The Case for a Creator

Lee Strobel is a great author! His story of how he became saved is amazing. For those who are curious but don’t want to look it up, Lees wife after years of marriage became saved and accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior! He was curious as to what that meant and wanted to know for himself. So he spent a large amount of time interviewing professors, scholars, but not just religious believers, he also interviewed the non believers. Through the interviews he asked questions to either support or deny the existence of God and what the Bible truly is. After his time researching, he became a believer himself! Every book he writes does not force you to believe anything. Instead he lays out the information gathered and how it is supported by factual evidence and allows you to decide for yourself. I have many of his books and my family has also read them and they enjoy them. To any believer or non believer, it’s a good read. They might surprise you!

This is a great book. Strobel provides scientific evidence for Intelligent Design. The book is laid out well. It begins with evidence refuting Darwinian evolution and naturalism, showing how and why what we were taught in school was wrong. And he does so from a scientific standpoint. In my opinion, Darwinian evolution is fundamentally and obviously flawed so that most people with an open mind would refute it. For those who aren't sure, Strobel provides the answers in his chapter, "Doubts about Darwinism." The book then shows why Design is the best scientific option. Strobel includes chapters on cosmology, physics, astronomy, bio-chemistry, biology, consciousness, so the evidence is well-rounded and from a broad spectrum of sources. The book ends with a cumulative look at all of these factors and what the data imply. This book is a must for those interested in the evolution vs. Design debate. Folks who have a high regard for science should definitely check it out. People who are interested in the intersection of faith and science should also read it. Even those who are not particularly interested in science for its own sake should read it if they think they will encounter scientifically-minded people in the course of evangelism/apologetics (and they will meet this type of person). Strobel not only has the information, he packages it well. The book is laid out in an investigative journalistic style that is interesting to read. Books about science tend to be boring, but this is not a fault of this text. I got slightly bogged down once or twice, but it was a passing twinge. Because the book is rather like a survey, it never really bogged down as a new topic is always on the horizon. Also, survey-style material does not go massively in-depth, so the reader, if he finds a section he doesn't like or in which he is not interested, can move on to a fresh segment. Strobel uses headings and sub-headings that allow the reader to find information readily. Strobel is not overly auto-biographic, but he does include a brief description of his journey from acidic atheism to Christianity. This serves to make the book more approachable as the reader has a better feel for the author and his purposes. Some Christians fault the book for not being sufficiently evangelical, meaning it does not proclaim the gospel adequately. I would argue that this is not the purpose of such a book. Proving Intelligent Design indicates there is a Creator but does not identify that Creator specifically. Strobel believes it is the Christian God, and I agree with him. This book is a stepping stone toward God, but is not meant to positively identify God as the Creator. There is an appendix, though, that does identify God and even Jesus Christ as the Messiah. I think pretty much everyone should read this book. Westerners, especially, are regularly subjected to scientific thought. Wherever the individual falls in regard to faith and science, this book is going to address questions and concerns pertaining to that position. Strobel has sold me in regard to both his arguments and his methodology. I look forward to reading his other books.

Strobel makes a strong case for design while puncturing giant holes in evolutionism. He gathers his information by interviewing leading scientists and philosophers from molecular scientists to cosmologists and many in-between. He punctuates his book with great and telling quotes, such as what he says evolutionists have to believe to be consistent: "Nothing produces everything, non-life produces life, randomness produces fine tuning, chaos produces information, unconsciousness produces consciousness, and non-reason produces reason." If the universe is created it says some interesting things about the Creator; namely that He is "uncaused, beginningless, timeless, immaterial, personal, with enormous power, and the free will to use it." Well, why is he so sure and what is his case based on? It's based on a lot! It is based on prevailing information that out-dates what is still in the text books. Java Man and the Missing Link, for example, have passed out of scientific significance, and the Millery-Urey experiments that supposedly produced the `building blocks of life' are no longer respected as significant. The Big Bang is a relatively recent scientific discovery, but it's occurrence is not ancient enough for a single DNA to have evolved. The Cambrian Explosion ruins the Darwinian model of incrementalism since a great number of animals burst onto the scene without intermediates, and they have not been discovered since Darwin's time either. Philosophy has shown that, even forgetting the Big Bang, logically the universe cannot be eternal (Impossibility of Transversing the Infinite) so therefore must be caused, and that necessitates design and a Designer. The fine tuning of the physical constants such as gravity and the nuclear strong force is so precise that the odds of it happening are virtually 1 to infinity. Some scientists have countered that with the completely unprovable `multiverse' theory, that says there a are an infinite number of universes out there with various settings of these constants - and ours is `just right'. The problem with that is that something would have had to generate these universes and that says `designer'. There is no natural explanation for consciousness; science cannot explain how the immaterial mind comes to be, though some think the mind is material manifestation, somehow part of the brain. That, however, cannot explain feeling, self-awareness, emotions, and the intangibles that make us who we are. The argument that speaks loudest to me is DNA. The recognized probability of it happening accidentally is 1 to 10 to the 40,000th power. That is an indescribably big number. How that much information came together in the right sequence is beyond belief, unless you posit a creator. Bill Gates says: `DNA is like a software program, only much more complex than we've ever devised'. How can that be an accident? I don't think it was! This was a good book and it brought me up-to-date with what is going on, and with what is no longer going on.

