John McKay.
How do you do?
How nice to meet you.
I do very well, thank you.
Good, good.
I've just been looking at your little pamphlet.
Didn't have time to read it.
Anyway, thank you very much for doing this.
Pleasure.
You do a lot of talks to schools, don't you?
Yes, we've been on a high school today.
Yeah.
We had 11s, 12s and 13s, so it's been good.
I mean, that's great grades.
Yeah.
What sort of things do you tell them?
Well, today we dealt with some of what you'll see tonight, dealing with some of
our fossils of giant kangaroos and things like that, and changes that can be
observed between the fossils and the present-day world, and then challenged
them to think about, if creation was true, how would you recognise it if you fell
over?
Right, right.
Now, how old are those fossils?
Well, if I was speaking as an orthodox geologist, I'd say anywhere between
100,000 and 10 million, right?
Up to 40 million, right?
So the age is a product of our theories about how we view the world.
It's not a product of facts, not a product of evidence.
No, because, you know, in my own geological research, I'm convinced that
what Charles Lyell did to us all was give us a set of glasses to see the world
through.
So when we believe that whatever carbon-14 or that is doing now, it's always done,
we have a philosophy about how the present connects to the past.
It's not just carbon-14, though, is it?
I mean, there are about a dozen different radioactivity.
It doesn't really matter, because what you've got is a philosophy.
You have to assume that the present is the key to the past, because you weren't there
and I wasn't there.
So whatever age you get, or I get, starts with faith.
But it's not just carbon-14, is it?
I mean, there's potassium, argon, and they all give the same answer,
don't they?
No, they don't.
Carbon-14 wouldn't give you any more than 70,000 years, even if it worked.
They overlap, they overlap.
Well, they're designed...
I mean, we keep looking for new dating methods for the simple reason that the
last one didn't give us the answers we wanted.
That's not true.
It is true, whether you like it or not.
How old do you think the world is?
OK, I believe, just like you believe it might be billions, I believe we've got no
more data than is sufficient for 6,000 or 7,000 years.
And the starting position for both of those is faith, whether you like it or
not, because I wasn't there and you weren't there.
Well, you don't have to be there, do you?
I mean, there are all sorts of things where we weren't there, but the detective
work, the evidence...
Well, your chief starting point is either history or a faith position that whatever
the world is doing now, it's always done.
So Charles Lyell said, Agra Falls is going backwards at 1 foot a year, divided into
the gorge distance, that gives you 35,000 years.
OK, you theologians have to bow the knee.
So there's where it all starts.
Whatever the present world is doing, it's always done.
If there were only one method of dating, then you might have a point, but since
there are so many and they overlap, and you've got dendrochronology,
you've got carbon-14, you've got potassium-argon, you've got uranium,
and they overlap...
Perhaps it tells you that they're all using the same assumption.
That's what it really tells you.
Why are you so desperate?
I mean, it sounds as though you're really on a losing wicket, because, I mean...
No, no, it seems like you need the world to be old for evolution to be true,
because you want to rule God out.
We've got geology, we've got physics, we've got astronomy, we've got biology.
Scientists in all these different disciplines converge upon an age of the
Earth which is about four and a half billion years.
Now, look, look, look, let's be honest.
They converge on that because they're using Charles Lyell's assumption that the
present is the key to the past.
That's a fake starting position.
And quote-unquote from Charles Lyell, my aim is to free science from Moses,
and he's done it.
Except for people like me who are willing to get up and look silly sometimes.
Well, it's really fair to say that we have a faith position, and then we try to make
everything fit.
I mean, there are so many different pieces of scientific evidence, and they all fit
together.
We don't have a faith position.
If the evidence really supported a 6,000-year-old Earth, we'd agree.
Well, look, what your biggest problem is, Richard, when you deal with scientific
evidence, you first of all have to believe things like man is rational, the world is
real, and for every real and rational question, there's a real and rational
answer.
If you don't believe those things, you don't even do science.
So why do you apply this just to evolution?
I mean, why don't you apply it to any other science?
I don't.
And why don't you believe the world is flat?
For the simple reason I've travelled around it.
In other words, you can observe in the present, but here's the problem with this
issue, and we need to be honest, we're trying to go backwards.
We weren't there.
Charles Lyell's book, 1831, Charles Darwin, 1859.
If I take Darwin and say, if this is true, what would the evidence be 100 million
years ago, then I'm stepping from the present back into the past.
