An A to Z of Creationist Fallacies: E is for Eugenics and Racism

Eugenics clinic, USA, 1920s

If creationists cannot convince people with spurious claims about a 6000 year old earth, designed and created by their god in six days, they will often attempt an emotional response. Amongst these are the claims that the Theory of Evolution leads to eugenics, that those who accept evolution support eugenics, and that Charles Darwin and all other “evolutionists” (their word, not mine) have been and are racists.

This claim appears to be based yet again, whether it be mistaken or are intentional lie, a complete misunderstanding of Darwin's explanation of biological evolution. A common creationist misconception about evolution is that it is an ever-upwards struggle towards 'better', when it most certainly is not, and that 'natural selection' means that only the strongest survive. The picture of evolution as an upwards spiral actually has more in common with Lamarckism, which sees evolution as a progression. Charles Darwin, whose understanding of evolution fits the standard accepted – and proven – model never said any such thing, but rather explained that with all life evolving from common ancestors, it branched out into varying species. Darwin's own drawing of his 'tree of life' in his notes, when he himself was struggling to understand this process, illustrates this beautifully, it does not show evolution as a progression, and Darwin never once claimed that.

Some creationists will quote a common phrase used in reference to evolution, “survival of the fittest”, and will even go as far as to claim that it was Charles Darwin who first said this. He did not in fact, it was stated by the naturalist, philosopher, and economist, Herbert Spencer. What is more, Spencer, who had indeed read On the Origin of Species, stated that when trying to apply Darwin's ideas to economics. Like the creationists, Spencer had completely misunderstood Darwin, and came out with the phrase to suggest a 'weakest to the wall' economic philosophy. However, 'survival of the fittest' in reference to biological evolution may not mean that only the strongest survive, but merely those best adapted.

When Patrick Matthew was hybridising and growing trees on his land in the Carse of Gowrie in Scotland, he noticed how some species would thrive in a given environment, but perish in another. Yet the same species which perished would thrive in an environment better suited to them, which would be unsuited to the flourishing trees. When he wrote these observations down in his 1829 paper On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, he had unwittingly stumbled upon and explained the process of natural selection, which many today recognise him as the father of. Patrick Matthew later read On the Origin of Species and wrote to Charles Darwin, accusing him of plagiarism. In fact, Darwin had never read Matthew's paper, but once he did he was fascinated and started a correspondence with Matthew in which both men realised they had too much in common for personal rivalries to get in the way of. Two men had observed natural selection in nature, and their observations both matched exactly; that species only thrive in environments suitable to them. That is what 'survival of the fittest' truly means; nothing more.

There are liars, there are damned liars, and then there is John Morris Pendleton. John Morris Pendleton is a car mechanic and a creationist lecturer, who because he managed to gain a minor degree in chemistry, claims to be a scientist. In one of his “Hello I'm a Scientist” lectures, working on subtitle for Darwin's seminal work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Pendleton openly states “Darwin's book was actually a justification, a thesis, trying to support racism.” So, John Morris Pendleton got all that purely from the book's subtitle. I would assume that he worked only from the title and has not actually read the actual book. If he had, he would have noticed that nowhere, not once, in On the Origin of Species does Charles Darwin make any reference to human evolution. The term “favoured races” in the title refers only to those species best able to adapt to their environments by natural selection, and has nothing to do with human racial ethnicity. Sorry (not sorry) to burst your little Darwin-hating bubble John, and all other creationists who make this claim, but On the Origin of Species deals only with the biological evolution of flora and fauna and at no point makes any reference to the human race. If any creationist doubts this, or wants to refute me upon it, I challenge them right here and now to provide the proof that On the Origin of Species was a thesis supporting human racism.

Nonetheless, the crazier creationists (and the most dishonest ones – not always the same people) will insist that Charles Darwin supported Eugenics, and that his Theory of Evolution led to all sorts of racial discrimination, experiments, and even the Nazi holocaust. Some even claim that Darwin invented eugenics. Unfortunately for these liars and shysters, their claims not only do not hold up to the slightest scrutiny, but throw up some very inconvenient truths about just who it was who supported Eugenics and other theories of racial superiority.

Eugenics is a philosophy of race based upon 'superior' and 'inferior' genetics, which seeks to improve the human race by selective breeding. Taking it's name from the Greek,Eugene, meaning "well-born", the idea has been around ever since the philosopher Plato suggested suggested selective breeding to produce and protect a superior Guardian Class. It was not until the 19^th century however that such notions started to be taken seriously. Gynaecologist William Goodell (1829-1894) suggested the castration and spaying of the insane to prevent them breeding. Of course, this idea was taken up to include the sterilisation of the mentally disabled and special needs adults, which alarmingly was still a common practice in many countries until relatively recently, certainly within the lifetimes of most reading this. Although officially banned in the UK, it is suspected and there have been claims that many such sterilisations were carried out on special needs people right up to the 1980s. In an alarming move in February 2015, a judge in England ruled that health authorities could forcibly enter the home of a mother of six who has severe learning difficulties, and carry out a compulsory sterilisation upon her, as they believe a further pregnancy could kill her.

