Many thanks to Philip Bell, who heads up Creation Ministries Europe, from the town of Leicester, England for submitting this article. This is an encouraging tale of a young man, Dr Nigel Crompton, who used his own intellect to stand against his peers and see through the deception of evolution and long ages and embrace the truth of Creation as he reached maturity. To read Philip Bell’s biography, just click on his name in blue at the top of this article.

To subscribe to Creation magazine and receive daily updates, such as this, included in the subscription, go to:

https://creation.com/en/creation-magazine

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

by Philip Bell

Radiation biologist, geneticist, and creation apologist

Philip Bell talks with Dr Nigel Crompton about his life in science

Nigel E.A. Crompton has had a long and fruitful scientific career in fields such as biology, genetics, neuroscience, and cancer research. He has a Ph.D. in biology from Justus Liebig University (Giessen, Germany) and a D.Sc. from University of Zurich (Switzerland). He lives and works in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Nigel is a committed follower of Jesus Christ, unashamed of speaking up about controversial issues surrounding science and the Bible. He has published many articles on these topics, including in CMI’s Journal of Creation.¹ He and his wife Angela have four children.

---

Nigel’s childhood in the seaside town of Southport, UK, was a happy one. At school, he captained the cross-country running team, led the Christian Union (CU), and was also active in a local evangelical church youth group. Sadly, however, he says, “Darwin’s ideas were simply embraced” in the church, which subtly influenced his thinking.

Nigel says that studying was not a high priority in his pre-university years, “Having fun and Christian fellowship with my friends was much more my thing.” That was soon to change!

Distracted student

During Nigel Crompton’s training for a science degree (genetics and cell biology) at the University of Manchester, UK, he threw himself into university life, including the CU, but still lacked application to his studies. Soon, though, a change in his thinking about origins would spark a much greater interest in his academic work.

During this time, Nigel says, “A German professor I met while on a summer science internship in London asked me to work in his research lab.”

So, following graduation, Nigel moved to Germany where he worked towards an M.Sc. as an external Manchester University graduate. He was ‘adopted’ by a lovely German family with whom he lived for six months. This became a pivotal time in his thinking.

Creation and a scientific awakening

Nigel says:

The father, a wonderful man of deep Christian faith, introduced me to creation science. I thought it was fabulous. I’d only ever been indirectly exposed to it before; it was nice that folks took God’s word seriously, but I just never took the time to carefully check it out. I had, unbeknown to me, been indoctrinated to accept evolution, even though I well knew it was full of holes and missing links.

Nigel testifies of God’s guidance through his life’s journey, including his family’s move to the US in 2002, where he felt he should “teach God’s children, telling them about science from a Christian perspective.”

What an encouragement, and a challenge. We should look for opportunities to pass creation information on to others, particularly younger generations. It also highlights the importance of getting good creation resources ‘out there’.

This was a key turning point for Nigel as it awakened a greater interest in science: “To actually consider origins from a scientific point of view was invigorating and fascinating.” Nigel now pursued his research in earnest.

Around that time, he discovered a likeminded group of committed Christian scientists. They were starting a Christian academic organisation called Wort und Wissen—Word (Bible) and Knowledge (science). Nigel quickly became an enthusiastic member. Over the many years since, he has continued to publish articles about creation topics (many in German) and has often spoken at Wort und Wissen meetings.

Accomplished academic

Dr Crompton’s passion to explore the complexities of living things subsequently led to two doctoral degrees. His lengthy career has included fellowships and professorships in several countries, plus consultancy responsibilities with organizations in countries across Europe (e.g., European Space Agency), and as far afield as Thailand, South Africa, and China. He has supervised many doctoral students (in science, medicine, and veterinary medical fields), published numerous articles (including many in prestigious peer-reviewed journals), and has acted as a referee for many international journals.

Nigel has served on several executive committees internationally, particularly in his speciality of radiation oncology (treatment of cancer with radiation) and has lectured in countries around the world—on subjects as diverse as radiation effects on cancer cells,² oncology, gender dysphoria, Mendelian speciation,³ biodiversity, and faith-based interpretations of science.

