About
Welcome to the blog of Dr. David Shormann. Here you will find his musings on the connection between studying what God said (The Bible) and what He made (His Creation). Take a few minutes to look around! You’ll find photographs and videos of all kinds of creatures and places, including explanations and coloring pages for the kids! You’ll also find more serious topics, such as how to teach math and science from a Christian foundation, topics discussing why creationism, not evolutionism, is the best way to interpret life’s origins, how Christians should interpret God’s command to “take dominion” (Genesis 1:28), plus much more. Feel free to leave a comment or a question!
Studying His Word and His Works 
September 23, 2011 at 7:43 am
David, I enjoyed your talk last night on the Katmai region. There certainly a lot of catastrophism on the earth. 26000 ft of sediment! The Phoenix valley has about 12000 ft of sediment burying mountain ranges and volcanoes. The valley is completely flat.
I thought your experiment some time ago on pressure effects on fossil morphology very interesting. I would think that experimental fossilization would be a hot topic for evolutionists and creationists alike. I do not know the state of the field. Another interesting topic is liquifaction and how that affects sorting of animal sizes in the fossil record. (some thought before I get to work)
-John Pinckney
September 23, 2011 at 7:59 am
Hi John,
Thank you, and thank you for coming! FYI, I just posted a pdf of the Katmai/Novarupta presentation to this blog. Experimental fossilization (taphonomy) is not studied that much, but I do think there is a lot of research that could be done. There was actually a paper published in Nature in 2010 (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7282/full/nature08745.html ) where evolutionist researchers noticed that the decay pattern of organisms can cause bias in interpretations. You should do some experiments on taphonomy and liquefaction, more definitely needs to be understood about this! I am writing an Earth Science curriculum right now, and I actually have a lab activity on liquefaction where students can watch beads of different densities resort themselves when water-saturated sediments are liquefied. Pretty amazing how liquefaction works, and also how fossils are typically sorted with more dense (fish, clams) at the bottom and less dense (birds, mammals) at the top.
Blessings,
David
December 13, 2011 at 10:25 am
Years ago you did field trips to Alaska. Do you have any intention of doing them again?
December 14, 2011 at 2:37 pm
Yes, but probably not in 2012.
April 27, 2012 at 8:34 am
A friend just referred me to your blog item on oil as a renewable resource. Excellent! Thank you! I can’t help thinking you’d appreciate the work of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, http://www.CornwallAlliance.org, and hope you’ll pay us a visit.
April 27, 2012 at 9:43 am
Thank you Dr. Beisner, and what an honor it is to “meet” you! I read your book “Where Garden Meets Wilderness” a few years ago, and appreciated it so much! It is full of wisdom.
Thank you for the reminder about Cornwall Alliance. I do want to keep up with it more, and perhaps even work together on some things in the future.
In Christ,
David Shormann
October 3, 2012 at 7:12 pm
Dr Shormann;
We met at a homeschool convention a few years back. We are using your DIVE progams in hs here. A quick question, what is your opinion of Intelligent Design and, do you make any reference or teachings about it in your Dive Science programs?
thanks!
Patty
October 4, 2012 at 8:11 am
Hi Patty,
I do teach about Intelligent Design in DIVE Biology, Lesson 16. For our latest version, available currently in online format, I minimized the discussion of ID to make room for discussing biological information. Some of ID’s premises, like specified complexity, are helpful in understanding biological information. For folks like me, ID points to the one true Designer and His son, Jesus Christ, through whom all things consist (Colossians 1:20). For others, ID may give them reasons to believe aliens are real 🙂
October 4, 2013 at 4:54 am
Creationism, to be a valid scientific field of inquiry, would be
searching for the scientific god, and it would not require the bible to
find.
October 4, 2013 at 6:33 am
Dear “Former TX Resident,”
God gives us limited authority over His creation (Genesis 1:26-28, Matthew 28:18-20). To give you a metaphor, notice that I have edited your incredibly long rant against God down to 1 sentence and posted it. He rules the universe, I rule this blog. He gives us limited authority, I give you limited authority. Do you see how the things we do are amazing analogies to how He operates? He created us in His image. This makes perfect sense to me, but probably not to you, because if you rebel against God, you become foolish (Psalm 14:1, Romans Chapter 1, etc.)
Now, on to your one sentence that I posted. Creationism is just that, an “ism”. It is an interpretation of history. It is not trying to be a “valid scientific field of inquiry.” It is not searching for the “scientific god.” He is definitely not hiding, so nobody has an excuse, Bible or not, for not knowing about Him (Romans 1:20)!
It is a huge mistake on your part to think creationism is striving to be scientific. That’s irrational and untrue. Read history. Modern science was built by Christians! Francis Bacon, the founder of the scientific method, was a young earth creationist. Galileo rightly said a long time ago that the Bible is not a science textbook. What Scripture does is give Christians the directive to go “do science.” That’s what Genesis 1:26-28 is about. God’s word tells us to go “rule over” His creation. But then He doesn’t give us a user’s manual. How boring life would be if we didn’t have anything to discover! But that’s what the scientific method is about, right? It is about applying inductive reasoning, which is about finding rules.
So do you see? You have “creationism” all wrong. Your concept of God is all wrong, too. You don’t need a Bible to find Him. He will find you! And you don’t “choose” God, because you are not the authority. He chooses you (Revelation 3:20). You know Him, so maybe it is time to stop rebelling against Him, repent, take up your cross, and follow Christ. I hope you will!
February 18, 2014 at 7:44 pm
god [this section edited because of crude, sexually explicit language] from a Brit
February 19, 2014 at 8:00 am
Hi Stanley,
You are welcome to comment here, just don’t use obscene language. Also, please understand that when you do so, you are just providing more evidence that God’s word is completely and undeniably true (Romans 1:26-32). God has given you over to a debased mind. Please repent and turn back to Him! At the very least, why not try to love those you disagree with? Life is more fun if you try to enjoy other people instead of find reasons to hate them.
March 18, 2014 at 7:30 pm
I found your post about Saxon Algebra very helpful. I have 7 children that I am homeschooling and wondered if you had any advice regarding the Saxon 7/6 and 8/7 editions? Which ones are true to John Saxon’s methodology?
Thanks for any help you can offer,
Mindy