It is now beyond any scientific dispute that all life evolved by a natural process of random mutation and DNA crossover, genetic drift, horizontal gene transfer, and natural selection. We are the highly refined but happenstance products of blind experimentation carried out in a design laboratory that has been running itself for billions of years. We are first cousins to the chimpanzees, descendants not of any biblical Adam but of lumbering hairy ancestors who were making fires and hand axes in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. Accepting this has been especially difficult for Christianity, because evolution challenges many foundational doctrines.
Concerned believers are walking a troubled middle path between Genesis and genetics, threatened with the loss of a cherished faith on the one hand or their intellectual integrity on the other. Numerous science-savvy theologians have emerged to help them on their way, a whole cottage industry of guides working to establish their own different trails through the hostile territory outside EdenÔÇÖs comforting fairyland. Writing with the combination of high criticism and low humor that fans have come to love from Robert M. Price, he and co-author Edwin A. Suominen survey the apologetic landscape and offer their own frank reckoning of evolutionÔÇÖs significance for Christian belief.
EDITORIAL REVIEWS
REVIEW
–Victor J. Stenger, author of God: The Failed Hypothesis“This book is an exceptionally well-written, informed and witty smack down of Christian attempts to deny the fact of evolution or incorporate it into their faith. The authors show us in this masterful book, the likes of which I have never seen before, that the implications of evolution are devastating for the Bible and the doctrines based on it. Absolutely brilliant!”
–John W. Loftus, author of The Outsider Test for Faith
“If I ever have to teach another workshop on how to debate creationists, this volume will be my textbook. Everything is there: comprehensive deconstruction of the Christian bible and its several myths of creation, comparative mythology and folklore, and all the relevant science from astronomy and quantum physics to molecular genetics and population biology. It clearly exposes the fatal flaws of biblical creationism, scientific creationism, creation science, intelligent design, and, yes, theistic evolution.”
–Frank R. Zindler, editor of American Atheist Press, author of The Jesus the Jews Never Knew and Through Atheist Eyes
“Evolving out of Eden offers something unprecedented–a joint effort by a theologian and a highly accomplished engineer, both former Christian believers, to explicate the theology and the science behind more than a century of Christian responses to the challenge posed by Darwinian evolution.┬á.┬á.┬á. Between them, Price and Suominen possess all the tools to track this quarry wherever it might dodge. Highly recommended!”
–Tom Flynn, editor of Free Inquiry Magazine
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Evolving out of Eden began as a collaboration between Robert M. Price, an atheist, and Edwin A. Suominen, then a believing but troubled Christian who was wrestling with what he perceived as a grave conflict between evolution and his inherited faith. Having both accepted the reality of evolution, they agreed to research its theological implications and the various ways that Christian writers have tried to smooth things over.
Bob holds a PhD in systematic theology from Drew University (1981) and a PhD in New Testament from Drew (1993). He is the author of over a dozen books and his own New Testament translation, The Pre-Nicene New Testament. He occasionally attends Episcopalian services where he sings, enjoys the stained glass, and keeps his mouth shut. Ed holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington (1995), where his senior project wound up being the subject of fourteen U.S. patents. He has retired from practice as a registered patent agent to write books rather than patents, for this one devoting himself to a year of personal study about evolutionary science and its intersection with theology.