Jehovah's Creationists

One Saturday in January, thinking the doorbell indicated the postman delivering an expected package, I opened the door to two gentlemen whom I instantly identified (don't ask me how) as either Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses. Their first question confirmed my initial assessment: they asked me what I thought God's name was. My reply — that I didn't think there was any such entity as God, and so his name was of no importance to me — brought a suggestion that they read me something from the Bible, but I interrupted with a counter-suggestion that quoting Bible verses to an atheist was a hiding to nothing.

The younger guy who had so far conducted this conversation seemed a bit deflated by this, but the older one stepped in at this point to ask me why I was an atheist. I said I hadn't come across convincing evidence for the existence of any gods. Cue the creationist argument: had I looked at the multitude of living things and how marvellous and complicated they were? Yes I had, and I understood that they are all related, with common ancestry, and had come about over very long periods of time through a process of random mutation and natural selection.

Then he began talking about "kinds" and separate creation, and that different kinds could not breed with each other. I said that if he meant species, this was a reasonable definition, but although different species can't in general inter-breed, it's useful to consider the analogy of language. Children understand the language of their parents, who understand the language of their parents, and so on, and if you go back far enough you'll find a couple speaking one language who are direct ancestors of people alive today who can't understand each other's languages. And so it is with evolution.

But then he changed tack and talked about the eye, saying it couldn't have come about by evolution, to which I responded that it probably could, starting with something as simple as a patch of skin that had randomly developed some basic sensitivity to light. I think at this point he realised that he was talking to someone who has actually thought about such things, and suggested I might like to read something, to which I responded that, yes, I would. (This whole conversation took place on my doorstep, and I had things to do.)

They gave me a brochure entitled Was Life Created? And in return I gave them an Atheist Tract — several copies of which I keep by the door specifically for occasions like this. I thanked the pair of them, wished them good morning and closed the door.

But what of the brochure?

Was Life Created? is published by Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, in 2010. Though the masthead says "Made in Britain", spellings reveal it was written for an American audience. I read it through, making a few notes, and a quick check of the Jehovah's Witnesses' website turned up a PDF (the PDF, however, says "Made in the United States of America").

From the first section, "What do you believe?":

It is not the purpose of this material to ridicule the views either of fundamentalists or of those who choose not to believe in God. Rather, it is our hope that this brochure will prompt you to examine again the basis for some of your beliefs. It will present an explanation of the Bible’s account of creation that you may not have previously considered. And it will emphasize why it really does matter what you believe about how life began.

First, note the implication that atheism is a choice. This, no doubt, is tied up with what Paul says in Romans 1:20, about being "without excuse", though that part is left out of the quote when it appears later in the brochure.

The next section, "The Living Planet" — which is essentially a crude rendering of the fine-tuning argument — contains a number of loaded phrases that might be missed by those unfamiliar with the low-grade apologetic techniques employed here.

Are earth’s features a product of blind chance or of purposeful design? Without its tailor-made moon, our planet would wobble like a spinning top... ...earth is protected by amazing armor—a powerful magnetic field and a custom-made atmosphere. Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field truly are marvels of design that are still not fully understood.

Note the language of design and manufacture taken for granted in these question-begging excerpts. The circularity, however, does not end there; next we have a section titled "Who designed it first?" which aims to catalogue instances of engineering and science taking their inspiration from nature.

As you consider the following examples, ask yourself, ‘Who really deserves the credit for these designs?’
...
Who deserves the credit? 
...
Who is nature’s patent holder?

They quote Michael Behe, who says (essentially, as all Intelligent Design proponents do, no matter what fancy language they use) it's designed if it looks designed.

Each section of the brochure ends with a couple of questions, and most of these are loaded or begged in some way. The section just covered ("Who designed it first?") asks:

• Does it seem logical to you to believe that the brilliant engineering evident in nature came about by accident?
  

To which I would answer, no it doesn't, because that's not what happened. Natural selection is not an accidental process — indeed it could be considered the very opposite. Evolution by random mutation and natural selection occurs because of environmental pressure — it's a process that occurs because it's taking the line of least resistance. Statistically speaking, it couldn't happen any other way.

There's then a subsection headed "Was it designed? If the copy requires a designer, what about the original?" Unfortunately for the brochure's thesis, this subheading appears to undermine itself. The copy doesn't require a designer, it only requires a copier — which is what the "original" does, albeit imperfectly. Indeed it is this very imperfection that drives evolution.

