Beyond Today... Neanderthal Apologetics

If you were expecting a dedicated Brexit issue of Beyond Today (formerly The Good News) for July/August, you're going to be disappointed. Instead its the tired old sawhorse, evolution. It seems the lads, all keen and bushy-tailed prophecy pundits, were asleep at the wheel, or - just like the Brits - didn't see it coming in time for the mag's release. Who'd have thunked they'd drop the ball on the biggest story of the year thus far?

In fact there's an anti-science whine throughout the issue. Even editor Scott Ashley manages to take a swipe at "the futility of Darwin's theory of evolution" while pouting about the parlous state of public "bathroom" signs. He's talking about toilets of course (why a euphemism like "bathroom" is used so commonly in the US is beyond me).

Mike Kelley kicks off in earnest with Evolution: An Article of Faith. What brilliant qualifications does Mike bring to this topic - other than being an in-house hack? No, I don't know either. Mike is immediately followed by Mario Seiglie who has a track record for writing this kind of guff with Answers from a Famous ex-Atheist about God. The person he's referring to is Anthony Flew who, at a ripe old age, did indeed change his mind. That's notable mainly because it's so unusual.

Then - holy guacamole Batman! - there's an article by a female writer. Scott, are you trying to make a point here? Anyway, Kayleen Schreiber is working on her PhD in neuroscience. Other than that we don't know much about Kayleen. Where is she studying? Is she a UCG member or some kind of generic fundamentalist? Scott clearly thinks you don't need to know. If you're expecting hard science here, think again. Snippet: "God made the physical world so wonderfully complicated that we will be studying it until Jesus Christ returns!"

Just when you thought you might escape from all this creationist drivel, along comes Dan Dowd with An Evolutionary Fantasy: Useless Body Parts.

Now you can relax and let out a short sigh of relief. But not for long as the next article up is Darris McNeely's Is the Bible True? Just what do you mean "true" Darris? As expected Darris takes a broad brush to the question and ends up painting the carpet. "Proof 1", in case you're in any doubt, is "fulfilled prophecy."

Next up it's the World News and Prophecy section. Brexit? What's that? To be fair, there are a couple of dumb references to BoJo the Clown (in an piece about German Leopard tanks):

Britain's next PM?

“The European Union is pursuing a similar goal to Hitler in trying to create a powerful superstate, Boris Johnson says . . . He warns that while bureaucrats in Brussels are using ‘different methods’ from the Nazi dictator, they share the aim of unifying Europe under one ‘authority.’ . . . “The former mayor of London, who is a keen classical scholar, argues that the past 2,000 years of European history have been characterized by repeated attempts to unify Europe under a single government in order to recover the continent’s lost ‘golden age’ under the Romans” (Tim Ross, “Boris Johnson: The EU Wants a Superstate, Just as Hitler Did,” May 15, 2016).

Beyond Today lapped it up. The authors (in the original Telegraph article) also mention that the reference to Hitler is "potentially inflammatory". You think?

Back to the toilet bowl with Tom Robinson sticking his head as far down as he can with an article entitled What's Behind the Transgender Movement? (You'll be as alarmed to know as I am that "bathrooms are just the beginning".) Behind? Movement? Sorry, just my scatological sense of the bizarre.

But wait. Tucked away toward the back of the mag is an article by Milan Bizic (that doesn't sound a very British name does it?) called What Made Britain Great? I looked to see if he mentioned the East India Company or colonial adventurism... but no.

On to a cherry-picked assortment of letters, then John LaBissoniere wrenches out as much significance as he can from the daily chore of washing the dishes.

Egad! Can our eyes be deceiving us? Another article by a female writer. Janet Treadway on Visiting Widows and Widowers in their Affliction. Obviously the drought has broken, even if it's left Scott a gibbering mess in the editorial room.

Robin Webber burbles on about something or other in A Promise is a Promise, and then somebody - perhaps Robin or maybe someone who isn't high-up enough on the totem pole to merit a byline - gets to write a feature entitled How Can You Correctly Understand God's Prophecies and Promises? Quote: "One awesome proof that the Bible is divinely inspired is its perfect harmony and consistency all the way through..." Has this guy actually ever read the Bible?

TV log, back page. Collapse over a coffee and take a moment to feel thankful that this is all a nightmare from the fundamentalist past. Once you've polished off the coffee and peanut brownies, take a drive down the newsstand and pick up copies of National Geographic and New Scientist. You're going to want to flush (ahem) this stuff out of your head as quickly as possible.

Available to download now.

