Episode Transcript
Hello and welcome to Science Conversations, a series examining the intersection of science and faith. I'm Dr. Barry Harker, and my guest today is Dr.
John Ashton. This is my final conversation with Dr. Ashton based upon his book Evolution Impossible twelve Reasons Why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth.
Over the last twelve programs, dr. Ashton has been explaining why scientific evidence makes evolution impossible. Today, Dr.
Ashton will summarize the evidence before telling us why he is a Christian and something of his life and work. Dr. Ashton is a chemist with a PhD in epistemology, a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of knowledge and truth.
Welcome, John. Hello Barry. Good to be here again.
During the last twelve conversations you've presented forceful reasons why evolution is impossible. Taken together, these twelve reasons are compelling. There are others, of course, but these twelve set up an absolute barrier to belief in evolution, don't they? Well, most certainly.
And that's why the book was entitled Evolution Impossible. Impossible is an absolute term, and I mean that absolutely. Well, I believe we now have overwhelming evidence that evolution never occurred.
Would you like to summarize those twelve reasons? Sure. I think one of the things is that we now know that mutations do not produce new purposeful genetic information. They destroy existing codes that are there.
And sometimes during that process, by some chance reason, they produce some minor change that happens to be a benefit. So for example, they may knock out a particular enzyme that is producing a toxin. And so now that toxin isn't produced anymore.
So that now means that you have a different organism that doesn't have the toxin and has different properties. So these are the sort of changes that mutation produce. They don't produce new codes.
The new codes to make a new type of organism are just so complex. Mutations are associated with an increased risk of disease and malfunction. They don't produce new codes, they don't produce new types of animals.
So we know that now. And also the genetic code is just extremely complex. It's sort of like imagining that some typing errors can change the computer codes that generate a totally new type of machine or something like that.
We know those sort of areas don't do that. The genetic code is just extremely complex. And so to date, there's no known mechanism how the codes in DNA could form.
There's also actually, from a chemistry point of view, no known mechanism how the molecular structures of DNA could form in nature without the preexisting molecular machinery to create them. So this is another main major problem. There's no known mechanism how nonliving molecules could form the first living cell.
Despite all our experiments, and as we now understand the structures of cells, the component structures that are required to have a viable, self replicating, life giving process, those structures require millions, and I literally mean millions of identical polymer molecules, none of which really form naturally in nature. So the requirements for the first cell to form again are well and truly in the impossible region. And, of course, all experiments to generate a living cell in the laboratory have failed.
When we come to the fossil record, which is often cited as the main evidence for evolution, what we find are fully formed animals already there when they first appear in the fossil record. They're fully formed, they're fully functioning. They're not in some transitional development, partly developed stage.
We don't find the fossils of the millions of transition species that there should have been there. We don't find the fossil evidence of all this very slow intermediate change that is required as these millions upon millions of mutations took effect. So, again, the fossil record doesn't provide the evidence of these mutations.
The oldest fossil bearing rocks have highly complex life forms in them, again, with no room for evolution. If we look at radiometric dating, we find that there are major inconsistencies. Depending on the radiometric dating scheme we use, we can get different answers for the same rocks we can get.
One system can give us rocks millions of years old, and yet we date carbon material in those rocks. With carbon 14 dating, it'll only give us thousands of years old. So there's huge discrepancies there.
Furthermore, the millions of years that the radiometric dating ages give us is in massive conflict with erosion rate data that we have. So the continents are typically dated as two and a half to 3 billion years old. We know that they would erode away in less than 10 million years on the basis of accurate present day erosion data.
And we know that in the past, with higher rainfall, erosion would have been much higher. There's not enough ocean sediments or volcanic deposits for the surface of the Earth to be as old as it's claimed to be. And furthermore, now as we study mutations and we see that mutations are actually accumulating in the genome to the point that down the track there will be sufficient mutations, that life will no longer function.
If we extrapolate back, we know that life has to be less than 100,000 years old maximum, and in realistically, less than 10,000 years. So that's just a quick summary. So everywhere we look for evidence for evolution, it's just not there really.
