Can a Scientist Believe in God? Part 2 - SC2535

SPEAKER 1 Welcome to Science Conversations. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Are there any scientists that believe in creation? Joining me to discuss part two of this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome once again to the program, Dr. John. SPEAKER 2 Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER 1 Dr. John Ashton has written a book entitled Evolution Impossible: 12 Reasons why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth. And we are going to be looking a little bit more into chapter 12, as part of this program. Now, we talked in the last session about a lot of scientists who reject evolution. However, it might be seen that they potentially could be biased by their worldview, religious worldview or belief in God, and this could be a criticism of their perspectives. Are there scientists who actually reject evolution but who may not necessarily have a biblical worldview? SPEAKER 2 Well, I'm sure that there are many scientists that come to that on the basis of the evidence because, you know, the evidence is quite over, over, but it's interesting that that very scenario that you've just raised was actually raised by Richard Dawkins, a professor, or Dr. Richard Dawkins, who was a professor, an outspoken professor in favor of evolution. He did a review of my earlier book in Six Days why 50 scientists choose to believe in creation. And I found interesting in that essentially he did not refute any of the arguments that those scientists raised, but essentially argued, well, you know, scientists here have been trained in Christian universities, so you'd expect them to have that worldview. So when I checked, there were 10 of the 50 scientists had actually trained in a secular university, in a Christian university, and perhaps could have had that bias. But the rest had all been trained in secular universities. But of course, what their family background was and this sort of thing, it's hard to know. But actually, following that, I did write again to scientists around the world, who had taught at, who had been taught and got their doctorates from secular universities and taught at secular universities, why they chose to believe in the Christian worldview, such as the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ, the answers to prayer and the miracles of the Bible. And that became the book, the God Factor, which went through quite a number of printings, actually, and is still available under the title On the Seventh Day at the present time. Now with regard to, you know, scientists being evolutionists or growing up with an atheist worldview and coming, there are sort of some notable examples. Well, particularly in the area of philosophy, I suppose, Anthony Flew, Dr. Anthony Flew, a Nobel Prize winner, he was quite an outspoken atheist that, again, became a deist and again believed that the evidence was overwhelming for intelligent design. And this is the main argument for these people. What they're saying is, hang on, mutations can't produce the amount of encoded information. So What the claim is that mutations, chemical mutations to the DNA code have so changed the code that has produced new code that produces these new amazing biochemical pathways, new amazing proteins and structures that enable flight, reproduction, immunity, all these sort of things to occur. But the complexity of the biochemistry and the structures involved in living systems are huge. It's very hard even for the most human minds to get around and have a capacity to understand the enormity of the complexity of these systems. And as these, you know, very clever minds have recognized this, they've said, yes, there must have been intelligent design. Thomas Nagel, is another philosopher. I think he's a professor of philosophy at the University of New York from memory. And he wrote a book, Mind in the Cosmos, and again argues this, that the whole Neo-Darwinian view must be false. It can't work. You can't have these sort of mutations producing the amazing complexity. There's overwhelming evidence for intelligent design. And his argument is essentially there must be some property of the universe that can provide this intelligence, this structure. Another philosopher is Jerry Fodor. And again, as far as I know, these aren't Christian philosophers, although I think Fodor may have had a Jewish background way back. But again, they point out the same reason that neo-Darwinism can't explain this whole concept that mutations can produce this amazing structure is absolutely impossible. So there's quite a few people in that area. Perhaps one chemist that converted would be Francis Collins, who head the Human Genome Project. I understand initially he was an evolutionist. and came from a non-religious background and converted to Christianity. I think I'm writing that there now. And of course, he put out the book, the Fingerprints of God. Again, powerful evidence for intelligent design out there. SPEAKER 1 Fascinating that people are in that category, not necessarily having the biblical worldview, but still recognizing innately that there are issues with the mechanism of the Darwin evolutionary process. SPEAKER 2 And. SPEAKER 1 That, yes, the need for a design element coming into it is just so strongly evidenced. And so I believe you've got some more scientists in this chapter that are explaining more about some of those things, the rationale, you strip out all of the any religious biases and you get down to the core rationale, does this work or doesn't it? Is it possible or is it not? And then this is where they're arguing from. So can you take us through some of those? SPEAKER 2 Yes, I think, but maybe before we discuss that, I think you raise an important point here that the teaching of evolution in our schools, we need to understand that most scientists, once they get to university and they're doing science and working through that are going to be very thoroughly inculcated with the ideas of evolution. SPEAKER 1 Yes. SPEAKER 2 And we have evidence for this in research that was done, for example, at the University of New South Wales. I think it was