Conflict Arises

In my sophomore year in High School, I had an experience where Biblical Christianity came into direct conflict with the evolutionary paradigm. Mr. Herbert Schmidt, my high school biology teacher, was my favorite and most challenging teacher in high school. He expected something out of all of us and he was not going to take any excuses. I remember many times locking horns with him over evolutionism. I did not realize at the time that the underlying principles of the evolutionary paradigm were atheistic naturalism. However, there have been many occasions I wish I could go back with what I have learned to lock horns with Mr. Schmidt again. Nevertheless, I will always respect Mr. Schmidt, because I knew he actually cared about us, and how we were going to manage in life. I will always admire him for that.

Fortunately, by the time high school was over, I had made a decision to attend a Christian university, Tennessee Temple in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The college had only one class that dealt with worldviews and evolutionism on the college level. That class, "Bible and Science" I took my first year. The teacher was Dr. Phillips. The class answered questions about the evolutionary paradigm and evolutionism actually never bothered me again until I was elected President of the Calumet Astronomical Society in 1989.

Halley's Comet

The event the Lord used to shift me into amateur astronomy was the return of Halley’s comet. At the age of five, Saturn was the first astronomical object I ever saw in a telescope. I remember that the telescope image I saw of Saturn was awesome. My Dad and Granddad would talk about Halley’s comet. Granddad had remembered the 1910 return of Halley’s and told how great it was. Dad wanted to see Halley in 1985-1986 return, but he died at the age of forty-eight, a month before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Dad really wanted to see that too. Therefore, when 1985 rolled around, there was a telescope under the Christmas tree for me. Things have never been the same since.

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Steve Miller Setting up his Telescope

Calumet Atronomical Society

There appeared to be no local astronomy group in our area, but in 1986, at the Lake County Fair, my wife and I met Mr. Earl Delong who was a member of the Calumet Astronomical Society. We joined the club later that year. In 1989, I was elected president of the CAS and the club was on the ropes by this time. We were down to four active members and broke. By 1994, when I stepped out of the position of president, the Lord had blessed the club with 120 dues-paying members and over 40 active members. We had a public outreach program at Lemon lake County Park, along with an operational observatory and members only observing sessions on Friday night at Lemon Lake. Our finances were in excellent shape when I stepped down and many members invested $1,000 to $1,500 on new telescopes during my presidency.

This is significant because, as I will explain, of what I have been falsely accused of since by Darwinists. If the accusations were true, how could I have been elected five times as president (or have been successful in the first place)? Other accomplishments include an indoor amateur astronomy forum in 1998 where the guest speaker was John Dobson himself. John Dobson is the inventor of the Dobsonian Telescope and he has been on the Johnny Carson show twice. He is probably one of the most famous amateur astronomy buffs in the world. I was the director of programs for the club at this time and played a major role in this event. This is important because John Dobson is a Hindu monk and he believes in the steady state theory on how the universe began. This is evidence for how I never censored other points of view and even encouraged other points of view to be discussed in the CAS. In John’s talk at Purdue University Calumet, he blasted the Big Bang theory right in the face of all the CAS club members.

Conflict Continues

Here is where evolutionism came into conflict in the club. In the Calumet Astronomical Society, many of the members had gone to secular colleges or schools, and they were taught the only way to look at the universe was with the evolutionary mindset, which is nothing more than atheistic naturalism. The CAS members may believe evolutionism is science, but it is the religious dogma of atheistic naturalism running beneath the radar screen in the stealth mode of evolutionary science. Evolutionism is Atheistic Naturalism and it is a religion just as Christian Theism is.

As president, I would always tell myself to remember I was the president for all members, even the ones who disagreed with my Christian Theistic worldview. I never kept anyone from giving a program or a talk on how they thought the world came into being even if it was evolutionary. Being raised in America, the principle that everyone has a right to express his or her perspective was important, and it would be wrong to try to suppress anyone else’s viewpoint. Many CAS members wondered why the creation position was never presented at the club meetings while I was president. A creation model would have been if there had been a professional presentation available. That changed, but an important point needs to be stressed: I would have shown a young universe creation cosmology film while I was president if there had been a good one available, but I never used my position, as president, to promote my personal viewpoint. To this day, I am very glad for what happened to me happened several years after I was president of the CAS.

Turning Point

The popularity I enjoyed changed in October of 1999. Finally, I saw a professional astronomy program by the Moody Bible Institute of Science. The video program is "Journeys to the Edge of Creation" and it came in a two video collection. This was what I had been looking for, a professional program that presented the Astronomical Biblical Creation viewpoint without mentioning evolutionism or attacking it. The series mentions the Bible and I never tried to conceal that fact, (although later, I was accused of doing this). What I told an official for the club was the Bible is mentioned in the presentation, but evolutionism would not be mentioned and never attacked, a very important point. Finally, an official of the CAS called me about showing the set. The video I chose to show from the set was, "The Milky Way and Beyond." For the record, in February of ‘99, I had contacted several officials of the CAS and told them about the series (and offered to let them preview it before it was shown to the club, but they never took me up on this offer).

