Yesterday, our director Robert J. Marks offered an obituary for Walter Bradley (1943–2025) — after whom our center is named.

Some of the things he did that it was our privilege (and fun!) to cover:

Providing practical technology in developing countries:

Robert J. Marks: We have Brian Thomas, a professor here in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University. He says, “Walter was instrumental in helping me understand that my gifts and talents as an engineer could be used to serve the poor and marginalized.”

Walter was one of the founders of the idea of appropriate technology. The idea is that, in developing countries, you do not need a new supercomputer. You need technology which is going to help the country where it’s at. He noticed around the world that coconuts were a waste product. In fact, coconut hulls used to accumulate on the ground in these developing countries. And they used to fill up with water and just like abandoned tires, mosquitoes would lay their eggs in there. It would be a great farm for mosquitoes coming out. So the question is, is how could coconuts be used in a free market sort of situation, to do some incredible things? His idea was to go into these different countries and help the people help themselves. The idea was to set up a company which nationals could take over. They could run and use their local natural resources in order to perpetuate the business. And then Walter would step away and the business would continue. (February 14, 2021)

Note: See, for example: Coconuts go high tech: Plastics from coconut waste offer economic benefit to poor farmers.

Breaking down anti-Christian prejudice:

Robert J. Marks: If you have followed academia today you know that this idea of Christianity being talked about on college campuses is not celebrated very much. One time Walter was sharing his faith and the associate provost at Texas A and M University sent out a memo to 2,500 faculty saying, “You shall not talk about Christianity in the classroom.” Wow! This was probably in response to Walter’s doing this at Texas A and M. And this was a number of years ago of course.

One thing about Walter was, he had a lot of guts. He immediately called him up and says, “Look, you and I need to sit down and talk.” And he went over and very politely said, “Okay, I think this might be a good idea not to be able to share your faith in the classroom. But if you do this, how are we going to keep quiet all of the people that diss Christianity and say that Christianity has nothing to do with science, that Christianity has nothing to do with the pursuit of knowledge. We have to get a rule where this doesn’t happen either. How are we going to do that?”

And the assistant provost paused for a second and said, “I never really thought of it that way.” And as a result, the assistant provost put out a memo that basically retracted his previous criteria and said, “Just be careful about talking about your faith to make sure that you don’t alienate any of the students.” Which I think was probably a fair thing. (February 21, 2021)

Explaining one aspect of our mission at the WBC — understanding artificial intelligence:

He and two colleagues, Charles B. Thaxton and Roger L. Olson ended up writing a book, The Mystery of Life’s Origin (1984). Afterward, a well-established researcher came up to him at a Gordon Research Conference and said, “I should have written this book.” Bradley asked, “Why didn’t you?” and he explained, “We all get our funding on origin of life research from NASA. I agree with you we need a different theory and we don’t have one right now. If I’d written the book, we wouldn’t get our research funding from NASA … and everybody would be really ticked at me.”

That’s pretty much the situation that the Bradley Center Fellows find today: vast, heady claims that artificial intelligence can easily duplicate human thought and will soon do so. These claims are certainly unrealistic and there are good reasons for thinking them impossible. They proliferate for the same reason as unrealistic origin of life scenarios: So many people are invested in the idea.

Dr. Bradley pointed out in closing that his and his colleagues’ work did pay off, though only slowly. (April 2, 2019)

A personal remembrance of Bradley from J. P. Moreland:

J. P. Moreland recalls an incident when both he and Walter Bradley were young football players:

“I had never suffered a concussion in my life, but there I was, laying on my back in the middle of a field, with a twilight wooziness that made me want to faint. Suddenly, I noticed a hand enter my cloudy visual field and a voice asked me how many fingers he was holding up. Three, I said, and as I did, I began to come out of it. I was able to see to whom the hand belonged: Butch (we used to call him that) Bradley! …”

Walter Bradley reached out his hand to many people. (December 20, 2020)