Jim Mason, a Lakefield, Ont. area retired nuclear physicist, who lectures on the evangelical church circuit as a young Earth creationist with Creation Ministries International (CMI)-Canada, will be in Thompson April 14-15.
Mason, who has a PhD in experimental nuclear physics from McMaster University, will start the weekend off with a brunch at Pastor Ted Goossen's Christian Centre Fellowship at 10 a.m. Saturday, asking the question, "Does the Bible Conflict with Science?"
Sunday at 11 a.m. Mason will speak during the morning worship service at Pastor Peter Elias' First Baptist Church on "Origins by the Book." That same evening on April 15, Mason wraps up his visit speaking at the 6 p.m. evening service at Thompson Pentecostal Assembly on "biological evidence for creation."
Mason's scientific career was spent developing passive and active sonar systems for shipborne, airborne and fixed applications that are used in Canadian and foreign navies and developing integrated, secure digital voice and data ground mobile tactical communications systems that are used by the Canadian and British armies.
While the debate over competing theories of Darwinian evolution and biblical creationism was famously showcased during the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee in 1925, the resolution of the matter - much to the surprise of secularists who had thought it settled for 50 years - is no closer today than it was in 1925, or when it reignited around 1975. If anything, the issue is more contested in more venues in more ways than ever, with "intelligent design" now added to the mix in recent years, much to the dismay of secular scientists, other academics and many public school science teachers.
Evolution is the theory that generations of animal and plant species alter and transform over time in response to changes in their environment and circumstances, a process known as natural selection. Intelligent design is the proposition that scientific evidence exists to show that life in its multitudinous forms was caused by the direction of a higher intelligence.
In 1925, prosecutors charged John Thomas Scopes, a high school science teacher in Dayton, Tenn., with teaching evolution, which had just been outlawed. Represented by the famed defence lawyer, Clarence Darrow, Scopes was found guilty and fined after a high-profile trial, but the conviction was later overturned on a technicality, although the statute prohibiting the teaching of evolution remained on Tennessee's law books until its repeal in 1967.
William Jennings Bryan, a well-known Populist, former Nebraska congressman and three-time candidate for the United States presidency, who delivered one of the most famous and fiery orations in American history almost 30 years earlier in 1896 with his "Cross of Gold" speech at the Democratic national convention in Chicago, denouncing a gold standard monetary policy, argued the prosecution's case for the State of Tennessee.
Creation Ministries International (CMI) is a non-profit young Earth creationist organization of autonomous Christian apologetics ministries that promote a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament in the Bible. It got its start in 1977 when the Creation Science Association (CSA) was organized in Adelaide, Australia by Dr. Carl Wieland, a medical doctor.
Wieland, an atheist in university, graduated from Adelaide University in South Australia with qualifications in medicine and surgery, but stopped practicing medicine in 1986 after he was involved in a serious traffic accident, which resulted in him spending 5 1/2 months in hospital. He has been managing director of Creation Ministries International (Australia) since 1987, when it was called Creation Science Foundation and then Answers in Genesis. He was the founding editor of Creation magazine in 1978.
The autonomous ministries are now located in Australia, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Mason's field of expertise, according to an interview he did for Creation Ministries International with Jonathan Sarfati, an Australian physical chemist and spectroscopist, who is a fellow CMI scientist and co-editor of the quarterly Creation magazine, which can be found online at http://creation.com/jim-mason-nuclear-physicist, includes radiometric dating. Mason argues radiometric dating techniques typically give wildly erroneous ages and carbon dating, properly understood, supports young Earth creationism.
Mason argues for a literal interpretation of the 50-chapter Book of Genesis, saying the first 11 chapters are "foundational." According to Mason, the so-called "long ages" and Big Bang theory, which explains the origin and evolution of the universe using the Lambda-Cold Dark Matter cosmological concordance model, estimating the age of the universe as being 12 to 14 billion years old, cannot be reconciled with the Bible as "Adam and Eve disappear, original sin disappears, death through sin disappears, the need for a Saviour disappears and indeed, in the end, salvation and eternal life disappear."