The next section — "Evolution myths and facts" — attempts to discredit the theory of evolution and claims that the fossil record doesn't provide evidence of what creationists and ID proponents like to call "macro-evolution". They claim to be happy with the idea that species can change (or "adapt") due to environmental pressure, but only up to a point. And that point appears to be arbitrarily undefined. What it comes down to is analogous to believing that it is possible for someone to stand on a step, but quite impossible to ascend a flight of stairs. Much is made of "Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, a scientist from the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Germany," who claims that:

“Mutations cannot transform an original species [of plant or animal] into an entirely new one. This conclusion agrees with all the experiences and results of mutation research of the 20th century taken together as well as with the laws of probability.”

Some Googling reveals that Lönnig is an ID proponent who, like Michael Behe, appears to have been disowned by his own institution. The brochure includes a footnote:

Lönnig believes that life was created. His comments in this publication are his own and do not represent the opinion of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research.

Fond though they are of footnotes, the JW's are not above making a bald assertion:

To date, scientists worldwide have unearthed and cataloged some 200 million large fossils and billions of small fossils. Many researchers agree that this vast and detailed record shows that all the major groups of animals appeared suddenly and remained virtually unchanged, with many species disappearing as suddenly as they arrived.

If this was Wikipedia, that phrase "Many researchers agree" would be immediately followed by "[citation needed]".

The final main section is titled "Science and the Genesis account". Jehovah's Witnesses, apparently, are not young-earth creationists, but old-earth creationists. How, then, do they reconcile the conflicting information in Genesis? Do they claim it's meant to be poetic? Metaphorical? Wrong? Untrue? No, they don't. This section, it turns out, is one huge exercise in semantic gymnastics. I won't go into it here — read the linked PDF if you're interested. Suffice to say, if the JW's really think that reading scripture in this way can reveal truth of any kind there's no hope for them — they are beyond logic. The Bible, for them, can mean anything they want it to mean.

The final section, "Does it matter what you believe?" seems to be an argument from consequences. After quoting William Provine saying, "I can see no cosmic or ultimate meaning in human life," they ask:

Consider the significance of those words. If ultimate meaning in life were nonexistent, then you would have no purpose in living other than to try to do some measure of good and perhaps pass on your genetic traits to the next generation. At death, you would cease to exist forever. Your brain, with its ability to think, reason, and meditate on the meaning of life, would simply be an accident of nature.

Well, yes.

That — apart from the "accident" bit (see above) — is how it is.

Get used to it.

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This post is based on one of my segments in a recent episode of the Skepticule podcast.

Edited 2022-06-08 to update links to JW.ORG and Jason Curry's Atheist Tract.

A creationist talk in Portsmouth

I've been suffering a surfeit* of creationism recently, which reminded me that I'd not written up the creationist talk I attended locally back in April. It was put on by Creation Ministries International and hosted by Portsmouth Christian Fellowship at the Drayton Institute, which is a community centre cum church hall within walking distance of where I live. (Though I've not written about this before, I did talk about it on Skepticule Extra episode 25.)

The talk was given by Dominic Statham, a name vaguely familiar to me — and more familiar once I realised I'd blogged about an article he wrote on last year's riots. Statham is a good speaker; he has his delivery down pat and "gives good Powerpoint". He sounds British, and is apparently an engineer, not a biologist. His talk was titled "Darwin's Theory: Good Science?" and appears to be one of several he gave throughout a UK tour — apparently he was giving another talk in Plymouth the next day.

His talk in Drayton was well attended; about 50 chairs were laid out, and most were occupied. I arrived in plenty of time and got a good seat near the front.

Dominic Statham

Statham began by stating (in words and on screen) that "Microbes to Man" is contrary to the Bible, and went on to explain the basics of Darwin's theory. This was OK as far as it went, though he slanted his explanation with typical creationist doublespeak. He talked about "survival of the fittest" as if it meant only that the stronger win out over the weaker, but this isn't what Darwin exclusively meant, as I'm sure Statham is aware. "Fittest" in this context means most closely adapted to prevailing conditions, as in "fitting its environment". Statham's implied meaning was "fittest" as in "most fit and healthy", which is clearly a skewed interpretation if not a downright distortion.

Mentioning education, Statham referred to "so-called" science classes, showing his bias, and such loaded language was evident throughout his talk. As part of his explanation of evolutionary theory he said ordinary chemicals "just happened" to come together to form living organisms. His overview of evolutionary theory was specifically set up to be easily knocked down. He described two "steps" to evolution: number one, chemicals evolved to single-cell organisms; and number two, cells evolved to man. That's a very lopsided division, but it enabled him to claim, correctly, that science currently has no proven explanation of abiogenesis, and therefore, even before we begin to discuss evolution from microbes to man, half of evolutionary theory is speculative hypothesis unsupported by evidence. But this is a straw man; abiogenesis is not part of evolutionary theory, and Darwin had little to say about it.

