Persuaded by the Evidence

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Persuaded by the Evidence Compilation Editors Doug Sharp and Jerry Bergman (c) 2008

True Stories of Faith, Science and the Power of a Creator

A unique and interesting collection of true stories from Christians – each sharing his personal journey to find the biblical truth of a six-day creation! From scientists in the midst of complex research to youth ministers, and more, see how each began at a different point and place in his life to question the supposed truth of evolution and how faith and actual evidence led to his embracing a creation-based, biblical worldview. In their testimonies, you will read about their search for answers, often unavailable through their school, their church or scientific knowledge – and how the discoveries they made have shaped their faith and changed their lives.

Seeking answers for yourself? Discover the powerful truths these individuals now share – and find yourself also persuaded by the evidence!

Contributors include Carl Kerby, Curt Sewell, Dr. Walter T. Brown, Dr. Raymond Damadian, Frank Sherwin, Dr. Henry M. Morris, Dr. Duane Gish, Dr. Jerry Bergman, and more!

Description

 

 

Introduction by Doug Sharp

It has been my pleasure to review and edit the personal testimonies of individuals whose lives have been changed by the knowledge of and a personal experience with, our Creator. I have had the privilege of interviewing many of these people and with some of them I interact often. Many have advanced degrees and a few have not yet had that privilege or opportunity, yet each one has had their faith in God strengthened by scientific evidence for creation.

Persuaded by that evidence, they have integrated Biblical principles in their lives and each one tells a story of how that has satisfied their hunger for God. One of the facets of the Christian faith is that a person’s experience with Christ is subjective and personal, and often it isn’t easy to share this with someone who hasn’t had that experience. That only comes through faith, and a person who has a logical mind will want more proof. These testimonies share both aspects, a personal experience as well as the scientific evidence that convinced them to take the steps needed to establish a relationship with the risen Christ.

What is amazing about each of these stories is that they are all different, and yet God individually tailored the evidence for their personality, causing a defining moment that persuades them to consider their spiritual life. Some received Christ first and sorted out their belief in him as creator much later. Others grew up in a Christian home but were never taught that science and scripture could be reconciled and, eventually, went through a crisis motivating them to research the issue. Still others had no Christian influence at all in their early years, but were confronted with the evidence only later in life. There were also a few who wanted to submit their story, but they felt that if they did so, it might jeopardize their employment. Discrimination against creationists is a real problem discussed by several of the contributors. It is also interesting to note that evidence that causes some to make a pivotal decision in their spiritual life might not be as convincing to others. Although I do not think that these individuals are in complete agreement on every aspect of Christian doctrine, I do know that the hand of the Master has touched their lives.

As you read these testimonies, ask yourself, “What is it that motivates you in your Christian faith?” Do you have unshakable reasons for your faith that stand the test of careful scrutiny? Or if you are not yet persuaded or are an unbeliever, ask yourself if you should be skeptical of your skepticism. Are the reasons given in this book enough motivation for you to take the challenge of following Christ? Or is your skepticism rooted in tradition, fear, or comfort?

Evolution is a stumbling block for many people that will prevent them from accepting simple faith in Jesus Christ. This collection of personal experiences will give you some feel for what helps many people overcome this common stumbling block.

Chapter 1: Eric Blievernicht: Information Tends Toward Chaos

Eric became a skeptic of atheistic Darwinism after realizing that natural selection did not explain the origin of new information in the gene pool. In fact, he observed that mutations would quickly deplete the gene pool of information.

 

Chapter 2: David A. Bradbury: A Reluctant Convert from Evolutionism

David Bradbury was a confident atheist who believed Christian faith was for only those who were not informed. But a challenge issued by Dr. John J. Grebe offering $1,000 to anyone able to present any first example of physical evidence justifying microbe-to-man evolution caused him to search the evidence, and he was compelled to concede that Dr. Grebe’s $1,000 was quite safe.