The evidence is there that it must have been created in a very, very short period of time. John, since your book was published in 2012, has anyone cited arguments or evidence from the scientific literature that refutes or at least raises significant questions about the validity of your conclusions? No, quite the contrary. Matter of fact, since my book has been published, other books have come out actually supporting the very material that I put out there.
For example, thomas Nagel. He's an atheist, a very eminent philosopher in the United States, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of New York and shortly after my book was published, he put out a book, mind and the Cosmos why the Darwinian Paradigm Must Ultimately Be Proved False. And what is happening is actually more evidence is accumulating, pointing out that evolution is absolutely impossible.
The Neodarwinian concept of how life came to be just doesn't work. The evidence is just falling away. And even from the Big Bang aspects, more astronomers and astrophysicists are speaking out now and saying, look, the Big Bang doesn't work.
We still don't have an explanation for how the universe could form, how the stars and galaxies could form. The evidence for dark matter and so forth, which is absolutely essential, just hasn't been discovered. And we now know that if it was real, that it would cause so many other observations and phenomena that we actually don't observe that in actual fact, we have the evidence that dark matter can't exist or doesn't exist.
And so everywhere we look, the evidence is actually supporting what I've summarized in the book Evolution Impossible. Okay, tell us why you believe a super intelligent creator God, is responsible for life on Earth. Well, when you think about it, we're here, we exist, and the universe exists, and there must have been some first cause that was self existing.
But the other thing is, what is the explanation for the laws of physics and chemistry that constrain energy and matter, that constrain the structure of atoms and the subatomic particles that actually constrain the fields, the energy fields like gravity, magnetism, electric fields, all these amazing fields that exist? What actually constrains these amazing forces that we observe? And they all fit these very fascinating mathematical models. And to me, that requires a super intelligence from what we understand as intelligent. And the other thing is the realization that our thoughts are non material.
I think this is a very, very important aspect that we often don't contemplate that our thoughts are non material, but our thoughts can interact with the material world as we know, because our thoughts can move our hands and feet and so forth. So to me, the explanation for this is a super intelligent, spiritual, non material mind or being that is behind all this. John, tell us about your life in science, your university studies and your qualifications, your career in science, including your publications and your current work.
Yeah, sure. Okay. When I was in high school, I was very interested in science, and I went to a very large coed state high school.
And I think from my very first science exam, I topped both physics and chemistry. And I did continue to do that all the way through high school. And actually, when I think back before that, I can remember as a boy, I must have been less than eight, observing the shadow moving across tiles on our front patio and being fascinated by the fact that the shadow moved.
And I can remember studying ants and picking them up and it took me a while to figure out that I wasn't being hurt by their bite, I was actually being hurt by their bottom where their sting was. And so that was as a small child. So I guess I had this natural tendency to explore nature.
When I began doing really well at school, one of the physics teacher actually gave me a book by, I think it was professor Harry Messel on science. And I used to enjoy reading science books, in fact I used to read encyclopedias. I suffered very badly from asthma so I actually missed a lot of school and spent a lot of time in bed and I used to read but as a result I did well at school.
I was a straight A student. I won a Lionscomb scholarship in third year high school. At the end of when I did my leaving certificate I won both a Commonwealth University scholarship and a BHP Cadet ship in physics and I went to university, I was 16 years of age.
My dad, as I don't know whether I mentioned earlier, he died when I was 13, about to turn 14. So initially I went to uni part time so that I could provide some income for my mum and brother as well. But as I was studying I did studied physics, pure and applied mathematics and geology and chemistry at university, both majoring in physics and mathematics.
But then I noticed that most of the physics students were ending up computer programmers. As a matter of fact the fact that I had learned computer programmer where I was working at the time was at the BHP central research laboratories. And of course at that time BHP was the largest steel maker in the southern hemisphere and we had an amazing research team there and they were ending up being computer programmers as I said.
And I was taken off the interesting physics projects and put on computer programming which I didn't like. So I decided to change to chemistry and I did my honors in chemistry and topped the university. So when you go into the University of Newcastle here my name's up on the honor roll there for 1969 and I think I mentioned you're a university medalist in chemistry.
It wasn't a medal at that stage, it was the CSR prize in chemistry. So it was a cash prize that was given in chemistry at that time and that was given to the top chemistry student at each university in Australia. So I won the one for Newcastle University.
