Prepare yourself for questions every parent or friend of a searcher must answer.

As bestselling author Sigmund Brouwer began to hear more and more questions about creation from his growing daughters, he realized that the issue could easily turn them away from developing faith in God. Was he going to stand by and let them wrestle alone with widely asserted contradictions between science and Genesis, especially as they got older? Or could he prepare himself to help them understand more clearly the truth in the Bible's foundation?

In Who Made the Moon?, Brouwer engages the reader by combining easily understood science concepts with inspirational stories from a loving father's heart. He says, "I believe it's my responsibility to know enough about both the Bible and science to answer the difficult questions. I want to be able to show my children that truth is indivisible and that faith in the God of Genesis has nothing to fear from science."

Who Made the Moon?

A Father Explores How Faith and Science AgreeBy Sigmund Brouwer

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2008 Sigmund Brouwer
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8499-2040-0

Contents

Part One-Faith1. Who Made the Moon?..........................................12. Through Heaven's Gate.......................................63. Intellectual Honesty........................................19Part Two-Science4. Physics and the Miracle of Life.............................315. In the Beginning............................................516. Creatio Ex Nihilo...........................................657. The Foundations of the Earth................................72Part Three-Conflict8. In Galileo's Footsteps......................................819. The Fence Around the Cross..................................9510. Man Without God............................................11111. Misunderstandings of the Bible.............................12212. Misunderstandings of Science...............................138Part Four-Harmony13. The Monster in the Closet..................................15114. The Monster's Friend.......................................16415. My Daughters' Journeys.....................................184AppendicesAppendix A: Recommended Resources..............................192Appendix B: Timeline of the Big Bang Story.....................194Appendix C: Discussion Points for Children.....................196Notes..........................................................206About the Author...............................................215Study/Discussion Guide.........................................216

Chapter One

Who Made the Moon?

Did blind chance know that there was light and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These and other suchlike considerations, always have, and always will prevail with mankind, to believe that there is a being who made all things, who has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared. -Isaac Newton

Our family was gathered on the deck on a hot summer evening to listen to the coyotes. Nearly every evening at dusk, one pack would begin howling from the top of a hill to the west, to be answered by another pack from the east.

As the sky darkened, the top of a full moon began to edge over the horizon. It was a moment as wonderful and fragile as dust on butterfly wings. The rest of the moon slowly appeared, with the music of the coyotes as a haunting background symphony, until the silvery disk hung above the hills, so bright that the shadows of the lunar mountains were visible from a quarter million miles across a void, yet seemingly so close that Savannah, who was three, reached toward it and whispered, "Daddy, who made the moon?"

What an instinctive and profound question, embedded in our DNA. Even when we are mere toddlers, the night sky leads us to search for a Creator.

Indeed, who made the moon?

When I listen to the beat of my daughter's heart, a great, quiet love fills me. I do not say this because this sense of love is unique to me. What is incredible is that each of us is given a unique sense of it.

Of all the human loves, I believe this parent-child love can be the purest. I do not love my daughters because of what I can gain but because of what I can give.

How is it that something so invisible is so strong?

Why are we able to share love?

And most of all, where does this love come from?

There is no denying that the night skies speak to us.

Away from the city, away from all that is made by man, surrounding us and dulling our senses, when we stand beneath a clear, dark sky and behold the vastness of the stars, our souls respond like harp strings plucked by an invisible hand. We yearn with a homesickness to be somewhere else, an unknown place as difficult to define as the yearning itself.

Sometimes, in the dark, with my head leaning softly against my daughter's chest, a haunting sadness overcomes me. I hope that she will love me as much as I love her. I hope, too, that I will live until I am old. That I will watch her become a woman. That I will one day hold her son or daughter the way I once held her.

Listening to that heartbeat, I often think of how growing old takes me toward my death. Neither my love for my daughters nor their love for me will be able to turn away that certainty. So will come the day when, perhaps, one of my daughters will lay her head against my chest to listen to the frail thumping of a heart close to its final beat.

This is the human condition. Great sadness along with great joy. The more we love, the more death takes when it inevitably arrives.

How do we deal with this? Why is life so beautiful yet so cruel? Is there a purpose to this?

The Genesis account of Creation resonates so strongly with our souls because it simply and elegantly helps us understand the night sky and the longing that comes with it, giving us the answers to the questions embedded within us.

When Savannah is old enough to read Genesis, it will tell her that God made the moon. As she reads on, she will learn that her sister, her parents, and her future children are more than complicated packages of protein, carbohydrates, fat, and water, doomed to become dust when their life forces are extinguished. Because of the bedrock of Genesis, she, like me, will be able to embrace emotions that are uniquely human. Peace. Hope. Purpose. And from that foundation, the Bible will proceed to answer all of the other major questions of human existence that she will someday have.

Who Made the Moon?

But also awaiting Savannah are answers that disagree with Genesis. Scientist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins would tell Savannah that God did not make the moon-or anything else. That the universe is random and meaningless. That we are merely assembled stardust. That our lives have no purpose-or hope.

In the introduction to his best-selling and highly publicized book The God Delusion, Dawkins states, "If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down." I was not. The book does make strong points against the flaws of religious institutions, and it demolishes poor and obviously cherry-picked arguments for the existence of God. But believers could, and perhaps should, do the same.

One of my goals as a parent is to ensure that by the time Savannah faces books like this, she will also be able to see that Dawkins does not have the intellectual honesty to fairly and squarely face the twenty-first century's most compelling argument for the existence of God:

Science.

An Atheist Undone

Antony Flew, perhaps the world's most famous atheistic philosopher, would once have also given Savannah an answer similar to that of Dawkins.

No longer.

Flew made global headlines when, at the age of eighty-one, he publicly renounced his atheism, having concluded that, despite what he had taught, argued, and published for all of his adult life, God does exist. What would cause a man with so much vested in an atheistic worldview to make that stunning reversal?

Science.

Who made the moon?

That summer evening on the deck, as the last of the chorus of coyotes faded, it was easy enough to pick up Savannah and whisper back the answer. "God did."

It was an answer she accepted and trusted because it was Daddy's answer.

But almost certainly the day will come when she'll wonder if Daddy's answer is enough.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Who Made the Moon?by Sigmund Brouwer Copyright © 2008 by Sigmund Brouwer. Excerpted by permission.
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