all right good morning and welcome my
name's Jody Weis I'd like to tell you
why I am a creationist so I also grew up
in Illinois southern Illinois near st.
Louis grew up in a Christian home in the
Churches of Christ and was taught
creation from my youth and really didn't
know that there was much of a
controversy until kind of middle school
age we had a presenter come to our
congregation and teach us about creation
and about the fact that there were
people that believed something different
and it wasn't until high school that I
started really learning about what that
was and so it was a really eye-opening
experience for me as I went through
education to learn about that dichotomy
that existed that the idea that on the
one hand you had God's Word which in a
plain reading talked about creation and
on the other hand you had a scientific
paradigm that based upon methodological
naturalism told us that all life arose
through naturalistic processes and I saw
a great divide between the two and I was
exposed to creationist scientists who
presented information from the
perspective that Genesis was history and
I thought there's something in there
that that I agree with that I like but I
also I'm hearing all this science over
here and it was interesting as I went
through high school and I learned
different things course I do not
recommend this I was very combative with
my freshman high school biology teacher
so mrs. Perkins I'm very sorry because I
was combative over evolution and I
shouldn't have been I didn't approach it
from a very balanced perspective but I
but what I've learned from that
experience was that there were a lot of
people that were trying to wrestle with
this idea and grasp this idea and as I
went up through high school and started
getting more and more interest in
science and more and more interested in
biochemistry we had some events in our
family my brother got cancer didn't
understand it didn't know where do you
get cancer where does this come from how
does this happen and it was a new
experience for our whole family to try
to understand and I made a decision I
said I want to go to school and I want
to understand science I want to
understand things like cancer and I want
to understand were we created or not can
we know can we do we have evidence of
that and it set me on a journey through
freed-hardeman universe
see where their biochemistry degree
through Vanderbilt University where I
earned a PhD in biochemistry and this
journey has been years and years long
now and I've been an educator now for
several years and also working in
research and the more and more I learn
about science the more I realize there
is a great deep divide there but it's
not about the actual evidence the divide
is all over the interpretation of that
evidence creationists and evolutionists
don't have different evidence we don't
have different sets of data so to speak
we have different filters through which
we understand and interpret that data
and once I came to understand the method
of interpretation the approach of the
interpretation is starting to make sense
to me how people can come to very
different conclusions it makes sense I
understand why people are evolutionists
I understand their their way of
interpreting the data and it makes sense
on certain levels but as was noted
yesterday by dr. wood and others my
commitment is not to methodological
naturalism as a paradigm my commitments
to scripture into God's Word and as I
read God's Word I see a very plain
understanding in one of the passages
that means the most to me in Romans
chapter 1 and verse 20 Paul writes for
since the creation of the world his
invisible attributes his eternal power
and divine nature been clearly seen
being understood through what has been
made so that they are without excuse and
what I see in that is God's eternal
power divine nature seen in the things
that have been made my career has been
spent studying the things that have been
made looking at cells looking at sub
cellular function enzymes in particular
and what I see in there is a fascinating
molecular world that we cannot see that
was the most fun part for me to explain
to my family that I'd never seen what I
study I really can't see it it's
invisible but I know it's there I can
see its effects and the same thing is
true of God I see what he's done I see
the effect of God's power and God's
design in nature and as I study these
enzymes and the interrelationships
between them I see his power
over and over again and to me it is a
compelling case on the molecular level
that God's eternal power and divine
nature are seen in what he made and
that's why I'm a creationist thank you
[Applause]