Many years ago a friend, a Christian from a different denomination, loaned me a book by the creationist Hugh Ross. I don’t remember the title: it might have been The Fingerprint of God. Reading it surprised and shocked me.
Why? Because I found that I agreed with most of it. I did not expect this.
As mentioned before in these essays, creationism or creation science is a pseudoscience because it cannot be falsified. It cannot be disproven.
In the introduction Ross claimed he had written a science book. By the time I had finished it I decided that claim was perhaps the biggest mistake of the book. To me it was a religious book, one in which Christian beliefs were illuminated by scientific observations of nature. That is how religious writing should be, and Ross did a very good job with it.
Before writing this essay, I looked a little more into what Hugh Ross believes. He has an astrophysics background. He accepts the observed ages of the earth and the universe. He also accepts the observed evolution of life. What he does not accept is any naturalistic explanation for that evolution, such as natural selection. He argues evolution was always driven by Divine intervention, every step of the way. This idea is known as progressive creationism. It’s not falsifiable, but it avoids the Omphalos deception, perhaps the only creationism that does.
Ross also claims some kind of Divine guidance in the planet Theia’s collision with the earth that gave rise to the moon. He maintains the odds of the moon forming was very low, so God must have had a hand in it, ensuring just the right angle and velocity of the collision. Again, this is not falsifiable, and the reason Ross argues for it appears to get us back to the fact that many people incorrectly think that God cannot use randomness or chance. Ross rejects abiogenesis (a natural cause for the beginning of life), but it should be noted that the Rare Earth Hypothesis postulates abiogenesis as the result of the huge and frequent tides from the large moon in a close orbit that resulted from the Theian collision. Without the moon the earth would likely have been barren.
He also is aware of the falsifiability criterion and has tried to develop falsifiable tests in his ideas. Or so he claims: unfortunately, I have not read enough of his extensive writings to report on this matter.
The bottom line is that I can recommend Hugh Ross as a Christian apologist who takes science seriously. He loves God and he loves God’s creation. Enjoy his writings but keep the true demarcations of science in mind as you read.
When I returned the Ross book to my friend, I noted it contained a mathematical model for the economy of salvation. I told her he came very close to a theological proof of the existence of purgatory. She was not amused.