“I Want to Be a Creation Apologist!”

When I gave my first creation apologetics talk 50 years ago, there were few people thinking, writing, and speaking on this vital issue. Living in Australia, it was years before I finally was able to get my hands on resources that gave me answers to the evolutionary challenges. I praise the Lord for how many easily accessible resources there are now—available to anyone anywhere in the world!

But the battle is far from over. The message of biblical authority and the truth of God’s Word are still under intense attack. We need the next generation to rise up and carry the message to the generations coming after them.

We need the next generation to rise up and carry the message to the generations coming after them.

And praise the Lord, I frequently hear from children and young people who tell me, “Mr. Ham, I want to work for you when I grow up!” or “I want to be a creation scientist when I grow up!” The Lord is raising up the next generation of apologists to use for his glory and the bold, uncompromising proclamation and defense of his truth . . . from the very first verse!

If your child or grandchild desires to serve the Lord this way, I hope this article, pulling from the wisdom of today’s generation of creation apologists, will be an encouragement and help to them.

Be Grounded Before You Go

Four things come to mind, based on my own experience:

1) Be thoroughly grounded theologically and apologetically before going off to school.

You need to be able to make the evolutionists’ case better than they do. You don’t want to be blindsided by what you hear in class and be knocked of your theological rails by a clever argument from a professor.

2) Have a support network before you go.

Specifically, be sure to have a strong home church/local church who can encourage you and hold you accountable while you’re at university.

3) Expect to read double the amount of material that is assigned.

I learned this point from someone else, and it applies to all disciplines. In secular university, all you will hear in class is the secular worldview. To get the biblical perspective in your field, you’ll need to read biblical worldview-based material outside of class.

4) Learn to do science in a field outside of creation science.

A good scientist must learn to have a dispassionate approach to data, to handle and reason through data in a rational way. It’s difficult to learn this skill when the results of your experiments have implications for eternity (i.e., the creation/evolution debate) and are, therefore, loaded with heavy emotional and spiritual weight. It’s much easier to learn critical scientific skills in a field not weighed down like that.

—Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson, PhD, Harvard University, Cell and Developmental Biology

See the Biblical Aspects of Your Discipline

What is the most important piece of advice for an apologist in the field of forensic science?

The scientific discipline of forensic science is unique in that all scientific specialties fall under the umbrella called forensic science. There are forensic chemists, forensic geologists, forensic entomologists, forensic botanists, forensic biologists, etc. And as a Christian investigator in the pursuit of knowledge in criminal cases, there is a peace and assurance of knowing that each respective forensic field directly confirms Scripture.

For example, a forensic anthropologist would affirm Genesis 1:27, there are only two biological sexes: male and female. A forensic trace expert would affirm Genesis 1’s description of God’s creation according to its kind, because under the microscope, a single piece of human hair or animal reflects this design. A dactyloscopist, who studies unique fingerprint patterns, recognizes fingerprints clearly reflect a fearfully and wonderfully made artistic work as described in Psalm 139:14, a unique gift given by the Creator to every image bearer.

—Dr. Jennifer Hall Rivera, EdD, Liberty University, Curriculum and Instruction

Read, Read, Read!

Read. Read. Read. Repeat. You want to imprint facts, names, dates, and Scripture verses firmly in your mind so you can quickly and easily access them in your writing, speaking, or personal conversations. That comes by reading the same content, or similar content, over and over again. Once you have the foundation firmly in place, start going deeper into the topics that particularly grab your interest. Apologetics, even creation apologetics, is a broad category, so you’ll want to be both a “generalist”—able to answer the most common questions and explain how Genesis is the foundation for our worldview—and a “specialist” in certain scientific or social issues.

After you’ve read and studied, start teaching it. When I was a teenager, I began with lessons to my younger siblings and then moved on to local homeschool groups, church Sunday schools and youth groups, and evening Bible studies. I also just started writing for no audience in particular to practice my communication skills.

One last practical piece of advice: Working in Christian ministry isn’t known for its large salaries! Avoid getting into debt, including student debt, and you’ll thank yourself later.

—Avery Foley, MA, Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary

Have a Solid Biblical Foundation

If I had to give advice to someone who wished to pursue archaeology and apologetics, I would encourage them to pursue a solid foundation in Bible, textual criticism, apologetics, and biblical languages. When I pursued the Word of God and knowing for myself what it meant and how the Lord had preserved his Word for us, I pursued a solid foundation for my future degree in archaeology.

