The ninth International Conference on Creationism (ICC) was held July 16–19, 2023, at Cedarville University in Ohio. ICR scientists made substantial contributions to this year’s conference as either authors or co-authors of five technical papers, three posters, and one oral abstract. We are pleased to announce that the proceedings are now online and may be freely accessed by interested readers.¹

ICR scientists have regularly contributed to the ICC over the years, with ICR’s first vice president, Dr. Duane Gish, making a presentation at the very first ICC in 1986.² From 1986 to 1998, the ICC was held every four years, and the proceedings were published by the Creation Science Fellowship of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Since 2003, the conference has been held every five years. In 2013, Cedarville University took over the responsibility of running the conference and publishing the proceedings.

Some of the most significant developments in the history of creation science have been presented at the ICC. These include catastrophic plate tectonics and a Flood model for the Ice Age in 1986,^3,4 a model for reversals of Earth’s magnetic field during the Flood in 1990,⁵ results of the Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) project in 2003,⁶ an initial refutation of dubious claims of human and chimpanzee genetic similarity in 2013,⁷ refutation of the evolutionary “fusion” scenario for the origin of Human Chromosome 2 in 2018,⁸ and the first fully creationist and design-based model of biological adaptation, Continuous Environmental Tracking (CET), in 2023, which is a paradigm-shifting theoretical alternative to the juggernaut held by Darwinian selectionism.⁹

This year, ICR scientists presented five technical papers covering the topics of biology, paleontology, and geology. Two of the papers described ICR’s ongoing efforts to develop a new design-based biological theory to replace the flawed concept of natural selection. The first presents initial results from ICR’s cavefish research,¹⁰ and the second discusses how a biological theory of design may help to explain symbiotic relationships.¹¹ A third paper presented evidence that biological systems are designed to be optimally efficient, and it also presented preliminary data showing that fossil animals may have lived much longer than their modern-day descendants.¹² The fourth paper proposed a new comprehensive Flood model, using stratigraphic data from five continents that confirm the progressive nature of the Flood.¹³ And the fifth paper showed how global paleontological data are integrated into the geological megasequences, also supporting the progressive nature of the Genesis Flood.¹⁴

As a physicist, I was especially interested in the following three presentations. Dr. Andy McIntosh presented a paper showing that erasure of information from a system has been proven by physicist Rolf Landauer to be associated with a loss of energy from the environment. This implies that the storage of information, including the information stored in DNA, is always associated with a corresponding precise input of energy. Information and thermodynamics are interconnected, as creation researchers have long maintained.¹⁵

Creation researchers have deduced that a rapid buildup of radiocarbon took place after the Flood. Dr. Russ Humphreys proposed that the same mechanism that caused accelerated nuclear decay during the Flood year also accelerated nuclear fusion in the sun, resulting in increased production of energetic solar particles that would have rapidly built up Earth’s post-Flood radiocarbon inventory.¹⁶

Finally, sophisticated computer modeling by Dr. John Baumgardner and Evan Navarro showed that large tsunamis during the Genesis Flood can plausibly account for the thick sedimentary rocks on the continents.¹⁷ This is an important result, since explaining these thick sedimentary layers in the context of the Flood has long been a major challenge for creation geologists and is one of the main reasons why Dr. Baumgardner decided to study geophysics in the first place.

Unfortunately, scheduling conflicts did not allow me to attend other high-quality presentations. Nearly a dozen other conference papers are also archived online along with posters and abstracts that were presented. We encourage interested readers to visit the ICC webpage to read about the latest developments in creation science.

References

1. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 9 (2023).
2. Gish, D. T. 1986. The Origin of Life. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 1: 57–64, article 12.
3. Baumgardner, J. R. 1986. Numerical Simulations of the Large-scale Tectonic Changes Accompanying the Flood. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 1: 17–30, article 56.
4. Oard, M. J. 1986. An Ice Age within the Biblical Time Frame. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 1: 157–166, article 48.
5. Humphreys, D. R. 1990. Physical Mechanism for Reversals of the Earth’s Magnetic Field during the Flood. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 2: 129–142, article 47.
6. Vardiman, L. et al. 2003. Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 5: 337–348, article 25.
7. Tomkins, J. 2013. New Research Evaluating Similarities between Human and Chimpanzee DNA. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 7, article 33.
8. Tomkins, J. P. 2018. Combinatorial Genomic Data Refute the Human Chromosome 2 Evolutionary Fusion and Build a Model of Functional Design for Interstitial Telomeric Repeats. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 8: 222–228, article 32.
9. Guliuzza, R. and P. Gaskill. 2018. Continuous Environmental Tracking: An Engineering Framework to Understand Adaptation and Diversification. Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism. 8: 158–184, article 11.
10. Hennigan, T. et al. 2023. A Creation Model of Design: Application of an Interface Systems Model in Key Global Symbiotic Relationships. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 9: 228–241, article 14.
11. Boyle, M. J. et al. 2023. Testing the Cavefish Model: An Organism-focused Theory of Biological Design. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 9: 654, article 17.
12. Hebert, J. 2023. Allometric and Metabolic Scaling: Arguments for Design... and Clues to Explaining Pre-Flood Longevity? Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 9: 206–227, article 18.
13. Clarey, T. L. and D. J. Werner. 2023. A Progressive Global Flood Model Confirmed by Rock Data across Five Continents. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 9: 412–445, article 23.
14. Tomkins, J. P. and T. L. Clarey. 2023. Developing a Comprehensive Model of Global Flood Paleontology: Integrating the Biostratigraphic Record with Global Megasequence Deposition. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 9: 561–587, article 25.
15. McIntosh, A. C. 2023. Language, Coded Instructions and the Interaction with Thermodynamics. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 9: 316–326, article 21.
16. Humphreys, D. R. 2023. Cause of the Large Post-Flood Jump in Earth’s Carbon 14. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 9: 280–287, article 16.
17. Baumgardner, J. and E. Navarro. The Role of Large Tsunamis in the Formation of the Flood Sediment Record. Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism. 9: 363–386, article 13.

* Dr. Hebert is Research Scientist at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas.