Hello and welcome to Science Conversations, a new series examining the intersection of science and faith. I'm Dr. Barry Harker, and my guest today is Dr.
John Ashton. Dr. Ashton is a chemist working in the field of food chemistry and has a PhD in epistemology.
Epistemology is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of knowledge and truth. Dr. Ashton is also a wellknown Christian author.
His most recent book is Evolution Impossible? Subtitled Twelve Reasons Why Evolution Cannot Explain the origin of life on Earth. In the first series of Science Conversations, I'll be talking with Dr. Ashton about these reasons today.
I will begin the series by looking at the background to Evolution Impossible and Dr. Ashton's personal story of faith. Welcome, John.
Great to have you on the studio. Oh, pleasure to be here, Barry. John, tell me about the questions you asked and the ensuing conversations that led you to research and write Evolution Impossible.
Well, as I recall, I was at a meeting with some university professors and we were discussing a new potential research program and grant application that was looking at a particular grain variety that had potential to help protect against the onset of type two diabetes. And one of the things that we had to do was to breed disease resistance into this particular grain that had been now developed. And as I was, we were just talking over lunch and it came up about the process and the mutations and so forth, and I simply asked the lead professor who was in charge of the program, do mutations ever produce new, meaningful genetic information? And he said, oh, yes, of course.
And I thought, well, this would be interesting. Can you give me an example? And the reason why I asked this question was as a creationist, I'd been looking at the evolution for some time, the science behind evolution for some time. And to my knowledge, at that time, mutations didn't produce actually new information and this was actually a problem for evolution.
So I was very interested in his answer, but also I was puzzled when he said, well, no, I can't think of an example. But he then went on to say, look, just ask our senior geneticist. Now, later that day when I was in the laboratory, I made the effort and I went upstairs to where the geneticist was working, and I spoke to him and I asked him the same question do mutations ever produce new, meaningful genetic information? And his answer was actually the very opposite.
He said no. Never. No, we don't.
He said, Mutations destroy part of the code. And he said, that's how we get the beneficial mutations in that they destroy the code that is, say, producing a toxin. But we want to be able to eat this particular legume or grain.
And so by having a mutation that knocks out the part of the gene that is producing the toxin, then this now gives us the advantage or it may be susceptibility to a disease. The mechanism whereby the disease can enter the plant works through a particular mechanism, but if we knock out the gene that is responsible for that mechanism, then the plant can become resistant to that gene. So this was very, very interesting because it was the opposite to, again, I think the main general perception that we have about what is happening with evolution.
And so this really stimulated me to really look at the science. Where was science up to with regard to evolution, the theory of evolution? What actually was the evidence that evolution was occurred? Had science actually discovered a mechanism? And that led to a fantastic little study project for me and resulted in the book. When did you first develop an interest in studying the evidence for evolution? Well, that occurred many years earlier, back in the early seventy s.
I became a Christian in 1971, and at that time people would ask me, okay, as a scientist, do you believe in creation? Or what about evolution? And it was at that time that I began seriously looking at the evidence for creation versus the evidence for evolution. And I think one of the particular areas was the area of radiometric dating. And at that time I began doing looking into that area quite considerably and and began to realize, yes, there were some major problems with the radiometric dating methods.
So you have been studying this issue since the early 1970s? Yes. Tell me how you came to write your first book in six days. 50 scientists explain why they believe in creation.
Right, well, I've been contemplating writing a book on the evidence for creation for some time, and I visited a church bookshop, looking for some information or actually trying to make contact with some scientists that I knew had some information on radiometric dating. And when I was in that bookshop talking to the girl, I heard a voice come out and I said, oh, I know that voice, it's John Ashton. And the person come out and they said, oh, hello John.
Look, we had a seminar at Macquarie University on the evidence for creation, and the curator of the Sydney Museum, Dr. Alex Ritchie, asked the question at the end of the session or challenged the chairman with the assertion that he did not believe that any practicing scientist with a PhD would believe in a literal six day creation. And the chairman had said, well, there's Dr.
John Ashton. And he also mentioned the name of another scientist who worked at the Atomic Energy Commission. And so this person said to me, well, look, I hope you didn't mind we mentioned your name.
And I said, no, I'm quite happy about that. That's exactly my position. And as I was going for a walk a few days later, I thought, well, why not write two scientists who do believe in a literal six k creation and ask them why because that way we're getting evidence.
You see, Dr. Ritchie had made that assertion and obviously it wasn't correct because I'm a practicing scientist and I knew of many others as well, and I thought, well, let's actually get the evidence. And I think this is an important point that I would like to raise at this time, and that is that there are a lot of assertions made about evolution, and I guess people make assertions about creation as well.
What I'm particularly interested in is evidence. I'm interested in getting evidence, reproducible evidence. And so when people make assertions, I want to know the evidence.
And one of the reasons I wrote the book was I can make the assertion that evolution is impossible. But on what basis do I make that assertion? What's the evidence? And if I write a book and I put it out there, it's there for other people to examine. This is exactly my position.
This is the evidence that I'm using to sustain my position. And you can challenge that. I've put it out there.
I've put it out there for people to see. And this is, I believe, very important because in actual fact, we have very, very good evidence to support creation. The evidence supporting evolution is really, really weak and is crumbling.
And so that was, again, the basis Dr. Alex Richard made that challenge. Let's have a look.
What is the evidence? And why in particular do these scientists choose to believe this is the basis for their choice, for their particular worldview? Sound what is it? And of course, that became that book, which is still selling very strongly around the world. And again, these scientists have put their evidence there, their position. That's why they choose to believe.
I think it was one of those books that really brought the creation evolution issue into the public domain. I certainly don't find many books on creation in mainstream bookstores, but this one made it. Yes, well, evolution sorry.
The book in Six Days was published by a secular publisher and that led to a number of, well, several articles in the mainstream press across Australia at the time. It was then taken up and published in other countries in other languages. But also that book has been cited at several science conferences as well, where mainstream science conferences where it actually represents the creation view.
You did a second book called The God Factor. 50 scientists and academics explain why they believe in God. Why did you write that one? Right.
Well, Dr. Richard Dawkins, who is a well known proponent of evolution, did a review of my book in six Days. And that's again, up on the web.
You can google it. And one of the points that he raised there was or he challenged, well, of course these scientists are going to believe in creation because they've been educated in church based universities. But really, when you look at it, I think that there were ten out of the 50 had at least one of their degrees from a church affiliated university.
And I thought, okay, well, fair enough. Let's again answer that challenge. Let's get data.
And so I decided then to write to scientists around the world who were educated in state secular universities and taught at state secular universities and asked them why they believed in God, why they believed in the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ, the miracles of the Bible, and so forth. And that became the book The God Factor, which, again, was published by a major mainstream publisher, Harper Collins. And again, that puts out data for people to read.
These are highly educated men. Many of the contributors were outstanding scientists in their field, and this is the reason why they choose to believe. And it's there for people to read.
They're the reasons. Did Professor Dawkins respond to that? No. No, I haven't seen any response to that book, but again, that attracted a lot of interest in it.
It's currently available under the title on the 7th Day as a sequel to in Six Days, actually. Okay. In your research for Evolution Impossible, where has the evidence led you, and where is the evidence going to take us in this series of conversations? Well, to me, when I look at the evidence that we can reproduce here and now in the laboratory, our understanding of biochemistry at the particular time, now, we can say, absolutely, evolution is impossible.
It could not have occurred. Life is a miracle. It's outside our known realms of science to produce a living organism.
Now, to challenge that, you've got to believe in something that has never been observed. That's the bottom line at the moment. And science really is the repeatable and the observable.
Well, that's right. I mean, we can propose theories and evolution. There are some major problems with evolution that we can talk, and there are a number of theories that have been proposed to attempt to explain this, but the experimental evidence to support these hypotheses is lacking.
Now, in Evolution Impossible, you're challenging the overwhelmingly dominant view of science that life on Earth originated from chemicals and that all life on Earth evolved from simple cells over hundreds of millions of years. Now, many consider that evolution is a fact in this context. How can you write a book that claims that evolution is impossible? Well, that's the reason why I wrote the book, to actually catalog the evidence that evolution is impossible and to put it out there and and to summarize it and and what you say is correct.
You know, somewhere between 60 and 70 science academies around the world have signed statements that essentially say that they believe that evolution is a fact of science. But they don't say on the basis of research that was published in Nature by so and so and so and so and supported by research published in Science by so and so and so and so they just make that assertion. And there are a number of organizations that make this assertion like NASA and the American Space Agency and so forth.
But the point is that they make these assertions and they say that there is a wealth of research that has been published in these areas but they actually don't cite a specific paper that actually say gives a mechanism for how evolution could occur. And while you can say, oh, well, there's all these similarities between different things and therefore evolution occurred, that doesn't work. What you have is a whole lot of similarities.
But unless you have a mechanism explaining how those similarities can arise, that doesn't mean anything. It's sort of like saying, well, people with black phones have a higher rate of cancer. People with red phones have a lower rate of cancer.
Therefore, if you have a red phone, you're going to get less cancer. I mean, say that statistic was true. You can't say that by having a red phone you're going to have less cancer.
Unless you understand have a mechanism whereby you can explain why a black phone causes you to have cancer. Otherwise, it's just an observation. It doesn't mean that there's a causal link.
And this is really the main issue with evolution that people make all these observations, but there's no mechanism, there's no known mechanism to link these observations together and to say that this particular organism evolved into this organism because it has a similar number of legs or something like that. Well, we're going to start the process now of really looking at the evidence. But I want to start by asking you what's the current scientific consensus about how life originated on Earth so that we know what we're dealing with.
Yeah, sure. Well, most books will say that the Earth was formed about four and a half billion years ago and life arose soon after. And I think most scientific papers would start with the assumption that the first life on Earth is at least two and a half billion years old.
Some scientists put it a little bit older than that. They estimate 3.7 billion years and so forth.
And this is on the basis of finding perhaps particular structures and dating the rocks and so forth. But there's certainly this consensus that it arose about that time. Now, how it arose, that's a big issue.
And of course, when a number of people are pushed on this matter for example, again, Dr. Richard Dawkins in one interview I saw, when he was pushed, know how did it start? What's the mechanism? How can life start from non living molecules? He said, well, maybe it came from outer space. And of course, Sir Fred Hoyle, the brilliant mathematician and astronomer of last century he wrote a book, Evolution from Space because he recognized the impossibility of life actually arising spontaneously but coming from outer space.
The universe, we assume, has the same physics and chemistry and operates much the same as we do here. So you have exactly the same problem, but that's essentially the consensus that life somehow arose two and a half billion plus years ago and then from that time evolved through changes, mutations and natural selection to form all the species that we have now. And of course, most of the species that have existed overall are now extinct.
So we have about 2 million catalog species at the moment. We know in the past there's probably somewhere between 100 to 200 million different species have existed in the past. So most of those are now extinct.
If the issue is the facts of science, what conditions have to be met before we consider that something is a scientific fact? And then we'll look at that in terms of what conditions have to be met before we can say that evolution is a fact? For science to be considered a fact, I think we would have to have reproducible results in laboratories that can be reproduced in different laboratories or observations that can be reproduced in different places. But there's also another requirement that we have to have sufficient evidence that to be able to say that in the future a new discovery is not likely to overthrow the knowledge that we have. So effect is basically an explanation that excludes logically all other types of explanations.
Yes, I would think it would follow along those lines because we have established that is the mechanism. And that's why I said it is unlikely that some other explanation is going to explain it. So that's the other criteria we have to say, well, it is highly unlikely that that would happen.
Now, bear in mind, of course, that science is going to exclude what we would call miracles. So they're not going to consider that there could be a miraculous explanation for something. Okay, so when we look at the whole issue of speculation, which is what scientists often do well, yes, they develop hypotheses and then they have to gather the data.
So they develop a hypothesis to explain something and then they design experiments to obtain the data to verify that particular hypothesis. And the idea is that those experiments are repeated in a number of different ways and that can verify the hypothesis. And this is, I think if we talk about this later at some time in a greater depth, this is one of the main reasons where radiometric dating falls down.
We got major problems there because we can't eliminate that. There can be other explanations. So speculation is okay in science, but you have to then be able to collect the data to resolve that speculation.
Yes, and I mean, speculation is good. That's how research and discoveries are made. This is good because I want to ensure that we lay a nice, strong foundation for being able to determine the correctness of your own claims as we go through the book as well.
Now, when you went to the scientific literature, what did you discover about the supposed, inescapable fact, of evolution, especially abiogenesis, which is the process by which nonliving molecules supposedly combine to produce a living cell? What did you find in the literature? Literature? Well, about the time that I was researching the book, there was actually a major feature series in Scientific American on this and it was interesting that there were no explanations. They had no explanation and that's what they were saying. And similarly, there was an article published in Chemistry, Australia by a university professor at the University of New South Wales.
