The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) exists to explore and explain the science that confirms the Bible. We target scientific discoveries and analyses that confirm biblical creation. Scripture tells us that God exists outside the universe and commanded the worlds into being without pre-existing material1 over six days2 only thousands of years ago. Why do these specifics matter? They come from the same Word as the gospel, and eternal destinies are on the line.
In today’s culture, evolution and evolutionary time masquerade as science and rank among the top objections to believing the Bible. Evolution of molecules to man contradicts Scripture’s assertion that God created molecules and humans separately and simultaneously. Evolutionary time collides with Scripture’s chronological data that indicate the creation of all things only about 6,000 years ago.
Therefore, ICR’s mission involves more than debating scientific facts. Our research team uses science to answer objections to biblical history. It’s our task and privilege to encourage all people that good science gives us more reason to trust the Word of Christ—including His gospel—than ever before. This calling would be very difficult indeed if science verified molecules-to-man evolution instead of creation. But thanks be to God that His world matches His Word time after time.
Four examples show how ICR science helps clear the way for the life-saving gospel to take full effect.
DNA Similarity and the Last Adam
ICR geneticist Dr. Jeffrey Tomkins often staples the first page of his peer-reviewed technical publications to the hallway wall opposite his office. The wall is almost covered now, and human-chimp DNA sequence comparisons headline his many finds. He uses high-performance computer systems to see how closely human and chimp sequences match one another. In keeping with little-known results from some secular reports, Dr. Tomkins’ data confirmed an overall sequence similarity of no more than about 85%.3
Secular scientists need a DNA similarity of close to 99% for known mutation rates to seem theoretically capable of generating enough new information to transition a chimp-like genome into a human genome. So, Dr. Tomkins’ results falsify the evolutionary meme that asserts a nearly 99% genetic identity between humans and chimpanzees. Refuting that number also refutes the evolutionary doctrine it was intended to bolster—that humans and chimps somehow share a common ancestor that supposedly lived from three to six million years ago.
How does this 85% similarity relate to the gospel? It means a 15% difference between human and chimp DNA. When you consider that these genomes have over three billion DNA bases, we’re looking at 450,000,000 information bits that unintelligent forces of nature would have had to expertly encode over only a few million years.4 Creation thus remains the only scientifically defensible origins option to explain so much information packed in human DNA. You and I came from Adam and Eve, not from any animal. Therefore, we all inherited Adam’s sin nature. We need a sinless man—the last Adam—to pay our sin penalty.5
Ice Cores, Recent Creation, and the Gospel
ICR physicist Dr. Jake Hebert recently completed a multiyear analysis of some of the methods secular scientists use to assign ages to different depths within drill cores extracted from deep-sea sediments and polar ice sheets.6 A 1976 technical article gave secular scientists confidence they could correlate chemical “wiggles” within cores to certain earth-sun cycles that they assume have been happening for millions of years. The article’s authors needed to pin the cores’ astronomy-correlated wiggles onto a timeline. So, they chose 700,000 years ago—a time that others assigned to a reversal of Earth’s magnetic field—to help date the core. But Dr. Hebert discovered a huge error that erases confidence in the whole dating process.
In the early 1990s, workers could not match other sediment cores to the 1976 age scheme, so they revised the magnetic reversal age from 700,000 to 780,000 years to force a better fit. No one fully determined the destructive impact of this change until Dr. Hebert looked into it. He discovered that the revised magnetic reversal age threw off the original core age assignments. This result calls into question the validity of the original 1976 paper’s conclusions as well as the highly-touted method of matching chemical wiggles to assumed astronomical ages.
Dr. Hebert’s findings exposed a supposedly scientific enterprise as a house of cards—many, complicated, interlocking cards—with none set upon the table of verifiable science. Now, scientists who claim that astronomical and isotope dates independently confirm old ages and thus refute Genesis history7 face the embarrassment of having trusted “science falsely so called.”8
Once Christians begin to deny the timing of creation in Genesis, they start to deny other Genesis events that fortify our understanding of the gospel. They start asserting that death was around before Adam’s sin and that the Flood covered mere regions rather than the whole globe. Why trust what Scripture says about the Lord Jesus saving us from our sins through His historical death and resurrection if science says we cannot trust what Scripture says about the historical death of Adam or the historical deaths of those who refused to repent and be saved aboard the Ark? Armed with Dr. Hebert’s new analysis, Christians can expose key errors in ice core age assertions.9 This leaves the Bible’s revelations of a recent creation, a global flood, and a relevant gospel unbroken.
Isopach Maps and the Lord Jesus
Isopach maps, or thickness maps, outline continuous geological layers found mostly below ground. ICR petroleum geologist Dr. Tim Clarey and his assistant Davis J. Werner used geology software to map the thicknesses of each rock type measured and recorded in over 1,600 oil wells, cores, and rock exposures across North and South America and Africa—with the rest of the world in the research pipeline. Over the last three or so years, they accumulated and merged these data into the first-ever images of the upper, lower, and outer boundaries for each major rock layer. Some of these single sedimentary layers are larger than we thought, extending across now-separated continents.
