LEWISBURG — A Penn State researcher who holds a doctorate degree in mechanical engineering disagrees with scientific colleagues who do not believe in creationism.
“Many will attack the word of God and the story of creation,” Jeremy Walter told about 250 men at a resurrection breakfast Saturday at the Country Cupboard Restaurant near Lewisburg. “It’s like an anvil. It’s not going to break like a bubble.”
Too often people seek the pretty pleasures, said the director of the power conversion systems department of the Energy Science and Power Systems Division at the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State.
“About the time they get them, they vanish,” he said, likening them to a bubble.
Walter, who was raised with a religious background, started questioning evolution as a graduate student in the late 1970s while reading papers about thermodynamics written by creationist scientists.
“I was willing to consider the creation story but I was trained as an evolutionist,” the 55-year-old from the State College area said.
He disagrees with Stephen Hawking and his big bang theory and how the earth came to exist.
Saying the age-of-the-earth debate is a distraction, he said the issue is whether people believe in human theories or “make room for God’s revelation.”
He wore a tie depicting a dinosaur he said was consistent with his belief that people and dinosaurs existed simultaneously.
“I think man was always on earth,” said Walter, who has led a number of undersea propulsion development projects for the Navy. His research involves developing and testing advanced air-independent engines and thermal power systems.
Walter, who has contributed to the books “In Six Days” and “The Seventh Day,” believes “there was no transition from people to frogs or frogs to people. I believe we started out people and stayed people.”
People have three ways of learning: observation, such as being present in a delivery room when a baby is born; using reason, such as DNA testing to prove a parental relationship; and someone revealing something to us, he said.
Showing maps of two ways he could have traveled from State College to Lewisburg, he said the best way to find out how he got there would be to simply ask him.
“The Bible says by faith we understand,” said Walter, who advises a Christian study youth group at Penn State and is active in his Baptist Church. “There are some things we have to accept because we trust somebody. God claims to have been there.”
God chose to make things in a certain way. He revealed what man’s job and consequences were if he disobeyed. By man eating the forbidden fruit, man indicated he didn’t trust God, he said.
“The consequence was if you disobey, you will die,” he said.
“God promised to restore us if we were willing to trust him. God chose to provide a substitute and Jesus died for us. Proof it was accepted was the resurrection.”
-- E-mail comments to kblackledge@dailyitem.com.
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