While working in Brugg, Switzerland, Nigel’s research focused on radiation oncology. “I directed both a cell lab and a flow cytometry lab at a national cancer institute.” In that time, the last two of his four children were born. Despite the busyness of the added family responsibilities, he says,

I developed a clinical assay to alleviate the suffering sometimes triggered by radiation treatment. For this, the medical faculty of Zurich University awarded a D.Sc.⁴

Nigel testifies of God’s guidance through his life’s journey, including his family’s move to the US in 2002, where he felt he should “teach God’s children, telling them about science from a Christian perspective.” Still an active academic, he is a Professor of Biology at Cornerstone University. During his time in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he has also been an Adjunct Professor at Grand Valley State University, and a visiting scientist at the Van Andel (biomedical) Research Institute.

Creationist contributions on speciation

Nigel’s passion to affirm biblical creation is clear from his writing on a range of different topics, for both English and German readers. It includes papers on things like the Paradisaeidae (birds of paradise), and the rare, endangered Hawaiian silversword plants. He recently published on the diversity of butterfly families, relating this to the concept of the ‘kinds’ in Genesis.

Readers of CMI’s in-depth Journal of Creation may know of Dr Crompton’s recent co-authored four-part series of articles about Mendelian speciation (see ‘Mendel vs Darwin’ p. 39).⁵ He said:

The articles explain how different species can readily arise without any mutations. This further explains how they arise quickly, in at most thousands not millions of years. It simply assumes our Lord invested genomes with the necessary information right from the start. The genetic recombination during generation of sex cells (meiosis) and reproductive isolation does the rest.

Nigel continued:

Contrary to Darwin’s ‘pangenesis’, Mendel discovered the rules our Lord Jesus had set in place. Traits are shuffled in every generation so they will recombine into new arrangements. This is the main driver of the origin of new species within the original kinds, not natural selection acting on random mutations. Similarly, when playing cards are shuffled, they recombine to give many new hands.

The series of papers by Nigel and his co-authors throws light on how Mendelian factors could allow for the significant changes, even speciation, that we expect within a biblical creation model. For example, many new cat species rapidly arose from the original pair of cats on the Ark—with no new information needed.⁶

Those factors provide much of the raw material (inherited variation in organisms) that natural selection acts on. Growing evidence supports the idea that living creatures were ‘designed to vary’ from the beginning.⁷ While random mutations of DNA may explain a small number of the observed modifications in living things, these do not support evolution. In particular, they rarely if ever result in new genetic information specifying for novel complexity, as neo-Darwinism would require.

These scholarly contributions by Dr Crompton and his colleagues are motivated by their desire to advance our understanding of creation biology. God’s Word does not change, but our knowledge of the natural world continually advances. In a rapidly changing scientific world, it is crucial that our models are up-to-date and in keeping with the best understanding of biology and genetics. Nigel also thinks that “these are helpful and encouraging ideas for Christians who wish to take God’s Word seriously.”

Strong convictions

Dr Crompton is both a keen scientist and a passionate Christian, someone who loves the Lord Jesus Christ, has a high view of the Bible, and reveres his Creator God. With so many Christians compromising Scripture’s record of origins, this is refreshing. Nigel says,

In God’s Word we read a very interesting declaration, made by created beings who stand in God’s presence and do not lie. It is about God and His creation: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3).

We should often reflect and meditate upon God’s handiwork, purposefully and wonderfully made. He elaborates:

When God conversed with Adam and Job face to face, both times He focused on His creatures to teach man deep truths. He said it was not good for Adam to be alone; he needed a suitable helper (Genesis 2:18–20). He taught Job from His creation that He is omnipotent, omniscient, and unerring (Job 38–41). Because our God’s existence is the most important reality of all, when we know more about Him, we are more alive. What God has revealed to us in creation is not empty of meaning, but full of instruction.

At Creation Ministries International, we couldn’t agree more!

Created magnificence

A person, scientist or otherwise, whose mindset is governed by Scripture and who sees the creation from God’s perspective is far less likely to be deceived.