There was no mention of plants in Statham's explanation of evolution, though my understanding is that all plants are part of the evolutionary tree of life. There was mention of "variation within kinds" — but my understanding of "kind" is that it's a biblical term with no scientific validity.

Statham soon moved on to some technical aspects of evolution, beginning with homology — animals sharing similar body plans (same number of limbs, digits, etc., laid out in similar patterns). Despite what evolutionists infer, Statham claimed, homology does not point to common ancestry. He gave three reasons for this:

1. Embryonic development in homologous animals is different. For example, in comparing human hands to frog hands, human hands develop in the womb by the death of cells between the fingers, while in frogs the digits are formed by sprouting new growth. I took this at face value, but later, consulting the Talk Origins archive, I discovered the reason for this is that frogs have webbed feet, which cell-death between the digits would not allow.
2. Similar structures (such as limbs) in homologous animals grow from different segments of the embryo. Again, a bit of research reveals that this is by no means universal — some homologous structures grow from the same embryonic segments, some grow from different segments. Statham was presenting this as cut-and-dried disproof of evolution when it isn't.
3. Similar structures are controlled by different genes, therefore homology doesn't prove evolution. Statham merely quoted an authority for this one, giving no examples.

At the time, of course, Statham's confident statements sounded convincing, and if I'd been on the fence I would quite likely have taken what he said at face value and come away with the idea that evolution wasn't true. Clearly that was his intention, and no doubt it was effective with some of his mostly Christian audience (if they weren't already creationists).

So, having shown to his satisfaction that evolution is insufficient to explain the diversity of life, Statham stated his own explanation: a designer. He went on to state that "software encoded in DNA" is how cells work, and showed a computer animation of the highly complex structures within a cell, with the clear implication that this was all too complicated to have happened by chance. And such it might be, but it's not by chance alone that evolution works. Variations resulting from faulty copying of genes (mutation — aka the "random chance" part) coupled with natural selection, whereby those organisms less suited to their environment tend to die out before reproducing while those more suited (by virtue of their different genetic information) survive, is mostly how evolution works. As for the complexity of the cell, I would guess that the earliest cells were very much simpler than shown in the animation. The complexity of present-day cells is the result of eons of evolution — but nevertheless creationists want to say it was put there, ready made, by God.

Statham went on to cite ATP Synthase and the bacterial flagellum as examples of complexity. I know nothing of ATP Synthase, but the flagellum is a favourite of creationists in general, and of engineer-creationists in particular — and Statham is one such. We know, despite the best efforts of Michael Behe that the flagellum is not "irreducibly complex". But if you deny stepwise refinement, as Statham apparently does, the development of such structures must be highly mysterious. He quoted Michael Denton describing the complexity of the cell, and then edged into conspiracy-theory mode, claiming that academics are not free to voice doubts about evolution. He promoted the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, understandably omitting to mention that it's pretty much outright lies from start to finish.

Having already appealed to authorities, Statham quoted several more. Prof Sir Ernst Chain FRS apparently said that evolutionary theory had "…no evidence and was irreconcilable with the facts," (though I'm unable to verify this quote). Statham put up a slide with big letters reading "Evolution is a Faith" and stated that if the Bible is not right about creation, people will question it about other things. Well, yes, that's the logical thing to do. It's not logical to believe something is true just because you don't like the consequences if it's false.

Statham moved on to yet another authority, this time William Provine of Cornell University. The quote on screen contained lots of ellipsis, which immediately set alarm bells ringing — creationists are notorious for quote-mining. Back home I looked up the quote and found something a bit strange.

"Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear … There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either."

That's pasted directly from CMI's website, and yet it isn't what Statham showed. Looking at the screen he explained that when Provine says "modern science" he means "evolution". But Provine doesn't say "modern science", he says "modern evolutionary biology". I've no idea what's going on here.

Still quoting, now from the Bible; Romans 1:20:

"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

This is basically, "Look around you, of course there's a creator!" (We'll leave aside the inherent problem of clearly seeing qualities that are invisible…)

Then Matthew 7:13-14:

"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

Creationists, thankfully, are in the minority.

Rounding off this trinity of Bible quotes we have 1 Peter 3:15:

"But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect,"

This is the apologists' verse. (Too bad some of them forget the last sentence.)