Many when they wish to study archaeology seek an undergrad degree in anthropology—I did not go this route, and I am glad I did not. If you attend a secular school, this is the time where the foundation of who we are as people and how we operate is laid down in your understanding. If you do not have a solid foundation of faith and biblical rooting, then you will not be able to place us and our history as humans within the proper framework. I strongly suggest pouring your heart, soul, and mind into the Word of God—you should become an expert in it if you are going to assist in a field that thrives off of it.

My official undergrad degree was a BA with an emphasis on classical studies. This degree assisted me in being accepted into the Hebrew University to study archaeology for my MA. I am so thankful for the Lord’s guidance and his timing as I had a very strong foundation in faith and study and knowledge of the truth before I was thrown into confusion. Without that strengthening of discernment that the Lord had grown in me before my MA, I would have been painfully shaken to my core in such a secular field.

If you are going to pursue this field, it is easy to take the data and make the Bible fit it, rather than seeing the Bible as the mechanism for defining what is truth. As you pursue your studies and training, remember that we are all on a journey to learn and grow in our understanding, but keep in mind this quotation from Charles Spurgeon, “Discernment is knowing the difference between right and almost right.” May God bless you on your journey with him as you seek ways to glorify him in this field.

—Corey East, MA, The Hebrew University, Archaeology

Get the Best Training You Can

Four pieces of advice I would give to young adults who have a passion for aspiring to be an apologist as a geologist. All are equally important.

First, get the best geological training that you can. A BS in geology will usually not suffice, so you are best to aspire to gaining a PhD. This will take a lot of courage because you will have to study at a secular university to gain a PhD. During your BS training, determine which specialty in geology interests you most. Then find out from the recent literature who is publishing papers in that specialty that interests you. Then seek to study for your PhD under that person at their university. That will guarantee your PhD is reputable and at the present cutting-edge in that field.

Second, make sure you have your parents and family support throughout this process. Stay close to them as you will be studying in “enemy” territory, and the task is very intensive and arduous. Your family knows you best and loves you, and they will do whatever it takes to support and help you.

Make sure you have your parents and family support throughout this process.

Third, make sure you are connected to a strong Bible-believing church family wherever you study. It is likely that where you study for your PhD will be far from home, so you need a Bible-believing local church family to be accountable to and to support you. You will be in “enemy” territory and thus engaged in a spiritual battle, so you need fellow believers who understand what you are doing to be accountable to, to pray with you, and to support you so that you do not succumb to Satan’s wiles and compromise your faith and your creationist commitment.

Fourth, throughout this process, learn as much as you can from the creationist literature, both technical and lay, so you become familiar with both the lay apologetics and the technical research and arguments. Introduce yourself to creationist PhD geologists. Attend technical creationist meetings and find a suitable creationist PhD geologist to mentor you and to be an advisor on the quiet while you are doing your PhD studies. That mentor will be able to advise you as you progress because he/she will understand what you are studying and coping with and eventually be able to help you through and beyond graduation.

—Andrew Snelling, PhD, University of Sydney, Geology

Be Connected in Your Church

My biggest point is that the person needs to be involved in church and serving the church, serving their family (parents, grandparents, and siblings), studying the Bible, reading it daily, meditating in the Bible daily. Being an apologist is not about only knowing it, but living it, understanding who we are and who God is, what we can do and what only God can do. It is about being obedient, subjecting to God’s will, and being humble. Being an apologist is living 1 Peter 3:15—give answers but with gentleness, kindness, and love. It is about searching not only for knowledge but also wisdom. Knowledge you can get through books, but wisdom is about fearing God. You can only fear God when you know his Word, who he is, and who we are.

—Dr. Gabriela Haynes, PhD, Federal University of Ceará State, Geology/Paleontology

Know Evolution Better Than the Evolutionists!

My best advice would be to make sure you understand evolutionary ideas better than the evolutionists! Defending your position well as a biblical creationist means knowing what evolutionists think and believe. You don’t want to use straw man arguments. Read their books and articles and listen to their presentations. Have a good grasp of their arguments so you can carefully craft your own arguments, starting with a biblical foundation.

—Dr. Georgia Purdom, PhD, The Ohio State University, Molecular Genetics

Follow God’s Leading

Step 1: Surrender the dream of apologetics ministry to God. Say, “This is something I think I’d like to do. If it’s your will, please open the doors to make it happen, and help me know how to prepare. But if not, that’s okay; I trust you will work out the best-case scenario.” Then stay open to what he ends up doing, even if it looks different than you expect.

