The Institute for Creation Research had a fantastic year advancing creation science in 2023! It’s my joy to continue the tradition of our founder, Dr. Henry M. Morris, in using the first Acts & Facts 2024 issue to recount ICR’s major activities and blessings from the past year. I trust you’ll be excited to see the hand of the Lord Jesus empowering our progress. All credit belongs to Him, and together we can thank Him for His abiding presence and the many good things He’s done.
A year ago, I discussed the new ICR logo, Digital Media department, construction for the ICR Discovery Center, and our newly completed science labs. We were able to use all of these in 2023, which turned out to be a superb year for outreach.
ICR Staff and Volunteers
Let’s begin with the fabric of ICR—our people. Our full-time staff recently grew by 34%. These new personnel have filled critically needed positions. We thank the Lord Jesus for giving us wonderful folks who value being of one accord, possess outstanding skills, and place ICR’s mission above self-interest. It’s a delight to see our departments working together in such harmony and their people helping to carry each other’s burdens. The expectation of achievement, confidence, and overall morale are extremely high.
But that’s only about half the people needed to carry out our mission here. We’re also blessed with a dedicated army of volunteers who deeply love ICR. All of them graciously help behind the scenes without fanfare. Most of our family of volunteers faithfully work at the ICR Discovery Center and are absolutely vital to keep it running. From our hearts, to all of them we say, “Thank you!” Our volunteers seamlessly work together with our full-time staff, who also serve as docents, speakers, or in other ways at our Discovery Center. When it comes to ICR staff, the Lord has faithfully provided for our needs according to His riches in glory (Philippians 4:19).
Educational Outreach
Why is all this teamwork important? If you were here on a daily basis, I’m sure you’d have been blessed to see over 25,000 students learning about creation in 2023 at the Discovery Center. Our facility may be the only place where they’ll be exposed to how true science confirms the Bible. With the information conveyed through our engaging exhibits, these young people are educated with answers to the ungodly messages menacing the church today. ICR content can help spare young people decades of heartache…but only if they hear it.
A major priority of our new Digital Media team is building connections with younger people. Among their many products this past year were two Creation Classes, four educational videos, and over 70 podcast episodes. One recent Creation. Live episode traces the fascinating story of a young man’s journey from deep involvement in the work of militant evolutionary atheist Richard Dawkins to salvation in Christ.1 The tragic part of his story is that he faithfully attended a conservative, Bible-teaching church throughout high school, but it never provided any teaching on evolution, Bibliology, or other topics he struggled with.
Do teens or young adults in your church know the abysmal legacy of Darwinian selectionism on humanity? This history goes back only 170 years, but its significance is lost on young people due to omission or misrepresentation in school. Our Digital Media team will make a major push in 2024 to expose the evil fruits of evolution’s selectionism. Recall that in the early 20th century, the United States led the way in forced sterilizations and other atrocities to improve the “breeding stock” of humanity through a practice that selectionists called eugenics. Digital Media recently produced a powerful podcast reminding viewers of the natural selection-to-eugenics connection.2
ICR’s educational antidote to evolutionary teaching is our School of Biblical Apologetics (SOBA). This is an online program designed as a two-year course of study with a flexible schedule in which graduates can obtain up to a Masters of Christian Education in biblical education and apologetics. Minor areas of study include creation research, Genesis studies, Christian school teaching, sacred humanities, and Christian leadership and communication. During 2023, SOBA grew to over 100 active students, including 21 graduate students. You can find out more at ICR.edu.
As an Acts & Facts subscriber, you likely appreciate the efforts of our Communications team to ensure that each page is custom made. Last year, subscribers grew by over 10,000. Communications put together six regular editions, plus the history of ICR research and kids special editions. They also compile the entries for our quarterly Days of Praise devotional booklet, which last year surpassed 165,000 subscribers. We are blessed to continue making these materials free to all who want them…thank you! With the addition of some young and energetic new editors last year, ICR published 15 new books, developed six books scheduled for publication in early 2024, and updated 13 books for reprint.
2023 was a busy year for our Events team as well. The calendar started filling up early. One of our goals was to partner with as many different creation science ministries as wanted to work with ICR. Twelve ministries came alongside us for some of our 30 different church events in 14 states. For the young people, we conducted 15 different student events in six states and 10 campus-based events, including at the University of Missouri, Truman State University, Missouri University of Science and Technology, University of Idaho, University of New Mexico, and University of North Texas. The Discovery Center held 17 on-site events. For those who love to hike and learn, we organized five Creation Adventures in Arizona, Idaho, South Dakota, and Washington.
Research Mission
Our scientists speak at ICR events, are guests on many Christian and secular programs, and write most of the articles for Acts & Facts. You may be surprised to know that they also wrote 15 peer-reviewed publications for Journal of Creation, Creation Research Society Quarterly, Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Creationism, iScience, and Applied Spectroscopy, along with some theological journals.
The articles covered our major research programs, like Dr. Tim Clarey’s worldwide borehole analysis detailing the progressive and multicontinental nature of the Flood, Dr. Jeff Tomkins’ work correlating paleontological findings with Dr. Clarey’s megasequence discoveries, Dr. Jake Hebert’s work on pre-Flood longevity, and Dr. Brian Thomas’ research into so-called “ancient” tissues found in dinosaur bones that are still distinctive and pliable. We also completed our third scientific expedition collecting samples, excavating dinosaur bones, and capturing footage for Digital Media.
Significantly, three papers laid the vital groundwork to fundamentally change how biological phenomena are interpreted via a new theory of biological design (TOBD). Two papers focused on ICR’s engineering-based, organism-focused model of adaptation called continuous environmental tracking (CET). Perhaps the most exciting area of research is our related science experiments on blind cavefish. This is our biggest science initiative in over two decades, and I believe it is ICR’s most important work to date. Our findings are already influencing other research organizations to do additional work on TOBD.
We now have four microscopes, including the Zeiss confocal laser scope, in our microscopy lab. In 2024 we hope to add a polarized light-refracting scope that will be able to identify and image soft tissue in thin sections of dinosaur bone. Our molecular lab is just about fully stocked, and we’re looking to add an additional lab technician.
That covers many of the highlights for 2023—what a year it was! It’s exciting to see the hand of the Lord Jesus empowering ICR’s progress for creation science. Dr. Henry Morris used to always add that “ICR finished the year in the black.” So, our deep “thank you” that we’re able to say the same, and also to the many Acts & Facts readers who regularly pray for ICR in their daily devotions. We need the Lord Jesus to help us have scientific insights, creativity in our communications, and spiritual protection for the ICR family. We look forward to working together with you in 2024.
References
- Behind Enemy Lines. Creation.Live. Institute for Creation Research. Posted on ICR.org October 27, 2023.
- Eugenics, Evolution, and a Death-Driven Worldview. The Creation Podcast. Institute for Creation Research. Posted on ICR.org October 17, 2023.
Top image: Events team members Dave Napier (left) and Joel Kautt talk with students at the ICR Discovery Center.
* Dr. Guliuzza is President of the Institute for Creation Research. He earned his Doctor of Medicine from the University of Minnesota, his Master of Public Health from Harvard University, and served in the U.S. Air Force as 28th Bomb Wing Flight Surgeon and Chief of Aerospace Medicine. Dr. Guliuzza is also a registered Professional Engineer and holds a B.A. in theology from Moody Bible Institute.