Professor Livingston from memory. And again, his whole research area was on chemical evolution of life. And essentially his summary was that we have major problems in trying to explain a mechanism for how life can evolve.
But we're working on it. And so I think this is this is the framework under which science is progressing in that they say, well, we are major problems from all our knowledge of biochemistry at the present time, we can't see how it happens, but we're still working away looking to try and discover a mechanism whereby it can happen. And so this is where it's very important to understand that at the present time there is no known mechanism for how life can arise from nonliving molecules.
And on the basis of the biochemistry that we understand the present time, it is absolutely impossible. But because a large body of scientists are enamored with the view that life did arise, they are persistent in this explanation. In trying to find this explanation, can you give us some idea of the magnitude of the task of explanation? Just describe for us a simple cell and what would have to take place for that cell to form.
Well, if we look at the simplest cell, we have to form biopolymers. So we're probably getting into quite a big area here. But just to very briefly summarize it, the simplest cell that we know of has about 540 base pairs in its code and has millions of polymer molecules to make up its structure.
Now, for these biopolymers to form from the simple molecules that we find in nature. So in nonliving things in nature, the molecules are fairly small and fairly simple. So when we get into living structures, we form biopolymers, which are these very long chain molecules.
So these long chain molecules have to form by some process. But not only do we need these long chain molecules to form, we have to form millions of them all at once, all in one spot, to come together. And they're all different types of proteins, they're all different types of sugars, there are all different types of fats that are needed of these special biopolymers.
They have to come together to form the structure of the cell. Then you have to have the code to encode for the reproduction of the cell into all its components, have to form the DNA code. And as I said, in the simplest cell that we know of that can survive by itself.
There's about 540,000 pieces, letters in that code or base pairs in that code that all have to form and have that particular structure. So that's like imagining about five or six thick textbooks, all the writing in those or let's say the operation manual for a nuclear submarine. Just imagine that operation manual being formed by someone randomly typing on a typewriter and that operation manual has to work so that the submarine works.
But not only that, you also then have to the DNA is in a code, but you have to have a code reader arise at the same time that can read the code and translate it and then the little factory that can actually take those readings and construct the new proteins for all that to form. The scientists understand the depth of the mechanism. They know it just can't happen by chance.
Now they try to propose different mechanisms. Well, what about maybe on the surface of a clay particle in solution and all this sort of thing, but we can't get anywhere near it under laboratory conditions. We can produce some biopolymers, but we can't then construct the code.
We can't put them together by any natural processes. But even if we had them all together, we'd simply have a dead cell. Yes, we have to make the cell alive.
And this is another very, very tricky question because for that cell to be alive, even the simplest little cell that we would have, you have to have hundreds of biochemical reactions all in a state of disequilibrium. In other words, just out of balance by just the right amount, so that reaction A is producing just the right amount of chemical B for reaction C to produce just the right amount of chemical for reaction D to produce just the right amount of chemical for a reaction E and for hundreds of reactions. In other words, not in equilibrium, in disequilibrium.
They've got to be in a state of imbalance all at once, all at the one time. The moment one of those reactions reaches equilibrium or out of balance by too much, the whole chain reaction process stops and the organism dies. And that's again making and that's why we say for something dead to become alive is a miracle.
So that's what the scientists have got to expect. They've got to expect a miracle. That's a massive task that they've undertaken, that's a massive claim to have to show.
Yes, and that's why some of them are, you know, life came here from outer space and I know just the other, the the little probe is sending back signals now from the comet and they're hoping that that will give us some ideas of maybe how life originated on Earth. But really, when you think about it, it doesn't change the problem, no matter where it is in the universe, you're going to have the same problems. You've got to somehow put all those biopolymers together, you've got to put that code together, a meaningful code, you've got to have a code reader system that can read that code.
And of course that was the whole challenge in the Enigma project in the Second World War, wasn't it? To try and crack the German code, so to have these things arrived by chance and then become alive. That's why we can be so confident to say that it is absolutely impossible on the basis of what we know at the present time. Now in Darwin's time, they didn't understand very much about the cell, and today we know an enormous amount about the cell, including the structure of the DNA molecule and these encoding and so forth.
And so what's the significance of the developments in molecular biology? I mean, for Darwin you could say, well, he was merely offering a plausible mechanism. But now after 150 years, we've arrived at a knowledge that makes it almost impossible to consider that this can take place. As you said, it's impossible.