I have faith.
If I do that with the Bible, I've got to be honest.
It's a faith-starting position.
Anybody who says it isn't is not telling you the truth.
The difference between 6,000 years and 4.6 billion years, it's equivalent to
believing, if you believe the world is 6,000 years, it's equivalent to believing
the distance from New York to San Francisco is 7.8 yards.
I mean, that's the scale of the disagreement.
Oh, beyond a shadow of a doubt, but the reality is I can measure the
distance to New York from here exactly because it's in the present.
The minute I step backwards, there's several things that I have to do.
I have to assume, how is the present connected to the past?
Charles Lyell deliberately set out to remove a biblical approach.
Lyell was a religious man.
He had problems with Darwin.
You're a religious man.
Be honest, Richard.
You're an atheist, right?
That's not religion.
I'm afraid it is.
It's your blind faith position for which you get nothing.
Nevertheless, Lyell was a Christian and Lyell had problems with Darwin.
Lyell was actually quite reluctant to believe Darwinism.
Of course he did.
But in the end, he's a disciple of his own disciple.
In reality, anybody who sets out to remove Moses from anywhere has a problem with
Jesus Christ who said, if you don't believe Moses, you don't believe me.
John chapter 5.
You can call him a Christian.
I would call him a church man.
You would place what's written in the Bible ahead of the whole of science is
what you're saying.
Well, I don't think even Isaac Newton would have had a problem with that
statement.
Yes, because he did too.
But what's happened between then and now is the change in the glasses we wear.
And if I'm achieving anything in schools or colleges, I'm getting the kids to say,
OK, let's be honest.
How are we seeing the world and what questions are we asking as a result?
If I'm going to be a scientist, I have to believe I'm real.
The world is real.
We can ask real and rational questions.
They are Christian presuppositions, not Buddhist presuppositions, not Hindu
presupposition.
We got them exclusively from a biblical worldview.
Even the word geology is invented by the Bishop of Durham.
So we've got a big, big system of Christian thinking which predates anything
you're talking about.
I'm trying to work out whether you're for real, because I can't believe you're
really sincere.
I mean, I think you... I'm trying to work out where you're coming from.
You can't seriously believe what you're saying you believe.
So I'm wondering what your agenda is.
OK, well, you may have trouble with seriously believe, but I've been doing it
for 20 years, so obviously it must be a good act, right?
Yeah, I believe it's obviously a good act.
And in reality, you will find there are many young people who are now Christians
as a result of what we decided.
OK, the young people are having trouble with Christianity.
What's their problem?
It's creation versus evolution, nine times out of ten in this present
world.
Yeah, I believe it.
But what do you say when you meet somebody like a bishop?
I mean, bishops don't go along with you, do they?
I mean, they all accept evolution as God's way of doing things.
Well, I had a good debate against John Polkinghorne, and he actually lost that
debate, and it's worth seeing.
In what sense did he lose it?
Well, let's put it this way, he politely wiped the floor, if you want to see the
debate, because he was trying to argue that the God of the Bible used evolution,
and Charles Darwin would have been the first to disagree, because the God of the
Bible says he made the world good, and evolution hasn't got such a concept.
Everything's just natural.
Death is part of the system.
Well, that's true.
The biblical God says there was no death until sin.
So you can have a God, but it's your own imagination.
Right, so you have to cut that line in two.
Yeah, what about thorns?
Are you one of those who believes that thorns didn't come into the world until
after Adam fell?
Yeah, I am, but you see, what you're really saying is that roses started out
without thorns, but then my biology professor said that too.
Yeah.
Because we have to start from seaweed, which doesn't have thorns, and end up with
roses, which does.
Yeah, but you're just playing with words now, aren't you?
No, I'm not, because you have to explain where thorns come from too.
But you take millions of years with the prince and the toad sort of story.
Yeah, what about thorns being found in the same fossil beds as dinosaurs?
What do you make of that?
Well, you've got to remember that the word geology, as I said, was invented by the
Bishop of Durham.
Our original geologists were all catastrophists.
They were basically creationists in their concept.
What you and I have done is re-look at the geological record through Charles Layles'
eyes.
I don't really care about the original geologists.
What about modern geologists?
Right, the fact is, you have a story about the rocks and the past.
