TASC to Present Comprehensive Creation Series at North Carolina State University This Winter and Spring
Mark your calendars: TASC has been invited to present a series on creation this winter and spring at Grace Church, which meets on the campus of North Carolina State University. The 12 classes in the series are open to the public and will be held on Sunday nights from 6:30 to 8:00 PM starting January 25. TASC will use the new video series from the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) entitled Unlocking the Mysteries of Genesis as the framework for the classes.
The complete schedule is below:
| Dates | Main Topics | Unlocking Episode |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 25 | Introduction and Overview | Chaos or Cosmos? |
| Feb 1 | Origin of Life | What is Life? |
| Feb 8 | Origin of Humans | What is Man? |
| Feb 15 | Fossil Record | Buried Clues? |
| Feb 22 | The Flood | Flood or Fiction? |
| Mar 1 | Dating Methods | How Old is Earth? |
| Mar 8 | ------- (no class) ------- | -------------- |
| Mar 15 | Soft tissue, scripture | Dinosaurs! |
| Mar 22 | Causes of the Ice Age | The Ice Age |
| Mar 29 | Archeology, Scripture, Babel | Rise of Civilization |
| Apr 5 | ------- (no class) ------- | -------------- |
| Apr12 | Big Bang, CMB | Origin of the Universe |
| Apr 19 | Earth was Designed | Uniqueness of Earth |
| Apr 26 | Review of all other videos | Science and Scripture |
You, your family, and friends are all invited to come out and join us! Please come meet the TASC board and NC State college students and learn more about the creation and our creator.
Each class will include one of the ICR videos (see schedule above), presentations by TASC members, and a question and answer period. The comprehensive scope of the series touches on the age of the earth, evolution, the Flood, the fossil record, the origin of life, the origin of the universe, intelligent design, Biblical history, the origin of humans, and much more. The series will be presented by scientists of the TASC board, including Gerald Van Dyke, PhD; Fred Johnson, PhD; Elizabeth McVeigh, MD; Jeff Gift, PhD; Joe Spears, MS; Everett Coates, BS; Mark Stephens, MA; David Plaisted, PhD; and Dan Reynolds, PhD.
The classes will be held at the:
Witherspoon Student Center
North Carolina State University
2810 Cates Avenue
Room 210
Raleigh, North Carolina
The Witherspoon Student Center is at the corner of Cates Avenue and Dan Allen Drive.
The video series is hosted by Christian actor Markus Lloyd and features the well known creation scientists John Baumgardner, Jason Lisle, Brian Thomas, Jake Hebert, Georgia Purdom, John Morris, Jeffrey Tompkins, Larry Vardiman, and many others. Unlocking the Mysteries of Genesis is ideal for Sunday school and comes with a companion book. Perhaps you will want to use this series to teach about creation at your church or small group.
The first class will introduce the series, the speakers, and what the scriptures teach about creation. We will consider questions like: Is the universe a product of chance or design? and Is the creation thousands or billions of years old? We will also touch upon topics such as evidence for design in animals, special adaptations like mimicry, the tendency for natural systems to become disordered, why there is beauty in nature, flight in birds, variation within kinds vs. macroevolution, genetically built-in (designed) adaptations, and the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. We’ll explain Occam’s Razor and how it points to creation.
In the second class we will define life and look at its origin. We’ll consider macromolecules such as DNA, RNA, proteins, and carbohydrates; macroevolution; Darwin’s tree of life; problems with abiogenesis and panspermia; mutations and natural selection; variation within kinds; abiogenesis and entropy; the RNA world hypothesis; and the differences in the life in plants and animals. We will discuss the fact that humans were made in God’s image and what implications that has for human dignity.
