of application to modern life and especially in challenging the thinking of people who may have mistakenly and uncritically imbibed the presuppositions and worldview of a generation who have more often been informed by talk-shows and TV than by well-reasoned scientific disciplines and carefully considered theological and philosophical conclusions.

To sketch the book by way of overview, Professor Andrews takes readers, as it were, by the hand (never condescendingly) and guides them page by page, step by step, idea by idea, through a maze of considerations considered within three categories: Man and the Cosmos, Man and the Biosphere, and Man and the Bible.

Under the first part, (Man and the Cosmos) the author gives consideration to key concerns such as the identity of humankind, the impossibility of the universe being self-creating, the willful conjecture of the media in inventing and embellishing highly detailed “facts” when there is no undergirding evidence, the habitability of the world (what he refers to as a fine-tuned universe) and the difficulties posed by the conceptualization of a multiverse.

Part 2 (Man and the Biosphere) considers people as unique creatures, traces the ramifications of the complexity of genetic mapping, spends some time on speculations that have arisen in light of fossil research and dating, and rounds off with some philosophical and ontological sketches with respect to human consciousness.

The third part of “What is Man?” (Man and the Bible) begins to draw many of the ideas heretofore explored into a unified conclusion, and provides a probing analysis of worldviews, the historicity of the fall of our first parents, the imago dei, Christ as the Second Adam, and the undeniability of the resurrection of Jesus.

Is this a “preaching, condescending kind of book”? I didn’t find it so. The author’s calm writing style, his eloquence, his gentle wit—these are all engaging features. In it all, I felt he was letting his readers come to their own conclusions at their own speed. Truth is compelling. Truth has the power, under God, to be life-transforming. This is the kind of book most people will easily be able to read. Be sure you are one of them and get one—and an extra one or two, too, for a family member or work colleague whom you might like to challenge to rethink some aspects of life!

Other Writings of Professor Edgar Andrews

I have worked with Edgar in lightly editing, reformatting, and republishing his most helpful book on Galatians (EP Books used to have it in the Welwyn Commentary Series—though Great Writing Publications it is titled Free in Christ—The Message of Galatians for Today) (more about that in another blog entry another time) and it’s on my radar soon to have his excellent commentary on Hebrews—A Glorious High Throne—back in print, also in the Great Writing Publications imprint.

Everything Says, “GLORY!” (Jim Albright)

Our pathways crossed some years ago when I was introduced to Jim Albright and helped him get his first book into print. We kept in contact, and some months ago, he reached out to me and mentioned he was ready to do his second book–and would I help him to do so? Well, the pleasure was all mine!

In the book, Jim Albright really does a great job to undermine and demolish some of the axiomatic beliefs of evolution. And what is so useful about it is that he uses many “insider” quotes from the evolutionists themselves in pointing out the weaknesses and inconsistencies of their assumptions and conclusions. As the blurb on the back cover of the book puts it,

In seven articulately written chapters, Jim Albright persuasively pinpoints and exposes the pseudo-scientific tenets of macro-evolutionary thinking. Replete with quotations from scientists across many disciplines, this is a book that every Christian should own. Missionary Keith Jones is right, “The best part of this book is that it will provoke you to a whole new level of worship!”

The book comes with several compelling endorsements, such as

• “. . . a staggering number of relevant (often shocking) quotations from scientists and researchers.”—Professor Don Whitney
• “Albright makes the case in a way that causes you to say, ‘How could it be possible to believe in evolution?’”—Pastor Jim Elliff
• “. . . utilizes scientific and logical evidence to expose the lie that evolution is.”—Professor Jim Ehrhard
• “My advice, dear reader, . . . sincerely contemplate what you find in these pages.”—Pastor Lance Quinn
• “. . . your tongue and heart are loosed to speak what you know is true with confidence and assurance.”—Missionary Alan Johnston
• “A great resource for the church . . . a layman’s synopsis.”—Pastor Brad Vaden
• “. . . a treasure of quotable science.”—Pastor Dow Welsh
• “Read this book closely; think deeply; observe inquisitively; worship passionately.”—Pastor Doug Richey
• “The best part of this book is that it will provoke you to a whole new level of worship.”—Missionary Keith Jones

Peacock and Poppycock

My colonial and English background make me rather like the word “poppycock.” Jim uses it to good effect in some descriptive text. There is a peacock motif that runs through the book. That was really why the cover was so important to “get right.” Below is the text from some early matter in the book:

About the Cover

So, why the peacock feather on the cover? Because Charles Darwin hated it. He wrote, “The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!”^[i]

The obvious problem was that he did not know how to plausibly explain this large, mathematically patterned, jewel-colored, gratuitous display of beauty in evolutionary terms. A peacock tail can stand five feet high. And all those cumbersome feathers are most inconvenient regarding the chief survival-of-the-fittest issue—namely, not being eaten. This was no small dilemma for Mr. Darwin.

In keeping with his general approach to science, Darwin concocted a story. Give the man credit. He knew how to weave a narrative. This is, of course, the foremost skill of his disciples. Storytelling is far less bothersome than engaging in the exacting rigors of real science.

Darwin proposed a theory of sexual selection. That is, peahens prefer peacocks with the best tails. Best meaning, the biggest and most colorful. The gaudier the tail, Darwin surmised, the better the peacock would fare with the peahens, and consequently pass on more of the flamboyant plumage genes to male offspring.

Oops. Yeah, this doesn’t actually happen. This is where storytelling, as opposed to truly doing science, puts one in a bit of a bind. A “seven-year study that observed 268 matings”^[ii] conducted by scientists seeking to confirm Darwin’s theory, found that peacock sexual selection based upon the coolest tail, is, and sorry, I couldn’t resist borrowing Ph.D. David Catchpoole’s quote, “poppycock.”^[iii]

The “tail tale”^[iv] is the perfect parable of Darwinian evolutionary theory. It’s all just unsubstantiated anecdotes. Regarding the macro-Darwinian hypothesis, there is no hard data. Zero. But oh, what a fanciful myth of unparalleled imagination has been fabricated for the incurious and unwary!

Darwin hated the peacock feather. It makes no evolutionary sense. Exactly!

[i] Charles Darwin and Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, including an Autobiographical Chapter, Vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton, 1911), 90-91.

[ii] Catchpoole, D., Peacock tail tale failure, creation.com/tale, 2008. (Creation 31(2):56–Jun 2008).

[iii] Catchpoole, D., https://creation.com/peacock-poppycock (Creation 29(2):56 – Mar 2007).

[iv] Ibid.

Read more about the book HERE.

Purchase the book on Amazon.com HERE

Purchase the book on Amazon.co.uk HERE.

Jim Albright: At the age of 42, Jim left a twenty-year business career to answer God’s call to preach. Since early 2004, he and his wife, Karen, have lived in Milan, Italy, where Jim is the pastor of the International Church of Milan, a non-denominational, Bible-believing, and Bible-teaching church ministering to internationals from around the globe.