‘Willingly ignorant’ scoffers of the Mega Conference

by Philip Bell, AiG–UK/Europe

2 August 2005

In the wake of the enormously successful creation conference at Liberty University, Lynchburg, USA (17–22 July), various web chat rooms have been buzzing. A number of sceptics attended the event and reported their opinions to their fraternity, mostly in the form of blogs. In one such blog, the writer had written at length about the talk that I gave on the first main conference day, ‘Apemen, “missing links” and the Bible’.¹ Following my talk, he was the last in a line of people who waited to question me—a young man, polite but rather full of himself and his own opinions. We had a cordial discussion and I realised that he was probably an evolutionist, although he kept his real motives under wraps.

On reading his blog material about myself and other creationists, it quickly became clear that this polite exterior had been a sham—on one of his blogs, following a talk by Dr. Werner Gitt, he describes how he really felt when answering a lady who dared to question his knowledge of biology:

‘I resisted the temptation to damage her physically in some way. I likewise resisted the temptation to unleash upon her a barrage of profanity so disgusting it would have made her ears melt right off her head. All I did was approach her casually, and in my most winning and charming manner (which is very winning and very charming, if I do say so myself) say, “Really, how so?”’²

That’s hardly a confession that most people would be proud of! So, far from some sort of impartial appraisal of the creationist speakers, his intention from the outset was clearly to paint them in as bad a light as he possibly could.

As I discovered on reading his report of my talk and our conversation, he was certainly not above distorting or misreporting the facts to make his points! First off, I was rather amused that he described me as having an Australian accent—seemingly he hadn’t even bothered to check what country I was from. But there were other points in his blog which seemed to show a wilful misrepresentation of the facts.

He commented:

‘Bell closed his talk with a truly bizarre statement. He summarized the fossil evidence as follows: There are thousands of hominid fossils, a statement he backed up by citing the Catalog of Fossil Hominids from the British Museum of Natural History. Then he said there are hundreds of human fossils. And there are numerous extinct ape fossils. But nothing in between!’

 In our discussion, I had reiterated to him what I had explicitly stated on one of my slides, that the human fossils to which I referred included the several hundred known Neandertal and Homo erectus fossils (themselves ‘hominids’). Of the thousands of catalogued fossils, most of them are not considered helpful to the evolutionary story (hence the oft-repeated evolutionist canards like ‘all the fossils will fit into the boot (trunk) of a car’ or ‘onto a snooker table’, etc.). All the non-Homo fossils that I covered in my talk are extinct apes, as even most evolutionists have conceded—albeit that they argue among themselves as to which of these was on the illustrious line leading to humans. Most of the Homo fossils (with the notable exception of Homo habilis) are agreed by the majority of creationists to be extinct humans. His blog comments here, as elsewhere, were designed to imply that I and other creationist speakers didn’t even understand the basics of our talk topics. For instance, he wrote:

‘So I tried again and asked, “But the issue is what did the British museum have in mind when they used the term hominid in their catalog? You offered hominid fossils as something separate from ape and human fossils. So what are they?” We were off to the races again.’

Yet at no point did I offer hominid as separate from ape or human, for the very definition includes humans, today’s apes and all those alleged ‘ape-men’ transitions.

Still on the conversation with me, this blogger says:

‘I pointed out that perhaps [Ken] Ham should have called the book [The Lie: Evolution] The Falsehood: Evolution but that a lie implies deliberate deceit. He answered that Satan was the deceiver. I said “So you’re telling me that if I read this book carefully I won’t find any implication that scientists are being deliberately dishonest?” He avoided the question.’

I did not avoid any question that this person asked me but I did make it clear to him that not all evolutionists and teachers are knowingly telling lies (far from it) as many simply believe, by default, this prevalent ideology that so saturates our culture via the education system and the media. However, I pointed out that they are, nevertheless, still guilty of perpetrating things that are false and therefore misleading many people—and that’s a serious matter.

