AiG’s Latest “Toy”

We affectionately call it his newest “toy,” but Dr. David Menton’s brand-new high-tech microscope is anything but—yet he enjoys using it so much, that it has brought out the youngster in him. It’s called an Olympus BX41 compound microscope, and multiple donors (two of them in Australia) paid for it, understanding the incredible outreach that can be accomplished with it.

The microscope has a range of 40X magnification to 1000X mag, and it has a microscopic video capability to watch things live under the microscope and then be projected on a large screen live (much better than just looking into the viewfinder). And it also comes with a high-resolution digital camera.

Dr. Menton has a PhD in cell biology (from Brown University) and has always marveled at the complexity of even the so-called “simple” cells. On Monday, he hooked up his new microscope to a video projector/screen and showed museum guests the incredible complexity of life.

In this photo, he gives a presentation to teachers from nearby Calvary Christian School—16 teachers and its head administrator, Dr. Don James—who were here for their ongoing professional development. The Calvary Christian teachers group also heard Dr. Terry Mortenson speak on the topic of the so-called “ape-men” (see the two photos) and also attended the anti-racism lecture by Dr. Georgia Purdom on the origin of all the people groups around the world.

Dr. Menton says this about his new “toy”:

When I retired from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri, I had a passion to use my knowledge and experience to encourage Christians and to challenge unbelievers. While teaching at the medical school, I used a microscope with an attached video camera to prepare medical students for their microscopic anatomy lab. Knowing how effective this direct mode of teaching is, using real specimens in real time rather than pictures, I was keen to use this technology to give a very different sort of creation presentation.

I will be using our new microscope here at the museum to show the marvels of the human body (and many other living things including plants) at a level suitable to people of nearly all ages. I see it as complementing the museum planetarium in the sense that we can go from seeing God’s handiwork in the big things He has made in the heavens, to viewing through a microscope the small things that make up our living body. Having spent 34 years teaching microscopic anatomy to medical students, I assure you “God is in the details.”

The microscope will be equipped with special optics (phase contrast) that will allow me to show living-swimming microscopic animals in pond water. I know from experience what a thrill this is for children. We will collect water from various locations on the museum pond and show our visitors what marvels God has hidden there. They will learn that these little one-celled animals are not “simple,” as some insist, but rather manage to do with one cell all of the basic things we do with 30 trillion cells.

I especially hope to influence Christian young people to enjoy science and even consider science for a career. Sadly, young Christians are often reluctant to pursue science out of fear of evolutionary intimidation, but God can protect and bless them even as He has done for me. Indeed, the biblical perspective makes science intelligible in a way that the unbeliever cannot appreciate. Certainly, we very much need Christians in science, medicine, and the allied health areas. Who knows what impact I may have on young people with the microscope you made possible with your generous gift?

At the museum, Dr. Menton will soon be giving talks using this new microscope called “Life in a Drop of a Jungle.” He will take little drops out of our ministry’s lake (it’s so lush around it now that it resembles a jungle) and show pond amoeba and such. Check back at www.CreationMuseum.org for these talks.

“Day” Talk Coming to Museum

Indeed, one of the great bonuses we’re offering at the Creation Museum is our speaker series, featuring our excellent speakers like Dr. Menton and Dr. Tommy Mitchell (and many others). In the photos here, you can see that Tommy gave a presentation last week in the museum’s SFX theater on the topic “Jurassic Prank: A Dinosaur Tale.”

Dr. Mitchell is a medical internist and a very dynamic lecturer for AiG. Last week his “Jurassic Prank: A Dinosaur Tale” included clips from the film Jurassic Park—it was all done to show the truth and fallacies about dinosaurs.

Many of the lectures are free with paid museum admission or museum membership.

The next time guests can hear Dr. Mitchell will be on Wednesday, August 20 at noon when he will speak on “Why Can’t a Day Mean a Day?” For more information about Dr. Mitchell, please visit our website at:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/events/bio.aspx?Speaker_ID=51

Devotion

Leaving and becoming

(Ruth 2:11) And Boaz answered and said unto her, It hath fully been shewed me, all that thou hast done unto thy mother in law since the death of thine husband: and how thou hast left thy father and thy mother, and the land of thy nativity, and art come unto a people which thou knewest not heretofore.

For some like Jews & Moslems, coming to the Lord Jesus Christ means leaving father and mother and becoming a part of a strange, new people, Christians.

Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,

Ken