Message from the ICC Chairman

There have been some changes at the International Conference on Creationism. The organization has a new location at Cedarville University and new website. At the next conference we plan to hold some new types of presentations, such as abstracts, posters, and interactive forums, alongside the traditional presentation of papers. With so much that is new, I thought this might be a good time to consider the unchanging purpose of the ICC.  The official mission of the conference is to promote the development and dissemination of positive contributions to a young earth creationist model of origins and models of earth history that recognize the reality of the global Flood described in Genesis. So our goal is more than just giving creationists a place to showcase their work.  Each ICC is dedicated to bringing researchers together to present their work and discuss it with other researchers so that iron can sharpen iron – we can both spread what we have learned and help each other push the work further.  The objective is that we improve our understanding of how God has accomplished His work in history so we can glorify Him in that work all the more.

It is my hope and prayer that this attitude will saturate our interactions as we go into the 2023 conference.  This is a conference for Young Earth Creationists; we will not demonize those who disagree but that is what we understand the Scriptures to teach and that is the position we will support.  But within that community there are different hypotheses and different interpretations of the evidence.  We all agree on the big picture but we differ significantly on the details.  That is not a bad thing – research advances when researchers critically scrutinize each other’s evidence and question their conclusions.  But I would challenge us to do that in a spirit of friendship. It is easy to lose perspective in the heat of debate, but we are on the same side.  If those who argue for origin by evolution or an old earth are not our enemies but our neighbors, how much more is the person who agrees with us that the world is young but differs on how to resolve the issue of distant starlight or the person who agree with us that the global flood truly occurred but differs on where to locate it’s end in the geologic column not our enemy but our ally. We should come together, present our work, and debate our interpretations in a spirit of respect and friendship.  This is not a venue for division, but for strengthening our understanding together.

With that in mind, I invite you to submit your research for presentation at the ICC.  You can find the official call for papers on this website and we plan to make an author’s manual available this summer, to guide you as you prepare your work.  We look forward to seeing you at Cedarville in July 2023.

Aaron Hutchison

Chairman of the Board, ICC