What's the significance of the developments in our understanding for the whole evolutionary theory? Yes, well, Darwin of course observed these mutations, the bigger beaks and all the changes in the beak shapes on the birds and the wingless beetles and this sort of thing. But what he didn't realize was that all these changes come about by changes in the DNA code because DNA hadn't been discovered. And we know that it's generally either the information is already coded there and it's just upregulated.
So we get these changes that can be produced by environmental changes or we have, say in the case of the wingless beetles, there was a mutation, part of the code was damaged, it didn't produce proper wings anymore. But those beetles then had the advantage that they could survive on the windy side of the island. They didn't get blown out to sea, so there's a greater chance they would mate and have know.
And there was this simple mechanism because Darwin grew up in the mechanical age, the development of machines was just absolutely mushrooming and people, scientists, educated people, were enamored with this mechanical worldview. And so the theory of evolution was simply a mechanical explanation for life. It fitted in with all these other mechanical views that were coming forward in economics and of course in physics, and so this gave the mechanical worldview there.
But once we had the discovery of DNA in the early fifty s, and we began to understand more about the structure of the cell and the components of the cell and the biochemistry of the cell and the enormous complexity of the chemical reaction. So this is just in the simplest cell net alone to get into a major organism like a rice seed, and we might see a rice seed as just little seed, we take it for granted, we put it in the ground it grows. But the amount of code that is in that rice seed vastly exceeds the human code.
And when you think about that rice seed has to grow at just the right time. If he sprouts too soon, he's going to die. It's going to be the wrong weather conditions.
If he doesn't, he's got to have some mechanism to lie dormant and a whole lot of changes have to take place for that little seed to survive and grow and sprout at just the right time to be able to react to changes in soil moisture, soil temperature, daylight length, all these sort of things. And the amazing codes that activate all these processes and the chemical reactions that take place during germination all those things are governed by codes. But the interesting thing is that when you plant the rice you get another rice seed.
When you plant that rice seed, you get another ice seed. It really doesn't change into anything else. And that, again, is a major problem for evolution, too.
So our understanding now of the amazing biochemistry I think really it's just so complex and so huge, these codes and there's so much more we can say about the codes that I think it's for the human mind to even understand and comprehend the depth of information in these codes. We just can't understand it. It's just too big.
Sort of like I'm trying to understand how big the universe is. The almost universal existence of DNA in animal and human cells is used as an argument that all life originated from a common ancestor. But you've discovered in the literature a deeper problem, haven't you? There is no proven mechanism for originating the incredibly complex DNA molecule that encodes the structures and mechanisms of myriad different types of cells.
Not only this, but there is evidence in the literature that DNA cannot arise by chance processes. What's the significance of this? Well, the significance is that where did all this information come from that encodes all the amazing plants, flowers, insects, birds and other little creepy crawlies that we can't describe in simple terms. Where did all the codes come from? Where did all that information? Because all those little creatures function perfectly though many of them have really complex reproductive systems how did those codes arise? We know that if we have a factory producing robots producing cars they're operated by computer codes and those codes are written by highly intelligent engineers.
Most of us couldn't write those codes. And so to write the codes for life to produce all these different functions. Just thinking of a flower, a simple flower that we take for granted all the parts of that flower are formed by molecular processes that are encoded for in a code that tells little factories how to make those parts that's a massive that blows the mind.
And there are codes for everything. Codes for everything that's living in this world. If there's no real evidence.
For evolution, then why have we arrived at this point of it being considered as a fact? Wow. I can't sort of give an explanation as to why people choose to believe what they believe. But I think a couple of things.
I think people have really bought into the long ages, and that's something that I think that we can challenge. And so they say that the fossil record seems to be pretty old and therefore maybe there's enough time. But really, when you think about it, there's still not enough time for all the things to evolve because we don't see evolution happening anyway.
So how did it happen over all those times? But I think they've been enamored by the changes in the fossil record, these changes where you have apparent increased increased complexity as you go up the fossil layers. But really, when we look at them, they're actually a lot more mixed up. And we find that highly complex animals are actually found in the very lower layers.
Look, there's just major problems everywhere we look in terms of accepting evolution. But if you don't accept evolution, the obvious explanation is God. And how can you? I think many people don't feel comfortable about saying, well, God explained this.