The CAS has its meetings on the second Monday of each month. On Saturday night before the Monday meeting in October 1999, I received a call to present the video. The only reason an official of the club called was the presenter of the program scheduled for that evening was unable to attend. There were some second thoughts about showing the video, but here was my opportunity to present my position and honor the Lord’s creation, without having evolutionism criticized. The video was very professional and outstanding and I thought it was benign, because it did not assail evolutionism, so everyone should enjoy it. WRONG! Several people got up and walked out (and the firestorm that followed even took me by surprise). Two atheists that did not even attend the meeting raised the greatest stench! On the club’s website chat room, CASX, the discussions were scorching.

After the dust settled and emotions calmed down, a friend who was a club member at the time sent me a copy of all the emails that went around on the CASX chat room, because he knew I was not on the Internet at this time. In fairness, not every email was against what had happened, but there is no doubt emotions were running very high. Yet, none of the negative emails ever tried to refute any of the evidence presented in the video for creation. All the negative emails attacked me personally (so much for scientific evidence). Reading the emails (and not being able to respond) caused me to make up my mind to buy a new computer. Getting on the net opened a completely new world for me. I never knew there were so many creation organizations and websites. The research had begun.

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Comet Hale-Bopp taken by Steve Miller 

One evening I had a thought. On the Creation Research Society website I asked if anyone knew Dr. Danny Faulkner’s email address (the scientist in the video). Dr. Glen Wolfrom responded and gave me Dr. Faulkner’s email address. Therefore, I sent Danny e-mail and introduced myself. To my joyful astonishment, he responded. I told Danny what had happened when the video was shown, and even he was surprised to hear of such a reaction. I later realized that the Lord was using this situation to open new doors for me. Here was a real ministry to do for the Lord in the field of amateur astronomy, Creation Evangelism.

Since then, Danny Faulkner and I have become good friends. (Danny even presented an astronomy program for the CAS in person, and the night he came the room was packed, and no one walked out on him). Nevertheless, after his presentation, someone who I thought was my friend has never called me again (and would not return my phone call, even when I asked his wife for him to do so). One of the CAS members said he did an investigation for information on Dr. Faulkner, but could not find anything about Dr. Faulkner. He could not have tried very hard to find anything about Danny, because there is plenty of information on the net about him. On a Friday night observing session after Danny’s club presentation, I overheard someone say, "Well, Miller, he’s got one." The CAS members just could not believe that anyone with a Ph.D. in the field of astronomy from a secular university could think the world (and life) had been created and the universe is young!

Open-Minded?

Another club member, in 2001, contacted the leadership of the CAS to see if it would be permissible to show "The Milky Way and Beyond" (the same video I showed in 1999). He was informed that he couldn’t use this video for a CAS presentation. After the CAS officer denied the request to present the video, the member contacted me. I explained to him the officer of the CAS was censoring the video because it was the same presentation I showed that caused such uproar. In my opinion, the reason for the censorship is the pressure exerted by the atheists within the leadership and membership of the CAS. Except for one manuscript, this video and other related articles have been black listed by the supposedly open-minded leadership of the CAS. I do not know what else to call their action. Of course, if you let them tell it, the officials and membership will say how open-minded they are. To be fair, the club officials are no doubt doing what the majority of the supposedly open-minded CAS membership wishes.

This is an example of where evolutionary philosophers have set themselves above reproach (and they actually think they are being scientific and open-minded)! Bona-fide science is based on the point and counterpoint method. Without counterpoint, you do not have genuine science, but indoctrination. Evolutionism has reached its sacred cow status, not by scientific evidence, but by restricting the jargon of the debate to naturalistic terms. The evolutionary clique has learned how not to tolerate any contradicting data by claiming any counter evidence outside of atheistic naturalism constitutes religion. Moreover, by doing this they have set themselves up as judge, jury, and executioner of what they say is relevant scientific evidence. So how can they lose?

Evidence only becomes valid when, as in a court, counterpoint is considered. Both sides must be evaluated, and when only one side is considered, the truth of a matter cannot normally be assured. If evolutionism could withstand the whole gauntlet of counter evidence, which would include not merely naturalistic counter evidence (and there is great deal of that) and evidence that is beyond the realm of naturalism, then their scientific evidence would become compelling. The evolutionary camp has even been allowed to manipulate the definition of what constitutes counter evidence. If authentic counter scientific evidence, which is outside of naturalism, cannot scrutinize evolutionism, the theory of evolutionism becomes nothing more than metaphorical belief, not authentic science!

The CAS has now taken one step beyond in their stand against anything that would make them appear to have any religious viewpoint whatsoever. We used to have a Christmas party (and it was called that for many years). Now, it is called a holiday party. The creation video truly tweaked the CAS atheists and their cohorts!

Since 1999, I have answered the call from the Lord to go into Creation Evangelism full-time. I have never found anything more fulfilling than Creation Evangelism. The field is definitely ready for the harvest.