Author: Steve Boyd

Abstracts Due for Origins Conference 2024

Posted on | by Steve Boyd

Hi, everyone!

Sitting at our breakfast table and looking out the window at our backyard, watching the robins hopping around our silver maple doing their thing, I am reminded of that old saying, “The early bird catches the worm.” Well, it’s time to remind you all to be early birds and submit your proposals for the 2024 Origins Conference. The deadline for submissions is March 31 and the instructions for writing your proposals are at this link.

You’ll be getting something a lot better than robins get. You’ll be getting the opportunity—subject to editorial board review—to present your ideas to the creation community gathered for the 2024 Origins Conference. And subsequently, the possibility that, after your papers have been peer-reviewed, to have them published in the Journal of the Creation Theology Society 3.

So, what are you waiting for? There’s room for only so many presentations at the conference. So, be that early bird and get your proposal in!

Dr. Boyd

Steven W. Boyd, M.S., Th.M., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Executive Editor of the Creation Theology Society;
Research Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages;
Director of the Cataclysm Chronology Research Group

Creation Theology Society 2021 Call for Papers — UPDATE

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The newly-minted Creation Theology Society (CTS) requests the honor of your contribution to the 2021 Origins Conference to be held July 28–31. Please see more details about the restructured meetings under Conferences. Any topics dealing with the text, philology, hermeneutics, theology, and apologetics of Genesis 1–11 and any other texts dealing with primeval history will be gladly accepted for peer review. Accepted conference papers may then be submitted to be reviewed for publication in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Creation Theology and Science (Series A). The special topic for this year’s annual Interdisciplinary Themed Session is “The Fountains of the Great Deep and the Windows of the Heavens in the Genesis Flood Narrative.” This interdisciplinary session of the conference will comprise two invited papers dealing with the biblical text, an invited paper providing a historical review of the geological/geophysical mechanisms proposed for initiating the Flood, and a panel discussion. The submission of papers related specifically to this topic are encouraged as we seek to move research forward at this year’s conference and in the journal. 

The style of the papers must conform to the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Submissions shall be made in Times New Roman 12 pt. font, double-spaced, and shall include an abstract (under 300 words), keywords, and bibliography. The new, extended deadline for submission is May 3, 2021. Questions should be directed to the executive editor of CTS at sboyd@creationtheologysociety.org. We look forward to receiving your submissions.

Cogitations on Interdisciplinary Creation Research

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A signal feature of the Creation Theology Society (CTS) is highly valuing interdisciplinary collaboration in creation research. This is immensely beneficial in both directions: the scientific, grammatical, and hermeneutical breakthroughs that can occur by proceeding from an accurate understanding of the biblical text; and the results which can obtain by applying scientific, linguistic, and mathematical methodology to the text—as the following testimony proves.

I’ve been involved in several interdisciplinary creation research projects and have seen firsthand the excellent results which can come from such undertakings. First, the RATE project (Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth), which was very successful in looking at the problem of radioisotopic dating from a number of different perspectives: geology, geophysics, and physics and then my work on the genre of Genesis 1:1 through 2:3 using statistical methodology. (Employing such atypical techniques to the text has been the hallmark of my approach, beginning with my dissertation). In this case, instead of being satisfied with the usual qualitative approach to distinguishing genre from genre, I worked with two statisticians to develop a quantitative model (a logistic regression model) for predicting genre. The best model was based on the relative frequency of wayyiqtol (which traces the flow of the events in a narrative). At a statistical confidence level of 99.5% the model predicts that the probability that Genesis 1:1–2:3 is prose, not poetry, is between .999942 and .999987.

Second, was the FAST project (Flood Activated Sedimentation and Tectonics), which led to the third such effort, the Cataclysm Chronology Research Group, an ongoing collaboration between a team of Hebraists and a geologist, Dr. Andrew Snelling, in which a close reading of the text in terms of the real world implications of what it is saying show that there is temporal discontinuity in the text at points. This then led to challenging the long-standing understanding of the dominant Hebrew narrative form and developing a semantic methodology for ascertaining sequence based on ‘temporal reasoning’, which will be applied to the 261 verbs in the Flood account. In addition, set theory and the concepts of general functions can be applied to the mapping of the recounting of Divine pronouncements and commands in the Flood account to their later reports of actualizations and compliance, respectively, by considering each verb as a point with multiple coordinates representing essential characteristics.


The fourth example is the documentary Is Genesis History?, which exemplifies a presentation to the public of the evidence from a range of disciplines for the historicity of Genesis 1-11.


And finally, in the fall of 2019 at the inaugural Bulwarks and Frontiers Conference scientists and scholars from diverse specialties had an opportunity to listen to, learn from,  and query one another as they each presented their assessment of the status of creation research in their particular discipline.

The birth of CTS promises such interdisciplinary collaboration on a grand scale between rigorous study in the Hebrew text and the hard sciences and consequent amazing results. Come join us and experience the thrill of discovering how God’s Word and world interface!