Reflecting on the 9th ICC
I am exhausted, but in a very good way.
The Ninth International Conference on Creationism is now in the record books. We're still waiting for the papers to be released, but the presentations have been made and the conference itself is over. I thought the last one was pretty good, but I'm certain this one topped it. Attendance was massive, behavior was pretty much exemplary, and I had a lot of silly fun with the "Let's Talk Creation" photo booth. Most importantly, I got to sit in on what I would consider to be one of the most important presentations in a very long time.
Where to begin? The crowds were impressive. I didn't know what to expect moving the conference from Pittsburgh to Cedarville University, and I'm glad to say the attendance was still strong. I presented and heard papers in rooms where people were lined up in the back and sitting on the floor. The theater that held the plenary sessions in the evening was also standing room only. This was fabulous, of course, but definitely highlights the need for larger rooms next time. Who could have anticipated?
I was beyond delighted to see so many young people at the conference. I heard a few snarky comments on the number of gray hairs in the audience, but I remember my first creation conference thirty years ago where I was the only young person in a sea of gray hairs. Now that I've become a gray hair myself, I'm just thrilled to see a veritable army of young people, some of whom were telling me how they will do the ICC "when we take over." HAHA! I love it!
Lots of people stopped by the Core Academy booth where we had information about Core Academy, Biblical Creation Trust, and Let's Talk Creation. We decided to get a little silly with this and printed some giant foam heads of Paul and me, and that was honestly pretty popular. We had a lot of fun meeting folks and making photos. And yes, Paul and I recorded enough live material for a future episode (hopefully the very near future). Check out our channel on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
I was truly honored to be in the audience to hear Kurt Wise present his work on "What Biostratigraphic
Continuity Suggests about Earth History," a paper with co-author Donna Richardson. I know something like this was a dream of Kurt's for a long time, at least as long as I've known him (approaching thirty years), and I was amazed at the results. I'd tell you all about it, but I'm going to wait and give some commentary after the paper is actually published. Then you can read it for yourself and won't have to just take my word for it. But I will say this: What they did was kind of obvious, and what they found was remarkable. It blew our traditional understandings of the geologic column right out of the water, and Kurt's reading of this data made a huge amount of sense. I'm still thinking about the diagrams and maps he showed. No, I'm not exaggerating, it was that important. I'm eager to try to replicate his work on some projects of my own.
My presentations went fairly well. I was excited and honored to present the work I did, although I must admit it was disappointing to realize that there were only twelve paper slots, meaning that my work (and that of my podcast partner Paul Garner) literally occupied half of those slots. There were three tracks of presentations, and that was my biggest bummer of the conference. With the move to Cedarville, I was really hoping to get rid of at least one of the tracks, if not reduce everything to a single track. I missed a lot of important talks that I wanted to hear because there were just too many tracks.
That said, my paper presentations went very smoothly. I admit that I was pretty worn out by the last one, which my wife described as "sucking the life out of the room," but otherwise, I was pleased with the presentations. I know a lot of you (a LOT of you) were in earnest prayer for me, and I'm extremely grateful for that. Everything in that regard went well enough, I suppose. My wife even described the conference as "healing." Thank you for praying. Your prayers were answered. To see a brief preview of my papers, check out this post.
As usual, the conference really got my creative juices flowing, and I've got lots of ideas for the future. In the very near future, I think I'll be expanding my work on human origins in a gigantic way, following examples and ideas that I got from several of the papers presented. Some of you reading might even be getting some emails from me very soon. Watch out! I have a wonderful plan for your life! Haha!
One final note for now, as you can see in the image at the top of this post, I debuted my latest essay as a paper handout at the conference, along with logo buttons. It's called "Young Earth Revolution" (it's very important that you spell it correctly), and we've already had requests to have the essay released online. In that regard, I'll tell you this: Check back later this week for an opportunity to pick up the leftover buttons and essays that we'll distribute from Core Academy for a small donation. I'm not exactly sure when I'll have them ready, but it should be very soon. You can also expect that the essay will be posted some time in August, and I'll also tell you that the theme of "Young Earth Revolution" may make another appearance this fall, Lord willing. There might be an expanded commentary on the themes of that essay, if you get my drift. I hesitate to say more, because I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I'm excited by the prospects and my creative juices are flowing.
Thanks for reading, and thank you to John Whitmore, Aaron Hutchison, Steve Gollmer, and the entire Cedarville University team. I know how challenging it is to produce a conference just a fraction of this size, and the ICC must have been a HUGE amount of work. I'm so happy to see how much it paid off. The transition from Pittsburgh to Cedarville was about as smooth as we could expect! I'm looking forward to 2028!
Feedback? Email me at toddcharleswood [at] gmail [dot] com. If you enjoyed this article, please consider a contribution to Core Academy of Science. Thank you.
Have you read my book? You should check that out too!