 

Chapter 3: Dr. David A. DeWitt: “The Word of the Lord is Flawless”

David was raised in a church and as a science major in college believed that God must have used evolution to create living things including man and woman.  A friend had given him a book about creation, but he didn’t really look at it for about a year.  Shortly after he understood what the gospel really meant, he began to see the significance of the Word of God—that every word was flawless.  He also saw the problem of death before sin in any evolutionary scenarios.  This prompted him to carefully read the creation book that my friend had given me.  David completed a Ph.D. and took a position at Liberty University where one of the classes he teaches is about creation.  He gives talks on creation at churches and colleges across the country.

 

Chapter 4: Dr. Jerry Bergman: Cult-Like Characteristics of Atheism

With an agnostic father and a Jehovah’s Witness mother, Jerry embarked on a search for truth that caused him to investigate both worldviews and reject them in favor of Biblical creation. Dr. Bergman has published over twenty books and 500 articles. He has 5 Masters Degrees and two Ph.D. Degrees. His personal library contains over 40,000 volumes.

 

Chapter 5: Douglas Sharp: Brown Sticky Goo in a Test Tube

A laboratory experiment attempting to duplicate the origin of life in a test tube was one of the defining moments that sparked Doug’s interest in the creation movement. A consistent witness from a Christian friend and a MSU science professor who dared to stand for young-earth creation helped provide a foundation for Doug’s faith in God.

 

Chapter 6: Richard Geer: “I could not say ‘Jesus is Lord’”

Creation artist Rich Geer was challenged to claim “Jesus is Lord” (I Corinthians 12:1). When he could not physically say that phrase, his foundations were shaken and exposed. Later that week he surrendered his life to the Lord. His enthusiasm for the message of creation has encouraged hundreds of people who have embraced the message of salvation as the result of his witness.

 

Chapter 7: Wayne Spencer: We are More Than Smart Animals!

In his early college years, Wayne concluded that it was impossible to know if there was a God. But that point of view changed dramatically in a personal crisis, and two Christian roommates led him to the Lord Jesus Christ. He realized that evolution had blinded his thinking.

 

Chapter 8: Carl Kerby:  Putting On Biblical Glasses

How does God take the son of a professional wrestler—raised in a liberal church, steeped in the ways of the world, squirreled away in a desk job as an air traffic controller—and convert him into a fervent Christian and “creation evangelist”?  The answer: the power of God’s truth about Genesis.  God used a “chance” encounter with two creationist pilots, and a short book exposing evolution’s direct assault on the authority of God’s Word, to change Carl Kerby’s life, forever.  After reading Ken Ham’s book The Lie: Evolution,Carl knew that God’s Word was true … from the beginning (Psalm 119:160).

 

Chapter 9: John Woodmorappe: Mutations Do Not Produce DDT Resistant Bacteria

John Woodmorappe has always been fascinated by science. His early training led him to accept evolution as fact for want of an alternative. In time, he started to question evolution, and his first exposure to creationist literature only fanned this flame. Since that time, he as done extensive creationist research and has published three books.

 

Chapter 10: Daniel Schobert: Evidence for the Flood

God has chosen various ways in which men and women are drawn to Him and the message of creation.  For Daniel, it was to be confronted with books where reasonable arguments were presented, showing that the ideas about origins he had been taught through most of his primary and secondary school days were fabrications from people with highly imaginative minds.

 

Chapter 11: Chard Berndt: The Inspiration of Being Human

As a son of a missionary who became a youth pastor, Chard realized the necessity of the creation issue as a foundation to his faith.

 

Chapter 12: Curt Sewell: Accuracy of Radioisotope Dating Doubtful

Forty-some years ago, Curt was Chief Engineer of a company which performed radioactive dating, among other isotopic radiochemical measurements.  He had to learn the foundational details of dating techniques.  He learned that circular reasoning and belief in materialism (with no supernatural intervention) were very important to dating calculations.  Since he was also a Christian, he felt a dichotomy in his world-view. As a result, he began a long study of technical evidences for an ancient Earth.  This led to rejection of evolutionism and belief in ancient Earth, and to a “conversion” to belief in the young earth creationary position.