God is the answer in the science classroom. They want to have some mechanical explanation for things. But the reality is that it is impossible without God.
And I think we have really. Science to me has proved that God exists. Now, you're not the first to challenge evolution.
Tell me about some of the challenges and the new fields of study that have created further problems for evolutionary theory. Well, there are a number of these. I mean, Jerry FODER a few years ago published his paper Why Pigs Don't Have Wings and he pointed out that, well, there's actually no mechanism for known mechanism for evolution.
He was pointing that out just after my book was published. Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy at the University of New York, published a book Mind and the Cosmos why the Darwinian Account of Evolution must ultimately be Proved. Fourth titled similar to that, but essentially why Darwinism must be forth because it cannot account for the origin of the mind.
Darwin evolution deals with mechanical things, but our mind is non material. So many of these issues are coming out, and the leading biology researchers and genetic researchers, they realize this, they know this. Tell me about epigenomics and facilitated variation.
You mentioned these in your book. Yeah, sure. Well, epigenomics is just that physical factors, environmental factors can switch on and off parts of our genes.
The genetic code is extremely complex, like particular genes, depending on the environmental conditions and what's happening may encode for a number of different things. It's amazing. The code is sort of layered in terms of its effects that it can have.
So we have a gene. It's just that one little part of the code doesn't always just do this. It depends on a whole lot of other factors and physical factors come into it.
So epigenetics is just the effect of how changes in the physical environment can upregulate or switch on and off parts of the code. Now, facilitator variation, this is a more sophisticated theory that was proposed by a couple of leading biology researchers a professor of systems biology at Harvard University in the Faculty of Medicine there and another leading geneticist at University of California, Berkeley. So we've got two of world leading universities here, professors in these particular areas and they recognized the impossibility of Darwinian evolution.
So you've got major problems there in that animals don't necessarily don't mutate over time. If you look at the colican, 380,000,000 years old and something like that in the fossil record according to their dating and yet we find it alive in swimming around in the Indian Ocean and it hasn't changed. Your fossil crocodiles haven't changed.
Lots of animals that go back, they haven't changed. And I mean, every mother that gives birth to a baby hopes that it hasn't changed. She expects a baby.
And that's what happened. See, what has happened is that there are core processes. They've discovered core processes within the genetic code that they don't change, they don't mutate, they don't change.
And this is a major problem for evolution. If evolution was occurring like sort of like Darwin imagined, I guess, then we should see it happening all the time all over the place. But it doesn't we don't observe evolution happening.
Sure, we observe some mutations, but those mutations, as we can talk about some other time generally result from a loss of code or some changes in preexisting code that are already programmed for. So if we have these core processes that are there to actually prevent evolution occurring and actually we have DNA repair mechanisms these guys were saying, look, how can we explain what is a mechanism whereby evolution could possibly occur? And so what they're saying is that under certain conditions mutations can occur in the core processes that can suddenly then produce a new form suddenly in the core process itself because otherwise we've got a major problem. How can some new part form? The only issue is with facilitative variation that the mechanism relies in part on that information already somehow being stored in the core process.
So they haven't really got round what is the origin of new meaningful codes because we know random variations can't produce new code. So somehow they're saying that the core processes themselves must somehow encode for future variations. And so this theory really highlights the huge complexity of the code that there are layers on pond layers in the code but it doesn't solve the problem of where did the codes come from? Where do this new information come from? And of course, it's just a hypothesis.
Again, it hasn't been experimentally verified despite all their experiments. But it still doesn't explain how the code could form in the first place. The code has to be there.
But that's a very sophisticated hypothesis that has been an attempt to try and develop a mechanism to explain evolution. We'll meet these problems throughout the series of conversations, I'm sure. Yes, we can talk about just briefly, could you just let me know about the meeting of evolutionary scientists at Altenberg, Austria, just in a minute or two? Just explain the significance.
Sure. Well, after Jerry FODER published his article Why Pigs Don't Have Wings, of course it highlighted the major problems with the Darwinian theory. So about 16 top evolutionists met at Altenberg to try and go into damage control, I guess as to how they could deal with these issues.
And of course this is covered in Susan Mazza's book The Altenberg 16. She was a journalist that attended there, or again you can google it and get the comments by the different scientists. I think Jerry FODER at the end of the conference said well, I don't think anybody knows how evolution occurs.