But I think I mentioned that at that time I was questioning about the purpose in life and one of the reasons for this was when I started working at the BHP research laboratories I was appointed the personal assistant of Dr. Neil Gray and he had just arrived at the research laboratories at that time. When I first started there were only two PhD qualified people within BHP, the research director and the Deputy director of Research.
And Dr. Neil Gray arrived in February March 1964. And he was the first then PhD scientist to arrive as part of a new research team.
They were setting up a high level research team was being formed and I was fortunate to be chosen to be his personal assistant. And later on, other scientists arrived that had trained at Massachusetts Institute Technology, Cambridge, London, Caltech, all the top unis from around the world to produce this really top team. But one of the things that I noticed was that Dr.
Gray, he stood out as being quite different to many of the other scientists in that he was very friendly. He didn't drink or smoke, he didn't tell demeaning stories about women as some of the other folk did. And he witnessed to me, he loaned me the book by C.
S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. And he used to talk to me about a faith in God.
And when I finished Uni, I thought about what is the purpose in life? And that was when I spoke to my mother, who had been raised in the Church of England at the time, before they became the Anglican. And she suggested, Will you go to church to find out about God? So I went to church and that was when I first heard the Gospel preach and now need to accept Jesus as our Saviour, that we had all fallen short of living in harmony with God's laws and God's creation. But God was forgiving us through Jesus.
And it's explained about the trap that Adam and Eve fell into that Satan had laid, was really a trap for God. Really. It's very interesting.
As I've read the Bible, there seems to be an ongoing war between evil forces of evil led by Lucifer, who changed and became from a perfect, loving being into a hateful, jealous being as Satan and then turned the tables on God. And so there was an interesting trap set in that Satan accused God of being a liar and Adam and Eve believed. And so God was now in a tricky situation.
If he forgave Adam and Eve and let them not die, then he would be accused of being a liar. And so I can see it was really a beautiful plan that God instead died to prove that he wasn't a liar and now to have the ability to forgive everyone. And I think that's a wonderful message that goes out there.
And I heard that preached in the church and I realized that I needed to accept Jesus and accept God as being the Lord of my life and surrendering to Him. And that was an amazing experience. It didn't happen just all at once.
And I'd like to encourage those that listening. It's not scary at all. It's sort of coming to know in a personal way a wonderful loving being that did create us as described in the Bible and who displayed himself as Jesus, as such a loving person.
And it was over time that I came to realizations. But very early on I prayed a prayer to God, my first prayer. And I guess it's a fairly simple sort of prayer and a naive sort of prayer, but I prayed God.
I said that if the toxide Research Fellowship was advertised at the time, this was early 1970 and it was the highest paying postgraduate research scholarship offered in Australia. It probably offered 30% more at Stipend than the standard Commonwealth Postgrad scholarship. I prayed to God if I got that scholarship I would buy a Bible and start going to church regularly.
Well, I won that scholarship, I was the 1970. So you had to keep your word. I did.
And I completed a master's degree in chemistry in the area of titanium chemistry. And then I took up a position lecturing in physics and mathematics at the Hobart Technical College. And I was responsible for setting up a number of their courses, like in the area of chemistry technician, the medical technology courses, the applied microbiology courses, courses in corrosion science.
So I was responsible for drawing up the curriculum in these courses and setting up these courses. So after a few years I was appointed state coordinator of the science courses for technical and further education in Tasmania. And I was very successful down there.
And by this stage I was married and had a family and we were quite well off, but I became very unsettled in I just wasn't sort of really happy, although life was going really well. And I was talking to a relative who was a lay preacher in the Baptist church and he said John, I think God is calling you. And you know, when I thought about I thought I have a real desire to write in the area of evidence for creation.
Now I guess how this came about was when I became a Christian, which happened a couple of years after I'd moved down to Tasmania and was working at the university there. People would ask me, okay, so you're a Christian, do you believe in creation? So that forced me to really look at the creation issue, which I did. And I began reading quite a bit in the area of creation, also in the area of the history behind the Bible and particularly the area of prophecy.
And I was looking for the independent historical evidence supporting Bible prophecy. And I found there was a lot of evidence that supported the accuracy of the biblical prophecies and the genuineness of the biblical prophecies and that was pretty impressive. And reading up privately in the two areas evidence for creation and evidence for the historical accuracy.
