175th Church Anniversary

"MARVELLOUS ME"

      The human body is amazing.

But are we a wonder of evolution or a masterpiece of engineering?

2026 marks 175 years of Downe Baptist Church's existence.  

To mark the occasion we held a special celebration over the weekend of 6 and 7 June with a series of talks about science, creation and design here in our historic village famous for Charles Darwin. 

Our guest speaker for the weekend was Stuart Burgess, Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design at Bristol University and Fellow of the Whewell Centre for Apologetics at Cambridge. 

He spoke about “Ultimate Engineering in the Human Body”, “How the Earth is Designed for Humanity” and “Evidence of Design and Beauty in Creation” 

You can listen to his talks HERE.

EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF ENGINEERING DESIGN AT UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

Stuart has held academic posts at Bristol University (UK), Cambridge University (UK) and Liberty University (USA).  He has published over 200 scientific publications on the science of design in engineering and biology. In the last three Olympics he was the lead transmission designer for the British Olympic Cycling Team, helping them on each occasion to be ranked in first place for track cycling.  For the last two decades his gearboxes have been used successfully on all the large earth-observation satellites of the European Space Agency.  He has received many national and international awards for design, including from the Minister of State for Trade and Industry in the UK.  In 2019 he was given the top mechanical engineer award in the UK out of 120,000 professional mechanical engineers.  He has been an invited speaker in over 30 countries.