In recent years ICR has become more and more active in basic scientific research. This is not something which "just happened"; it was planned. When I became president of ICR in 1996, I insisted ICR's mandate was twofold: research and communication. The communication included all forms of transferring information about creation. It certainly included the ICR Graduate School in the sciences, but it included children's workshops and meetings too. And nothing in between was to be neglected. As always we continue to hold seminars for non-scientists, church meetings, conferences, etc., as well as scientific meetings.
Thankfully, we didn't have to do it alone. Much of ICR's success is measured by the large number of creation advocacy groups around the world. In some ways they do a better job of communication to the laymen than we do, and we welcome their partnership. Together, much is being accomplished, for polls continue to reveal that a majority of Americans reject pure naturalistic evolution. Things will never go back to the way they were.
The other prong of ICR's work involves basic research, and it is for this we receive the most notoriety. In many ways we are alone in this work. To be sure, scientists elsewhere are doing good research, but only ICR maintains a faculty of scientists whose main responsibility is research. Most newsworthy was the RATE Initiative on radioisotope dating which discovered more than we had dreamed, for several evidences that radioisotope decay rates had changed over time were uncovered. The scientists are now in the process of both presenting and extending this information. Some members of the inner circle of researchers were not on ICR's full-time staff, but the research was conducted mainly under ICR's auspices and funding came primarily from ICR's "family" of supporters. New projects on human gen-omics (GENE); the nature of past climates (possible pre-Flood canopy, Flood "hypercanes," post-Flood "Ice Age"); the origin of the universe; and flood geology (FAST) are rapidly progressing, again with the coordinated assistance of non-ICR scientists, but under ICR's umbrella. Creationists can expect stunning advances in our understanding in the months ahead.
As revealed recently in Acts & Facts, ICR has accepted a leadership role in the International Conference on Creationism, the premier peer-reviewed conference on creation research held every four years. The ICR-sponsored research is always featured, but numerous projects from a growing number of scientists are on display. (The next conference will be held in the San Diego area in August 2008.) Furthermore, we have just instituted a new online technical journal. The lead article of this issue of Acts & Facts calls for papers to be submitted. Because of all this, the creation message, and thus creation ministry, has never been stronger.
