Episode Transcript
Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
Earlier, in the first part of 2021, matter of fact, I think it was the 15 January Query, a jewish private school in the United Kingdom was disciplined, I suppose you could say, for teaching creationism. And the United Kingdom's national secular Society was quoted of saying, schools that teach creationism as science are prioritising religious indoctrination above the educational rights of the children they teach. So that was a statement published by Stephen Evans, who was the chief executive of the UK National Secular Society, and they had initiated government action against a jewish private school, as I said, for teaching creationism.
Now, in response to this, it was interesting that a scientist who is a nuclear physicist has his phd in the area of nuclear physics from one of the universities in Canada, actually one of the top four universities. I just can't think of the name of it at the moment, but his name is Dr. Jim Mason.
And as I recall, his PhD thesis back in the late 1960s was actually looking at the structure of strontium and ribidium isotopes. And of course, these are isotopes that are used in radiometric dating. So he is really, in terms of that, quite an authority, or can speak quite authoritatively in terms of radiometric dating as well.
And he is a creationist. He believes in a young earth creation. And he wrote and published on the 1 April 2021, an open letter that's on the Internet. And so the name is Jim Mason. If you googled Dr. Jim Mason, M-A-S-O-N open letter to Mr. Stephen Evans. And in this letter, he starts off by saying, dear Mr Evans, it was recently reported in the UK that a Jewish private school has been hit by government action for teaching creationism science. And he names the school as being served with a statutory notice. And one of the things that it was being reprimanded for was that creationism is also taught in geography and science, which is not appropriate.
But it's interesting that he goes on to point out that one of the doctrines of humanism, and one of the founding doctrines of humanism is Big Bang and evolution. And what he goes on to argue is that both are articles of faith for the religion of humanism, and that if the Big Bang or evolution are taught as science, a school, and that would include state schools, are prioritising religious indoctrination above the educational rights. And so the argument that he's pointing out is that humanism is a religion and humanism is a belief that permeates our education system and is powerfully pushing, of course, for the teaching of the Big Bang theory and evolution.
It's interesting. In his article, Dr. Mason goes on to point out that if you look at a dictionary definition of religion, it can be defined as a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, and usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
It can also be defined as a specific, fundamental set of beliefs and practises that are generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects, such as the christian religion or the buddhist religion. And also a religion can refer to a body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practises, such as the World Council of Religions and so forth. And so it's interesting that while the definition alludes to the possible belief in a supernatural being as the creator of the universe, this is not a mandatory requirement of religion.
So he states that the Buddhist religion is specifically identified, for example, would be a religion that does not have this belief. So it's as a supernatural being as creator of the universe. And so he goes on to elaborate that the documents that define humanism are, namely the humanist manifesto and the humanist manifesto two and the humanist manifesto three, and these comprise a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature and purpose of the universe, and they contain a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
So it's interesting, if you look these up on the Internet there, you can see that in actual fact, humanism really fits the definition of religion quite well, because it contains a fundamental set of beliefs generally agreed upon by a number of persons. And humanism represents a body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs. He goes on to actually quote some interesting stuff from the humanist manifesto, and he quotes from the third paragraph of the original Humanist manifest, which states, today's man, larger understanding of the universe's scientific achievements and deeper appreciation of brotherhood have created a situation, requires a new statement of the means and purpose of religion.
So it's interesting that it then goes on to list another 15 affirmations, and it concludes, so stan these theses of religious humanism. In the final paragraph of the humanist manifesto two, it includes the sentence, these affirmations are not a final credo or dogma, but an expression of a living, growing faith. These statements clearly identify humanism as a faith, and they have their statements of faith.
And, of course, there was a book written some years ago by Charles Francis Potter entitled Humanism a New Religion. So it's quite interesting. In 1983, too, the humanist John J.
Dunphy wrote in the magazine the Humanist, which is the official publication of the Humanist Society, an article entitled a Religion for a New Age, in which he wrote, teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist teachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilising a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach. Regardless of the educational level, preschool, daycare or large state university, the classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new, the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with its adjacent evils of misery, and the new faith of humanism. So we can see that this article, which was published in 1983 in the Humanist, and the author again, John J Dunphy, spelt Dunphy, you can look that up.
So here we can see that humanism is a religion that is actually being allowed to be taught in our schools. And so I guess, let's have a look now, what are the doctrines of the religion of humanism? Remember that the jewish school was disciplined for allowing the teachings of, for example, Judaism, which believes in creation and says there was a supernatural creator God in the beginning, in Genesis and of course, and the flood and so forth, and was dispensed for teaching them. But let's have a look at what the humanist people then believe and want taught.
The first of the affirmations are that religious humanists regard the universe as self existing and not created. Now, that's something, of course, that is totally unscientific. It can't be proved either way, except we have a lot of evidence for creation from point of view of philosophy and the whole concept of if the universe having a beginning and therefore having a cause.