Looking for Darwin

Intelligent Design is nothing less than Creationism in Drag: it is an attempt to pass off Creationism as a science, without ever mentioning the word God. The principal modus operandi of its proponents is to attack what it perceives as the two main weaknesses of the Darwinian world-view. Namely, (i) the fossil record is imperfect, and (ii) it’s impossible to conceive how really complex organs like eyes could be the process of an apparently random and uncontrolled biological process like Natural Selection; that is, half an eye, by its very nature, would be as useless as half a kidney: so how could these complex structures have been constructed as a series of steps as evolutionists seemed to be suggesting?

Except that the Creationists’ arguments are a superficial and nonscientific treatment of the evidence. Indeed, there are gaps in the fossil record, but the fossil record is nothing if not supportive of the Darwinian view of evolution – where one form can be seen to change over time, where simple can be seen to become more complex. Similarly, with complex organs such as eyes, it is being at best mischievous to suggest that the Darwinian view of evolution implies such structures came into being all at once (the Creationists are fond of likening the probability of evolution producing an eye as being similar to the probability of a tornado going through a junkyard and assembling a bus). But that’s just ignorant bluster: evolution doesn’t happen as a single event (in contrast to Creation), but as a long series of steps – some small, some big – that occur over long periods of time. And, yes, it is possible to discern a series of steps whereby simple light receptors have been modified in succeeding groups of animals, culminating ultimately in the vertebrate eye.

Of course, the telling thing for supporters of Intelligent Design, for proponents of so-called Scientific Creationism, is that they have no testable hypotheses, nothing they can hold up and potentially test to validate their view of the world. They lack that basic requirement of any science. They are, therefore, left believing in God and his ability to create the world in six days as an act of faith. Call that intelligent, if you will.
Lloyd Spencer Davis
I've just finished Looking For Darwin, a fast-paced mix of science and travelogue by Otago University's Lloyd Spencer Davis, who follows in the footsteps of the author of Origin of the Species to throw light on the whys and wherefores of life on our small planet.

Regrettably you won't find this one on Amazon, as it's only published in NZ. But be of good cheer ye Northern Hemisphere types, there's a website to accompany the book that's well worth checking out. I particularly enjoyed the comments about ID, but the anecdotes about far-flung places from the Galapagos Islands to Antarctica make this anything but a dry academic read. A helluva book.

Creation Smackdown

Recent issues of UCG and Hulme flagship mags, GN (May-June) and Vision (Fall 07), feature very different "takes" on that old fundamentalist chestnut, creationism.

UCG's resident "expert" on the subject, Mario Seiglie, is armed with a wet tea-towel and on the attack.

Darwin's deceitful theory... The movie [Expelled] gives a balanced overview... an avowed secular humanist and atheist... it's important to understand that the intelligent design theory was not developed by religionists... They continue deceiving the masses...

In the place of science, the old time gap theory is yet again dusted off. The result is something to bring pleasure to any home-schooled ten year old looking for a project to please Mom.

Contrast the approach at Vision, as always trying hard to impress the plebs with its depth and profundity. Here you'll find a complex discussion about the Big Bang and alternate cosmologies, including an interview that (and it pains me to say so) is actually quite interesting - if you're into that kind of thing.

In summary - the GN dishes up something worthy of The Watchtower, and Vision delivers something that wouldn't be out of place in New Scientist. A clear win to the High and Hulmerous One.

But, realistically, the typical COG reader will find the GN junk food more to their taste than Vision's art cuisine. Dumbed down is what brings in the financial sheaves: forget the science and spoon out the pabulum. After all, as far as anyone can tell the Hulmites are as gap-toothed on creationism as their former co-religionists in the not-so United Church of God: they're just a whole lot more subtle about it. And subtlety is usually lost on people who are convinced that Anglos are Israelites.

A favorite lie

Worth tracking down is the March 1 issue of New Scientist, with an enlightening article on those "missing links" our creationist brethren keep burbling on about.

"Yet the idea still persists that the fossil record is too patchy to provide good evidence of evolution. One reason for this is the influence of creationism. Foremost among their tactics is to distort or ignore the evidence for evolution; a favourite lie is "there are no transitional fossils". This is manifestly untrue."

