An overly long account of my debate with Creationist Walter Brown at Southeast Christian Church, Louisville, Ky, 27 October 1996, by Robert T. Dillon, Jr. Department of Biology, College of Charleston, (dillonr@cofc.edu).
Walt's conversion to creationism began in 1970, when, as a new professor at the Air Force Academy, he heard "some surprising, almost shocking, claims that Noah's Ark rested near the 14,000 foot level of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey. Almost daily I gazed up at 14,000 foot Rocky Mountain peaks and tried to imagine, at one of their summits, an object large enough to fit snugly inside a football stadium. By 1972, I had become a creationist." He has been touring the country with his In the Beginning seminars since 1980.
I'd been watching Brown perform since Friday afternoon, and he really does have considerable skill as a public speaker. He is forceful and declarative, and presents as a classical "authority figure", although brusk. He is of the military sort, not the "distinguished gentleman" sort. He is of Midwestern extraction, with some Yankee flavor. A southerner will have an advantage in front of many audiences.
He normally uses a lot of humor, mostly at the expense of evolutionists, but sometimes at his own expense, which of course can be especially disarming. His best jokes Friday and Saturday were all based on the theme, "aren't scientists of all sorts stupid?" He found a nine year old girl in the front row and led her along his line of reasoning, to show that even she might marshall more insight than the entire scientific establishment. He moved around easily, used the stage well, and smiled often.
But the man seemed to cave in Sunday evening. He can't take much pressure. I joined the Director of Adult Education, who organized this thing, the timer, the moderator, and assorted wives, for sandwiches while Brown hid in the choir room.
At the introduction, I received polite applause, Brown received enthusiastic applause, plus a fair number of cheers. Brown had won the toss at lunch earlier in the day, and elected to go first. He stood rooted behind the pulpit and read a dry, prepared statement verbatim. An assistant, seated by the overhead projector, followed the script and flipped transparencies. It was a 41 minute outline of his book and rather light on the worldwide flood. About halfway through he had pencilled in "How can you, Dr. Dillon, explain..." where his script read "How do evolutionists explain..." At which point I spontaneously, and rather heartlessly I fear, gave a tiny jerk in my seat, as though roused from slumber. Got a titter from the side of the congregation that saw it.
After the five minute stretch break came my turn. When I asked if everybody would join me in prayer, one person in the audience audibly scoffed. I used that old preacher's standby, Psalms 19:14 "May the words of my mouth,...be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord." Here are the brief opening remarks I prepared.
"Ladies & Gentlemen, the creationist message boils down to three logical fallacies, two misunderstandings, and one crying shame. The crying shame is that this issue is divisive. It tragically divides the scientific and religious communities, and even Christian against Christian. It's a family spat. But it does no good to bottle this sort of thing up. It's a blessing that the Lord has brought us together today to discuss these issues and if not agree, then at least increase our level of understanding. So I have chosen to emphasize for my talk this evening the two misunderstandings that creationists seem to harbor. I have not come to argue, I have come to explain."
I then went to my slides. The first slide was an outline of my talk:
Evolution and Creation in Louisville, a dialogue:
- Definitions
- What is evolution?
- Examples
- Macro and microevolution
- Primate evolution at Olduvai Gorge
- Stratigraphy and dating
- Fossils
- A hypothesis
As "misunderstanding #1" I showed Brown's definition of evolution, and how this differs so greatly from the correct one. No, evolution is not always "natural." No, change is not always "beneficial." No, evolution has nothing to do with "complexity." I really spent a fair amount of time on that term, complexity. It underlies both misunderstandings. We cannot define the term; it can't be measured. I argued that bacteria may be the most complex organisms, then seeming to change my mind, made an argument that vascular plants are the most complex organisms. I held a big yellow potted chrysanthemum in my hands for an illustration.
Then I ran through 10-12 slides on what evolution is, namely "heritable change." Six sub-points, each with solid, real-life examples: (1) may occur naturally, artificially, experimentally, (2) occurs constantly, over days, years, or eons, (3) has many causes, (4) occurs within populations, (5) may result in speciation, (6) may result in extinction. I asked if anyone had seen any dinosaurs rumbling down the street? Then, I concluded "Evolution is not a theory, it is an observation."
Then we came to our second misunderstanding, the difference between microevolution and macroevolution. I again showed Brown's definitions. We all agree on what he calls microevolution, -- good! But macroevolution, which he defines as an increase in complexity is misunderstood. No, I reiterated, evolutionists do not, cannot study complexity. I showed the correct micro and macro definitions. Simply an artificial division of time scales, done for convenience. Both are equally observable. Do you see any dinosaurs?
I know this sounds kind of dry. It certainly could have been. But all the while, I was on my feet, mostly right in front of the audience, sometimes moving back to gesture at slides, keeping the mood as light as I could. Folks told me later that it was clear that I was having fun. Which, oddly, I was.
