About GodAndScience.org
Beginnings
GodAndScience.org began for me (Richard Deem) while I began serving as a volunteer apologist for Reasons To Believe in 1994. At the time, Reasons was receiving dozens to hundreds of letters every month that needed to be answered. The "easy" letters were answered by the staff, usually by including one of the ministry's short papers along with a form letter. However, there were always the harder questions, most of which required at least some research to answer. As a part of the group of 40-60 volunteers, I answered 3-4 letters/week. Initially, the number of letters answered was much less, since every letter required research and study (both biblical and scientific). Eventually, I wrote quite a number of long papers on various topics related to theology and science. I kept up with the current scientific literature and kept adding to the body of evidence for each paper. As a relatively new Christian (since 1988, see my testimony page), serving with Reasons To Believe forced me to examine Christianity in detail and study the Bible in depth to answer the questions of both skeptics and believers. The learning experience with Reasons To Believe was the basis for much of the information incorporated into this site.
GodAndScience.org
The website Evidence for God from Science was begun in early 1997 as a
personal homepage at Geocities
(now part of Yahoo). The site
still exists as a mirror
of GodAndScience.org, but is not updated as frequently as the main site. The
main site continued to grow, and in 1999, the domain
"GodAndScience.org" was purchased and the domain name was forwarded to
a personal ISP homepage. In early 2000, the website ran out of its 20 MB of
server space and was moved to a hosting server.
As of 2008, the site is over 2 GB with 1200+ pages and thousands of
images. It now receives over 100,000 visitors each month and answers dozens of
e-mails.
Mission
The mission of Evidence for God from Science is to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ and to encourage skeptics to examine the truth claims of Christianity. Having once been a skeptic myself, I understand that most skeptics assume Christianity is false before making a serious attempt to examine the evidence. Therefore, our goal is to present the scientific and biblical evidence that supports a rational belief in the existence and love of God.
Ministry Volunteers
The ministry is blessed to have several volunteers who are now helping. They are much appreciated:
Name | Position | Expertise | Other Experience |
Bruce Hammerle | Correspondent | General apologetics, philosophy | B.S., Psychology, minor in Philosophy M.A., Counseling Psychology, Slippery Rock University |
Michael E. Young | Correspondent | Science, statistics, philosophy | Associate Professor of Psychology, Southern Illinois University |
Joseph Martinetti | Correspondent | Science questions | M.S., geological sciences |
Scott Brisbane | Web Support Moderator |
Web development Discussion Forum |
Web Hosting |
Mario A. Olcese | Spanish Translator | Evangelism to Spanish speakers | El Evangelio del Reino |
Interesting facts
Although most visitors to the website live in the United States (~70%), four of the top ten cities are not in the U.S. Three Australian cities are within the top 20. The website is very popular in the Philippines (#4, overall, behind UK and Canada). The small L.A. county suburb of Monterey Park (population 60,000) tends to have more website visitors than all of Los Angeles city (population 3,800,000) proper (and more than 180 countries, other than the top 10 countries). On any given month, one out of every 70 residents of Monterey Park visits the website! The most popular pages are:
- Love Defined (by the Bible)
- History of the Bible: How The Bible Came To Us
- If God Created Everything, Who Created God?
- Famous Scientists Who Believed in God
- What Will Heaven be Like?
- General Introduction for Non-Believers: Part 1, Are Your Beliefs Consistent with Your Worldview?
- Did Albert Einstein Believe in a Personal God?
- Stem Cell Research/Cloning: Status and Ethics
- UFO's and Extraterrestrial Aliens - Why Earth Has Never Been Visited
- Origin of Mankind and the Races
Needs of the ministry
GodAndScience.org is a "tent-making" ministry, since its primary minister is employed full time in medical research. The modest costs of the ministry (web hosting, domain registration, etc.) are partly covered through the sale of books. Therefore, the ministry has no financial needs at this time. However, the ministry is always in need of prayer, since the time demands of employment, family, and volunteer activity (mainly Cub Scouts) limit the amount of time spent in ministry. I am "blessed" to live over one hour from my work, since there is a vanpool that allows me to work on the site and e-mails 10-15 hours/week. However, the volume of e-mail is getting beyond the point of part-time ministry, and I am looking for ministry partners to help answer e-mails. In addition, it would be nice to have ministry partners willing to examine the pages for errors. Every time I edit a page, I am appalled by the number of errors in English. Of course, if you see any errors in content, we want to correct those also. For the last few months, we have been translating pages into Spanish, so we would be interested in getting more help with that. See the help wanted page for more information. All positions are part-time and unpaid.
Prayer Needs
- That I would have the mind of Christ and respond to inquiries as He would.
- That I would provide for the spiritual and emotional needs of my wife and children.
- That the Lord would expand my ministry to serve Him and give me the time to do His will in my life.
- That the minds and hearts of skeptics would be opened to the truth and love of God in Christ Jesus.
- That ministry partners would be blessed through service to Jesus Christ.
- That my need to drive the Cedars vanpool as backup driver might be limited to a few days (or less) per month.
- That the website's server would be protected. It has suffered from break-in and denial of service attacks.
Thank you for your prayers!
Rich Deem
Last Modified June 23, 2008