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The Academic Niceties of Fair Play while it is Still Day

The Advertiser, April 17, 1997

A news item about 'Creation Science a Scam', from the tongue of an academic person addressing the Press Club in Canberra, would seem to need some balance by accounts of what ELSE is being said and done. Hence a record is here provided of a FAX of news sent to the officer in charge of AAP in Sydney. Various ways of shortening this news were suggested, down to some 300 words or less if needed. Here however the entire substance, minus some minor introductory words and one misprint, is produced.

It is a testimony therefore to what is available, and an answer which the Press may possibly not see fit to notice, for whatever reasons they hold sacred.

We shall hope for better things; and shall see.

April 24, 1997 - Fax to AAP (address put up to date, 2004)

I have been concerned, as a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and Australian citizen at the article from AAP (published in The Advertiser, it seems, April 17, 1997), entitled "Creation Science a Scam: scholar". Not the character of the words per se is it that particularly concerns me: it is the question of reason in the presentation, or of balance in meeting it . It has not been seen paired with anything that could be construed as an answer. If it has been please advise.

I do not know what ethics you follow in such a case, but here is one opportunity to illustrate them.

Would you care to consider what follows as representing something else that is happening ... Actually, I have yet to see in the papers sober reflection of this historically massive approach of creation at all, for months, as this current furore on the Melbourne court case for creationism-evolutionism mounts. Never let it be said, however , that nothing of this kind was available to the various media and media agents.? It can be shortened to a rough equality with the other one if you like. Actually, I have yet to see in the papers sober reflection of this approach at all, for months as this current furore on the Melbourne court case re creationism-evolutionism mounts. Never let it be said that nothing was available.

Now follows script for some appropriate account, to au pair your article (and perhaps others) noted above:-

Science amid organic evolution is not merely a complete misnomer, but a virtual contradiction in terms. This magical fiction masquerading as hypothesis, fails so constantly to meet the facts or supply the relevant evidence that it has broken into a mass of such hypotheses, constantly expanding as one after another becomes so ludicrous that its opponents, evolutionists though they be, expose each other with amazement, wrath or glee, sometimes astounded at each other's folly.

It is, we are told from time to time, obviously gradual, equally obviously non-gradual, occurs by logical steps, comes in illogical bursts, is entirely unpredictable, arrives as expected, occurs anyway, is easy to see, is never seen - is required by reason, is held to by faith alone, since God is deplorable ( a view at times expressed by scientists speaking in this field) or undesirable: a scarcely scientific finding. Conforming to no laws, violating some, it remains as unattested in processive thinking as in perceptive observation.

All this and the Bible's teaching on creation, is expounded in detail in our over one million word Web site, World Wide Web Witness,  {now 7.8 million word, at http://webwitness.org.au} , dealing at length with this and the other reasons why it is not a possibility, but a logical certainty that the Bible is the word of God, and that in particular, creation is what happened. Here, confrontation, agreement, exploration is welcomed. Over any media, for forty years one lacks any logical presentation that rates as a challenge!

Despite this, it is declared, evolutionism of one brand or another is thrust into the minds of school students in S.A. without even proper opportunity to debate; science is evacuated of it like the plague; unfair intellectual practice is the authorised norm in State Schools, while religion is dismissed as non-factual: in an question-begging effrontery which makes vilification look benevolent by contrast. This is the case since the 1988 SA Education Department Circular to Principals, critically examined at the site. THIS squalor is in a Government Department of S.A., while Premier after Premier is confronted by rebuffed petitioning Christians, some with doctorates, seeking education and freedom, not propaganda and indoctrination; and Premier after Premier dallies and delays, before leaving the scene of Premiership with no obvious glory.

The realities of scientific method facing not hope but fact, do not SUGGEST creation amidst competing runners in the hypothetical race; they allow nothing else.

The world blares at evolutionists that it is losing some of the variety and scope of design, while now non-existent species are deplored by a sense of loss; for methods of increase are not visible, but methods of loss are legion - but they do not listen. The unthinkable is thought, the undo-able is done, but only in the mind. The gossamer constructions of philosophically flirtatious fancies do nothing to subdue the facts. The facts do nothing to support the theories.

It is time open competition was "allowed" and this evolutionism was made to earn its keep, instead of having to shoot empty verbal ballistics about scams and the like, put out by people in authority, whose reason, it is observed, is harder to find than their opinions in any open interchange. This is the message.

The Presbyterian Minister involved (PC in America) reports:-

I personally have challenged Adelaide University over years, on site, in a Student Club publicising to Staff and to students our claims and their opportunity to overthrow them by reason if they can: without anything coming back which could so much as stand. The proposition has been just this: the word alone and altogether authorised by Almighty God for the human race is found in the Bible.

It is a matter, at this level, of reason - which as our Web site shows - has neither rest nor reality elsewhere. It is in addition, like evolutionism, a matter of faith; but in the latter case, it is without support of any kind from reason: numerous theories, unstable because they are not validatable by reason, by reality, by relevant verification. It just doesn't happen that way down here.

The extent of the banal propaganda is shown by a 5UV interview once accorded me: Just go over to the University, said the announcer, and they will show you evolution! In his clouded view, there it was, operating it seems, like a machine. In fact, if that were possible, if ANYTHING could be SHOWN which was an operative reality and not a metaphysical illusion, science at last would be relevant. At present misuse of authority in schools and at University is de rigueur; and as we have noted, it is in this respect, a philosophy of human-racism, as ugly in its domineering as Hitler's crass evolutionary variants ever were.

On occasion after occasion I have made it clear as student, Lecturer, teacher, or Minister in four countries, in churches, in universities: evolution is as logical as any other magic, but not more so. NEVER have I received a logical reply in any open discourse. In one lecturing situation, I resigned rather than toe the party line, and on challenging for reason, could find only one official answer: it was 'not convenient'! In news situations, bias in space is the usual method, but our Web site now leaves no excuse for misused authority.

Rev. Dr. Robert E. Donaldson Th.D., M.A., B.D., B.A., Dip.Ed.

Valley View, S.A.

This is the substance of the Fax sent to AAP in the name of The Australian Presbyterian Bible Church Inc..