The second half of my talk was a mixture of pretty slides of Olduvai Gorge from old National Geographics and rather technical, detailed accounts of stratigraphic mapping, K/Ar dating, fission track dating, and paleoanthropology. I'm sure some folks weren't following, but heck, they asked for science and they got it. Besides, I was sick of being condescended to for three days. I was having a blast. I get excited about this sort of thing. The summary slide was a check chart showing:
Olduvai Bed I: 1.8 mya - H habilis yes, A boisei yes,
H erectus no, H sapiens no.
Olduvai Bed III: 1.0 mya - H habilis no, A boisei no,
H erectus yes, H sapiens no. Present: H habilis
no, A boisei no, H erectus no, H sapiens
yes.
Evolution as heritable change has occurred.
Now I clearly and explicitly pointed out that I had not, to this very point, offered a single evolutionary theory. My talk had been entirely definitional or observational. Here, I said, I will offer you my first theory. I then showed the first page of a 1960 National Geographic article, where Leakey announces finding "The World's Oldest Man, Zinjanthropus boisei." Although Leakey was among the best anthropologists of his day, we have subsequently discovered far more human looking fossils that are much older. I showed the nice overview of human evolution in the most recent American Scientist (Nov/Dec 1996), with all the transitional forms anyone could want.
So finally I showed a big pile of old science textbooks that a colleague had left stacked in the hall for garbage. Science texts are updated every three years. Six years and they're useless, clogging the dumpsters. I reached for and held up my Bible. "This book, on the other hand," I said, "is thousands of years old, and still every bit as fresh, every bit as vital, as the day it was written. I don't want this to become my science textbook. I love it too much." Speaking time was 39 min 11 seconds. Whew!
I got a really hearty round of applause, and a nice chorus of cheers. I think my ovation easily rivaled Brown's.
After a fifteen minute break came the dialogue. Does the scientific evidence favor creation or evolution? I opened, since I was the second presenter. I picked up my big, potted chrysanthemum and asked if anybody had ever seen one growing wild. Nope? Wild mums look like weeds. This specimen is a demonstration of evolution, artificial manipulation of chromosome number. I had pinned a sign on the pot: "God's hand, by man, through evolution." I then made a gift of this plant to Dr. Brown, so that he could have some evolution to remember me by. I'm not sure whether I looked sweet, or obnoxious as hell. Brown did not smile.
Brown was miserable. The poor man was a shadow of himself. He sat stiffly behind his table with a note pad, shuffling 3x5 cards with little factoids and quotes. He had a file box stuffed full of alphabetized arcana. And I knew what every card and note said. I'd read his book, listened to hours of tapes, and attended all his sessions. He had absolutely nothing new. And he could not offer a cogent response to anything I challenged him with.
I spent most of the debate on my feet, alternately at the edge of the stage speaking to the people, or upstage directly addressing Brown, or occasionally seated and listening.
During the debate I hit him with the three logical fallacies I'd promised at the outset. Logical fallacy #1 took away most of his material. He repeatedly asked questions like: "How can life spontaneously assemble?" or "How could an eyeball evolve?" If I cannot explain to the satisfaction of Walt Brown, right now, how an eyeball evolved, then evolution did not occur. But this is nonsense, confusing an observation with its causation.
The first time he did it, I said to the folks, suppose I were to tell you that I saw the baseball game on TV last night. Then you ask me to explain how that picture got through the air all the way from New York. I don't know. But that doesn't change the fact that I saw the game. Second time Brown did it, I picked up a roll of duct tape and dropped it. I said that of the four forces of nature, gravity is the least understood. Physicists can't explain why that roll of duct tape dropped. Yet it did fall. The third time he demanded some sort of explanation from me regarding an evolutionary observation, I simply told him I would explain that particular observation if he would explain why TWA flight 800 crashed. The debate here is whether evolution has occurred, not how it occurred.
The second logical fallacy came when he questioned my radiometric dates. He calls the assumption of constant nuclear decay "bold, critical, and untested." I characterized this as "gratuitously questioning assumptions." I told about the philosophy instructor who entered the classroom every day and asked: "Will the Sun rise tomorrow?" The answer is yes, unless there is evidence to the contrary. We have 4.5 billion years of observations of yes. If my philosophy instructor would like to suggest "no", the burden of proof is on him.
I identified the third logical fallacy when Brown brought out his "evidence" that the speed of light is decreasing. This involves a series of observations beginning back in the nineteenth century. Never in my life, I said, have I seen anybody with such a strange fondness for old science. The technology a hundred years ago was not as good as today's, hence old observations cannot be equally weighted with new.
As it became clear that he was going to be relatively harmless, I felt bold enough to offer a number of important theories to the congregation, outlining the three lines of evidence for the Big Bang, and the importance of bipedalism. I attacked Brown mostly on definitions, challenging him to define complexity, or even creationism.
I ran out of time five minutes before Brown. He could have used this to his great advantage, but instead, the congregation was treated to a boring reiteration of his little factoids, read from notes. We received applause together at the end.
Thomas Wheeler made some comments on Dr. Dillon's account.
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