Your own background in physics, chemistry, maths and also geology would have been enormously helpful to you at this point, wouldn't it? Oh, yes. It meant I had no problem in reading the literature, particularly with the applied maths that I did, which was virtually equivalent to the third level physics course. They were very similar.
And so I had, yes, a very good understanding. Matter of fact, physics was really in the area of science. That was my first love, physics, and I really, really enjoy physics.
So how did you move across to chemistry? Well, as I explained earlier, because most of the physicists weren't getting jobs in the area of physics. They were getting jobs as computer programmers because they were good at maths. And, you know, the employment area for physicists was not real high.
Matter of fact, when I was teaching at the Hobart Technical College, there were two of us that were appointed at the same time, and the other guy had a PhD in physics, and he taught physics and math classes, and I taught physics and math classes because at that stage there were no chemistry courses. But when the head of school found out that, yes, I had a very strong chemistry background, then that's when he decided, wow, we can expand the offerings of the school to offer the courses in chemistry training for the chemistry technicians as well. So you're still now in the 1970s.
Yeah, sure. How did your career progress? I mean, you've picked up Christianity along the way, and you've picked up this interest in creation. How did it all start to work together through your career? Well, as I was saying, to say, when I became unsettled, I talked to my wife and we decided to move from Tasmania up to what we call the mainland, up to around the Sydney area somewhere because my wife's family lived mainly in the Sydney area.
That's where her parents were. And so we came up here and we bought a house not far from Newcastle, it turned out. And a position came up as chief chemist at Sanitarium, the Sanitarium Health and Well Being, or Santarian Health Food Company, as was called back then.
And so I took that position, and at that time I decided to go back to Uni and read for a doctorate in the area of epistemology. Why epistemology? Because theories of knowledge, how we can know, is really one of the fundamental issues that underpin science as well. See, science uses reductionism to a very large extent to discover new things, but reductionism fails.
Explain reductionism. Okay. Reductionism really was developed by Descartes.
Descartes, when he was looking at how we can know, we're talking in the 17th century, we're talking in the 17th century. And so he believed that God was a mathematician and therefore nature could be summarized, could be studied. If we divided nature down into tiny weeny little bits and we studied all those little bits, then we should be able to mathematically reconstruct the situation and therefore understand it.
So that's the concept of reductionism that you specialize down, you study precisely one very, very small area. And of course, that's what science has done. We all have these very specialist scientists and of course the power of reductionism was really developed by Newton and Newton and Lebennets both at the same time developed calculus which enabled them to then mathematically sum these tiny little bits.
And of course Newton at the same time too identified the laws of motion which had a very powerful predictive effect. So you could predict the motion of objects and this sort of thing because they were obeying these laws of so, you know, Newton's book I forget its name now. Principal Mechanica, or yes.
Okay. His book went through numerous reprints very quickly and just took off throughout Europe because here now, science was predicting outcomes. But when we get to biological systems, it doesn't work.
And the reason is because of synergy. And I guess to explain synergy, let's say we've got a pile of railway sleepers that are very heavy and so the boss assigns a workman to go and move those railway sleepers. They've got to move from where they are to 20 meters away so they can be load on a truck.
And so the guy goes along and he finds he can't carry a railway sleeper so the only way he can move it is he's got to end for end it, end for end it and so it takes him two minutes to move one railway sleeper over to where he's got to go. The boss comes past and sees him doing that and says, oh this is going to take too long joe, you go over there and help Fred. So Joe comes over and he starts in for ending two and so with two of them working they're still going to take two minutes to move but you've got two people so you're going to move twice as many.
But then Joe and Fred look at one another and they say, hey, we might be able to carry this. And they reach down and they can just pick it up between the two of them and carry it across. But instead of taking it two minutes to get across, now it only takes them half a minute to get it across but yet predicted putting two on it should be only 2 /minute but now they're doing 4 fact that two come in it's not additive, it's now a synergistic effect.
It's actually one plus one doesn't make two one plus one now makes four. So that's the power of synergy that can happen in biological systems. In other words, a slight change can produce a very different mechanism now that's very difficult to predict by reductionist in science.
