My latest Creation Ministries magazine has an article on Dr. Dewey Hodges, an aerospace engineering professor from Georgia Tech, with his PhD from Stanford. The article was written by a student at Tech who was influenced by Dr. Hodges. Hodges became interested in creation in 1971 while a graduate student at Stanford and working at Ames Research Center. He started a Bible study at Ames and continued when he moved to Tech. The interviewer commented that Georgia Tech has become more secular in the last two decades since he was there. Hodges commented "Most large public and private colleges share a common perspective that Christianity is not true, and even if it were true, it is not relevant. Then we have university administrators bending over backwards to promote non-Christian social behavior. There are administration officials hired to do nothing but enforce the university's vision of 'diversity', but this really amounts to 'perversity'."
Asked how his faith interacts with his work, he replied "There is an underlying order to the universe, and I especially see that order in the equations I write." He related the story of how he and a colleague found mistakes in equations of structural analysis. They realized the equations were longer than needed. "And I don't think it was an accident that the final analysis is simpler, and that the underlying interpretation is simpler." He has other examples of his beliefs about why he believes evolution is wrong and creation the only possible answer. The article concludes with a quotation from Kepler "there is a connection between mathematics and the real world and this is part of design. I feel that I am 'thinking God's thoughts after him'." Hodges recommends reading the books: Mathematics; Is God silent? and Euler's Defense of the Divine Revelation against the Objections of the Freethinkers."
During the first lecture to each class Hodges states " There are people on this campus and in this culture who will tell you that you cannot be a good scientist of engineer if you are a Christian. But I am here to tell you that they are wrong."
I agree with that statement.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Sunday, March 4, 2012
NEWSPAPER COMMENTS
I have been engaged in a couple of online comment strings on the evolution/creation science controversy. I am always interested in the fact that we have such a great gap in our thinking, one that the universe was created about 6000 years ago and that it came into being 4.5 billion years ago as a Big Bang. When I first entered this arena I said the difference was so much that the answers should be simple and obvious, but immediately ran into the problem that all scientific explanations are based on assumptions. I had completed 12 hours toward a nuclear engineering degree and was certain C14 dating would be a definitive proof so I looked up the research at that time and immediately ran into the problem that the technique assumed that the atmosphere and high intensity solar radiation that changes Nitrogen to radioactive Carbon has been constant for over 100,000 years that didn't agree with the concept of a young earth. The age-old question has been what was the original earth and atmosphere like and how has it changed. We have a lot of guesses and not much proof of any of the assumptions. What I saw was that if the earth was young then the C14 technique would be fairly accurate for a few thousand years and then there should be a discontinuity in the data and when I looked at it I found that was true. Dates of really old carbon jumped in the data.
Another thing that has always fascinated me is looking at the demographics equations that predict the number of people and how the population changes. The census bureau uses a simple equation that predicts the exponential growth that is logical by assuming children produce children by doubling the population in every generation. The current exponential growth in the world uses an exponent of 1.7. If we used that rate and projected backward eight people would have produced the current population in only 1300 years. So we know that earthquakes, plagues, disasters and other factors affect growth, but to me there is just no way that people have been here more than a few thousand years that is compatible to a young earth theory. The person disagreeing with me on the comment string stated that the exponent was zero for millions of years. This is hard for me to conceive, but that is the current evolutionary myth belief.
Another thing that has always fascinated me is looking at the demographics equations that predict the number of people and how the population changes. The census bureau uses a simple equation that predicts the exponential growth that is logical by assuming children produce children by doubling the population in every generation. The current exponential growth in the world uses an exponent of 1.7. If we used that rate and projected backward eight people would have produced the current population in only 1300 years. So we know that earthquakes, plagues, disasters and other factors affect growth, but to me there is just no way that people have been here more than a few thousand years that is compatible to a young earth theory. The person disagreeing with me on the comment string stated that the exponent was zero for millions of years. This is hard for me to conceive, but that is the current evolutionary myth belief.
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