Statham suggested members of the audience might like to subscribe to the quarterly Creation magazine — a year's subscription would get you an extra issue; a three-year subscription would get you an extra issue plus a DVD. (But only if you paid in full on the night.) Statham showed several examples of the articles in the magazine — on, for example, "modern science" — though here that doesn't necessarily mean "evolution", apparently. Another article was on refuting Richard Dawkins — which I was pleased to see. Dawkins got several mentions in Statham's talk, indicating that the infamous god-hating militant evolutionist baby-eater is still rattling cages.

Then it became a bit farcical. Statham showed some testimonials for Creation magazine — after all, you wouldn't simply take his word for how great it is, would you? The first testimonial was from that well-known arbiter of all that's worthwhile in scientific literature, the comedian Peter Kay. The second was from someone named Pat F. The third … there was no third — we have two testimonials: a comedian, and anonymous Pat F. (I'm convinced — here's my credit card.)

Finally before the break, Statham promoted the website (Creation.com) and a book titled The Creation Answers Book by Batten, Catchpoole, Sarfati and Wieland, disturbingly suggesting it could be bought for teenagers setting off for university.

During the break I looked at the merchandise, of which there was plenty: books and DVDs, including the despicable Expelled.

There were six questions in the Q&A, all answered by Statham with confidence, giving me the impression that there was nothing he hadn't heard before. He even had additional Powerpoint and videos to address specific questions — almost as if the questions were planted (but I don't think they were). I've paraphrased Statham's responses below, and added appropriate links.

Q1: Darwinism is bad science — why is it still taught?

• Because animals are observed to change. But this is micro- not macro-evolution. Genetic information for micro-evolution is already present.
• Evolutionists are committed to philosophical naturalism.
• Secular scientists say natural processes today means natural processes for origins.
• They are looking for reasons not to believe in God.
• The Intelligent Design movement is doing a lot of good, but they don't present an alternative. We do; the alternative is Christ.

Q2: There's lots of evidence for the Earth being older than 10,000 years.

• Yes there is evidence for an ancient Earth, but dating methods are unreliable. Carbon 14 dating shows the Earth is young. [My understanding is that radiocarbon dating is good for up to 60,000 years, so it can't be used to prove an old Earth, but neither does it show the Earth is young.]
• The Moon's orbit is increasing, but at the rate it is, for an old Earth it ought to be farther away by now.
• There's not enough salt in the sea for an old Earth.
• Dinosaur remains are evidence for a young Earth. In Montana, dinosaur bones (not fossils) have been found with organic soft tissue still in evidence, which should have decayed if they were millions of years old.
• Science cannot tell us how old the Earth is.
• An old Earth conflicts with the Bible. Statham recommended another book: 15 Reasons to Take Genesis as History.

Q3: Where are dinosaurs in the Bible?

• Dinosaurs were made on the same day (the sixth) as Man.
• Dinosaurs were on the Ark, and lived contemporaneously with Man.
• Dinosaurs were called dragons, and some were fire-breathing.
• Carlisle Cathedral has a picture of a dinosaur on the tomb of Richard Bell, dating from 1496.

Q4: Has the universe been around longer than the Earth?

• The stars were made after the Earth.
• Billions of light years away should mean they are billions of years old, but relativity accounts for the apparent age of starlight.
• The Bible says God "stretched out the heavens" — meaning cosmic inflation.

Q5: Did Darwin have a deathbed conversion?

• Probably not, but either way it makes no difference.

Q6: How were the fossils created?

• A global flood; there is lots of evidence that fossils were buried in flood conditions.
• Fossils in the Grand Canyon are all aligned, as if carried by a current.
• Jellyfish fossils must have fossilised in hours, because they are very soft and would otherwise decay or be destroyed.
• There is an absence of transitional forms in the fossil record, such as between invertebrate marine animals and vertebrate marine animals (fish).
• The order of fossils in rock is virtually a formal falsification of Darwin's theory.

Statham made that last point (or rather, assertion) as his final comment to the final question at the end of the evening. There was no opportunity to challenge him on it before the organiser from Portsmouth Christian Fellowship got up to thank him for his talk and to lead the congregation — pardon me, the audience — in a prayer, after which I made my escape.

What did I learn from this talk? I learned that a creationist lecturing to a sympathetic audience can sound very convincing. Dominic Statham was quite clever in not stating some things outright; instead he let the audience infer what they wanted to believe from his tacit implications. I recognised his use of loaded language immediately, but only because I've heard such disingenuous slanting before. Creationists, however, are at least open about what they're up to — they want God back in our culture, and have no truck with secularism. The Intelligent Design crowd on the other hand are more insidious in their aims, all the while claiming that ID has nothing to do with religion.

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*Watch this space...