The first person to properly promote eugenics and coin the word in modern parlance however was Francis Galton (1822-1911). Galton was in fact a half-cousin of Charles Darwin, and his reading of On the Origin of Species led him to conclude that there were desirable hereditary traits which could be achieved by selective breeding. It is due to Galton's misreading of Darwin's work that some creationists blame Darwin for eugenics, and some go even further and claim that Darwin was personally responsible for Galton's twisted ideas. It seems that some Christians think we are nor merely our brother's keepers, but our half-cousin's. Charles Darwin in fact strongly disagreed with his half-cousin, and in fact it was not until 1883, one year after Darwin's death, that Francis Galton officially gave his ideas the name Eugenics, and published his work Inquiries into Human Faculty and Development.

Eugenics as an idea took off from there, and had a good few notable followers, including psychologist Sigmund Freud, writer and philosopher George Bernard Shaw, writer and socialist H.G. Wells, and family planning pioneer Marie Stopes. Again, because these people were advocates of eugenics and swayed from the dictates of the Bible, creationists today are very quick to point to them and the 'evil' which they spread. Edinburgh lass Marie Stopes comes in for considerable criticism from some creationists, not least because the family planning clinics which carry her name today advise and offer abortions, and some even claim that she was a supporter of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In fact, when Marie Stopes set up her first clinics they were to educate people, particularly the poor, about contraception, sparing them the expense of extra mouths to feed, and she also was a pioneer in teaching women that there was no guilt in them enjoying sex. In her time, not only was abortion still illegal in the UK, but Stopes was firmly against it. As for the Nazi accusation, Marie Stopes in 1933 sent a collection of poems to Adolf Hitler, long before the world was to learn of his true nature. Do not forget this was at the same time that Winston Churchill was praising Hitler.

As eugenics grew as an idea it grew as an academic discipline in many universities, and there were eugenics societies, notably in the UK and the USA. Whilst the USA is officially a secular country, we all know that it is culturally very religious. So how could this state of affairs occurred in what were then the two strongest countries in the world, where the Christian churches held so much sway and dictated much of people's lives? Quite simply because it was actually Christians and many church leaders supporting eugenics. Galton himself stated that eugenics needed to emphasise “the religious significance of the doctrine of evolution”. One enthusiastic contributor to the Eugenics Review, journal of the Eugenics Educational Society, was Reverend W.R. Inge DD, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London, and Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. Championing eugenics as a spiritual quest, Inge once wrote;

"It is the paradox of the spiritual life that if we could take to ourselves ‘the wings of a dove’ and escape from this world of mingled good and evil, we should not reach the rest which we desire. For one at least of the Divine values, Goodness, cannot be realised by flight, but only by struggle."

Another leading Church of England clergyman, Reverend J. H. F. Peile, was also a contributor to the Eugenics Review, who stated that eugenics and church endorsement of it was “a principle to which the Church is already committed”.

Meanwhile, in the USA, the American Eugenics Society had sought, and won endorsement from at least one leading clergyman, and a Roman Catholic one to boot, Archbishop Hayes of the Diocese of New York. And although the UK had been the birthplace of eugenics, it was actually in the United States it was to become a “science”, endorsed in law, where the first experiments would be carried out, and from whence the Nazis would take their ideas.

David Starr Jordan came from a strict Baptist family. He gained his PhD at Northwestern Christian University (later Butler University), in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he also was Professor of Natural History. A Unitarian, although he stood aloof from organised religion, he once said “Religion, like love, can be suppressed and perverted, but religion is the foundation upon which all rest," Founder of Stanford University, he is to this day lauded by many Christians in the USA, including the Christian Scientists. He was also the man who in 1902 published his work on race, Blood of a Nation, in which he theorised that qualities such as talent and poverty were passed on through blood.

Eugenics movements in the USA won funding from some charitable organisations, who were at the least based in the best of Christian motives, no matter how misguided their ideas. The Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation poured money into 'betterment' programmes. In 1908, John Harvey Kellogg MD, a fervent Seventh Day Adventist who declared a “War on passion” and who in his invention of corn flakes hoped such a bland food would prevent masturbation (I kid you not), funded the Race Betterment Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. Biologist Charles B Davenport founded the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Spring Harbor, New York, in 1911 with funding from the Carnegie Institution and the Harriman Railroad Fortune. The ERO went on to research and keep records upon thousands of US families, concluding that those who were unfit came from economically and socially poor backgrounds, and favoured immigration restrictions and sterilisation. Some members of the ERO, such as Madison Grant, favoured extermination. Davenport, himself a home-schooled puritan Protestant, also founded the American Breeders Association, dedicated to purity in marriage, of which David Starr Jordan and Madison Grant were also members.