The good news (which will never make the pages of The Good News) is that recently palaeontologists have struck back. Among the case studies highlighted in New Scientist:

• Velvet worms (linking arthropods to nematode worms)
• Lancelets (invertebrates on the journey to vertebrates)
• Fishibians (first cousins to those fish that crawled out onto the land in the Devonian)
• Synapsids (not mammals and not reptiles either...)
• Ceratopsians ("Of all the lies about transitional fossils told by creationists, none are as egregious as the claim that there are no intermediate forms among the dinosaurs... One striking example is the horned dinosaurs, or ceratopsians.")
• Rhinos ("All horses, tapirs and rhinos can be traced back to a common ancestor in the late Paleocene of Asia...")
• Giraffes (In the Miocene they all had short necks!)
• Ichthyosaurs (Lizard fish of the Mesozoic)
• Pinnipeds (Sea lions, walruses and seals descended from primitive bears - and there's a beautiful transitional fossil to prove it. Enaliarctos looked like a seal, but had long toes and claws)
• Manatees (there's a 50-million year old fossil manatee with four legs with feet.)

"Creationists simply have no answer for such irrefutable evidence."

Which explains all those brain-dead articles in the GN.

Stone Age

Two trips to the Stone Age. A National Geographic report from 2005 states that: "Despite invasions by Saxons, Romans, Vikings, Normans, and others, the genetic makeup of today's white Britons is much the same as it was 12,000 ago..."

They forgot to mention those roving Ephraimites who dropped in for a cup of tea and a biscuit after the fall of Samaria, and then took the place over.

"The notion that large-scale migrations caused drastic change in early Britain has been widely discredited, according to Simon James, an archaeologist at Leicester University, England."

"They were swamped culturally but not genetically."

Who's going to tell Craig White and Steve Collins?

The second trip actually takes us way back further, then fast forwards through time. The bright young things at Vancouver Film School have produced a short but impressive presentation called Duelity that puts the Genesis creation story up alongside the scientific story of origins. It's very, very clever, approaching each view from the alternate perspective. Click "watch" then view each of the segments in order (creation, evolution and then the split screen version.) Trust me on this; you won't want to miss it! ... and watch out for that apple!

Finally, a memory trip into WCG's Stone Age (a.k.a. the 1970s): Remember Ralph Helge? Often seen in close proximity to Stanley Rader, Ralph reigned in Pasadena as church attorney and legal counselor for many years. The United News reports that Ralph has recently been ordained an elder (non-salaried?) in the UCG.

Creationism? Good Grief!

Recently someone asked whether an article I wrote some years ago on creationism is still available online somewhere. Here's the intro and a link.
One of the first things that initially attracted me about the Worldwide Church of God was its strong, clear, no-compromise position on creationism. There were regular articles in The Plain Truth that dealt with the issue, complete with colourful diagrams and photographs. And you could send for brochures with titles like “A Whale of a Tale” and “Our Awesome Universe.” The way the church presented it, evolution was a theory shot full of holes. Garner Ted Armstrong, at that time the voice of The World Tomorrow, did a nice little number on evolution too. The way Ted told it, those evolutionists were just plain dishonest with the evidence. I believed him.

Read the complete article (PDF file)

Pseudo-Creationist Confection

I want to say straight off, Richard Wiedenheft is one of the good guys. Richard is one of the "class of 74", WCG ministers who acted on principle and left Armstrongism in a tidal wave of self-honesty and disgust, valuing integrity over paychecks. 1974 seems a long time ago, but many of these people are still around. These days Wiedenheft ministers in the Church of God (Seventh Day).

I also want to say that, as ex-ministers go, Richard appears to have a whole lot more savvy than most. He's well read, thoughtful and "pastoral" in the best sense of that word. Way back in the long-ago, he even graciously mailed me regular copies of his newsletter Focus On Truth, and played host to a friend and fellow Kiwi who was touring the US in the aftermath of Garner Ted's final ouster.

In the latest (Jan-Feb) Bible Advocate, Richard has contributed a feature article called Creation's Roots and Realities. I wouldn't normally have bothered reading it, but then noticed that Richard refers to the Enuma Elish in his endnotes.

Enuma Elish? That's an ancient epic that probably goes back to the reign of Nebuchadnezzer I. It might not be as famous as the Gilgamesh epic, but scholars of the Hebrew Bible value it highly because it predates Genesis, throwing light on the creation of the later document.

The point is, Richard is no wooden-minded fundamentalist. Over three pages he waxes eloquent about Genesis and gives comforting messages about its meaningfulness, without indicating that he sees it as literally true.

Am I complaining? Heck, no! It's a carefully crafted article that can be read as either supportive of the special nature of Genesis (and uncritical readers will assume that means a literal reading) or an encouragement to read Genesis at a deeper (i.e. non-literal) level.