When I go out on a dinosaur dig and I dig up a dinosaur, it doesn't come up with a
label that says, Hi, I was here 200 million years ago.
I found it in the hole today, and then I proceed to try and work out a story which
I actually can't get back to check.
So you think dinosaurs co-existed with humans?
I've no problem with that at all.
Okay, and why don't we see fossil dinosaurs and fossil humans together?
Why would you?
I mean, if you had a worldwide flood today, would you expect kangaroos to be
buried with Brits?
Not necessarily.
Good, good.
You've made the point I'm trying to make.
But you would expect to see dinosaurs co-existing with modern mammals.
Okay, define your word co-existing.
Do you mean in the same layer?
Yes.
Right, for the simple reason that you believe each layer got their one on top of
the other, and they all took vast amounts of time to get there.
Now I'll tell you what I've done in reverse to challenge geologists with this.
Go to the Grand Canyon, start at the top with Joe Tourist, it's a half a mile down
to the bottom of the fossils, and in our orthodox geology we say that's about 300
million years worth of time.
Okay, let's reverse the question we normally ask and say, if it really took
that long, how much rock on average is laid down each year?
Answer?
About a 40th of, you know, 1 by 10 to the 4th of an inch.
It's insignificant.
So something's wrong with our story somewhere.
Well it does happen, it continuously does.
But if it doesn't, now you've shot evolution in the foot.
Now you haven't.
Because you have a fossil record full of gaps, which is Charles Darwin's biggest
problem.
Of course you have a fossil record full of gaps.
Good, good.
Everyone knows that.
Great.
That's one reason why I ceased being an evolutionist.
You don't get fossils in the wrong order, do you?
You don't find, as J.B.S.
Horvath said, fossil rabbits in the Cambrian.
Well, I haven't found a fossil rabbit in the Cambrian.
But I tell you what, I was out in Wales the other day, and here we have a lovely
mixture of land plants all in with seashells, and I found exactly the same
beds in the USA.
And I'm convinced that Derek Age, evolutionist as he was, right,
anticreationist, but a catastrophist was right when he said the early catastrophist
geologists were much more objective than the present day was.
And you, above all people, should know that we've got currently the thinking of
punctuated equilibrium, because it works better than Darwin's slow punctuated
theory.
Slow, you know, progression theory.
It really does.
For me, Darwin's inspiration comes from evidence, but where do you think Darwin
was coming from?
Where did Darwin get his inspiration from?
Well, I think the BBC program, which had him sitting outside the church
on his daughter's gravestone, refusing to go inside, because we've got to remember
he had a master's degree in theology, right, is a real key to understanding.
As his great, great grandson Richard wrote in Nature or Science, I don't know which
one, that when Charles Darwin's favourite daughter Annie died, he turned his back on
Christy Abbott.
It's only after that that he felt free to actually embrace all of his evolutionary
theology, is what I call it.
So his inspiration is really, I'm angry if there's a good God, why should my
favourite daughter die and my poor little single good girl?
A good question.
His answer is ultimately, there's no God, everything just happens naturally.
Annie died in 1851, and Darwin wrote a pretty full sketch of his theory in 1844.
Yeah, but he published it in what year?
1859.
So he felt free after that to actually go with it.
Before 1859, he's hesitant, he doesn't publish.
He's pushed on by competitors, he's pushed on by his own thinking.
You can even see it in his books, when he starts out in book one,
there's still a creator there.
By the time you get to book two and three, his creator is out the window.
But in 1844 he had this full theory, why would he have developed that theory if
he didn't pick the evidence?
Well, if you lived in Victoriana, England, and all the bishops were some
sort of catastrophic creationists, you would have to be a brave man.
Unfortunately for him, he was independently wealthy, so he didn't really
care in the end.
But, like most of us, he goes from his daughter dying up to the publishing,
and there is a progression there, just as there is a progression after he
publishes his first book.
And it's more and more anti-Christian.
Well, but you can't say that it was his daughter dying that inspired him,
because he wrote it out...
Well, I'd suggest you read what his great-great grandson Richard said,
because he would reach that sort of conclusion.
That was a motivating factor.
You don't think he was motivated by Satan?
Er, he never admits to anything like that.
I don't have any evidence he went to séances, right?
I wouldn't be silly enough to say that.
I thought I'd read that you had said it somewhere.
Well, you'd have to find it for me.
I can't remember saying anything like that at all, so...