Michigan attempted to introduce a sterilisation bill in 1897, which failed to gain support from sufficient legislators. Pennsylvania passed such a bill eight years later, which was vetoed by the Governor of the state. In Indiana in 1907 a bill was passed and the first compulsory sterilisation of individuals for “imbecilism”, “feeble mindedness” and epilepsy proceeded. Washington and California followed suit in 1909, and while levels remained low, California was the exception which was to be the vanguard of sterilisations under the teachings of eugenics, performing some 20,000 enforced sterilisations from 1909 up to the 1960s. Of the 32 US states which adopted sterilisation under eugenics programmes, North Carolina was the most aggressive. It was in NC that an IQ of 70 or lower was deemed suitable for enforced sterilisation. The North Carolina Eugenics Board almost always approved proposals brought before them by local welfare boards, and NC social workers were allowed to propose individuals for sterilisation. "Here, at last, was a method of preventing unwanted pregnancies by an acceptable, practical, and inexpensive method," wrote Wallace Kuralt in the March 1967 journal of the N.C. Board of Public Welfare. "The poor readily adopted the new techniques for birth control." This deeply religious state, some of whose boundary signs claim “When Jesus returns, he's coming here” ran a eugenics-based sterilisation programme from 1933 to as late as 1977.

Where compulsory sterilisation was carried out in the USA, those it was carried out upon were not always told, most came from the poorest backgrounds, many more women were sterilised than men and as they were seen as inferior, many more people of colour were sterilised than men. Native Americans and African Americans, again mostly women, were the main targets for compulsory sterilisation, sometimes without their knowledge but otherwise bullied into it, or not properly informed. The Native American women's organisation, Woman of All Red Nations (WARN), publicised the fact that Native American women were being threatened with removal of benefits if they had large families and did not agree to sterilisation, while the Indian Health Service (IHS) repeatedly refused to deliver the children of Native American women unless they agreed to sterilisation whilst in labour. In many cases the women had not had the circumstances correctly explained, or because they were given in English rather than the women's languages, they did not understand what was happening. The US General Accounting Office was later to estimate that the IHS had carried out 3,406 sterilisations under these circumstances.

It was the US eugenics programmes which attracted the attention of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and it was the eugenicists in California who were responsible for drawing their attention to it. Californian eugenicists sent literature to German scientists and medical professionals. The newly-elected Nazi government were all too interested and embarked upon their own compulsory sterilisation programme, the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, based largely upon a proposed 'model American law' by Californian eugenicist, and superintendent of the US Eugenics Records Office, Harry H Laughlin. Californian eugenicists were invited to Germany, and one of them, C.M. Goethe, told a colleague upon his return;

“You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought... ...I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.”

The Rockefeller Foundation went on to fund German eugenics programmes, including one overseen by Nazi scientist Joseph Mengele, before he was transferred to Auschwitz, where he carried out genetic experiments on concentration camp inmates.

Of particular note among these US geneticists for their influence over Nazi ideology was Madison Grant (1876-1937). Grant was a conservationist, a lawyer and a writer. He is best remembered for his 1916 work The Passing of the Great Race, in which he became the greatest promoter or 'Nordic Theory', under which Grant postulated that tall, white, blonde-haired, blue-eyed northern Europeans were racially superior to all others;

“The Nordics are, all over the world, a race of soldiers, sailors, adventurers, and explorers, but above all, of rulers, organizers, and aristocrats in sharp contrast to the essentially peasant character of the Alpines. Chivalry and knighthood, and their still surviving but greatly impaired counterparts, are peculiarly Nordic traits, and feudalism, class distinctions, and race pride among Europeans are traceable for the most part to the north.”

Were this not enough, it was Grant who suggested the rounding-up, separation, and ultimately the elimination of all other races;

“A rigid system of selection through the elimination of those who are weak or unfit—in other words social failures—would solve the whole question in one hundred years, as well as enable us to get rid of the undesirables who crowd our jails, hospitals, and insane asylums. The individual himself can be nourished, educated and protected by the community during his lifetime, but the state through sterilization must see to it that his line stops with him, or else future generations will be cursed with an ever increasing load of misguided sentimentalism. This is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.”

Madison Grant was undoubtedly barking mad, as well as an out-and-out xenophobe. He considered the white peoples of the Mediterranean to be the same 'Negroid' race as Africans, and his views of the Scots was completely loony. In his 1933 work, The Conquest of a Continent, Grant stated,

“The aborigines were called Picts in Scotland. These Mediterranean Picts spoke a language related to Hamitic or Egyptian, and many place names of this origin are still to be found... ...Curiously enough these Mediterraneans [Scottish Picts] contributed their dark eyes and hair color, but not their short stature. The population of West Scotland has the greatest height of all the people's of Europe.”

