Dan Reynolds PhD

Isaiah 45:18 (KJV) 

For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else. 

Genesis 8:22 (RSV) 

While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.

Revelation 20:11 (KJV) 

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.

I was recently invited to give a talk on intelligent design to a college philosophy class on Darwin, Marx, and Freud. I have known the professor for a number of years and had presented to his classes before. He usually has had me come in and present the case for intelligent design (ID) at the start of the section on Darwinism. The professor is an atheist but interested in discussing various views. I can only imagine what he has to say about my presentations afterwards; no doubt he tries to counter my arguments. Since I only had one chance to speak to these students, I wanted to present them with what I considered to be the best evidences for theism. This article is based on that talk. The discussion here will be brief and in everyday language.

The creation/evolution debate is a critical battle ground for the hearts and minds of everyone. What we think about our origins impacts everything we think about the world and ourselves. If human beings are merely the result of natural law working over billions of years as materialists claim, then any action we “choose” can be justified since we become the arbiters of right and wrong. Our culture is becoming increasingly secular in its thinking and policies. Moral relativism, situation ethics, sexual permissiveness in all its forms, abortion, theft, senseless mass murders, tolerance and even justification for dishonesty, are on the rise. We are at a critical time, a tipping point, in the history of our nation.

While I was studying chemistry in graduate school at the University of Texas, I befriended a physics graduate student, who was studying echolocation in bats in the hopes that the research might result in helpful technologies for blind people. One day he invited me to his lab to watch as he fed the bats. We entered a small room where dozens of bats eagerly waited for a dinner of yellow grub worms. Many of the bats were hanging from the ceiling but others were flying around us yet never touching us. I looked at one bat on the ceiling as he looked down at us. His mouth was open and his lips quivered as he rapidly rotated his head round and round. I was fascinated. The bat was using his echolocation capability, akin to sonar, to map out the environment.

This month I report on various science news stories and articles from the secular and creationist literature from over the past few years. The topics will include origin of life research, the discovery of nearby earth-sized planets, the discovery of gravity waves, the competition between dark matter and Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) for explaining astronomical observations, new evidence for a galactocentric universe, the use of DNA for computer memory, a conference on the historicity of Adam, and an upcoming total solar eclipse which will soon be visible near you.

One scientific challenge young earth creationists have had to address is the starlight-time question.

From NASA: Binary spiral galaxies NGC 2207 (left) and IC 2163 (right) are estimated to be 114 million light years away from Earth

Recently I was asked to give a talk on resources available on creation. I expanded the topic to include best evidences for creation. This article is based on that talk. For resources, I will discuss some of the major websites and organizations. Many of these will probably be familiar to you if you have been interested in creation science for a while. For best evidences, I will discuss scripture, the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of species, empirical detection of intelligent causes, and the age of the earth.

REPORT FROM THE Intelligent Design Conference 

 Highlands, North Carolina, June 24-26, 2004

Setting and Overview

The conference was held at the Community Bible Church in Highlands North Carolina situated in the beautiful Smokey Mountain area surrounded by clouds, forest, and waterfalls (website: http://www.idconference.org/). My daughter, Holly, and I attended. I took a digital camera and made a few pictures some of which are included below.

Master Books has just released a new book entitled Refuting Compromise by Answers in Genesis staff member Jonathan Sarfati. While the main thrust of Refuting Compromise is a theological and scientific refutation of progressive creationism as advanced by Christian astronomer Hugh Ross, it is also an up-to-date review and defense of young earth creation (YEC) science in general. Refuting Compromise is thoroughly documented with references, websites, drawings, illustrations, and photographs. This article is a review of the main topics discussed in the book.

Those who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s lived through a revolutionary transformation of Western culture from a Judea-Christian worldview to the prevailing secular views of today.