A person, scientist or otherwise, whose mindset is governed by Scripture and who sees the creation from God’s perspective is far less likely to be deceived. Nigel shared, “The natural world is full of truths about God. We lose sight of that when we fall for the lie that it’s all a cosmic accident.”

Think of Jesus’ comparison of the human glory of King Solomon with the divinity revealed in the splendour of meadow flowers (Matthew 6:28–29), which should make us consider our lives in relation to our Maker. Nigel’s thoughts on this provide a fitting close:

Often, we can’t help but be impressed with nature’s beauty and majesty, but we are like lay people at an art gallery without a guide. Its true meaning is lost on us. This is God’s world, which He created and maintains, to His very great glory. We must view it through the eyes of faith, with ears that hear. For the Christian, all things are ours in Christ Jesus. For those who love God, when we delight in a glorious sunset there is no truer response than to burst with pride, and say, ‘My Dad made that. Thank you, Father.’

Mendel vs Darwin

Gregor Mendel was the Augustinian friar and abbot now regarded as the ‘Father of Genetics’. He is famous for his experiments (1856–1863) on the traits of pea plants.¹ He subsequently obtained the second German edition of Darwin’s 1859 book, On the Origin of Species, about a year before he announced his results in 1865. His pea studies established his fundamental laws of inheritance. They contradicted Darwin’s theory of inheritance which he called pangenesis. Darwin presented pangenesis in detail in his 1868 book The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. Mendel bought the German translation in 1869, and his annotations on his copy indicate that he found the section on inheritance “highly speculative”.²

Evolutionists today recognize Darwin’s error but claim that adding mutations to natural selection has reconciled Darwinism with Mendelian genetics. This reconciliation is called ‘neo-Darwinism’ or ‘the modern synthesis’. However, mathematical modelling has revealed the immense difficulty of accounting for the evolutionary origin of the natural world via mutations, i.e., inherited mistakes in DNA copying. One can only speculate how different things might have been had Darwin known of Mendel’s work before publishing the Origin.

1. Anon., Genetics and God’s natural selection, creation.com/genes, 26 Aug 2009.
2. van Dijk and Ellis, T. (The Genetics Society), Mendel’s reaction to Darwin’s provisional hypothesis of pangenesis and the experiment that could not wait, Heredity 129:12–16, 2022, nature.com.

Posted on homepage: 18 October 2025

References and notes

1. Earlier ones were published under the pseudonym Barnabas Pendragon while he was still active in secular academia: Pendragon, B. and Winkler, N., The family of cats—delineation of the feline basic type, J. Creation 25(2):118–124, 2011; creation.com/the-cat-family. Also, Pendragon, B., A review of selected features of the family Canidae with reference to its fundamental taxonomic status, J. Creation 25(3):79–88, 2011; creation.com/canidae. Return to text.
2. Of particular interest to me (Philip), as I did similar research 30 years ago; Bosanquet, A.G., Burlton, A.R., and Bell, P.B., In vitro radioresponse by DiSC assay of malignant cells using a laboratory cell irradiator, Proceedings of the Röntgen Centenary Congress #456, 1995. Return to text.
3. How species can arise from new combinations of pre-existing information, per Mendel’s laws of inheritance. Return to text.
4. This is a higher-level science doctorate. Return to text.
5. Crompton, N.E.A., Sprague, T., Truman, R., and Junker, R., Mendelian speciation: part 1—what is the abundant source of significant biodiversity? J. Creation 37(3):110–120, 2023; part 2—latent genetic information, J. Creation 38(1):77–86, 2024; part 3—fixation and reproductive isolation, J. Creation 38(2):97–104, 2024; part 4—adaptive radiation and cis-evolution, J. Creation 38(2):104–111, 2024. Return to text.
6. Catchpoole, D., Cats big and small, Creation 37(4):34–37, 2015; creation.com/cats. See also both papers in ref. 1. Return to text.
7. Carter, R., Species were designed to change—hub page for three-part series, creation.com/species-change, Jul–Aug 2021. Return to text.