Firstly, Grant was alluding to an ancient Scots legend, that the Scots were descended from Scota, daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh, and Gaythelus, a Greek slave who was her lover, and they fled to Spain, then their descendants invaded Ireland, then their descendants invaded Caledonia, founding Scotland. Secondly, the Picts and the Scots were genetically different peoples. Thirdly, west coast Scots are not renowned for their height even today, and in 1933 when this work was written, poverty was rife as was disease, particularly rickets, and west coast Scots, particularly Glaswegians, had stunted height as a result.

Madison Grant was also a staunch Christian, and showed contempt for all other religions and their followers, whom he included among his 'unworthy' races. Also from Conquest of a Continent;

“The settlers of New England may be regarded as essentially rebels against established religion and established authority when the religion and authority were not of their own choosing. This non-conformist spirit persisted in the successive new frontiers as they were settlers of western New York and the old Northwest Territory gave birth to an astonishing number of new sects, religions, 'isms,' and communities, ranging all the way from Mormonism to Shakers and the Oneida Community.

“...the South has remained characteristically American...One of the strange results of the Civil War has been that while the victorious North sold its birthright of culture, religion, and racial purity for a mess of industrial pottage, the South, thought defeated, retained its racial inheritance unimpaired.

“...With its two million Jews, its million and a half Italians, its million Germans, and its three quarters of a million each of Poles and Irish, together with substantial contingencies from almost every other country on the map, the Empire State is scarcely able to meet the requirements of the Founders of the Republic, who, like Thomas Jefferson, feared above everything else the formation of an alien, urban proletariat as creating a condition under which a democratic form of government could not function successfully.”

As barmy as he was an out-and-out liar concerning European and American history and migration, Madison Grant's works were nonetheless extremely popular. The Passing of the Great Race was particularly popular, so much so that by 1937 it had sold 16,000 copies in the USA alone. Consider that was at a time when a great many Americans were still fully or semi illiterate. It was also published in many other languages, notably German in 1925. With it's fantasies about a superior white-skinned, blonde-haired, blue-eyed race of warriors, soldiers, scientists, nobles and knights (yep, Grant originated that silly notion too), and his arguments for the separation and elimination of 'inferior' races, we need not look too far for where Adolf Hitler and the Nazis got both their ideology – and their inspiration for the death camps from. It was the first non-German book to be ordered reprinted and distributed by the Nazis, and Adolf Hitler actually wrote to Madison Grant in which he stated “This book is my bible”.

We therefore see that far from eugenics, ideas of racial purity, and the inspiration for the Nazi holocaust coming from Charles Darwin and the proponents of the Theory of Evolution, they came instead from the USA, pioneered and spread by mostly Christian people, who carried out a 'holocaust' of their own, and who were responsible for promulgating ideas of racial purity and the eradication of other 'inferior' races.

Today of course we look upon these things with 21^st century eyes, where most decent people are absolutely horrified by the bigotry and prejudice of the past. When Charles Darwin was alive, it was in fact quite a common belief among white, Christian, Europeans that were superior to all other races, who ranged from “murderous savages” to “painted heathens”; the entire British Empire, which was to colour one quarter of the globe pink, was based deeply in such ideas. You would be hard pushed to find one white person in those days who did not consider those of other races, even of other religions, to be at the most inferior, and at the least, beneath them.

Thankfully there were a few exceptions who did indeed believe all races were equal. One was a man in Victorian England, who as a Methodist Christian had been a strong campaigner for the abolition of slavery. He went on to study at the University of Edinburgh, he learned taxidermy from a man employed to carry out such, a freed slave named John Edmonstone. The two became firm friends and would speak for hours about animal specimens. So who was this fine fellow who not only hated slavery but treated a black man as his equal and his friend? Charles Darwin, that's who.

Racism and proponents of eugenics still persist to this day, both among some theists. Whilst researching this article, I came across some truly odious 'Christian' websites, from Roman Catholic anti-abortionists continuing to pour their bile upon Marie Stopes, to hardline Protestant white supremacists championing the lies and utter fantasies of Madison Grant. I am sure there are equally some twisted atheists who also support eugenics. Those who promote eugenics today however, are roundly condemned and disregarded by the majority of both communities; it is one thing both the faithful and atheists can agree upon. Yes, all of those 'good Christians' who backed the US eugenics programmes were all in the wrong, every bit as much as the atheists among them. The vast majority of Christians today are good, well-meaning people, and I'm sure there will be some reading this will be as equally horrified at the shameful eugenics record of the USA as atheists are. Please, such Christians, I am not for one moment trying to lay the blame for those programmes at your door, nor would I ever try to suggest that all Christians support eugenics. I merely use the example to hammer home just how much creationists lie (which decent Christians should be very concerned about), or are mistaken, on this matter. By equal measure, to accuse those atheists who accept the fact of evolution of supporting eugenics and racism is an outright slur upon a great many decent human beings.