So my area of research looked at in the area of the biomedical sciences and environmental sciences and essentially it was looking at ways we can predict outcomes and in actual fact I developed a holographic model for the interpretation of data. So a hologram has some fascinating properties and really getting me excited now but that's good and some people have seen holograms. If you can produce holograms with lasers and you'll get this three dimensional image of light and you can have sort of like a person on a stage and they're not there, but they're in three dimensions and you look around them and they're amazingly realistic.
And when you look at a holographic slide, say we've got a holographic slide of a swan on a pond, right? So if we had a normal film and you shone a little laser beam, just say, through the section that was its beak on the photographic film, then up on the screen would just come that little picture of a beak. But if you have a holographic slide of a swan on a pond, and you just shine a little narrow laser beam on just a very small part of that slide, you get a picture of the whole swan, not just a picture of its beak, because every part of the slide encodes information about the whole. And so my thesis was that every part of nature actually tells us something about the whole, and how could we apply this? And in actual fact, this comes right down to DNA, because every cell in our body contains the code for the whole of our body.
So, in actual fact, within nature itself, we find the holographic principle applied, that there is information about the whole. And so what I did was I used that to be able to predict outcomes in environmental and health issues, and it was very powerful. And so then we would make the prediction and look for the outcome.
And it was highly successful. Matter of fact, I think I wrote more than 30 articles, papers associated with my research during my PhD, plus a book. And where did you do that PhD? I did that at the University of Newcastle, and I did that under Professor Onlaw, who trained at Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge.
So he was quite a cluey guy and very supportive of my work. And we actually published a number of books together. But that was really exciting because really I read articles where they say, well, the intelligent design argument has no predictive power.
Well, they should read some of the stuff that I've published, including my book The Perils of Progress, where, in actual fact, I pointed out that if we assume there is intelligent design, we could avert many of the environmental and health disasters that have occurred if we can recognize that there's a purpose in the way things are structured within the environment. So, in fact, very powerful evidence, in fact, in nature for purposeful design in nature itself. And I could talk for ages on that, but I guess we'll get off the top.
Now, you had an interesting creation. You've been reading. You do your PhD in epistemology, and then when did all of the writing begin, the public writing the books and so forth around the creation issue.
Right, okay. Well, I was publishing and writing a lot of books in the area of the environment and the impact of technology on the environment, like microwave radiation and different other areas. Changes in our food composition, changes in the type of light our eyes are exposed to all these things can affect our health and also in the nutrition area.
So I was writing books in the area of that as well. And that in part related to my work as chief chemist and the research that we're doing in nutrition and at universities. But it came to a point where I published a number of books, I think maybe six or seven books very successfully.
And I decided now was the time. I felt now was the time to actually write in the areas that I was really interested in. They were in the areas of evidence for the existence of God and evidence for creation.
So my first book was called the 7th Millennium. The Evidence. We can know the future.
And that was published by New Holland and that sold out relatively quickly. And that looked at the evidence down through history that people have seen the future ahead of time, because that lies outside the mechanical paradigm that is adopted by most. By the way, I got a copy of that book, but I bought it after in six days.
All right. Okay. I didn't realize that it preceded it.
Yes, it had preceded that. And that provides powerful evidence that there must be a non material, spiritual existence. There's so much evidence out there, hard evidence for the existence of a spiritual, non material reality.
John, I'd like to pick up on that a little more as we come back after the break. I'm Dr. Barry Harker, and you're listening to science conversations.
My guest is Dr. John Ashton, author of Evolution Impossible twelve Reasons Why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth. John has summarized the scientific evidence that makes evolution impossible.
He's also told us about his early life in science and why he's a Christian and a creationist. We'll go to a break now. When we come back, John will tell us about the books he has written and why he continues to write while performing a very important role at Sanitarium.
John will also tell us something of his early life and influences. If you have any questions or comments in relation to today's program, you can call Three ABM, Australia. Radio within Australia on oh, two four nine seven three three four five six, or from outside of Australia on country code 612-497-3456.
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Box seven five two. Morissette, New South Wales 2264, Australia thank you for your prayers and financial support. If you've just joined us.
