I was raised in Chicago by Christian parents and grandparents who instilled in me a profound respect for the Bible. They sent me to parochial schools, from kindergarten through high school, where I was taught that God is the creator of all things. It was at the University of Illinois where I first came into contact with teachers who contradicted what I had been taught concerning the origin of life. My first encounter with the teaching of evolution was 50 years ago in an anthropology course. I was surprised to find that not a single student in the classroom came to my defense when I offered up Intelligent Design as an alternative explanation for the origin of life.

Fortunately I was enrolled in the College of Engineering where required electives such as anthropology were few and far between. Oddly enough, it was in a thermodynamics course where I found what I considered to be the first scientific evidence that contradicted what the anthropology instructor taught. The text for the course, Thermodynamics, was written by Dr. Gordon J. Van Wylen, Chairman of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Michigan. Chapter 7 of his book is entitled “Entropy”. It deals with the second law of thermodynamics which basically says that nothing moves to a higher state of complexity on its own. Expressed in thermodynamic terms, entropy always increases. Inasmuch as evolution teaches that over time life achieved higher and higher levels of complexity on its own, it appeared to me that the teaching of evolution violated the second law of thermodynamics. My suspicion was reinforced by the closing paragraph of the chapter in which Dr. Van Wylen wrote:

A final point to be made is that the second law of thermodynamics and the principle of increase in entropy have great philosophical implications. The question that arises is how did the universe get into the state of reduced entropy in the first place, since all natural processes known to us tend to increase entropy? . . . On the other end of the scale the question that arises is what is the future of the universe? . . . The author has found that the second law tends to increase his conviction that there is a Creator who has the answer for the future destiny of man and the universe.

Soon after graduating from the University of Illinois I earned a Master of Science degree in Aeronautical & Astronautical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Much of my professional experience has been in the field of orbital mechanics and numerical flow modeling. While at M.I.T. I studied under Dr. Richard Battin, the country’s leading authority on astronautical guidance. As part of a team at North American Aviation’s Space & Information Systems Division in California I helped compute orbital trajectories for Project Apollo, the NASA program that resulted in placing the world’s first man on the moon. Later, at Conductron in Missouri I was assigned the responsibility of writing a computer program that simulated the on-board computer of the Gemini spacecraft. I believe God placed me in the latter position to introduce me to an important element of this book; namely, an orbit that passes through the north and south poles of the earth. In 1975 I co-founded a highly-successful company in Michigan that specializes in the modeling of fluid flow and heat transfer using computer simulation. I retired from the company in 2001. All of the above experiences were instrumental in equipping me for the writing of this book.

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