At the end of the day however, even if Charles Darwin had been a racist, even if he had supported eugenics, even if the USA had not embarked upon eugenics programmes, even if all those who did had all been atheists, it matters not one jot to the truth of biological evolution. What the creationists are attempting in making such claims is an appeal to the heart, not the head. Well, even if that appeal were in any way attractive, and because it is based in lies, it is not, it cannot change the truth one iota. Biological evolution is a fact, and has been roundly proven to be so on it's own merit, and by several other sciences which support it, and it in turn supports. It is often very beautiful, and by equal merit, it can appear extremely cruel. Again, neither of these positions matter to it's ultimate truth. John Keats once wrote “Truth is beauty, beauty truth”, but in life we often have to suck up the fact that not all which is true is beautiful, and that which is beautiful is all too often not true.

An A to Z of Creationist Fallacies: D is for Dating

Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags, Edinburgh

The entire creationist claim in Christianity hinges upon the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis in the Bible. Some creationist fundamentalist Muslims have taken up and also purport this claim, despite the fact that the Qur'an makes no mention of timescales for creation. Interestingly enough, there are very few creationist Jews. This is perhaps because Judaism teaches that 'Man needs the Talmud, and the Talmud needs man.' Creationist Christians are Biblical literalists who maintain that the Bible is the word of God, written down by men who were divinely inspired by God to copy and interpret the oldest surviving copies of copies of the scriptures, and with their hands being guided by God, no mistakes could ever be made, nothing could be omitted and nothing could be added, and thus the Bible must be the perfect, unerring word of an omnipotent and omniscient God. There's only one problem with this claim; it is complete and utter bollocks.

If one thinks that the above claims are bold, bolder still were the claims of Archbishop Ussher, who not only set out to date the creation of the Earth to the year, but went as far as to claim to have accurately dated it to the year, month, day, and right down to the very time. He is important to this narrative because so many creationists stand by his chronology today. James Ussher (1581-1656) was Archbishop of Armagh, and Primate of All Ireland in the reformed protestant Church of Ireland. Possibly going for the record for the world's longest book title, in 1647 Ussher published his Annales Veteris Testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti, una cum rerum Asiaticarum et Aegyptiacarum chronico, a temporis historici principio usque ad Maccabaicorum initia producto. ("Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the first origins of the world, the chronicle of Asiatic and Egyptian matters together produced from the beginning of historical time up to the beginnings of Maccabes”), more commonly known as the “Ussher Chronology”.

Ussher had not been the first theologian to attempt to date the scriptures, but 'corrected' the dates proposed by Jose Ben Helafta (3761 BCE), Bede (3952 BCE), Scaliger (3949 BCE), Johannes Kepler (3992 BCE) and Sir Isaac Newton (c. 4000 BCE). Ussher looked at the chronologies of descendants in the Old Testament, and took into account the claim in 2 Peter 3:8; “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” By these and looking at the Hebrew Bible as well as the Christian scriptures, cross-referencing with known rulers, linking with recorded historical events, and taking into account that Josephus gave the date of the death of Herod as 4 BCE, then Jesus could not have been born after then, Ussher was able to give a year for the creation at 4004 BCE.

Going further, Ussher deduced that if God created all things in six days, then rested on the seventh, the Jewish Sabbath being Saturday, the creation must have began on a Sunday. Then looking at the Jewish calender, and tying in the creation of the stars and planets with Kepler's astronomical tables, he deduced that creation would have taken place on the Autumnal Equinox, which for the year 4004 was Sunday, 23 October in the Julian Calendar. As God rested and thereby instituted the first Jewish Sabbath at nightfall, which according to Judaism is when the first three stars appear, it would logically follow that the creation would have began at the same time, six days previously. Again, from astronomical tables, Ussher was able to deduce that would have been 6:00pm in Jerusalem on the day. Therefore, Archbishop James Ussher proclaimed that the creation took place at 6:00pm on Sunday, 23 October, 4004 BCE.

Archbishop Ussher's chronology is a beautiful piece of logic, deductive reasoning and sheer number crunching. However, it has several problems which render the source material unreliable. We cannot even be sure if many of the 'heroes' of the Old Testament even existed, and the great ages of some of them lived to, including Adam (930), Noah (950) and Methuselah (969) are sheer biological impossibilities. Then of course, Ussher had to have a place for the creation as well as a time, and that had to centre upon Jerusalem, which was still considered the centre of the universe. Anyone who accepts that, would likewise have to accept another Biblical claim; that of a stationary geocentric Earth, and all that footage you've ever seen of the Earth in rotation, any mobile devices you have or anything else served by a satellite must be a government / NASA / Illuminati conspiracy, and solar and lunar eclipses are either shot onto a backscreen, or a figment of your own deranged imagination.

