Does anyone know of any good resources that survey the evidence for evolution, the age of the earth, and/or the Big Bang in a single (or perhaps one for each) book/website/video-series/whatever? I’ve read/watched plenty of disparate material, but I’m curious if there’s anything that gathers it all in one place in an accessible way.
A quick Google search reveals lots of options, but I don’t have the time to discover which of them is good and bad, and I’m kinda hoping one of you already has. I also noticed a lot of books by Richard Dawkins (and others like him) in my search results. I’m ok reading his books myself, but I have in mind recommending the resource to my church friends, and his work simply won’t cut it for them. It doesn’t have to be from a Christian, but it can’t be from a famous atheist to have credibility.
Also, I’m not really interested in an explanation or assertion of the theories (I know how to find those resources), but rather in an outline of the different lines of evidences with examples of each. For instance, one chapter on the genetic evidence for evolution with a handful of specific examples, or one video on the CMBR as evidence for the Big Bang.
Mainly I’m looking for a single resource I can pull off the shelf or navigate to whenever I need to refresh my knowledge or give recommendations for a friend. Sort of like Evidence That Demands a Verdict, but for science.
Darrell Falk’s Coming to Peace with Science is something like that, though it’s getting older now. There is a summary of the chapters with a bunch of quotes here, if you want to get an idea of the content.
Interesting request in that I cannot think of a suggestion. What springs to mind comes up short by either being written from a position antagonistic to faith, or dealing with only limited aspects of origins questions, or more philosophical or theological in tone, or of questionable authority, or dated, or overly personal and autobiographical, or less than polished writing and production value skills.
It would be nice to have an up to date handbook which gets to the point of how we know the earth/universe is old and what we know of what took place over that time; which surveys the lines of evidence, conveys why we have confidence in them, addresses common misrepresentations, and especially, deals with the consilience of how it all fits together.
I’ve read that before and liked it a lot. It’s actually pretty close to what I’m looking for, but it’s too technical for my purposes. I realize that asking for specific examples and then complaining that they’re too technical seems a bit silly, but I know there are ways of making this kind of data more understandable to a lay audience without watering it down too much.