Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
Scientists should want their conclusions critiqued, or refereed, by their peers (peer review). Researchers who believe their work is important should try to publish that work. However, leading science journals will not accept papers published elsewhere. (That stipulation alone eliminates any portion of this book from consideration.) Seldom would a science journal publish a paper more than 6 pages in length. (That also prevents the hydroplate theory, pages 110–441, from being published in a journal.)
I certainly want my ideas tested and, as explained on page 588, am willing to pay $10,000 to anyone who can find a qualified person to do that. Also, I have frequently initiated and appreciated cordial, factual exchanges with scientists who are not creationists. But in a journal, who does the evaluation, and is there an unbiased process in which a writer who advances creation or the flood can challenge an evolutionist reviewer’s disagreement? Leading science journals have a solid history of hostility toward creationists, so evolutionists are both judge and jury. Who would want to make his case in a court run by an opponent? Why would that opponent publish your case?
To level the playing field, I have had on the table, since 1980, a written-debate offer for any qualified evolutionist or team of evolutionists who disagree with what I have written. Both sides would have the right to publish the complete debate. [See "What Is the Written Debate Offer?" on page 588.]
Evolutionists have known of this offer for many years. An earlier version was published in the anticreation journal, Creation/Evolution , in 1990. The offer was even placed on the worldwide web in 1995. So far, no evolutionist has accepted. A few initially agreed but soon dropped out, because they were unwilling to limit the exchange to science; they wanted to include (and probably ridicule) religious views. Another debate offer that, if accepted, could be heard (or read from a transcript) by the public over the Internet; it is explained on page 589. Can you find a taker for either debate? Until someone accepts the written debate and as long as my good health continues, both offers will remain.