The Judeo-Christian accounts of the creation were the accepted 'facts' for thousands of years, and Ussher's chronology held good for over 100 years. Then some troublesome Scot had to go and upset the entire applecart. James Hutton (1726-1797), came from a farming background, but showed great intelligence from an early age, variously worked as an experimental agriculturalist, canal builder, chemist and physician, which amassed him a not inconsiderable income, enabling him to buy a rather nice house in the St John's Hill area of Holyrood, then still a separate burgh, just outside Edinburgh. Hutton would take exercise in Holyrood Park adjacent to his home; an ancient hunting park of the Kings of Scots (and still officially Crown Estate), dominated by the 823 feet high volcanic cone of Arthur's Seat, and with it's high basalt cliffs of Salisbury Crags overlooking Hutton's home. By observing the rock strata of the volcano complex and comparing it to how erosion and sedimentation work, Hutton came to the conclusion that far from being a mere 6000 years old, the Earth must be very ancient indeed. James Hutton travelled the length and breadth of Scotland (which is a geologist's playground), taking and observing rock samples, which further convinced him of his hypothesis. It took 25 years of research but finally Hutton had a paper, Theory of the Earth; or an Investigation of the Laws observable in the Composition, Dissolution, and Restoration of Land upon the Globe, read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1785. Shortly afterwards a shorter abstract of his theory was read at the Royal Society and subsequently published, in which James Hutton outlaid his findings;

The solid parts of the present land appear in general, to have been composed of the productions of the sea, and of other materials similar to those now found upon the shores. Hence we find reason to conclude:

1st, That the land on which we rest is not simple and original, but that it is a composition, and had been formed by the operation of second causes.

2nd, That before the present land was made, there had subsisted a world composed of sea and land, in which were tides and currents, with such operations at the bottom of the sea as now take place. And,

Lastly, That while the present land was forming at the bottom of the ocean, the former land maintained plants and animals; at least the sea was then inhabited by animals, in a similar manner as it is at present.

Hence we are led to conclude, that the greater part of our land, if not the whole had been produced by operations natural to this globe; but that in order to make this land a permanent body, resisting the operations of the waters, two things had been required;

1st, The consolidation of masses formed by collections of loose or incoherent materials;

2ndly, The elevation of those consolidated masses from the bottom of the sea, the place where they were collected, to the stations in which they now remain above the level of the ocean.

James Hutton had been wary about publishing his findings, and with good reason. When word of his theory reached the ears of the Church of Scotland, they were in uproar that this farmer had dared to question the Holy Word of God, in challenging not only that the Earth was formed only 6000 years ago, but had suggested that some mountains must have once been underwater. This was to lead to a rift between Hutton and the Kirk, which was never to heal and which saddened him greatly. Nonetheless, James Hutton had given birth to the modern science of geology, it's key theory of uniformitanism – which asserts that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe – and where Hutton led, a great many more were to follow, pushing the age of the earth further and further back into the past.

To go into detail would take too long (and you probably wouldn't read it) but to cut a long story short, James Hutton was not of course the first to have such ideas, but that he laid it out and presented it was the first real catalyst to the scientific findings which would come after. After all, if the Earth were extremely ancient, it thereby logically followed that all life on Earth must likewise be ancient, and the universe itself had to be even more ancient still. Patrick Matthew of Gowrie, another nippy Scotsman, set out the basis of natural selection in his 1829 paper On Naval Timber of Arboriculture, then Charles Darwin followed with On the Origin of Species. By 1915 Albert Einstein had formulated his Theory of General Relativity, then Hubble and others discovered other galaxies beyond ours (an idea which the 16^th century renegade monk, Giordano Bruno, had postulated and had paid for that by being burned at the stake) that far from a Steady State Universe, the universe was in fact receding in all directions, which infers that it must be receding from an original point where all matter came from, and of course, the further away they are, the further back in time they must be. Viola! The Initial Singularity (Big Bang) Theory was founded. The religites steadfastly tried to stand against every one of these discoveries, despite a, more and more solid evidence coming to light, and b, the fact that many of these sciences agree with and support each other, building up a standard model of deep time. Which brings us up to the present day, where the accepted standard model is that the universe formed from an initial singularity 13.82 billion years go, the Earth was formed 4.53 billion years ago, life began on Earth 3.8 billion years ago, and evolved through millennia, leading eventually to the rise of our species, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, a mere 200,000 years ago.

And still the creationists try to argue against this, despite enormous amounts of evidence, despite various sciences supporting and agreeing with each other, despite being able to observe and demonstrate certain aspects of the sciences, they dig their heels in and assert that all this science must be wrong, and that their holy book is the truth, without offering a single shred of evidence to back that up.