I'm Dr. Barry Harker and you're listening to science conversations. My guest is Dr.
John Ashton, author of. Evolution impossible twelve reasons why evolution cannot explain the origin of life on Earth John has summarized the scientific evidence that makes evolution impossible. He's also told us about his early life in science and why he's a Christian and a creationist.
Before the break, John was talking about his first book, the 7th Millennium. As we go into the second part of the program, john is going to tell us more about the books that he has written. John, tell us about a little more before we move on to the books, a little more about this non material entity that you talked about in the 7th Millennium, your first book in this area.
Okay, well, essentially the Bible has prophecies where God revealed to people what was going to happen ahead for two reasons so they know that God exists, that God is real. God claims he's the only one that knows the future and can reveal this. And it was also to provide encouragement to people, particularly in difficult times, particularly when there was persecution and this sort of thing, knowing that they would get through, that they would come through those times.
So it gave the people hope. And so I was very interested to look at the secular historical records that both confirmed the biblical prophecies. And there are, I think there's over 700 biblical prophecies.
Matter of fact, a scholar from Princeton Seminary, from the seminary at Princeton has put together an encyclopedia of biblical prophecies. So there's a lot of data on this. But I was also interested just in the secular accounts of people seeing the future ahead of time, people being warned of disasters.
The classic one, of course, that most of us would know about is the dream that Julius Caesar's wife had before he was assassinated, where she pleaded with him not to go to the forum that day, that something bad was going to happen. And there's lots of accounts like that. Princeton University actually did research in this area as well, in the Space Neuronautics department.
They were very interested and did some experiments, what they call in the era of precognition people seeing events ahead of time. So I was very interested in this sort of research and putting all the evidence together. But just shortly after that, there was a seminar on creation held at Macquarie University in Sydney.
And at that seminar, and I think I mentioned this in one of our earlier talks, the curator of the Sydney Museum after the presentation challenged that he didn't believe that any practicing scientist with a PhD would believe in a literal six day creation. So that led me to write to other Christians who believed in the Bible and in creation and asked them as scientists if they would explain why they chose to believe in creation and not evolution. And of course, that became the book in Six Days why 50 Science Choose to Believe in Creation.
It was published by New Holland and I think I mentioned earlier there was a German edition, Italian edition, Portuguese edition. I think it has been translated into Romanian and Korean as well. And of course, there's an American version now that is still available and still selling very strongly on Amazon.
I mentioned to you earlier, for example, yesterday, it was number three in the top selling books on creationism on Amazon. Is that your best known book, in Six Days? In Six Days would probably be the best known book in the scientific area. When the book in Six Days came out on evidence for creation, richard Dawkins, professor Richard Dawkins, the very outspoken evolutionist, did a review of the book, and people can Google it.
It's called, sadly, an honest Creationist. And he asserts, well, some of the people were trained at church based universities. Well, only ten of the 50 contributors were educated at a church affiliated university.
So I think that's a little bit unfair. But I decided to address that. So I decided to write again to academics around the world who believed and asked them why they believed in the miracles of the Bible, the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ, and answers to prayer.
And this time, I chose all academics that had been educated at secular universities and held and taught at secular universities. And there were some outstanding academics that contributed well to both books, actually. And in many ways, I think that book came out under the title The God Factor, and it has been reprinted a number of times, published by Harper Collins and then by Strand Publishing.
And it currently is available in the US. Under the title on the 7th Day, because the US publisher, Master Books, they were publishing in six days. So this they saw was a sequel.
So it was called on the 7th Day. So all these books that you've talked about, they're all available on Amazon? Oh, they're all available on Amazon. And most of the popular book electronic bookshops, I mean, online bookstores like Booktopia, Book Depository, Kurong here in Australia, these sort of books, they're all available.
So when that book came out, I was contacted by a university student who had read my books, and he wanted to address some of the questions that university students face at university with regard to believing in God. And so we decided then to write to experts in the fields looking at a number of different things, such as evidence for the Exodus or archaeological evidence for the Exodus, archaeological evidence for the Old Testament, archaeological evidence for the New Testament, evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Look at philosophical questions.
If God is good nor powerful, why does he permit evil? Evidence for creation. Why evolution was impossible. Evidence for the Flood, these sort of questions.