Step 2: Start equipping yourself. Make sure to learn answers to the most-asked questions (the Answers Book series is a great place to start). Then you can dive into deep topics related to whatever areas of apologetics you’d most like to focus on. Or you can try a few topics to see if there are any that especially interest you. (AnswersInGenesis.org articles are a solid place to begin browsing. We also have a library of free ebooks at AnswersInGenesis.org/answers/books/.) Apologetics speakers usually end up focusing on some sort of “niche” topic they can be experts in, where they can contribute something new to the field of apologetics or fill an unmet need in a ministry where they work. You don’t have to know what that niche is right now, but it could be useful to look around at what other apologists are already doing so you can identify gaps that need to be filled.

Step 3: Surround yourself with others working in apologetics (or other Christians in the field of study you want to pursue). Volunteer for apologetics ministries or at conferences with apologetics speakers. Look for internship opportunities. Find ways to serve the people who are already in the field, like Elisha served Elijah. Seek out a mentor or someone in your focus area who can answer your questions and help you prepare. And pray for the right connections.

Step 4: Sharpen your communication skills. Speaking, writing, and research usually go together. (I listed my top writing and research tips in the back of Prepare to Thrive to help students in this regard.) Consider joining a Christian writing community, attending writing conferences, or taking a public speaking class to learn even more. You might also want to start learning some graphic design for making PowerPoints and a blog or website.

Step 5: Start contributing! Try writing blog posts or articles (or making videos) that you can either publish/post yourself or submit to websites that accept unsolicited manuscripts. And start looking for places to do apologetics speaking and teaching, even if it’s just in a living room. Pray for the right opportunities.

Step 6: Be faithful. You might only have a handful of people reading your writing or listening to you speak. But continue to do your very best speaking and writing as an act of worship to Jesus, even if nobody else overhears it. “He who is faithful with little is faithful with much.” We’re not called to see results but to be faithful. We never know how God is going to use the seeds we plant. Also be faithful to do your best in the other everyday tasks God has set before you—at work, school, home, church, and everywhere else. You never know how God will be using these things to equip you for what he has next.

—Patricia Engler, MA, Bioethics

Depend on God and Reject Academic Pride

Here are my suggestions after getting my PhD (in history of geology) under supervising professors and examiners who mildly or strongly rejected the young-earth view of Genesis.

Be firmly committed to the supreme authority of Scripture.

• Be firmly committed to the supreme authority of Scripture and constantly evaluate what you are learning by checking it against Scripture.
• Respect the PhD professors in your program, learn from them in your research and writing skills, but don’t allow them to be the authority in your thinking. Remember that you are a disciple of Jesus Christ. Don’t become a disciple of your supervising professor(s).
• Walk humbly with God each day, acknowledging your dependence on him for guidance in your research. In the PhD world, you can cut the academic pride with a butter knife. It is an infectious disease that you must guard against (1 Corinthians 8:1).
• Keep your young-earth creationist (YEC) convictions to yourself in your academic environment. Be as shrewd as a serpent (wise and discerning) in your private interactions with fellow PhD students and with professors. There is hostility toward the YEC view in academia, even among Christian academics. You don’t want to jeopardize your opportunity to get a PhD because of the bias against your view of Genesis. Wait until after you get the PhD to become very public in defending the truth of Genesis.
• Choose an area of research that doesn’t directly challenge the evolutionary or old-earth view but that will be helpful knowledge to use after the PhD to defend the YEC view. Of course, if you are doing the PhD at an evangelical institution (that is open to or at least not hostile to the YEC view) and your supervising professor is an open YEC, then you could focus your research directly on something that will strengthen the defense of YEC.

—Dr. Terry Mortenson, PhD, Coventry University, History of Geology

Don’t Be Taken Captive by Worldly Wisdom

If you’re a young Christian who wants to pursue a degree in rocket science and one day become a creation apologist, I want to encourage you with three main things (especially the last one):

• Be strong and stand firm in your faith (1 Corinthians 16:13).
• Put on the full armor of God (Ephesians 6:11) to stand against every attack and argument from the world that contradicts God’s truth (2 Corinthians 10:5).
• Honor and obey your parents. This is the first commandment with a promise: That things will go well with you (Ephesians 6:2–3).

