On the evening of April 22, 1987, over 850 young and older adults nearly filled the auditorium at Calvin College’s Fine Arts Center. What would bring that many people out on a weekday night? A lecture by Dr. Duane T. Gish from the Institute of Creation Research in California entitled, “The Scientific Evidences for Special Creation.”

How this lecturer came to the campus of Calvin College may be of interest to our readers. Last year Professor Howard Van Till, teacher of physics and astronomy at Calvin College, published his book, The Fourth Day. In this book Van Till, among other things, states that the first eleven chapters of Genesis are not to be taken literally and that he would allow for the evolution of mankind from lower forms of life (see pp. 83, 258). Many concerned persons have spoken and written to Van Till and to his overseers on Calvin’s Board‘ of Trustees, expressing their disagreement with him and showing how his book radically departs from past synodical decisions, our Reformed confessions, and the Word of God.

The Board of Reformed Fellowship also disagrees with much of what Professor Van Till has written in his book. So, at a recent meeting, the Board discussed how it might help to bring about some clearer understanding of the issues raised in The Fourth Day. It was thought that a debate between Van Till and an equally knowledgeable scientist taking a different position would most quickly get at the heart of the issues involved. Besides, in a debate format, each scientist could marshall his evidence and show how he reached his particular conclusions. The audience would be able to judge whether the conclusions were warranted by the evidence each man presented.

So the secretary of the Board was instructed to write two letters: one to Dr. Van Till of Calvin College and the other to Dr. Gish of the Institute for Creation Research . Dr. Gish immediately responded that he would be happy to come and debate Dr. Van Till. However, Dr. Van Till declined the Board’s invitation. So the Board scheduled Dr. Gish as the sole lecturer for that evening.

Gish began his Wednesday night lecture by surveying a number of atheistic, naturalistic scientists who say that they no longer consider evolution as a viable theory to explain the origins of the universe and human life. Listening to Gish, I found it curious, even strange, that · the theories originally proposed by atheistic evolutionists and now being rejected by them are now enthusiastically embraced by so-called theistic evolutionists. Imagine–Christians eating the crumbs that fall from the tables of non-Christians!

By means of a sight-and-sound presentation, Dr. Gish went on to compare the definitions of evolution proposed by the atheist Sir Julian Huxley and that proposed by Professor Van Till. Both men, Gish noted, operated with the idea that matter itself has motion and process, as if matter itself has the inherent capability to develop, to progress, and to come to life. Hence, the universe is essentially viewed by both men as a closed system with no need for a direction-setting, history-shaping, life-giving God. Over against this perspective, Gish quoted from the Scriptures which explain in detail how God created the Universe and human life, not by mechanistic evolutionary processes, but by special creative acts.

Later in his lecture Gish used a study of mathematical probabilities to show how impossible it would be for the 124 elements of certain amino acid to be precisely arranged to produce just one molecule of that amino acid. What’s more, these elements in the primeval universe would have been moving about in a random fashion. The incredible odds of having all these elements properly align themselves, without any outside control or direction, approaches sheer impossibility. And all this just for one molecule! According to the evolutionists, the molecules would also somehow draw together and the groups of molecules would somehow start forming structures, and so on, until that evolved amino acid eventually would start talking and writing books!

In addition to many Biblical references, Gish also used facts obtained from scientific study. He observed, for example, that biologists never speak of good mutations in plant or animal life. Mutations are always bad; they produce deformities and imperfections which often lead to premature death. Yet the Darwinian evolutionists depend on mutations to explain how creatures gradually improved!

Likewise, physicists, in their second law of thermodynamics, have always maintained that the movement in the universe is from order to disorder (the stars, for example, are said to be burning out). How inconsistent, then, for the evolutionists to claim that the movement in the universe is just the opposite: from disorder to order.

Gish also referred to the field of geology. If, as the evolutionists insist, the earth is billions of years old, and if each species of animal life evolved from lower to higher forms with countless transitional forms in between, should we not expect to find millions, even billions, of these transitional forms embedded in the layers of sedement below the present surface of the earth? But how many of these transitional forms have been found? None! What we do find embedded in these rock layers, said Gish, are bats and dragonflies and birds, the same kind of bats and dragonflies and birds we find today. No bona fide transitional forms of half-bats or half-birds have ever been discovered. And, taking away the clever hoaxes and the wild reconstructions of skeletons on the basis of a jaw or a tooth, no transitional forms of human life have been discovered either.

I came away from the lecture with a profound sense of gratitude that in Dr. Gish and others we have scientists who are not afraid to take on the evolutionists on their own scientific turf. Surely, as a pastor, I have neither the time nor the expertise to study and to refute evolutionary theories. Thank God for men like Dr. Gish who have that time and expertise.

What saddens me is that we did not have the opportunity to hear the other side that night. How helpful it would have been for Professor Van Till or one of his colleagues from one of the science departments to respond to Gish’s facts and to his conclusions. Yet, despite pleas from the Board of Reformed Fellowship for a public forum on these important matters, the science professors at Calvin College turned us down. Can it be that these are the same men who frequently champion the cause of free inquiry at Calvin? Or does their definition of free inquiry go only as far as the closed doors of the classroom where they can teach what they want in secret?

Randal S. Lankheet is the pastor of the Jamestown CR Church.