What a difference an eyewitness can make! Especially when

the truth is being sought and there are conflicting opinions

about what has taken place. This difference was dramatized by the

emotional and legal turmoil our nation experienced during the trial

of O. J. Simpson, who was accused then acquitted of the slashing

deaths of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend

Ron Goldman. More recently we ve experienced this lack of an eye-

witness during the trial of Timothy McVeigh, who was accused and

convicted of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building

in Oklahoma City, and in the still-unresolved murder of the doll-

sized beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.

Our country might have been spared multiple millions of dol-

lars, weeks and months of preoccupation, and the misery and agony

of minutely detailed analyses as well as at least one verdict that

incited hostile division in an already emotionally overwrought pub-

lic if there had been just one credible eyewitness in each case. Such

a witness is powerful because the testimony is irrefutable, clearly

and simply setting forth what someone has actually seen with his

own eyes, heard with his own ears, or touched with his own hands.

This holds true not only for criminal justice but for the origin of

the universe, our planet, and the human race. If a credible eyewit-

ness could be found ,for Creation itself, he or she would substantially

reverse and alter our conclusions. One such conclusion about the

)rigin of the universe is the theory of evolution, which has been