Anti-Creation Museum Lecture at Purdue University

Brent Aucoin, who is the Pastor of Seminary and College Ministries at a key AiG-friendly church in Lafayette, Indiana—Faith Baptist Church (where I have spoken), and is located down the road from the campus of Purdue U. (a huge university)—sent us this report on the anti-Creation Museum lecture given last week by a secularist who toured our museum with the 285 atheists/agnostics on Aug. 7 (see the blog post on that).

I am a long time supporter of Answers in Genesis and have organized several spring break trips with our Purdue students to serve Answers in Genesis during the museum construction. As the pastor overseeing our church’s outreach to Purdue students, I was eager to attend a presentation on the Creation Museum by Jennifer McCreight, President of the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue University. I identified myself to Ms. McCreight before the meeting to ask her if I could come to which she gave permission.

The name of Ms. McCreight’s presentation was “When Dinosaurs Walked with God: A godless biologist’s trip to the Creation Museum.” The audience consisted of roughly fifty to seventy-five individuals. Over the course of the night, I became aware of three professing theists among that number.

I expected, based upon the publicized description of the presentation, that the tenor of the meeting would be somewhat mocking of the Biblical worldview believed by young earth creationists. I did not go to function as an adversarial debater of Ms. McCreight. I went with the goal of hoping to have the opportunity after her presentation to answer questions about my Biblical worldview for any that might be interested. Criticism of our Biblical worldview is not something that should be feared or avoided. I am confident in the worldview of the Bible. David Wolfe states,

Only to the extent that a scheme remains open to continued testing is it able to display its credentials. Only then can it show the strength of its internal structure and its ability to illuminate experience. Far from being a favor, to protect one’s interpretive scheme from criticism is to rob it of the only way it can display its claim to truth” (Wolfe, The Justification of Belief, 65).

After an innocuous introduction, the main presentation of Ms. McCreight began with a picture of Jesus embracing and affectionately stroking—not a lamb—but a baby dinosaur. One can easily find this picture by searching for “Jesus holding dinosaur” on the Internet. The crowd was really amused by this picture and the tone was set for the evening. Initially, I began to note some of the specific museum exhibits that Ms. McCreight presented with incredulity as the crowd was entertained. However, I soon stopped taking any notations, because this was the general tenor of the presentation. One different but significant response of the crowd came when Ms. McCreight spoke about how many children she saw on her visit. The announcement of children on field trips to the Creation Museum was met with groans.

Ms. McCreight did acknowledge that she learned the most from the video presentation of creation week (the Six Days video). She actually watched the video twice at the museum. She explained that she was not raised in a Christian home and therefore had very little Bible knowledge. Through the video she learned the details of the Biblical creation story. Additionally, toward the end of her presentation, she speculated about why Genesis was deemed as so important to warrant this kind of attention by Christians. She correctly surmised (or learned from the museum) that if Genesis lacked integrity then the account of the person and work of Jesus Christ would be suspect as well.

The presentation ended with a cartoonish picture of Darwin’s Night at the Creation Museum (one can find this on the internet as well). I laughed at this cartoon myself since Darwin would indeed run screaming away from the Creation Museum. During Q&A time after the presentation, I identified myself and commended Ms. McCreight for her wit but asserted that she had misrepresentations in her presentation. I offered to remain after the designated ending time to answer any questions about the Biblical worldview that I hold in common with the Creation Museum. I had a lively discussion for about two and a half hours with a handful of non-theists regarding worldviews, creation, and the gospel. I was personally treated politely throughout the evening, although there was much amazement regarding what I profess to believe.

As I attempted to engage with this handful of non-theists, I tried to explain that even their responses could be accounted for in the Biblical worldview. That is, this evening did not surprise me in the least, because the Scriptures prepare God’s people for the charge of “foolishness” from the world at the proclamation of His Word (1 Cor 1:18-21). Yet, believers cannot shrink from proclaiming His word starting from the very first verse. For God’s inspired word is precisely what begins to lead individuals to saving faith in the incarnate word, Jesus Christ.

Brent Aucoin Pastor of Seminary and College Ministries Faith Baptist Church Lafayette, IN http://www.faithlafayette.org

Atheists’ Visit Continues to Receive Press

Reports on this visit by the atheists and agnostics continue to appear in the press several weeks after the event. For instance, a report by the Baptist Press about the this visit has been picked up by a few media outlets, including the major website of Townhall.com.

On the Way to Atlanta 1st Baptist

Today I am on the way to Atlanta (Georgia) and 1st Baptist Church to speak tomorrow morning and evening at this well-known church (pastored by Dr. Charles Stanley). You can find out details from the AiG website. For the morning services, I will be giving a presentation similar to the one I gave in Oregon last Sunday morning. A person who attended one of those morning services in Portland wrote a comment on their blog concerning that presentation:

This morning was an awesome talk, my kids LOVED it and we found ourselves investing in some material to teach more on this at home! I would highly encourage you all to go! …” http://angietolpin.blogspot.com/2009/09/guest-speaker-ken-ham-on-creation.html

The morning’s presentation in Atlanta will deal with why kids are leaving the church in America and what to do about it, as well as the State of the Nation and the Genesis connection. That talk was specifically requested by Pastor Stanley. For the evening session I will be teaching people how to defend the Christian faith in today’s world—how to think biblically—how to understand and use evidence in regard to the origins issue—and is a poodle really a dog (yes, we can get light-hearted at times)?

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying

Ken