"We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures; our Darwinian claim to have done it all ourselves is as ridiculous and as charming as a baby's brave efforts to stand on its own feet and refuse his mother's hand. If the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence." ~ John A. O'Keefe, pg. 190 If you are looking for evidence of God's existence then "The Case for a Creator" is an excellent place to start. Lee Strobel interviews scientists and asks a number of pertinent questions designed to perplex even the brightest of minds. While the scientists argue in favor of Intelligent Design, Lee Strobel asks all the right questions, pretending to be a skeptic. It was interesting to learn about how the conditions for life to even exist are very precise. Even our sun is unique as the vast majority of stars would not be able to "support a planet like earth." We are living on a very finely-tuned planet. It is very unlikely that anything just happened by chance. This book covers a wide range of topics like Darwinism, The Big Bang, consciousness, molecular machines, the human brain, earth's dependence on the sun and moon, faked fossils, prebiotic soup, the Cambrian Explosion, Cosmology, Astronomy, near-death experiences, DNA, Panpsychism and Panthesim. If you were taught in school that evolution is a fact then you will come across some startling new information. Lee Strobel examines the deficiencies of Darwinism and presents some convincing arguments against evolution. He also discovered "that there were credible scientists who harbored significant skepticism toward Darwinian theory." For more information you may want to read Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution is Wrong . I really enjoyed reading this book as it looks at Intelligent Design from a variety of angles. One minute you are learning about biology and the next considering the soul. This is truly a fascinating read that is best taken in small doses, as it is fairly complex. For a while I've been looking for a book that would convince others of the existence of God and finally I think I've found one that does exactly that! Lee Strobel was an investigative reporter who was once was an atheist. In his search for evidence about the life of Jesus Christ he became a Christian. You may also enjoy his book: The Case for Christ: A journalist's personal investigation of the evidence for Jesus . ~The Rebecca Review

Another great Strobel book. I enjoy his investigation, and the conversations he had with many interesting people, but I as a young-earther don't agree with all his conclusions.

All I can say is awesome book

As mentioned in my title, the author does present a unbiased and compelling case in spite of his Christian viewpoint. One of the things I find most compelling about his case is that even if you remove the religious conclusions Strobel draws from his interviews, nearly all of his arguments are still stongly supported by science alone. As a former student of Darwinism (who grew very skeptical by the glaring lack of transitional fossil evidence, among other things), I particularly enjoyed his chapter about evolution versus the fossil record. Evolutionists who argue that Creationists are wishful thinkers who ignore the facts have never been able to explain away the pure science of the fossil record and the Cambrian explosion, which stand in direct conflict with gradual evolutionary processes from a common ancestor. This is an excellent example of hard science refuting evolutionary theory, at least with regards to macroevolution. If gradual evolution with constant emergence of transitional species was taking place before and during the Cambrian explosion, why didn't it continue in the 500 million years since? Yet, as Wallace Arthur notes in "The Origin of Body Plans," by way of contrast, "it appears that no new phylum-level body plans have arisen in the animal kingdom in the last 500 million years." The only observable and testable part of Darwin's theory is natural selection, or "micro-evolution," which leaves Darwinism without an explanatory mechanism for speciation (large-scale evolution). Basically, readers of this book will fall into two categories. Those who see science as having limits and are willing to look beyond those limits to seek answers, and those who refuse to believe in the possibility of an Intelligent Designer (God), and therefore refuse to believe anything that can't be proven without Science. For me, the clincher has always been our consciousness... no scientific explanation has ever come close to making the case that it's purely a biological function. Stobel's chapter on our human consciousness is the most interesting in the book. Interestingly, the study of the conscious mind is difficult with pure science alone... and at some point the reader will have to straddle the world between scientific and metaphysical explanations. At this point, your faith (or lack of it) will play a role in how you view this book. Read this book with an open mind and an open heart. The truth is out there, and science doesn't have all the answers (although the 'science-only' camp would like us to believe it). I'd highly recommend this book to people who don't see science and faith as being mutually exclusive, but rather as two converging paths leading toward the truth.

I didn't need this book to prove to me the existence of GOD. My spiritual journey to this point had already done that. My HIGHER SPIRIT saw fit to bring this book into my awareness. Although I didn't need it, I saw fit to read it. Although I already had all the proof I needed, this book gave me to science to back that faith. However seeing is not believing, believing is seeing. Since science is now married with my faith, I see with a new clarity.