In the third class we will consider the origin of humans. Are we just intelligent animals or more special than that? Do DNA similarities prove common ancestry? We will explore the alleged similarities between the human and chimp genomes; the alleged fusion of chromosomes that proves humans and other primates evolved from a common ancestor; the uniqueness of humans; and genetic evidence that supports the historicity of Adam, Eve, Noah, and the Flood. We will discuss blood clotting, how it exhibits “irreducibly complexity,” and why design is a better explanation than evolution. We’ll explain why natural selection can explain the survival but not arrival of the fittest. Finally we will consider, Are we an accident or were we created for a purpose?
In the fourth class, we will consider the fossil record. Does the fossil record support evolution over millions of years or a recent catastrophic flood that was global in extent? We will discuss missing transitional forms, the implications of well preserved fossils, the theory of punctuated equilibrium, stasis, how the Cambrian Explosion shows there was great complexity from the start and why Darwinism is wrong, the lack of evidence for vast periods of time between layers, the implications of finding intact dinosaur soft tissue and associated biomolecules, and much more.
In the fifth glass, we’ll consider Noah’s Flood. Was it local or global in extent? We will look at Flood stories common in cultures around the world. We’ll consider evidence that indicates many geological formations were generated rapidly instead of over millions of years.
In the sixth class we will consider radiometric dating and the age of the earth. We will discuss why the “age issue” matters and consider hard evidence for accelerated nuclear decay in the past. Our discussion will include helium retention in zircons, polonium radiohalos, argon retention in feldspar, and isochrons. We will also look at radiocarbon evidence in the fossil record that supports a recent global Flood.
In the seventh class, we will discuss dinosaurs. We’ll see fossil evidence that dinosaurs lived recently including intact soft tissue, intact biomolecules, and radiocarbon dating. We will discuss evidence from the Bible, other ancient writings and ancient art that humans and dinosaurs were contemporaries. We will touch upon why dinosaurs went extinct, fossil formation, and alleged dinosaur to bird evolution.
In the eighth class we will talk about the ice age. Much evidence for at least one ice age can be found in the rocks and soils left behind by glaciers. We will discuss glaciers and ice cores, oxygen isotope ratios and methane content used to date cores, and the astronomical theory. We will then show how the events during and following the Flood would naturally lead to the rapid advance of ice sheets that characterize the ice age.
In the ninth class we will consider the rise of civilization We currently have seven billion people and six thousand languages. How did this come to be? We will review evolutionary theories of homo sapiens, the Out of Africa model, mitochondrial Eve, Y chromosome Adam, and human migration to other continents. We will consider archeological evidence that supports the accuracy of the scriptures such as Ur in Iraq, the Tablets at Ebla, Babel, and the Dead Sea Scrolls. We will discuss how genetics show that the diversity and the population of the earth now could have come from Noah’s family. We’ll see how “race” is an evolutionary concept that, when coupled with the philosophy of “survival of the fittest,” leads to cruelty and prejudice.
In the 10th class we will discuss the origin of the universe. We will look at evidence that the universe had a beginning. We’ll discuss the fine tuning of physics and why it points to a creator. We will look at problems with the Big Bang theory and offer an alternative that also explains how the earth could be only thousands of years old yet we see starlight from objects billions of light years away. We examine the lack of evidence for parallel universes and inflation theory, both critical to the naturalistic story.
In the 11th class we will consider the uniqueness of Earth. We will discuss our solar system, the earth and moon, the “Goldilocks zone,” the sun, earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field, earth’s tilt, our location in the Milky Way, and why all this points to an intelligent designer like the God of the scripture.
In the last class we will tie everything together by way of review. We will discuss science and scripture. We’ll address important questions: Why is there evil? Why does the age question matter? Does the Bible get history right? Was life an accident or created? Is death the creative engine of evolution or a result of the Fall? We’ll touch upon: the idea that humans were made in God’s image, the fossil record, the Flood, dinosaur soft tissue, and the origin of the universe. Are we just cosmic tramps in a purposeless universe where anything goes, or are we eternal beings created by an all loving and powerful God who entered history in the person of Jesus Christ? It’s our choice what to believe.