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. After the break, I'll be talking with Dr. Ashton about his life in science and how he reconciles his work as a scientist and his Christian faith.
If you have any questions or comments in relation to today's program, you can call Three ABM, Australia radio within Australia on 024-97-3456, or from outside of Australia on country code 6124-973-3456. Our email address is
[email protected] Au, that is radio at the number three ABN, Australia.
All one word Au. Our postal address is three ABN, Australia, Inc. PO.
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 are 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. In this part of the program, I'll be talking with Dr. Ashton about his life in science and how he reconciles his work as a scientist with his Christian faith.
John, tell me about your interest in science. I think my interest in science stemmed back from in high school when my science teacher recognised my achievements in the class. I think all through high school I topped my science classes in a large high school and he gave me a book on physics by Professor Harry Messel, I think was one of the authors.
And I read that and in my spare time I used to read books in the areas of science, physics and chemistry. I was also interested in geology and when I finished school I won a Commonwealth University scholarship and I also won a BHP Cadetship in the area of physics. And I began work at the BHP Central Research laboratories and going through university I changed over to chemistry, partway through my studies.
So at university I studied physics and geology, chemistry and mathematics. But partway through my studies I realized that most of the physicists were ending up computer programmers. And so I decided to change my emphasis over to chemistry and I topped Newcastle University in chemistry, won the prize there.
And that was at a time when we had a very strong department. Our professor went on to become the head of the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization. And I also had the privilege of working with scientists that had trained at MIT and Oxford Cambridge.
I was the personal assistant of another scientist who trained at London University. So that gave me a tremendous background in meticulous science and I really, really appreciate that. It was fantastic.
Working at BHP at that time, actually I was thinking about what is the purpose in life and does God exist? And the opportunity came up for me to apply for the toxide Research Fellowship, which at the time was the highest paying chemistry research scholarship offered in Australia. And it's actually at that time that I said my first prayer and I prayed, lord, if I get this scholarship I'll buy a Bible and I'll start going to church. Well, I received that scholarship and I know it's perhaps a silly prayer and an immature prayer, but really I was just beginning to get to know God at that time.
And I did, I won that scholarship, which at the time was at the University of Tasmania, because there was a world renowned chemist there, Harry Bloom. And so I worked there as a research fellow at the University of Tasmania. I obtained a master's degree there because at that time I was not so sure about science.
I could see that there were some major issues, some major flaws in some of the areas of science. There was quite a bit of politics I could see in science. One of my friends, for example, was doing his doctorate in geochemistry and he had a European shovel handle dated from a gold mining site he was working on in New Zealand.
And the New Zealand government laboratory results came back at about 6600 years. And I remember him discussing the result with me and he said, how can this be? It's a partly fossilized shovel handle, how can the age be that? And I'd got married at the time and I began really emphasizing reading the Bible and studying the Bible. And so I took up a position at that time teaching physics and mathematics to diploma students at the Hobart Technical College.
And I stayed there for a number of years and eventually became the coordinator of science courses for technical and further education in Tasmania. Matter of fact, I set up the Applied microbiology courses and the medical Laboratory technology courses and yes, a number of other courses, their chemistry technician courses. And at that particular time, I decided to go back again and read for another PhD or PhD again in the area of philosophy of science, because I could see that this was really where the issues were, particularly in the area of epistemology.
And I could see this was a major area of interest to me. What was the basis that underpinned science, what was the basis that underpinned scientific knowledge, how could we know? And particularly in the biological sciences, this was very important because I could see that science was not able to predict very well in the area of biological sciences and major problems, of course, were synergistic reactions and the complexity of the biological systems. And so I returned to the University of Newcastle and read for a PhD in the area of epistemology there under an Oxford and Cambridge trained philosopher.
And again I won a prize for my doctorate there as well. Did you do a doctorate in chemistry? I actually read for a doctorate in chemistry, but at that time I was becoming a Christian and Jesus had said call no man teacher, which was doctor, and so I was unsure whether I should go for that doctorate. So I went for the master's degree at that time, even though, in actual fact, I won the prize for the best student prize for the best dissertation of my thesis at the time, which was in the area of titanium chemistry, by the way.
And toxide actually gave me a further research position. Yes. But I decided not to take the doctorate at that time, even though the Secretary of the Faculty of Science contacted me about that.
