The Case For a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God

Strobel relates his experience as a young reporter for the Chicago Tribune in 1974. His editor gave him an assignment to travel to West Virginia and cover an emerging story about a community protest against textbooks in the public schools—specifically, against textbooks that challenged the locals’ view of Christian morality. One of the key sticking points was the presentation of evolutionary theory in science textbooks, which community members felt would undermine their children’s belief in the biblical creation account. In West Virginia, Strobel interviewed community members on both sides of the issue, trying to report fairly but feeling that the protestors were obviously in the wrong. In Strobel’s view, Darwinian evolution was clearly true, and the Christian understanding of origins was clearly false: “White-coated scientists of the modern world had trumped the black-robed priests of medieval times. Darwin’s theory of evolution—no, the absolute fact of evolution—meant that there is no universal morality decreed by a deity […]” (16). 

At one point, Strobel and his photographer caught wind of a closed meeting to be held in a nearby town, at which no outsiders (and especially no journalists) would be permitted. They decided to try to sneak in to cover the event but were noticed and confronted by the crowd.