 

Chapter 13: Dr. Hennie Mouton: Missing Links in the Ape-Men Story

Evidence concerning frauds and missing links concerning ape-men helped shift Dr. Mouton’s thinking to accept a creationist worldview. He has translated several creationist books into Afrikaans.

 

Chapter 14: Jeffrey Stueber: Evolution is Faulty Moral Theory

Clearly, humanity has an ethical compass that defies naturalistic efforts to reduce it to mere remnants of biological processes and instincts. Humanists such as Corliss Lamont, Paul Kurtz, and Edward Wilson offer explanations for our moral feelings, but these are mere explanations that do not explain what agent we feel we must obey when making moral judgments of others. Only a Christian creationist paradigm explains our moral ideas.

 

Chapter 15: Jyoti Chakravartty: The Message of Creation Finds its Way to India

 

Jyoti’s father, a Hindu Brahmin, became a Christian reading Mark’s Gospel, sold to him in the streets of Calcutta. But his faith was shaken as a college student reading the Origin of Species. He searched for answers until he heard Science, Scripture and Salvation on the short-wave radio WYFR. He has founded what may be the only creationist group in India.

 

Chapter 16: Dr. Peter Line: The Science Fiction of Primordial Soup

Peter Line had a superficial belief in God but deep down was uncertain about whether He really existed. He believed evolution made sense, but only because he knew little about evolutionary theory beyond the standard superficial arguments, and because he had not been exposed to arguments against evolution. His knowledge of Scripture was poor, but enough to realize that the theory of evolution was incompatible with what the Bible said about how God created life. The situation of believing in evolution, but at the same time wanting to retain a belief in the God of the Bible, creates a dilemma for anyone contemplating the issue. If evolutionism is true and the creation story in the book of Genesis is wrong (which follows if evolution is true), then with what confidence can God who inspired the words of the Bible be trusted or believed in. Peter’s testimony is how, after being unable to reconcile the two mutually exclusive accounts of origins, he became convinced that evolution was false.

 

 

Chapter 17: Dr. Roger W. Sanders: Doubts About Punctuated Equilibrium

Doubts about the ability of natural selection to reorganize coordinated structures nagged Dr. Sanders, and as he heard evolutionists debate with each other on this subject, he realized that evolution did not have any explanatory power.

 

Chapter 18: Dawid Jansen van Rensberg: More Complicated than Rocket Science

Dawid tried to reduce God to his own level and put him in a box that he could handle and manipulate to his own advantage. But he soon realized that this was the same sin of Adam and Eve, and he came to the conclusion that the whole of creation did not come about through death and struggle.

 

Chapter 19: Eric Armbrustmacher: “Just Believe” Wasn’t Enough

Eric had a high school teacher that sparked his interest in science, but that science program was evolutionary in nature, and since Eric had recently became a Christian, he immediately found himself in a conflict of ideas. He began to drift away from God, until a Bible Training Institute teacher brought him the message of creation.

 

Chapter 20: Dr. Paul Back: Is Man a Perfect Animal, or is He the Image of God Spoiled?

With the finding of Piltdown Man, Paul concluded two things. First, evolution was true and, second, only an unscientific fool could possibly think otherwise. He decided that Christianity was irrelevant to life. After he earned a Ph.D. in Engineering Science from Oxford, he enjoyed mocking his Christian friends, until he was brought to his knees by a simple talk about Jesus to ten year olds.

 

Chapter 21: Rick Lanser: Evolution was Unwelcome Baggage

Though Rick has a profound hearing loss, he was able to do well academically as a result of his skill in lip reading. While studying medical technology, his unquestioning acceptance of evolution changed after he was converted to Christianity. The book by Dr. Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood, provided the answer he needed.