I wouldn't, er, you know, it's not what he says.
What sorts of things do you tell the children when you lecture to children?
OK, we've just put a new three-dimensional website up, which has got the whole course
that we do in schools, particularly the public schools.
So anybody who wants to hear the full answer can go to evidenceweb.net,
click on education, and then they'll see the whole high school course, which deals
with basically that question.
If creation is true, or if evolution is true, how would you recognise the evidence
of your fellow?
Because my view of education is, if you can teach the kids how to think,
you're miles ahead from teaching them what to think.
Because then they will be able to think, which is what this country and every other
country in the West needs.
Certainly all for teaching them to think.
Good, great, excellent.
We agree on one thing.
Well, I'm not sure we really do, actually, but, er, but still.
There must be a lot of money behind you if you can put together three-dimensional
websites.
We have supporters, and folks can go and see us at evidenceweb.net, and they're
free to make donations, but no, you wouldn't say this is the way to get
rich.
I used to earn a lot more when I was lecturing in geology for technical
education.
You were lecturing in geology?
Yeah, for technical education.
You got a degree in geology then?
I got a degree in geology, yeah, and in education too, so...
Are your donations tax-free?
Er, in different countries they are.
Like you have a system here, they have a different system in America, so it would
depend on what each group in each country did.
Which countries is it tax-free in?
Er, it's tax-free in England.
I mean, you have your sort of reverse system.
It's tax-free, I know the reverse system.
So you have that.
In America, it's a slightly different system, but the result is the same.
That means that in Britain, your enterprise is supported by the British
taxpayer, in effect.
Yeah, well, you've got to remember the government got the money off the taxpayer
in the first place, so please don't say it's their money.
I do remember that.
The point I'd like to make is that it's God who provides for all of us,
atheists included.
Yeah, well, I mean, tax-free charities are supposed to be good for the public,
they're supposed to be good for education, or good for something like that.
Can you really claim that?
Oh yeah, definitely, definitely.
And if the question were raised in Parliament...
...that they should come to schools and watch us, right?
And see the results in kids who learn how to think.
And again, go to evidenceweb.net, click on the Search for the Origin of Life
program, and learn how to think yourself.
I should do that.
It does rather seem to me that it's rather like going back more than a century,
actually.
A century and a half.
Well, we had a very clever premier in our state, and somebody accused him of turning
back the clock 30 years, and said yes, but then we had no inflation and no
unemployment.
So I have no problem with saying yes, I had this concept from that long ago,
but I grew up outside the church, so I didn't grow up brainwashed with this.
It's the result of finishing my university course, listening to students say,
if evolution is true, why can't we see it happening?
Third-year genetics question to the professor.
You take that question seriously, do you?
Oh yeah, yeah.
And the professor, his answer, I took even more seriously when he said,
well, it happens so slowly, you wouldn't expect to see it happening.
And all of a sudden I thought, hang on.
That's true.
Good.
So in other words, what you don't see happening is not science, it's
unobservable, and you are the first person on PBS.
You're using the word see as meaning see within one lifetime.
If a phenomenon takes billions of years, of course you're not going to see it.
Which means you have a faith position, and you need to admit it.
It means you have to use other evidence than the evidence of one man's eyes.
Oh, sorry, Darwin was only 1859.
That's only 150 years ago almost, right?
And you haven't seen it, and I haven't seen it, so please stop calling it
science.
Teacher, what's more interesting than just seeing with one man's eyes?
You can see through geology's eyes, you can see through instruments' eyes.
You know perfectly well that we have instruments that can measure things that
the human eye can't see.
Now we're back to the start.
You might as well say you don't believe in electrons.
Now we're back to the start, because you have to assume what you're seeing now is
always applied.
That's your faith position to remove Moses.
You can't see electrons, and do you not believe in electrons?
Well, I'm afraid if you can't see God, do you not believe in God?
Let's be objective here.
Answer the question.
I have no problem with electrons, but they're here now.
Well, why not?
Because you can't see them.
No, no, no.
I can actually run them through bits of paper.
I can see the results.
That's right, you have instruments that can measure them.
But the minute you start to turn that backwards and say it was doing the same
thing 150, 200 million years ago, please admit to the allegiance of your
faith.
And call what you're teaching philosophy or atheism, if you're going to really be
honest.
And my time is up.
That's ridiculous.
But anyway, thank you very much.
Thank you.