The second affirmation is that humanism believes that man is part of nature and that he is immersed as a result of a continuous process. And so the secularists, of course, support the big Bang theory, and they also clearly support the slow and gradual process of evolution. And so deep time, deep time evolution, fundamental tenets, it would seem, of the religion of humanism.
It's interesting that humanism affirms the origin of the universe and the origin of humans, but it doesn't need to affirm, for example, gravity, electromagnetism or quantum mechanics. Why? Because quantum mechanics, gravity and so forth are matters of science and they can be determined and studied by scientific experiment. But the big Bang and evolution can't.
And so it's interesting that if we think about that, these two dogmas are apparently considered so fundamental to humanism that they are set out as the first two at the very start of the first document that defines humanism. And, of course, I guess folks listening might be thinking, well, aren't the Big Bang and evolution proven scientific theories? No, they're definitely not. And these theories have not been proven by science to be true.
And this is a very important thing to be understood. And this is something that Dr. Mason points out very early in the piece.
You see, not everything that gets called science is actually science. And he points out that it is important to understand that not everything that gets called science is of the same character. And so, for example, he compares physics and cosmology.
So cosmology is about the history of the universe. So, for example, he quotes a theoretical cosmologist, Dr. James Turner. And Dr. Turner writes, the goal of physics is to understand the basic dynamics of the universe. Cosmology is a little different.
The goal is to reconstruct the history of the universe. Thus, cosmology, which is where the big Bang fits, is actually a study of history using science as an investigative tool. So it's sort of the way forensic science is used to try to solve crimes.
And sometimes you watch tv programmes about these. So the forensic scientist tries to construct a history that explains the evidence. But often there's more than one history, as comes out in.
Often in courtroom trials and in real life dramas, that explains the evidence. And some histories do a better job than others. For example, in the Bible, we have a record of the creator himself.
So the Creator, who created the universe, spoke with humans and revealed the origin of the universe. And that's how we know that the universe was created in six days. And so we know from the evidence, these are eyewitness accounts that have been preserved in the Bible.
Now, of course, a lot of people reject the Bible as history, and I've talked about that on other occasions, too. But when we look at the archaeological evidence that we have today, the overwhelming evidence is that the Bible is an accurate account, as well as the fulfilled prophecies that took place. So there's powerful evidence that the Bible is a supernatural book.
As we continue on down this theme, cosmology may look like science, but it's not a science. The basic tenet of science is that you can do repeatable experiments and you can't do that in cosmology. For example, Dr James Gunn, spelled G-U-N-N who was professor of astronomy at Princeton University, once said, cosmology may look like a science, but it is not a science. A basic tend of science is that you can do repeatable experiments as per the scientific method, and you can't do that in cosmology. So that was a statement by Dr. James Gunn, professor of astronomy at Princeton University. It's very important to understand that, know the Big Bang is a theory. When we look at the predictions that it makes, so many of them don't fit.
And that's why hundreds of scientists have signed, for example, I think cosmologystatement.com, I think, is the website, but I'm just going from memory there. But hundreds of scientists have signed a statement saying, look, should stop teaching the Big Bang because it just doesn't fit.
The problem is, of course, that if we remove the big Bang theory from science classes, they don't have anywhere else to go. There's really no other satisfactory theory. The theory that explains the origin of the universe is that of a supernatural creator who is outside time and space, in other words, nonphysical.
And that's exactly how the Bible describes God. It's fantastic. And it's the same.
When we look at evolution. The goal of biology is to study the basic dynamics of living things. Evolution is a little different.
The goal of evolution is to reconstruct the history of life on earth. Evolution may look like a science, but it isn't a science. A basic tenet of science is that you can do repeatable experiments, and you cannot do that in evolution.
Matter of fact, I've talked about this before in other issues where people, for example, have bred bacteria through tens of thousands of generations. They haven't mutated into a new kind of bacteria. Matter of fact, they haven't mutated into a yeast or they're still the same type of bacteria, same kind of bacteria.
And so, again, when all the experiments that have attempted to be done that have been attempted to demonstrate evolution have failed, sure, we see some types of evolution occurring, and you might say, well, hang on, aren't you just contradicting yourself? No. Well, evolution is a very broad term, and this is where the confusion comes in. Most people, when they think of evolution, is where you have some initial light form that solely mutated, that became worms, that became fish, that became amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and so forth.
And so the change over time. But evolution can refer to any change, and it's possible to have mutations that destroy part of the genetic code, and those mutations can create differences. But all the examples that we see of that kind of evolution involves the loss of genetic information or the duplication of preexisting genetic information.
We don't see the creation of new body parts as a result of new code being formed, totally new code. And that's what the theory of evolution requires. That's the requirement for it that has never been observed, despite all the experiments.
And from the biochemistry that we know, it's absolutely impossible, because the new code required to make something work is so complex in terms of its involvement in the systems. Because biology works on a systems approach, everything pretty well is interconnected in biological systems. And so there has to be allowances for these when the new code is formed.
