Blog

by Charlie Wolcott

The heart and soul of the International Conference on Creationism is the papers and abstracts. As this is the first and only professional conference I have been to, I do not have much of sample space for this type of thing as a whole, but it is my understanding that the general idea is not that much different in the mainstream or secular professional conferences.

At this conference, there were full papers and abstracts in which the author(s) got to give a defense of their paper before an audience composed of laymen and other professionals. Each paper and abstract still went through the peer review process, but here the authors got to present before the audience. The paper authors were given 50 minutes to give an overview of their paper and clarify things, whereas the abstracts were only given 20 minutes. You can watch this video to learn about some of these authors.

I am not going to attempt to describe the technical details of these papers here. The only reason I had a remote clue of what was going on in most of these papers was being already familiar with the topics and even then, a lot of it went over my head. What I will emphasis here is what I talked about two weeks ago. The Biblical Creationists are doing true, valid, and legitimate science. During the presentations I sat in, I saw legitimate science. I didn’t agree with every statement or every conclusion. But if Creationists are “not doing legitimate science” then NO ONE is. I’ve seen what is coming from mainstream journals and there is no evidence that science was ever done in some of their papers.

Here are some highlights on a few of the topics. Tim Clarey expanded his published “Carved in Stone” research to showcase through five continents of mapping the six major “geologic megasequences” that the Flood did happen gradually over the course of the year-long event with the peak of the waters only around day 150 and then receding. Australia’s mapping wasn’t finished yet, but Clarey indicated that Australia could be the best of the six continents to show the Flood’s reach. Andrew Snelling discussed radiohalos and showcased how polonium had to be pulled away from uranium to produce their own halos. This would be evidence for accelerated radioactive decay and evidence that such accelerated decay would not produce the heat problem that skeptics insist upon. Steve Austin gave a presentation about Hopi Lake, which would be a great lake that would breach to carve the Grand Canyon.

There were other presentations about statistical comparisons about radiometric dating results, other radiometric dating topics, issues with the Ice Age and the Flood, discussions about animal longevity, and the list goes on – paleontology topics, genetic topics, more Flood geology topics, and even some theological topics. To try to describe them all would overwhelm almost anyone.

There were at least one or two papers that people said were unimpressive and likely should not have passed peer-review. There were papers that disagreed with other papers being shared, but science does that. There are competing ideas over the same central theme. There were other papers that were good enough for getting through peer-review but needed modifications and tweaks to further the study. I’ll hit one in particular next week as it related to my own research.

What was really cool though was despite the disagreements, the whole conference had a central theme: demonstrating the validity of the Bible’s accounts and seeking how the events took place. Some discussions did get heated, and we have to face the fact that we are not yet fully redeemed. There is so much we still have to learn, and some of what we think is going on now may not be actually happening. Some of the scientists have pointed out that they are on their third or fourth version of their models, tweaking things as they go, and would eventually reject the models if the evidence really turns against it. The creationists are doing all the legitimate science that the mainstream only boasts about doing. There is no valid reason to reject their findings on the grounds that “they don’t do science” or “they are biased.”

Next week, I’ll wrap up my series on the International Conference on Creationism by examining my personal experience with my own research and what happened as a result of the feedback I received.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.