Creationists question the dating of the universe and ask how we can come about with the dates given. Well, quite simply actually, for the simple fact that the further away we see light, the further back in time that light originated. For people fond of banging on about how complex the human eye is, it astounds me how few realise just how it works. Our eyes work by processing light and reflecting images, therefore when we see something, unless it is right in front of our eyes, we are seeing it as it was, not as it is. Strange as it may seem, if you see a friend across a road, you are not seeing them as they are at the same moment as you, but a tiny fraction of a second ago in your own personal past. Similarly, we know that the Sun is 92,955,807 miles from Earth, and that light from the Sun takes approximately 8½ minutes to reach us. Therefore, the light from more distant objects has to take much longer to reach us. Mankind has looked at the stars since our earliest ancestors and dreamed of flying to them, but the fact is that they are so distant, we may never even reach even our nearest neighbour, Proxima Centauri, a mere 4.2 light years away.

A word here about light years, for this is important. A light year is the time it takes light to travel in one year. Light of course travels at 186,000 miles per second in a vacuum, which is a constant. This equates to some 670 million mph and 6 Trillion miles in one Earth year. Therefore we can use the constant to measure the incredible distance to other stars, planets and galaxies in the universe and use the term “light year” to make the figures managable. I can already hear the creationists reading this parroting their old favourite “A light year is a measure of distance, not time.”, and guess what? You are absolutely correct, I wholly agree with you, and well done you for stating a scientific fact. That distance measurement however is immensely useful in calculating distance, so permit me to educate you in some basic high school mathematics. Distance and speed can be easily used to measure time, just as distance and time can be used to measure speed, and speed and time can be used to measure distance; all of them interlock in these three simple equations;

Distance = Speed x Time

Speed = Distance / Time

Time = Distance / Speed

It is the last of these we are interested in. Think of it this way. A commuter train travelling between the two Scottish cities of Edinburgh and Dundee travels at an average speed of 30mph, to cover the 59¼ miles. Take the distance and divide by the speed ; 59.25 / 30 = 1.975, which as we are dealing in minutes, we have to then multiply the result by 60; 1.975 x 60 = 118.5, or 1½ minutes off 2 hours. I chose those two cities because they are close to 60 miles apart, so a train travelling at 60mph would take just under one hour, therefore a train travelling half that speed would take close to 2 hours. So, using exactly the same principle, if we use light years divided by the speed of light, we can accurately calculate the age of the source of the light. And by using the same principle, science takes the age of the oldest stars and the rate of expansion, then work back to find a point of origin, which is precisely how the universe can be aged. Ain't numbers beautiful?

The more and more sophisticated science has become, the deeper and deeper astronomers have been able to look into space, and as a result, the more distant the objects they look at, the further back in time they are able to observe. Cosmology uses the redshift of distant objects in space to determine their distance and thus their age. Redshift occurs when light moves into the red end of the spectrum; the further away, the higher the redshift. This is based on the “Doppler Effect”, which works in the same way as sound; an emergency vehicle's sirens are constant in a vehicle, but as it comes towards the observer the note increases in pitch, then changes and drops as it passes and moves away. By using these relatively simple principles, the Hubble telescope eXtreme Deep Field has managed to measure objects in the universe some 13.2 billion years old, amazingly close to the origin of the universe, 13.82 billion years ago.

So, that explains the age of the universe. How do we know the age of the Earth? Well, we need to turn to radiometric dating of rock samples. One of the most common war cries of the creationist when this is mentioned is “Carbon 14 cannot accurately date geology”. Correct. Carbon 14 can be used on organic substances, which is precisely why geology does not use it but relies instead upon other means of radiometric dating. The spontaneous breakdown or decay of atomic nuclei, termed radioactive decay, is the basis for all radiometric dating methods. In simplest terms, the older the rock, as it's atomic nuclei breaks down, 'parent' atoms decay to stable 'daughter' atoms, and each disintegration results in one more atom of the daughter than was initially present and one less atom of the parent. The probability of a parent atom decaying in a fixed period of time is always the same for all atoms of that type regardless of temperature, pressure, or chemical conditions. This probability of decay is the decay constant. The time required for one-half of any original number of parent atoms to decay is the half-life, which is related to the decay constant. In this way Uranium 237 will decay to Lead 207 in 0.704 billion years.

The decay constant is enormously useful to date rock samples, using simple maths but by hugely technological means. First one needs to determine the number of original parent atoms. Simples – that is merely the number of parent atoms apparent plus the number of daughter atoms formed by decay. Then by applying the time which the atoms take to break down from father to daughter, you have the original age of the rock. Science originally looked for the oldest rocks on the face of the Earth, and of the oldest meteorites they could find. Everything changed on 20 July 1969, when Neil Armstrong took one small step, and one of the giant leaps was being able to compare Moon rock samples to Earth rock, finding they were mostly the same as Earth, and that their age corresponds to the age of Earth rock. By doing this the Moon has been dated to 4.4-4.5 billion years old, and the Earth to 4.4-4.6 billion years old. Again, different sciences support and confirm each other – and of course, radiometric dating absolutely confirms the original assertions of James Hutton.