The project revealed where and how far muddy floodwaters must have flowed to deposit each vast, continent-size, continuous rock layer. It turns out that the maximum level of coverage is the same on all three continents—as though the same global phenomenon affected them all. The picture of Noah’s Flood is now clearer than ever. Combined with clues like fossils and cross-beds that point to high-energy deposition, isopach data show that fast-moving sediments covered continents repeatedly and rapidly. Then, very soon after, sedimentation changed direction. Floodwaters carried recent deposits off continental margins at the same time on all three continents mapped so far.
Despite mainstream scientists who essentially ban Genesis from their brains no matter what the evidence shows, Earth’s rocks shout “worldwide Flood!” This geology confirms the very words of the Lord Jesus, who said,
“For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.”10
Scientific evidence that confirms the Flood also confirms the reality of God’s judgment on ancient sinners, as well as salvation through His appointed vessel. This accurate biblical account motivates us to seek salvation from our own just judgment. The Lord Jesus offers just such a redemption for those who repent and believe.
Environmental Tracking and the Great Creator
ICR medical doctor and engineer Randy Guliuzza’s research helps remove another key objection. The real mechanisms creatures use to better fit themselves into various environments stand poised to flip the common nature-does-it-all mindset into a new God-designed-it confidence.
For example, how do normal-looking fish transform into the pale Mexican blind cavefish within just a few generations? They thrive in the dark, complete with scales where their eyes used to be and with supersensitive chemical, pressure, and touch organs. Secular scientists studied this fish hoping to reveal how nature—which in this case takes the form of darkness—does its evolutionary magic. They must have felt cheated when they found sophisticated fish-altering mechanisms within the fish instead of their environment. Water-conductivity sensors on fish eggs signal the inhibition of a specific developmental protein. Epigenetic controls shut down eye genes during development in such a clever way that those traits can revert back to their original settings in future generations.11 Indeed, blind cavefish can spawn sighted offspring.
If any and every creature change represented evolution and if that same kind of evolution brought forth man from molecules, then the Bible is wrong about creation. Internal mechanisms automatically select trait variations, refuting Darwin’s external selection concept. Dr. Guliuzza is finding case after case of creature-driven trait adjustments. And who but our great Creator could conceive and craft such intricately integrated, forward-thinking, creature-changing features?
Good science gives us more reason to trust the Word of Christ—including His gospel—than ever before. 
Good Science Leads to the Gospel
When we find creatures using innate environmental tracking instead of evolution to adjust their features, evolution poses less of a threat to Genesis creation. When we show how the Flood explains extensive, fast-deposited rock layers far better than long ages of slow deposition, then evolutionary deep time dries up. When we discover that the eons matched to various sediment cores rest on bad assumptions, then they dwindle into empty threats against the Bible’s history. And when we find more precisely specified, uniquely human DNA than any natural random process could possibly compose, we are left with our origins in Adam and a dire need for rescue from our sin.
What we believe about creation impacts what we believe about salvation.
What we believe about creation impacts what we believe about salvation. So, ICR is all about using science to answer key questions and to remove objections to the gospel. We offer web articles and videos, DVD series, devotionals, Acts & Facts, books, speaking events, and someday soon a brick-and-mortar discovery center12 to showcase our gospel-confirming finds. As long as the Lord and His generous people fuel this mission, we will conduct and communicate science that supports biblical creation and builds confidence in the truth of the gospel.
References
- “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (Hebrews 11:3).
- “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11a).
- Tomkins, J. 2016. Analysis of 101 Chimpanzee Trace Read Data Sets: Assessment of Their Overall Similarity to Human and Possible Contamination with Human DNA. Answers Research Journal. 9: 294-298.
- In other words, the supposed time since our last common ancestor.
- 1 Corinthians 15:45.
- Hebert, J. 2017. Testing Old-Earth Climate Claims, Part 2. Acts & Facts. 46 (12): 10-13.
- For examples, see Hebert, J. ICR and AIG Refute BioLogos Old-Earth Argument. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org December 15, 2016, accessed October 20, 2017.
- 1 Timothy 6:20. See also Whitcomb, J. C. 2008. Science “So Called.” Answers Magazine. Oct.-Dec.: 102-103.
- Hebert, J. 2017. Testing Old-Earth Climate Claims, Part 1. Acts & Facts. 46 (11): 10-13.
- Matthew 24:38-39.
- Tomkins, J. P. Blind Cavefish Illuminate Divine Engineering. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org October 23, 2017, accessed October 24, 2017.
- See ICR.org/DiscoveryCenter for more details.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his M.S. in biotechnology from Stephen F. Austin State University.
