Sometimes ICR speakers are invited to speak to a potentially hostile crowd. In January 2017, I spoke at Campbell University in North Carolina in a creation event that a group of dedicated Christian undergraduates initiated. Campbell still carries a “Christian” reputation from its beginnings, but students and faculty confirmed to me that the school’s tenor and personnel have become increasingly secular over the last few decades.1 The organizing students therefore wanted a creation speaker to present evidence for biblical creation to the hundreds of evolution-taught students who may never have considered how well the Bible explains the origins of the world and all it contains.
The remarkable students who invited me understand why creation matters. They regularly defend their Christian beliefs. I asked them where they learned biblical creation, and some affirmed that their parents incorporated creation materials into their homeschool experience.
These young adults took care of the many details an event such as this requires. They obtained funding to secure an auditorium and cover speaker costs, persuaded evolution-leaning science professors to encourage their students to attend even if only to gauge how “irrational” and “unscientific” the presentation might be, and conducted an on-campus physical and digital advertising campaign. Due to their efforts, over 700 students, plus several ICR supporters from surrounding communities, attended, and at least several dozen watched the event online.
I was privileged to give an evening presentation titled “Seven Fossil Features to Fortify Your Faith” in which I presented Bible-friendly science solutions to evolutionary problems. For example, Bible believers who agree with atheistic evolutionists that creatures died and formed fossils millions of years before Adam have a difficult time explaining why Jesus died in our place. Evolution’s fictional history asserts that humans developed through the death of millions of unfit creatures, whereas scriptural history affirms that death came through man’s conscious rebellion against God.
In addition to evolution’s theological implications, dozens of fossilized animals retain original body components that should have decayed long ago if they were millions of years old. These dinosaur and other fossils still have remnants of original vertebrate proteins including elastin, ovalbumin, and collagen.2 If the Flood formed fossils, then Earth’s rock layers record animals buried after sin and its curse of death.3 And if the Flood formed fossils only thousands of years ago, no wonder those old bones still have so many remnants of short-lived proteins.
Audience members asked questions following the presentation. Most were typical questions, like how the dinosaurs might have fit on Noah’s Ark.4 Two each of the 60 or so basic dinosaur kinds—some likely juveniles—would have all fit quite neatly into one section of one of the Ark’s three decks. Another student asked about the universe’s expansion as evidence for a Big Bang. The models run expansion backward all the way to a supposed time when all matter and energy were packed into a tiny nugget. What if God created it already large in the beginning and then keeps it expanding from there?5 These kinds of questions revealed that the students had not heard many biblical or scientific creation answers.
We can thank this small group of smart and faithful creation-thinking students for going against the evolutionary grain. They made this valuable opportunity to introduce secular thinkers to a radically different but sensible and biblical view of world history.
If you want to know more about scheduling an ICR speaker you can visit ICR.org/events, email events@icr.org, or call 800.337.0375.
References
- Secular thinkers discount miracles and thus generally have a low view of Scripture, whereas biblical Christians believe all the Bible’s miracles, including the recent creation of everything.
- Thomas, B. 2014. Original-Tissue Fossils: Creation’s Silent Advocates. Acts & Facts. 43 (8): 5-9.
- Genesis 3.
- Morris, J. 1992. How Could All the Animals Get On Board Noah’s Ark? Acts & Facts. 21 (3).
- Hebert, J. and B. Thomas. 2014. Does Science Support the Big Bang? Acts & Facts. 43 (7): 21.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his M.S. in biotechnology from Stephen F. Austin State University.