From my experience, much of the space industry is currently very secular and has become inundated by naturalistic evolutionary beliefs. Most of the people I worked with did not believe in God, and even if they did, they didn’t fully believe the whole Bible. The sad truth is that Christians are a small minority in the space industry today.

However, this industry is rapidly growing and will likely continue to expand in the future. And so, this means that unless more Christians start stepping into the field, the vast majority of current and future scientists will continue exploring space—for the wrong (unbiblical) reasons—based on the fallacious worldview of naturalism. So if you’re a Christian interested in rockets and space, then I highly encourage you to get out there and pursue a career in this field!

Of course, if you’re interested in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), you don’t have to become a rocket scientist (though I’ll admit, it’s a lot of fun!). No matter which field of science you choose, what matters most is that you always view science through a biblical lens, like a pair of glasses, in every area. Remember, it’s only the biblical worldview that makes science possible in the first place! And remember, fallible humans (myself included!) are prone to errors in all scientific fields. But the Bible is always right because it is God’s Word! “Let God be true though every one were a liar” (Romans 3:4).

God promises to give wisdom generously to those who ask (James 1:5), so don’t let yourself be taken captive by worldly “wisdom.” And don’t be conformed to the thinking of this world (Romans 12:2). King Jesus promises to put every enemy, including every form of worldly philosophy, under his feet (1 Corinthians 15:25).

Reading God’s Word, being consistent in prayer, and maintaining fellowship with other believers—those are the fundamentals (which every Christian should practice daily!) that helped me stay committed to God and his authority during my rocket science career, and I hope they do for you as well!

As a sidenote, if you struggle to spend time daily feeding your soul with spiritual food—reading your Bible—think about how much time you spend feeding your stomach with physical food. How many hours do you spend each day nourishing yourself with spiritual food versus physical food? Early on in my Christian walk, I struggled with this balance too. (And I believe many Christians today face the same struggle.) But one day, my old pastor shared a helpful saying with me: “No reading, no feeding; no Bible, no breakfast!” In other words, don’t eat physical food before feeding on spiritual food! That simple practice helped me establish the good habit of reading my Bible daily—and I’ve kept it up for over 10 years now!

—Rob Webb, MS, University of Colorado–Boulder, Aerospace Engineering

Don’t Disqualify Yourself by Ignoring Practical Matters

On a practical level, avoid student debt. I know brilliant people who were hamstrung by debt because by the time they had the education to do what they had always dreamed, they could no longer afford to take the salary being offered. This is particularly the case for degrees that have limited salary potential in the secular world.

Also on a practical level, be careful about what you post on social media. Anyone who defends the Bible makes himself or herself a target for God-haters, and social media can be easy to mine for ammunition against someone. An edgy post today could come back to haunt you in a decade.

Get involved in evangelistic ministry through your church. You will get to speak to all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds and hear their thoughts about Christianity. This will keep you from overintellectualizing your apologetics because you’ll be addressing very practical issues people are asking about and the very real emotional aspect of people’s faith. If you can’t share the gospel with clarity, work on that before you go on to apologetics because apologetics should have an evangelistic heart.

—Lita Sanders, MA, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, New Testament

Strive for Excellence

As you serve the Lord, always remember that we should be giving him our very best in every area, so we must strive for excellence in all we do. When it comes to biblical studies, theology, apologetics, and related disciplines, develop a deep love and lifelong respect for God’s Word, approaching it with humility as you prayerfully study it every day. Do not assume that you already know what it teaches because of what your church, theological tradition, or favorite pastor teaches. Be diligent to carefully interpret the text in context and allow it to change and direct your thoughts and actions. Finally, remember that no matter how much you have studied, there will always be more to learn from the Bible, so never allow your pride to lead you to think that you have it all figured out or have learned enough.

—Tim Chaffey, DMin, Shepherd’s Theological Seminary, Advanced Biblical and Theological Studies

Honor Christ as Holy

As I consider advice for students looking to use their degrees in science education for apologetics, my best advice comes from the classic passage on apologetics—“in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy” (1 Peter 3:15). Without first having a sincere devotion to Christ in our own hearts, others will not see the hope of Christ on display in our own words and actions and won’t be looking for the hope that we have to offer them. As you consider the entirety of 1 Peter 3:13–17, you must be willing to suffer for the sake of Christ (with gentleness and respect), be immersed in the Word of Christ, and act and speak in the name of Christ so that the name of Christ may be exalted above all else.

—Roger Patterson, BS Ed, Montana State University, Biology