 

Chapter 22: Dr. Sean Pitman: Discovering the Truth about Evolution

To Dr. Pitman, it became clear that either evolution or Christianity was wrong. He made up his mind to find out which it was, and began a study. He found only examples of micro-evolution, and every example of evolution he read in the textbooks was not really an example of true evolution at all.

 

Chapter 23: Roger G. Sigler II: My Journey from Evolutionist to Creationist – A Geologist’s Story

Roger tells his story how his Roman Catholic background and geological studies eventually came into conflict and the events in his life that eventually led to a resolution.

 

Chapter 24: Scott Hanson: On the Sixth Day, God Created…Creationists!

A bombshell dropped in his zoology class concerning Noah’s Ark forced Scott to deal with the conflict between what he was taught in Sunday school as a child and atheistic arguments against the Bible.

 

Chapter 25: John Sanford: The Making and Unmaking of an Evolutionary Atheist

John was brought up believing in evolution. As a godless youth in college, John had no foundation for his life, and was very empty.  His spiritual hunger led him to worship pretty women, experiment with drugs, try out exotic religions, and be fascinated with magic.  Later, he became a socialist/communist, dropped out of school and hitchhiked through Mexico – looking for all the wrong things. When he became a scientist, he centered his life on the hope for continuing evolution. John now marvels at God’s grace, which let him out of all that darkness and has since opened his eyes to so many new and wonderful things.

 

Chapter 26: Donald D. Ensign: Dinosaurs Capture the Imagination

As a child, Don discovered the world of dinosaurs and fossils through the popular media. This “prehistoric” world was framed in the evolutionary worldview. He was raised in a Bible believing home and eventually realized that his Christian experience and beliefs were not reconcilable to evolutionary deep time thinking. Thus began a search that allowed him to gain insights into the correct relationship between scripture and nature. In later years he has become more involved in the creation science movement through local creation groups, writing and work experiences with a creation based fossil museum.

 

Chapter 27: Victor Marshall: Prison Chaplain, Ohio – “New-Age to New-Creation”

Victor was a truth seeker who studied Philosophy, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Theosophy, Spiritualism, Animism, Pantheism, New-Age beliefs and the occult. These intellectual and ‘spiritual’ pursuits, and a life immersed in drugs, brought him no closer to peace of mind or health of soul. He tells the story of his conversion to Christianity and how creationism played an important part. He is now a Corrections Chaplain with the State of Ohio.

 

Chapter 28: John Doughty: My Cup Continually Overflows

Dr. John Doughty talks about his training as a mechanical engineer and tells how the laws of thermodynamics was one of the primary pieces of evidence that persuaded him of the truth of the creation model.

 

Chapter 29: Walt Brown, Ph.D.: A Flood of Evidence

Dr. Walter T. Brown received a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) while in the military.  His career in the Army and Air Force began at West Point and included service as a paratrooper and Ranger, directing a 450-person research and development laboratory, teaching mathematics at the Air Force Academy, and teaching science and technology at the Air War College.  He is the founder and director of the Center for Scientific Creation, based in Phoenix, Arizona.  His story is included in the book Christian Men of Science, Eleven Men Who Changed the World by George Mulfinger and Julia Mulfinger Orozco, along with those of Kepler, Faraday, Maxwell, Henry Morris and other Bible-believing scientists.

 

Chapter 30: Raymond Damadian, M.D.: Creation, Science and Rewards

Dr. Raymond Damadian, the inventor of the MRI machine, tells his story.   MRI is a household acronym these days; everybody knows somebody who has had one (if not themselves) when needing to be diagnosed for a serious disease.  But in the 1970s, being able to produce a non-invasive image inside a body would have seemed like a device out of Star Trek.  To see inside a living body in fine detail, without the harm of X-rays, was then a doctor’s impossible dream then; today it is a reality, thanks to Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

 

Chapter 31: Frank Sherwin: A Evolutionist Becomes a Creationist Parasitologist

Frank Sherwin tells about the steps that led him to become convinced of the truth of creation. The fact of God, historical evidence, the reliability of scripture, the foolishness of the religion of naturalism and the failure of Neo-Darwinism all caused him to conclude that all science is creation science!