On this point, he wrote:

‘Another thing that came up was the distinction between what professional evolutionary biologists do and what certain popularizers say. He replied, gesturing at the remnants of the audience who were still milling around, that all most of these folks ever hear about evolution is what’s in the popular literature. I had to stifle a laugh again, because his tone and facial expression achieved a level of condescension that would be termed the height of snobbery if someone on my side of this managed to achieve it. Anyway, he said that popularizers are giving an incorrect impression of the evidence for evolution and that was what he was trying to correct in his talk.’

I was not in the least condescending as I well knew that the audiences at the Mega Conference included a large number of well-educated and informed creationists—exactly the opposite of what he was implying! But, the truth is that creationists do have to counter the stuff that is taught at both the technical level (which few laypeople read) and the popular level. My talk was in the ‘basic track’ of the conference and so was pitched to the intelligent layperson accordingly. Had he read the program like everyone else attending the conference, he would have known this; or perhaps he knowingly omitted this rather significant fact from his review. He went on:

‘I replied that it is certainly true that occasionally a Gould or a Dawkins might be a little less precise than they ought to be in some paragraph or other. But the fact is a conference like this one isn’t devoted to making science popularization more precise. It is devoted to convincing people that evolution is total nonsense, and that people would be foolish to believe it. If that is the goal, then you should really have more than a popular level understanding of the subject.’

He certainly did not say the last two sentences to me and has added these to his blog to embellish himself as the bold refuter of creationist nonsense. Had he bothered to find out, he would have discovered that my knowledge of the subject matter went way beyond what I had covered in my presentation—as I have no doubt is true of all the speakers at the conference. But his statement reveals that his real motive—as with so many like him—is to paint creation-believing scientists as those who are prepared to use any means—fair or foul—to turn people against evolution. The implication is that we can only make our case by dealing with our subject matter superficially, and that detailed understanding would somehow reveal how watertight evolutionary theory is!

Ironically, he later contradicts himself:

‘Bell was not amused, and responded that the professionals don’t seem to worry too much about the misconceptions the popularizers are perpetuating. I replied that they have more important things to worry about, and they figure that such inaccuracies as there are in the popularizations pale in comaprison [sic] to the nonsense that comes out of AiG.’

I did remark as his first sentence indicates, but he never said that AiG produced nonsense—he kept his real feelings hidden, as I said, and has merely added this to make it sound like he was being totally ‘up front’ and bold in his discussion with me. But it’s rich that he can defend the perpetuation of misconceptions and inaccuracies of popular science (which after all is where practically everybody gains their beliefs about evolutionary origins), while simultaneously objecting to creationists when they seek to counteract these very same things!

Finally, it was ‘enlightening’ for me to read him say:

‘We went on for quite a while, discussing the Cambrain [sic] explosion and the growth of genetic information and the like. In every case his answers suggested to me that he just didn’t know what he was talking about.’

At this point in our conversation, I recall that he spoke with such ‘authority’ and superciliousness about matters that I had been studying for over twenty years since leaving school, that I pointedly asked him about his own background, to which he replied that he was a mathematician.³ Like so many, this opinionated young man has quite convinced himself that he must know more than anybody who is stupid enough to be a creationist, no matter what their scientific credentials or experience!

Well did the apostle Peter (2 Peter 3:5, 6) write of such scoffers: For this they willfully forget [willingly are ignorant of; KJV]: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.’ The tragedy is that these issues are not esoteric matters with little relevance to the real world, for humanistic and evolutionary philosophies blind many to the true gospel of Jesus Christ. The Bible is clear that all people will be required to account for their lives at the final consummation of all things (2 Peter 3:7): ‘But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.’ In light of the future resurrection of all people—to eternal life or eternal punishment—the apostle Paul said (Acts 24:16), ‘This being so, I myself always strive to have a conscience without offense toward God and men.’

References and notes

1. <www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/07/report_on_the_2_3.html>, 28 July, 2005. Return to text.
2. <www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/07/report_on_the_2_4.html#more>, 28 July, 2005. Return to text.
3. He is actually an assistant professor of mathematics at James Madison University, Virginia. Return to text.

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