And so evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science. The evolutionists are attempting to explain events and processes that have already taken place. And so, again, what we find is that all the attempted experiments have failed.
Matter of fact, the experiments, and I've talked about this on several times before, and it's highlighted in the work of Mture, who's a synthetic chemist at Wright University. It's absolutely impossible for a living, simple, living cell to arise from non living molecules. It had to be supernaturally created.
I guess one of the things that is often missed is that science actually can't prove anything to be true. This is quite an interesting. And Carl Popper wrote about this.
Science can prove theories to be false, and sometimes it struggles to do that. And the problem is that the popular media often and even the editors of some journals fall into this trap. For example, some time ago, in a news section in the journal Science that was published some time ago, the title of the May 6 News of the week's story was, at long last, gravity probe B satellite proves Einstein right. One of the things is that really, that you can't prove Einstein right. You simply have data that fits the theory at the moment. And it's interesting that it was picked up, and the editors replied when a person raised issue about that.
The correspondent was Dr. Charles L. Bennett, who is professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University and who earned his phd at MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the top units in the world, of course.
And he actually led NASA's Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe mission. And he says, Bennett, its quote here is correct in that it's an important conceptual point. Science magazine editors blew it.
You can't prove something is true. You can have data that fits the theory. And so observing results that are consistent with the theory does not prove the theory is true, since the same results might also be consistent with some other theory.
He uses an example here. For example, suppose you hypothesise that eating a large pizza will fill your stomach. Then you do an experiment to test the theory by eating a large pizza, and behold, your stomach is full.
But clearly, this is not the only way you might fill your stomach. Your stomach would also be full if you ate a large steak and kidney pie. Observing that someone has a full stomach does not prove that the person ate a large pizza.
And however, observing results that are inconsistent with the theory does prove that the theory is wrong. Thus, for example, if you were to eat a large pizza and your stomach was not full, you could unequivocally conclude that your theory was false. And so, concluding that the big Bang or evolution is correct based on observations that are consistent with predictions of a particular one being considered is simply a classic logical fallacy.
The same observations may and indeed are consistent with predictions derived from the genesis account of creation. And if that's being the case, then these observations cannot be used to assert that either is true, only that the observations do not indicate that either is wrong. Of course, in the case of the Big Bang, as I said, we have numerous examples that demonstrate that the big Bang just doesn't fit the data.
And the same with evolution. When we've attempted to make evolution happen and generate new, meaningful genetic codes, we just can't do it. It doesn't happen.
And so these are very important aspects. One of the things, though, coming back to the original premise, was that the jewish school was disciplined for teaching creation in their schools. And yet we find that the evidence for creation fits what we observe when we also know that one of the tenets of humanism was to indoctrinate people in the tenets of humanism.
The two of the fundamentals, of course, are essentially the big Bang theory, that the universe was self existent or came into being by itself, and the theory of evolution, that man arose by purely mechanical processes. And so, again, really, we need to, if we're going to be consistent, if we're not going to allow creation to be taught in schools, we really shouldn't be allowing evolution and the Big Bang theory to be taught in schools, either. So this raises a very interesting point, doesn't I think it's something that many people aren't aware of, that we need to remember that a lot of things that are called science in the classroom today aren't science.
They're history. They're attempts to reconstruct the past, and they can't be proven. On the other hand, when we look at the Bible, the Bible gives us hope that there is a future.
Evolution doesn't give us any hope. Humanism doesn't give us any hope for the future. This is just life as is.
If you happen to be fortunate enough to be born with good health and in a well to do family, then you'll probably have a comfortable life. If you born in poverty somewhere and with poor health or where there's a lot of illness and disease, then what's the hope? But the Bible says that there's a God that loves everyone the same and that one day everything is going to be put right. And the thing is that we can believe this because we have the fulfilled prophecies, the prophecies that fulfilled when Jesus would come and what he would do when he did come, and other historical prophecies that history has confirmed that were true, that God revealed to people in the past and the reason he revealed them was so that people could know that there truly is a supernatural God that is control of things.
The Bible is an amazing book and it's something that I recommend everyone you must read. It gives us hope, real hope that we can believe. You've been listening to Faith and Science and remember you can relisten to these programmes by Googling 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the listen button.
I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day. You've been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia radio.
When a person is lowered into the water of baptism, it's not simply a ritual, an exercise.
It's representative of the great work God is doing in a life. A person who comes to faith in God dies to the old life. The old life is gone.
By embracing Jesus, you are farewelling the past and entering into a whole new life where Jesus lives in you. Romans six three says, know ye not that so many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death. Those are strong words.
One of the reasons a person is baptised by immersion is to demonstrate that baptism is really a burial. The old you is dead and now buried. A new you comes up out of the water to live a new life.
God's objective is a remade you. If you'll let him do it, he will totally transform your life today.
I'm John Bradshaw for it is written, let's live today by every word.
