The week of July 16-19, 2023, was truly an opportunity of a lifetime for me. Back in November, the El Paso Creation Network that I am an active part of hosted Dr. John Whitmore of Cedarville University, one of the top geologists in the creation community, and Nate Loper of Canyon Ministries (touring the Grand Canyon from a Biblical perspective) to talk about the Flood. During the conference, I told Dr. Whitmore about studies I have been doing regarding radiometric dating methods and the need for a more scrutinous examination of them. He suggested I do a poster presentation at the 9th International Conference on Creationism, held only every 4-5 years. I had never heard of that before. When I looked it up, I likely had those big cartoon eyes with glee and excitement!
This conference is a gathering of the top Biblical Creation scientists in the world, focused on not merely gathering together and pooling resources but to get research published and presented in a professional format. You can watch a video about the conference here. This is not your normal conference where you bring in speakers to give talks about different subjects. This is a professional conference where people are presenting their research and getting published. In my circles, I am often one of the larger fish in the pond, and here I knew going in and fully confirmed when I was there that I was one of the smaller fish in a much larger lake.
The conference was the evening of Sunday, July 16 through the afternoon of Wednesday, July 19. I flew to Michigan to visit family for a week and a half before the conference, and then my parents drove me to Cedarville University in Ohio (outside Dayton. For the return trip, I joined the caravan from El Paso that was coming separately.
There are keynote speakers during most conferences of this type, but this one was different. Instead of having a single keynote speaker each night, Dr. Whitmore and his crew decided to have someone speak on each of the major fields Creationism addresses: 11 speakers in all over three nights.
The formal paper presentations were each of the three mornings. There were two types of presentations: full papers and abstracts. The full papers are the heart of the conference. There were 29 full papers presented in three different rooms at a time, with four sessions each morning. So, each person could sit in during four full papers each day, but they would miss 1-2 others each time slot. Each presenter would be given 50 minutes to address the highlights of each paper, some behind the scenes, and deal with questions.
Alongside the full papers were the abstracts. In formal papers, the abstract is a basic summary of the whole paper and whole concept. The abstract presentations were only 20 minutes each and would basically give the main overview of a topic, but not yet complete enough to give it full paper status. There were 27 abstracts presented, at the same time as the full papers. Needless to say, no one got to see it all. None of the presentations were recorded to my knowledge without expressed permission, and the main reason why is because they wanted people to focus more on the paper itself, not just the presentation that would be just a sampling of what was going on.
The afternoons had three major events: roundtable talks, poster presentations, and field trips. The round-table talks were a group of experts who formed a panel to discuss a variety of topics and address questions from the public. There were three roundtables, and I didn’t sit on any of them because I was busy doing other stuff. One roundtable dealt with “feathered dinosaurs,” another dealt with the Flood boundaries, and the third dealt with the biogeography in the post-Flood world. Several people commented that the discussions were really good, and they were having some good debates.
The poster presentation was one of the highlights for me as this is where I got my turn to shine. I was one of 22 posters, and I had a two-hour time slot on the second day to “defend” my studies. I’ll make a separate post on that specifically. The posters were meant to present initial ideas and studies that were not ready for full papers. This time operated like a science fair on steroids. I had awesome feedback which I will share later as I further report on this conference. The posters were up for the entire conference, and I got to share my studies throughout the conference.
The field trips went outside the campus to discuss the geology and botany of the area. I was not on any of those trips so I cannot comment. But prior to the poster presentations we got a full viewing of a current draft of the film “Is Genesis History? Mountains After the Flood.” This is a quasi-sequel to the first “Is Genesis History?” film that went to theaters, but this one focused specifically on the studies that Andrew Snelling spearheaded in the Grand Canyon to analyze the folded rocks in the area and to prove/disprove how they folded. The film followed him, Dr. Whitmore, and Dr. Steve Austin in their studies in this field, showcased how Creationists have been doing their research, and much more. It is my understanding this film will not go to theaters when it is finished so it may go straight to DVD.
Then the evening closed with the keynotes, and we had a “soft” closing to the whole conference. After the final presentations that Wednesday morning, we had lunch and a few events for people to choose from, but most started scattering. Oddly, there were no closing final remarks in a large group.
This conference may well have sparked a new chapter in my life. I most certainly plan to come again the next time hopefully to present a full paper, not a mere poster. Whoever says that Biblical Creationists don’t do science either has never read anything, never looked, or doesn’t even know what science actually is. This conference proved that we don’t just do science, we do it well. I had respect for these guys going into the conference; that respect has truly skyrocketed, and it is a total shame that these scientists like Dr. Whitmore, Dr. Snelling, Dr. Austin, Dr. Baumgardner, and Dr. Humphreys are not considered among the greatest scientists of our day. Their research is top-notch and impeccable.
Watch for more of my reflections from this conference in my posts for the next few weeks.
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