Guest Blog—Dr. David Menton

Dr. David Menton holds a Ph.D. in cell biology from Brown University and is professor emeritus at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. He is a popular AiG speaker and has a chapter in the new book, War of the Worldviews. One of AiG’s most popular DVDs also comes from Dr. Menton: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.

While Ken is on vacation, some of the speakers have been invited to submit blogs. I’m not sure I even know what a blog is and I notice that my computer dictionary doesn’t know either because as I type, the word "blog" is underlined in red. Well in any event, we have been invited to share insights from our speaking engagements around America and the world, so here is my first blog.

Last month I was in Lima, Peru, where I was invited to speak at the first Latin American conference on creation. One of my hosts in Peru was Ruben Berra, formerly on the staff of AiG. Most of those in attendance were pastors, missionaries, teachers and active laymen. I don’t think anyone missed a session for four days and it seemed that every word spoken was written down in their notebooks.

My Spanish is not all that good—in fact, it is nonexistent—so every word from me and most of the other speakers had to be translated by an interpreter. I quickly learned that my humor doesn’t really come across in Spanish. Can you even imagine me giving a totally serious lecture? I heard so much unintelligible Spanish in Peru that I was actually relieved to hear a dog bark in English!

I was amazed at how hungry these folks were to learn about creation and the evidence against evolution. In all my years of speaking on the issue, I have never been so warmly received as I was by the folks in Peru. At the end of the conference, everyone in attendance got in line to hug and thank each of the speakers and have their picture taken with them.

I should add that it wasn’t all work and no play. Five of us (Dr. Allen White, Dr. Charles Jackson, Jim Gardner and Frank Sherwin of ICR, and I) traveled by plane to Cusco, the capital of the ancient Inca civilization. Cusco is in the Andes mountains at an elevation of nearly 11,000 feet and is surrounded by six mountains that are over 20,000 feet in elevation. In addition to sightseeing, we had the opportunity to speak on creation to nearly a full house in the local theater.

While Cusco itself has many Inca ruins that are impressive, the most astounding and best-restored Inca city is in Machu Picchu. The only way to get to Machu Picchu is by a four-hour train ride from Cusco. The view out the window of the train along the way was simply stunning. To make things even more interesting, a landslide of immense boulders wiped out the train track and we had to hike around the landslide to get to another train trapped on the other side of the slide.

Machu Picchu is a city of carved stone buildings, walls and terraces built in the steep slopes of what must surely be the most magnificent mountain setting in the world. It is still not known how the Incas cut the immense stones that they used in their construction. All the stones are precisely cut and fit together without mortar. Nowhere is there a gap between the stones that you could even fit a hair between! One stone had fourteen precisely cut faces that fit perfectly with its surrounding stones. Another immense stone was cut as a spiral stair case. Somehow the Incas precisely cut and shaped these stones (they did not simply fracture them), but nobody has been able to explain it.

Thanks for spending some time with me,

Dave