I have been asked this question a few times and thought this would be the perfect time to lay my cards on the table. I didn’t start out to write this book. I intended to write a different book altogether. Just to be clear: I never intended to write THIS book!

My original goal was to investigate and report on the creation/evolution controversy, in an unbiased manner. I thought it would be fun to take a serious swipe at a few sacred lines in the sand, let go of a fistful of preconceptions, and give evolution a fair shake. As Stephen Covey said, “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” That sounds fair. And besides, I thought it would be honourable to exhibit genuine kindness towards those Darwinist cranks before calling them out. I was honestly puzzled. What was it was that made evolutionary theory so compelling to the atheist hoards? “How do they sleep at night” I had written somewhere in the earliest hours of this journey.

How complicated could it be to wring some sense out of these arrogant godless geeks? How dangerous would it be to go for a spin in their imaginary universe, stop at the gift shop for Darwin bobble-head and get back to my normal Christian life? I told myself that with my newly acquired knowledge I would then be able to offer advice to others interested in defeating the most evil intellectual dung ever flung upon the masses.

“Keep it light” I repeated more than once. People get worked up over this stuff. Hey, I get worked up over this stuff!

But something strange occurred along the way. Something nervous and threatening and more ridiculous than I ever imagined could happen, happened. The mythical slippery slope that I had only hinted at when I first scribbled the title in a notebook began to writhe beneath my boots like a tiny, angry tectonic plate under the illusory bedrock of my tidy young-earth evangelical worldview. You have to believe me. I didn’t start out to write THIS book.

But this book is better. Better by far because, as many before me have learned through experience, once you dare pry open the lid of an unfamiliar can, the worms, undoubtedly, get agitated. For the first time in my life of faith, I was forced to deal with critters I had no experience with. Slippery concepts like interpretive bias and theological uncertainty. Doubt. Ideas that had been ignored, left in the dark, undisturbed by the light of inquisition were set free to slither and writhe on the laboratory table as soon as the lid of permission was peeled back.

It was science. And worship.

This book is better than the book I started out to write because the writing of it changed me. My hope is it will change you.