And we wrote to people who were recognized expertise. For example, the fellow that wrote on the archaeological evidence for the accuracy of the New Testament, taught at the University of Chicago was an eminent professor there. So this was the sort of caliber of people that we attracted to write articles for the chapters in this book.
And that book was published under the title the Big Argument does God Exist? So I went through several printings here in Australia and again is currently available under master books in the US. Under the title The Big Argument does God Exist? You've been busy. Yes.
Following that, when I was looking for someone, looking for archaeological evidence for the Exodus, I met up with David Down, who had done a lot of work in Egypt. He was a former army officer who had become a church pastor and then taken a great deal of interest in Egyptian archaeology and had spent nearly 50 years traveling to Egypt and working with archaeologists there. And he had put together from his findings and studies and talking with the other archaeologists a history of Egypt.
And he asked me if I'd come in with him and help him finish it off and get it published. And one of the things that was missing was a timeline. And so we worked on producing a timeline, harmonizing biblical chronology with Egyptian chronology.
And we found that we were able to establish some very strong links between events described in the Bible and events described in Egyptian history. But the Egyptians didn't have a calendar as such or didn't have the dates for Egyptian events are very obscure and hard to identify. And we found by using the Bible, we could identify certain characteristic events in Egyptian history and then link them to the biblical chronology and find that they fitted.
And so that became the book Unwrapping the Pharaohs. And that is still selling very strongly well, and I think it's probably one of the first books that has been able to establish a chronology of Egypt that harmonizes with the Bible on the basis of archaeological evidence. And while we may not have got everything 100%, what we have put together works, and I think it's been an amazing contribution there.
Then following that, with the anniversary of the Sesqui centennial anniversary of Darwin's book being published, that was in two nine, I became really strongly convicted that I really need to put out another book on why evolution is impossible. We had so much data now from the biochemistry point of view, and so I worked on that for over two years. And that was published in 2012.
Published in June or July 212. Yes, that's right. And that's been out, so it's in second printing now, so it's gone well.
Is that the last book that you've done? I have lots of ideas. It's just a matter in other words, it's not the last book that you're going to write. Time.
Yeah. So another area that I'm passionate about is the impact that alcohol abuse has on cultures. Alcohol abuse is impacting the lives just around the world.
It's horrific. And back in two six. I published a book on this uncorked and that's co authored by Ron Lara as well.
And the book was endorsed with a foreword by Professor HED Yapman. The University of Wollongong and also Professor Tony Warsley from Deakin University wrote support on the back cover too. They were amazed, actually, at the research there.
And what the book does is that it describes the impact that alcohol abuse has on society, particularly the families and young people and marriage. And the book essentially summarizes that we need duty of care. People need to take responsibility if they see someone who is looking to put themselves into a position of being no longer in control of their thoughts, in other words, getting drunk, that they need to do what they can to discourage that person from getting drunk and going that far.
I know a lot of young people now drinking to get drunk and that is very silly. And it really is something that there needs to be a massive campaign to discourage people from drinking to get drunk, because when they do get drunk, they do things that most of them regret for the rest of their lives. It's very detrimental to health too, isn't it? Well, it is.
And we now know that alcohol is a class one carcinogen. Very little is said about that. It appears to damage the gamete cells, both male and female, so it damages reproduction and offspring.
There's a lot we could talk about there, but that was an area that I was very passionate about. Thank you for telling us about your books. We've got very little time left, but we need to know a little bit more about you.
Tell us a little bit about your early life and influences. Sure. Okay, well, my parents were living at Stockton, a suburb of Newcastle where I was born, and we lived in a house directly opposite the beach in Mitchell Street there, overlooking the beach.
So I have a natural affinity to love going to the beach. And when I was eight, my father built a new house at Warner's Bay and I went to local primary school there and he died when I was, as I said, 13, about nearly 14. And we were showed much kindness by some local Christians.
It must have been pretty devastating to lose your father at that point. Yes, it was very Sunday. It was totally unexpected.
He died of a heart attack. I went off to school and that was the last time I saw him. He died during the night, the next morning while he was in hospital.