But I'm not so sure that is helpful. Most BA readers will miss the point, if there is one. After all, COG7 is a Sabbatarian church, and as we all know, Sabbatarian churches are staunchly literal when it comes to Genesis. Richard has been dipping into the Enuma, and checking out what the big boys are saying in the Eerdmans Bible Commentary. That's great. But knowledge brings responsibility.

Moses did not write Genesis. (Richard hints at this when he writes "Moses may not have been the original author of all Genesis...") Genesis is derived and adapted from earlier mythologies. Here's what John Collins says on the matter.

The Bible claims that Moses received a new revelation, but even a new revelation was of necessity expressed in language that was already current... The Hebrew language uses the word El for God, and the term inevitably carried with it associations of the Canaanite high god. The biblical creation stories draw motifs from the myths of Atrahasis and Enuma Elish, and from the Epic of Gilgamesh. In short, much of the language and imagery of the Bible was culture specific, and was deeply embedded in the traditions of the Near East.
(John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, p.45)

That's straight talk. Any church which doesn't "fess up" to things like this is in effect misleading the people in the pews, endorsing a lie because the truth is uncomfortable. Genesis did not drop down out of the sky into Moses' waiting arms on tablets of stone. It does not convey a prehistory of the planet. It is great literature, a testament to an ancient faith, but contains nothing to confirm the pre-scientific prejudices of fundamentalists.

Richard Wiedenheft's article steps up to the line but dares not cross it. Which is a shame. As it stands the article is a mere sacherine confection.

Neanderthal Meanderings

A news item on the BBC reports the discovery of Neanderthal remains on Gibraltar as recently as 24,000 years ago. Perhaps they were guarding the "sea gate" till the Ephraimites turned up and planted the Union Jack.

Our proto-human cousins used to be referred to as "Neanderthal Man." In these gender-sensitive times that obviously is a thing of the past. Neanderthal persons anyone? A quick check through the BBC article reveals that the acceptable terms are now Neanderthals and Neanderthal people. I think we can all breathe a little easier knowing that.

Enter Dennis Diehl (no, that's not him in the picture.) As most AW readers know, Den is a former pastor in the WCG, and a rare individual who has emerged from that vocation with a keen insight into the perils of Biblicism. An excerpt from his most recent article:

"There are no Neanderthals on the earth today, but there are Neander-thoughts. A Neander-thought is an idea, way of thinking or being, that no longer works. Just as Neanderthals seemed incapable of insight and foresight, creative solutions and critical thinking, Neander-thoughts today are holding humans back from making any real progress and actually expose us all to being consigned to some trash heap of history for not recognizing it."

As always, Dennis aims true. If you read nothing else even faintly paleoanthropological this month, you owe it to yourself to check out Neander Thoughts.

Mario the Marine Biologist

UCG minister Mario Seiglie (that's not him in the picture, keep reading) has been pounding away at his keyboard for a long time. Now the veteran GN writer has achieved a moment of fame as a paragon of family values.

I confess that I've never heard of the Traditional Values Coalition (slogan: "Empowering People of Faith through Knowledge"), but they've chosen the very knowledgeable Mario - a person of faith if ever there was one - to help slay the demon of evolution.

You'll have to forgive me. Being a New Zealander I've been deprived of the cultural resources to make the connection, so maybe someone closer to the cusp of this sort of thing can explain it to me: what do traditional values have to do with an anti-evolution stance?

In any case, here's the spiel:

In a recent commentary on evolution by United Church of God Pastor Mario Seiglie, he points out that the archerfish is so uniquely designed that it could not have evolved with slight modifications... According to Sieglie, “The archerfish offers precisely such an example [of complexity], since several complex systems must all appear at the same time, perfectly and not gradually formed—binocular vision, a specialized mouth and tongue, specialized gills to compress and expel water and an aiming system based in the brain and not in the eyes. If any of these parts is missing, the mechanism will not hit the target and no survival advantage is created."

You can read the whole thing at the TVC site. You might like to also check out a counter-opinion at the Fundamentally Flawed blog. Here's an excerpt:

The argument seems to stem forth from statements made by Mario Seiglie. Seiglie believes that this combination of complex systems in the archerfish could not have developed through evolution, as they must have developed all at once to give the fish this ability.

Is Seiglie a world-renowned marine biologist? Not quite… he is a pastor in the United Church of God. It would seem that this position gives him indisputable expertice in the field of biology.

Here's the problem with those UCG experts that write for the GN and make guest appearances on their TV advertorial shows. They're not. Want to know about the wonders of the natural world? Pick up a National Geographic.