In the science versus faith debate, most people either believe that the two are mutually exclusive or can easily be integrated. Edward Wayne Kimbrough falls squarely in the second category.
From Church House to Main Street concludes a series positing a set of universal principles that God expects humans to follow for the optimization of humanity. “The goal of this book,” he writes of Volume 5, “is to search for Universal Principles that provide concrete evidence that the Bible is not just a religious book; it is a scientific book that teaches us how the universe was created” and also serves as a critical historical, social, prophetic, and spiritual guidepost.
Most chapters follow a question-answer format, with questions fast-forwarded to conclusive answers. Kimbrough suggests readers refer to previous volumes to learn how those conclusions were reached. This methodology is frustrating; readers would benefit from inclusion of at least rudimentary summaries of the steps in the scientific method (hypothesis, experimentation, and data analysis) used in each conclusion.
Additionally, the author offers no initial scientific proof that the Bible is a reliable source. For pro-science readers, this calls all his subsequent conclusions into question. Further, most questions don’t require in-depth scientific analysis, since the answers are easily found in the Bible. For example, the answer to “What are the Covenants that God has established with humanity?” is simply a list of paraphrased citations from books of the Bible.
Meanwhile, although the book includes tables of contents from the previous volumes that correspond to each chapter in this new book, they are placed before the appendices, rather than with their paired chapters, where they would be more accessible. The appendices themselves are primarily a collection of puzzling and dense tables. Oddly, they range in topic from Dow Jones Top Shareholders of 2019 to biblical genealogy from Adam to Jesus, and include personal proposals in chart form, such as the author’s plan for a one-year presidential election cycle.
Kimbrough clearly has a passion for the topic. Unfortunately, this title raises more questions than it answers and will likely prove challenging for readers.
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