So that was my choice. Again, I was a new Christian and I was very concerned about having a relationship with God. By that time I'd had many answers to prayer in my life.
I could feel God directing in my life, I could hear Him putting well, sensing Him putting thoughts in my mind and directing my life. God was very real to me and I have a diary of answers to prayer and God's leading in my life. So I wanted to know more about God and that became far more important to me than my study of science at that particular time.
But later on, as I said, I felt this real need to go back and to read again the Doctor of Science because really I wanted to write in this area of creation evolution, because I saw it was a major problem, it was emerging as a major problem. This was back in the as I mentioned back at the beginning, within six days at that time, before I wrote in six Days, I was working towards writing a book on the evidence for creation. But then I was diverted to write the in six Days book and rather ask well, why did other scientists believe? And, of course, ultimately, I did fulfill that aim in writing my book evolution Impossible twelve Reasons for Evolution Cannot Be True.
That was the background there. And when I moved back to Newcastle, I took up the position of chief Chemist for Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing at that time and I've been with them since. And I got involved in directing their research program at different universities.
That was I started there back in 1988 and I was elected a fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute in 1992. And then since that time, I've published a number of books in the area of the environment and some published by the University of New South Wales and other major publishers on health and environmental issues, which is another area that I'm interested in. I've published work in the area of alcohol.
The major problems with alcohol, it's a major social problem, alcohol abuse causing massive damage to the human mind, in particular around the world. So these issues that I've been quite interested in, I've also been interested in the evidence that supports the Bible. And that got me looking at other areas, other areas of evidence.
For example, one of the claims of the Bible is the evidence that God has predicted the future. God has mapped out the future of the world through to the time when God will return to his creation here to see what we've done with it. I was very interested, well, how can we know what is the other evidence that people have seen the future ahead of time? And that became my book.
The 7th millennium. The evidence. We can know the future.
And I think there's powerful evidence that God has definitely revealed the future in time, revealed the future ahead of time for people so that they know that he is real. And so this is another area that I've been looking at. What is the evidence for the non material world? This is another very important aspect that is totally overlooked by many atheists, many secularists, many people who espouse this materialistic worldview.
And so again, my focus has been to look at what is the evidence that we have. And that's why, again, I was so fascinated in the area of epistemology. How can we know what are the basis that we know? What are the assumptions that we make when we believe that we know? These are the areas that I think that are very important.
And so using those tools that I obtained during my study, I've attempted to apply those now to look at the interpretations that science puts on a number of the observations that they make. And this is one of the things that we need to understand, is that when these geologists write their reports or these biologists write their papers, they have a certain amount of data that they have actually observed. And generally speaking, the data is good.
But what they have done is they've taken that data and they've painted a picture which we then call as a scientific fact or a scientific hypothesis or some aspect of science. And one of the things is, have they actually interpreted that correctly? Have they actually taken that observation and from that observation constructed the correct picture of what that observation is really telling us? And I think this is really the basis of the big issue between science perhaps and what the Bible is telling us. What God's revelation is telling us is that people don't understand that there is actually that difference and that scientists have a bias sometimes.
And when we perhaps look at it at the evidence with a more open mind, we say, whoa, hang on, this is actually supporting the picture that we come from the Bible. This is not supporting evolution, this is actually supporting creation and the history of the Bible, all the different areas. I'm getting the impression that you're applying the same standards of proof to your faith as you are to scientific explanations, so that you're not just about rubbishing evolution or denying evolution, but you're also looking at positive evidences for the faith that you hold as well.
Is that a fair comment? Oh, very much so. I believe God gave us a brain we're created in the image of God, and God wants us to use that brain to communicate with Him and to know Him, and he puts a lot of evidence out there for us. And that's what I'm very interested in, is gathering this evidence, presenting it so that it's there for other people to look at and say, wow, we can believe we have a wonderful God that loves us.
John I'm really looking forward to the remainder of our conversations. I'm Dr. Barry Harker, and you've been listening to science conversations.
My guest has been Dr. John Ashton, author of Evolution Impossible twelve Reasons Why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth. Today in conversation, I'll be talking with Dr.
Ashton about evolution Impossible and how he reconciles his Christian faith and science. Next time I'll be talking with Dr. Ashton about Darwin's theory of evolution.
If we are to under understand why evolution is impossible, we must first understand the theory itself. Remember to join me next time on Science Conversations. Until then, bye for now, and God bless.