But it was a life changing experience in that. Some Christian folk who were nearby came and visited us and were very supportive of my mum because we didn't have any relatives close by and we didn't regularly go to church. And I think their kindness certainly played an influence.
They left a copy of a book called Your Bible and you, which explained the Bible. It was a picture book and it had stories and answers to prayer of soldiers. It explained a little bit about prophecies and what the Bible said and salvation and the battle between good and evil.
It made a lot of sense, really. And because had pictures in it, for a boy, it was easy to read. And as I said, there was the influence of when I started work of Neil Gray, dr.
Neil Gray. And I met him just recently and I found out, I think I mentioned earlier too, that he was a creationist. And he went on to become a professor at the University of Melbourne.
And the professor whom I studied under at Newcastle, he was a Christian and a very lovely man. He was very supportive. When I was doing my honours, he was very approachable.
And I'd come in and he'd say to me, oh, come on in, John. How's it going? Have you found a girlfriend yet? Well, many professors are just so unapproachable, but he was very interested in people. And I think these sort of people have certainly had an effect in my life.
I could see the difference between many people who were Christians, who were really comfortable in their faith, they were happy people, they were joyful people, they were interested in other people, they were helpful. And I guess that smolded me and I was attracted to that. I thought, that is really good when I read the Bible.
And as I said, when I had that prayer answer, I won that scholarship. I went out and I bought a Bible and I started reading and I systematically read through it and I checked things when it came to prophecies and it said something about Tyre, I would look it up in the encyclopedia and I find out what was the history of Tyre. And because being a scientist, I work with data and I want good data, so I went to the best sources of data that I could and I looked it up.
And back then, as I checked through, everything I checked out with the Bible made sense. Now, there were some difficult bits, there were some bits that didn't add up to me, sort of, if God is loving, how can you have eternal destruction? And all this sort of thing. But then, as I read into the meaning and the understanding of the words and how they were used at the time and the consistency in the Bible, I came to realize, well, from my perspective, my understanding of the Bible, there's no eternal hell.
There's no burning in hell fire forever. There's destruction of the wicked at the end, but that's it. Because God then just creates everything new again.
And the whole idea is, my understanding is that God desired us to be living in paradise originally, Eden. I understand that's what the word Eden meant, meant paradise. And Satan, because he was jealous of God, came in and tricked Eve and led her astray.
God wanted to forgive Eve and Adam, but he couldn't because of the strategy that Satan has used. And there's been this conflict and Satan had been given free reign for so long to display. Okay, this is what happens when people follow Satan.
And we can see the chaos that the world is in at the present time. It's horrible. And we just see the chaos in our own.
You know, when my wife and I were first married, we lived in a little village where most of the people were Christians. We didn't even have lock. Well, we had locks on our doors, but we never locked them.
When we sold our house, we had to go and buy fresh locks because we had no keys. And people saying it was a delightful experience to live in that village. There was no crime, people didn't steal.
And I've been to other places in the United States where the people are strong, churchgoers, believe in God, they help one another. You can see the difference in their faces to me. And the crime rates are virtually non existent in those little communities.
It's only if somebody from outside comes in and having experienced that to me, and then having the peace of knowing that you can have salvation, it's just so empowering. And that's why I've written my books. And I know that creation has been a big issue for young people, why they've been losing their faith.
And that is why I have felt so strongly. Those incorrect teachings about evolution must be counted. There is powerful evidence for the existence of God.
The creation story makes the most sense. The young people need to have that evidence. And that's why I was strongly motivated to write my books and particularly Evolution Impossible.
And, yeah, it's been great having the time to be able to talk to you about this. Thank you so much, John. I hope you've enjoyed the conversations as much as I have.
It's been really delightful talking with you over these last 13 hours. Oh, thanks, Ben. Best wishes.
And I look forward to the next book and I look forward to the next series of conversations with you at some stage in the future. I'm Dr. Barry Harker, and you've been listening to science conversations.
My guest is Dr. John Ashton, author of Evolution Impossible twelve Reasons Why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth. This concludes my series of 13 conversations with Dr.
Ashton. John has agreed to record further series around his books. Thank you for listening.
I hope the conversations have been helpful and a blessing to you. This series will be repeated because lots of this material is very dense and it bears being heard twice. Until then, bye for now, and God bless.