by, just trying to think of the professor there, he was professor of biology for many years there. I think it was Professor Archer. And what he did was he kept records of when students started biology one at the University of New South Wales, what their beliefs were. Did they believe in creation? Did they believe in evolution? Did they have no belief, this sort of thing. And essentially he showed that over the 30 or so years from the 1970s to the early 2000s, or maybe a bit longer, I can't remember roughly the time period, that the number of students believing in creation dropped dramatically. There was only now a very small percentage of students that actually believed in creation. And so what they argued was that the teaching of evolution in schools has been very successful. SPEAKER 1 Right. SPEAKER 2 Now, to me, this is very morally wrong. And we need to understand, too, that scientists that do become creationists and speak out on this in order to keep their positions, there's got to be pretty, pretty strong evidence for that. And I, I've worked in, you know, in university circles, you know, for decades now about this. And, and fortunately, I've received a lot of respect from my colleagues for my, for my views and, and this sort of thing. But, I mean, you know, I'm at a fairly high level in terms of, you know, research Publications and, and this sort of thing. So it's very hard then for, for junior science, particularly in some areas where, particularly in the area of biology publishing, you know, in peer reviewed journals. If you started taking a creationist view, you wouldn't get published. Yeah. So this makes it, it's a very, very difficult. And that's why a lot of the books that we've talked about, a lot of the scientists that are speaking out about it are very senior scientists now. They've established themselves. They're in a position where they really can't be sacked very easily because they've contributed so much to science. So they now can speak out. So what we have is when we're looking at people for scientists to speak out and to do this, there's really got to be a lot of evidence underpinning what they're doing. And that's why I've been able to put these books out. Because, and one of the reasons I like writing the books is I can put out my reasons, I can state my sources and the basis. And so if you're going to, if you're a detractor, you've got to actually demonstrate where I'm wrong. Yes. And generally people haven't been able to do that. Sometimes people have claimed to be able to do it, But when you drill in and examine their statements, their statements are assertions. They're not actually based on hard scientific reproducible evidence. And this is very important, a very important point that I like to raise is that one of the things when we're debating this particular issue and looking at the evidence, what is the evidence that we can actually go and examine and reproduce today as opposed to a conjecture, as opposed to assertions? And when we look at the scientific evidence that we can go and reproduce today, whether it's mathematical, whether it's from biochemistry, whether it's from geology, radiometric dating, when we look at the data we can reproduce today, it all points to evolution being absolutely impossible and the Earth being young. And so that's why, as these other scientists have got down and drilled into it, they've come out and spoken. But what has happened, of course, is that the academies now, essentially the science academies in most Western countries around the world and even probably a lot of developing countries, have made statements essentially that they're rejecting creation and that evolution is the official position. But when you read the statements of these academies, it's not they don't say on the basis, of such and such paper published in nature and such and such research published in science, we can now define that evolution as a fact. It's not that it's just an assertion that many scientists are supporting that particular view. And I think people really, really need to understand that. For example, there was Jerry Fodor put out his paper why pigs don't have wings, right? And that caused quite a stir and led to a number of conferences of scientists because here Fodor was pointing out, hang on, the science supposedly underpinning evolution isn't there. It doesn't work. And so as a result of that, and shortly after that, Richard Dawkins published a book Evolution: the Greatest Show on Earth. And that was lots of sales. You know, I can remember being in an airport bookshop browsing one time, and a guy came in and asked specifically for the book, and the lady went and showed him, oh, yes, here it is, you know. So who was being sold in airport bookshops sort of thing, you know? Now, later on, and Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, again, a brilliant chemist, an amazing chess champion with a brilliant mind, published a book evolution, the greatest hoax on earth. Oh, right. But that got, yeah, and refuted on the basis of scientific evidence, Dawkins' arguments. Wow. And, but again, it didn't get the same sort of publicity. Yeah. And so this is where we've got this problem out here, that people haven't been made aware of the overwhelming evidence that this theory that has been pushed upon us is on very, very shaky foundations, foundations that really aren't there. And again, that's one of the reasons I wanted to put out my book in support, again, of the second book, Evolution Impossible, because people need to be aware that this evidence is out there. And as you mentioned, yes, there's a number, a large number of highly qualified, experienced scientists that are putting out books and information showing that evolution is impossible. SPEAKER 1 Thank you for giving that extra extensive background, because I think it really did help to unpack the dynamics of what is going on in this whole space. And yeah, I think that's really important. So I appreciate you sharing that, and we'll dive into some more of the details of those arguments and the evidence that some of these preeminent scientists are talking about in the next part. So join us for that one.