One of the most bizarre claims I have heard from creationists is that one element cannot change into another. Ermm, just how do you think you are getting heat and light from the sun? The sun, just like any star, is constantly fusing hydrogen and creating helium and other elements. At the end of a star's life, when it's hydrogen fuel runs out, helium atoms create carbon and oxygen, carbon and oxygen then fuse into neon, sodium, magnesium, sulphur and silicon. And so the fusion chain goes on, creating calcium, iron, nickel, chromium, copper and others, then heavier elements, until the star, attempting to create heavier and heavier elements, first implodes, then violently explodes outwards, spewing the elements necessary for life out into the universe. Elements are changing all the time, even at the lower level. Nuclear reactors burn uranium and produce plutonium and other elements as waste products. Even in nature, granite rock will break down over time and emit radon gas. Just a point, creationists, the periodic table has moved on somewhat since the days of Earth, Air, Fire and Water.

As geology dates rock, and thus the Earth, so it also compliments palaeontology, and helps to date fossils and thus gives us an insight into evolution and the age of fossils. Enter another creationist liar and shyster, Kent Hovind. Kent Hovind, off the creationist circuit for 10 years during which he served a jail sentence for tax evasion, tries to claim that science is dealing in circular reasoning. One famous quote of his; “How do they date the fossils? From the age of the rock. How do they date the rock? From the age of the fossils.” The lack of intelligence alone is worrying enough. More worrying still were the large number of his audience who laughed at this. Of course, it is not that simple. There is however a grain of truth in it, and one which is going to stick in the craw of every creationist; that this again are different branches of science supporting and confirming each other's findings. If a fossil is found in certain strata of rock, dated by radiometric dating, then it logically follows that the creature which formed that fossil must have lived in that era. Similarly if the fossil of a creature has been found and dated, then other fossils of the same creature will confirm that the rock strata must be of the same era. And then of course, fossils can help in other ways, even the absence of them. After Hutton kick-started geology, and Darwin increased the interest in evolution, scientists were taking rock samples all over the world, and not least from Scotland. Those who came to Scotland found a curious thing in the Torridon Hills, in Wester Ross, north-west Scotland; not one fossil was found in any sample of Torridon Sandstone. It was not until the advent of radiometric dating however, that the hypothesis for this was confirmed; the Torridon Hills were formed before life began on Earth. When we in Scotland that something is “Old as the hills.”, we really mean it. Told you it was a geologist's playground.

Seems to me that Kent Hovind would do better to reflect on the fact that revenue services work out tax due upon earnings, and earning money means paying your taxes.

As we see, Kent Hovind's claim is not as crazy as it may seem; it's not circular reasoning, it's all about fitting pegs into holes (and as I never tire of saying, you never find the fossils of modern creatures besides ancient ones) and Hovind & Co are behaving like the imbecilic child, who continually tries to force the square peg into the round hole, despite being shown several times that's not how it goes; it's either their way, or no way at all. But Hovind is only giving half the picture, and this is where our friend carbon can indeed make an entrance. Carbon, coming from the stars and thus evident everywhere, occurs naturally all over the planet. However, carbon-13 (C-13) is much rarer than carbon-12 (C-12), the latter of which is concentrated in living organisms. As organic debris fell to the ocean floor of our ancient Earth, the C-12 to C-13 ratio rose in sedimentary rock which formed, and that ratio is preserved in rock formed billions of years ago. As Craig Manning, a geologist at the University of California at Los Angeles states, “In the modern world, the only way you can generate such a high ratio of carbon-12 relative to carbon-13 is if some sort of fractionation (or preferential use of carbon-12) occurs in living organisms.”

But can this prove the age of or date of life? Well, not prove, but a branch of geology called geochronology can deduce a minimum age by dating igneous intrusions cutting through sedimentary rock. The intrusions are “nature's timekeepers” - zircons. Zircons are of course yet one more form of carbon, forming from molten igneous rock as it cools. When first formed, zircons contain uranium, which as I have said above, converts to lead over time. As all the lead present in a zircon sample will reflect the ratio to uranium over time, that gives the age since the zircon first formed. Thus, this is how science, using several disciplines, has managed to equate that life on Earth began at least 3.8 billion years ago, beginning with simple, single-celled organisms from whence all life, me, you, the dog next door, even Kent Hovind as strange as it seems (yep, you are distantly related to him – we all are, as unsavoury as that fact may be), all arose.

And of course, it is indeed by using the same principles of radiometric and stratigraphic (dating fossils from the geological strata they are found in) dating that the age of fossils, and their progress through biological evolution can be observed, and demonstrated to give fairly accurate dates. Much more accurate, and with much more evidence and reliable source material which, as undoubtedly as clever he was, Archbishop Ussher was ever working upon.