I have been a caver since age 11. I have been in the show cave business since age 24. I didn’t become a Christian until age 32. However when I did come to faith, I had had enough religious teaching as a kid to know I had some questions that needed good answers.

In the church my family attended as a child, I was taught that God created everything in six 24 hour days and then he rested. I was taught the Big Bang was bad and something that must not be discussed or considered. I knew that based on the geneology found in the Bible that most Christians I knew believed the earth to be a good bit less than 10,000 years old. However as a caver with many friends of strong science background and a decent scientific background myself, I knew that could not be truth. Now as a person of faith, I knew the Bible was the inspired Word of God; so there had to be a way to reconcile science and the Bible.

This was way back in 1980, but I set out looking for the answer. I went to a Christian bookstore and bought several big books explaining creation and science from the current Biblical perspective. I spent several weeks reading probably 2-3,000 pages on the subject. It didn’t take long for me to see that I wasn’t finding the right answers. Quickly I realized there was not a strong case being made for the earth being young. However the changes coming to faith had wrought in me and were such that I knew God was real. There was no denying that! I just hadto put my questions on the back burner for the time being and live by faith.

It wasn’t until about 25 years later that I read about a court case in Pennsylvania involving the teaching of “intelligent design” in a local school. This very short newspaper account peaked my interest and I decided to investigate. This quickly led me to a book by a famous Christian writer, Lee Strobel. Most serious people of faith had at least heard about his critically acclaimed book “The Case for Christ” and Lee’s former background as a hard-nosed investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune gave him some credibility as a logical/rational intelligent non-emotional person. Lee had written a new book “The Case for the Creator” making a strong argrument how scientific discoveries made over the past 40-50 years now were pointing to a very strong compatibility between what science was discovering and the Bible. The only problem was Christians had to be willing to realize that they might be looking at some things from an incorrect perspective. After all, at one time Christians thought the sun revolved around the earth.

I dived in. Within a few pages, I was excited. I was yelling at my wife, Laura, to come listen to me read excerpts. I was like a kid in a candy store. Here were the answers I had been looking for the past 25 years. The earth was old just like I knew it had to be from all my time spent underground in caves. However scientific discoveries were showing that the limited scientific information available in the Bible and even Chapter 1 of Genesis was a very good fit with the scientific data and could still be taken literally , if the Bible was interpreted from the right perspective. The next couple years were re-invigorating as I learned as much as I could about “intelligent design”. My studies led me to reasons.org, the webite of an organization called “Reasons To Believe” founded by former astronomer, Hugh Ross. Wow! they really had some great stuff and most of it from a very strong scientific perspective.

As I now develop my third show cave, I don’t have to be concerned about all the Pleistocent age bones being found in Indiana Caverns being older than the earth. The earth has been around for 4.5 billion years just like scientists said and the universe is indeed 13.72 billion years old. Intelligent Design shows that this much time has been necessary to prepare planet earth for the appearance of man. The Big Bang also indicates that there must be a causal agent for the universe – something beyond time, space, matter and energy. That both my faith and my intellect are now in full agreement pumps me up everyday!!

If you would like to learn the real scoop about intelligent design, I recommend that you visit the website,reasons.org, or spend about $7.00 for a paperback copy of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for the Creator”. I hope you will find it time well invested.