 

Chapter 32: Dr. Richard Lumsden: Mocker Turned Apologist

Dr. Richard D. Lumsden was fully grounded in Darwinian philosophy, and had no reason or desire to consider Christianity.  Science was his faith: the facts, and only the facts.  But at the apex of his professional career, he had enough integrity to check out the facts, and made a difficult choice to go where the facts led him, against what he had been taught, and against what he himself taught.  His life took a dramatic turnaround, from Darwinist to creationist, and from atheist to Christian.

 

Chapter 33: Nick Contor: A Miracle of a New Birth

A persuasive instructor in college caused Nick to become unsure of his Christian faith and for a time compromised his beliefs and caused him to doubt. It took the birth of his son and a serious accident to jar him into reexamining his beliefs about God.

SPECIAL FEATURE:
FOUNDING FATHERS OF THE CREATION MOVEMENT
 

Chapter 34: Dr. Henry M. Morris: “From Theistic Evolutionist to Creationist”

Dr. Henry M. Morris is often regarded as the founding father of the modern creationist movement. His book The Genesis Flood, co-authored by Dr. John C. Whitcomb, was the foundation that started several creationist organizations, including the Institute for Creation Research, Answers in Genesis, and the Creation Research Society. Dr. Morris recounts the events in his scientific career and Bible study that led him to devise the modern young-earth creationist model.

 

Chapter 35: Dr. Duane T. Gish: “Persuaded by the Evidence to Always be a Creationist”

Having made a decision to follow Christ at ten years old, Dr. Duane Gish recounts how information about creation science had added to the foundation of his faith, to the point that he became one of the most sought-after creation debaters in the modern creation era.

 

Chapter 36: Dr. Gary Parker: “I Preached Evolution”

As a teacher, Dr. Gary Parker not only taught evolution, he preached it. He believed that it was his duty to steer young people away from what he regarded as silly myths. But he was challenged by several Christian professors to re-examine the science upon which his beliefs in evolution were founded, and after about three years of study, he also became a believer.

 

Chapter 37: Dr. Andrew Snelling: A Geologist’s Story

Dr. Andrew Snelling tells of his journey as a geologist whose Christian faith was challenged by evolution, and how he searched for answers and finally was persuaded that the rock layers showed evidence of catastrophe.

 

Chapter 38: Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith: Fulfilled Journey – the Influence of a Triple Ph.D. Creationist

Long before the “Intelligent Design” movement was making news, Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith was already making the same arguments. His analysis of genetic information influenced Dean Kenyon, the evolutionary origin of life researcher turned creationist, to call Dr. Wilder-Smith one of the two or three most important scientists in his life.  Much of the literature coming out of the modern intelligent design movement contains echoes of powerful arguments made by A. E. Wilder-Smith decades ago.

 

SPECIAL BIOGRAPHY
 

Chapter 39: Dr. Mortimer Adler: Publisher Encyclopedia Britannica

Dr. Mortimer Adler (December 28, 1902  – June 28, 2001) was considered one of the greatest thinkers of all time, and according to a 1987 Time magazine article was the “last great Aristotelian.”  Adler wrote (or co-authored) over 45 books (all of them very successful) and over 200 articles.  He was also chairman of the board of editors of Encyclopedia Britannica for many years. His 54-volume Great Books of the Western World has sold over a quarter of a million copies since 1952.

Additional information

Weight 10 oz
Dimensions 8.5 × 5.5 × .75 in
ISBN

978-0-89051-545-7

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