The forecast was for chilly weather in Chile, yet it was quite warm during my recent week of teaching on intelligent design in the capital city of Santiago. I’m referring to the warm camaraderie I enjoyed with 40 students who signed up for a week-long study of the Signature in the Cosmos. During this SRL Seminary (Seminario Reformado Latinoamericano) course on the “big picture” of design, we focused on many kinds of biological evidence that tend to embarrass Charles Darwin and his followers.
We especially wanted to equip students to pass on what they learned, so we provided a color-coded plastic DNA model to use in their own teaching venues (see here).
Our class expanded to several hundred in our all-Saturday conference, as I was joined by Dr. Ricardo Bravo, a top Chilean oceanographer. Together we gave talks on the clash between Darwinian theory and the design paradigm. After our panel discussion, some stayed for a group pic. (Dr. Bravo is in the top row on the left.) A shout-out to Guillermo Cuadra, Discovery Institute’s facilitator for Latin America, who did a superb job as my translator! Oh, and you can now call me by my Chilean name, Tomás Woodward.
On Sunday I spoke to a lively church crowd, showing the elegant fit between science and theistic faith. The youth swarmed us to see our trilobite fossils and T. rex teeth. Afterward, they enjoyed recreating the universe’s expansion by blowing up our “cosmos balloons.”
With the support of Discovery Institute, intelligent design is taking off to a new level in Chile!