Brian Baxter *

April 2006

In addition to its flagship Creation magazine, Answers in Genesis (AiG) produces another publication called the Technical Journal (TJ). This was introduced late in 1984 as ‘a special technical edition of Ex Nihilo‘, an earlier version of Creation. Readers would be excited by the new publication’s ‘glossy four-colour cover’ and were assured that ‘[e]ven though it is a technical journal, many layman [sic] would also be able to glean much from its pages’. (Creation Science Prayer News, Jan. 1985, 3)

Although TJ (or, to give it the full title it used for several years, Ex Nihilo Technical Journal) was promoted as being a ’scientific’ journal of some kind - ‘a must for the technical-minded’ - it was clear from the first that it would cover a very wide range of issues. A recent TJ describes itself as:

An international journal devoted to the presentation and discussion of technical aspects of the sciences such as geology, biology, astronomy etc., and also geography, archaeology, biblical history, philosophy etc., as they relate to the study of biblical creation and Noah’s Flood. (TJ, Vol. 19(3), 2005, inside front cover)

So does this mean you can send TJ an article disputing the reality of the Genesis creation story/stories or gently suggesting that the Noahic global flood tale is a crock? Surely you jest. Kindly refer to TJ’s ‘Instructions to Authors’:

‘TJ’ is dedicated to upholding the authority of the 66 books of the Bible, especially in the area of origins. All members of the Editorial Team adhere to the … AiG Statement of Faith and most papers will be designed to support this. (ibid., 128)

The ‘Statement of Faith’ includes the not-unexpected assertions that the Bible is the written Word of God, divinely inspired and inerrant throughout, and that ‘Scripture teaches a recent origin for man and the whole creation’. Naturally, the Genesis Flood was ‘an actual historic event, worldwide … in its extent and effect’. (ibid., 2)

Brief History

TJ got off to a slow start, with only four issues produced up to 1990. A clear majority of articles dealt with aspects of the physical sciences - so-called ‘Flood geology’, the alleged decline in the speed of light (remember Barry Setterfield?), criticism of dating techniques etc. However, with the successful establishment of AiG in the United States, TJ began to appear first twice and then three times a year. My impression is that there are now more historical/theological-type articles than there used to be, but TJ still presents a superficially ’scientific’ appearance and is promoted by AiG as a fully-fledged science journal. The organisation seems to have been genuinely surprised when they tried in 2000 to place an advertisement for TJ in the journal of the Geological Society of Australia and were unceremoniously knocked back:

Our ad did not hide the fact that the ‘[Creation Ex Nihilo] Technical Journal’ dealt with creation and evolution. We explained that the scientific scope [of our journal] was broad, including astronomy, geology, biology, geomorphology and a number of other fancy geological fields … [W]e were excited to think that more Australian geologists would soon have the opportunity to examine interpretations of geology from a biblical perspective. (AiG Prayer News, May 2000, 3)

In recent years, AiG has begun to claim that TJ is no less than ‘the world’s premier refereed creation publication’. (Creation, Jun. 2001, 35) Prospective contributors are assured that the organisation will provide ‘refereeing through our contacts’ (TJ 14[2], c. mid-2000, inside back cover), and the magazine was proudly described in 2005 as ‘AiG’s peer reviewed science journal’. (Answers Prayer News, Apr. 2005, 15) At first I thought this unconscionable, but later realised that AiG is using terms like ‘refereed’ and ‘peer reviewed’ in a highly specialised sense, the ‘referees’ and ‘peers’ presumably all being creationists!

Outside their fields?

[A]ll scientists are laypeople … outside of their field. (Creation, Jun. 2001, 35)

It is often alleged that AiG authors stray beyond the boundaries of their expertise, and with this charge in mind I examined all three issues of TJ published during 2005. In general, well over half of each journal is comprised of various ‘overviews’, ‘viewpoints’, ‘papers’ etc. by authors whose qualifications and brief biographies are appended to their articles. (By some strange quirk of fate, all of these authors are male.)

When I began this exercise I was trying to identify authors who were clearly writing outside their fields. However, after a preliminary run-through, I decided it would be much easier to identify authors who clearly wrote within their fields. I’ll confine myself here to the 20 or so articles principally concerned with the natural sciences.

TJ Volume 19(1)

Peter Line, author of two articles on the ‘fossil evidence for alleged apemen’, has an undergraduate major in biophysics and a Master’s degree and PhD, both in neuroscience, all from unnamed universities. (42) This topic looks like paleoanthropology to me. Are neuroscientists supposed to know a lot about paleoanthropology?

Carl Wieland, the founder of Creation magazine, has MB BS degrees from Adelaide University. He’s writing here about ‘mitochondrial Eve’, but why? He’s certainly not a geneticist and he hasn’t even practised medicine for the last 20 years. (59)

‘Can recombination produce new genetic information?’ asks author Chase W. Nelson. Nelson is ‘a high school junior with a particular interest in biology as it relates to evolutionary theory. He often gives talks at his [unnamed] school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes on topics ranging from Genesis to Christian love.’ (64) I’m all for encouraging the young but is this really the best that the ‘world’s premier refereed creation publication’ can do?

Lawson L. Schroeder tells us all about ‘a possible post-Flood human migration route’. Is Schroeder an anthropologist, an archaeologist or at least a geographer? No, he’s a dentist. (72)

John Hartnett might be the goods. The Physics Department at the University of Western Australia (UWA) awarded him a BSc (Hons.) in 1973 and a PhD with distinction in 2001. He’s published more than 45 papers in refereed scientific journals and his current research interests include ultra-low-noise radar and ultra-high stability microwave clocks. Hang on, what’s this at the end of his bio? - ‘This work or the ideas expressed are those of the author and do not represent those of UWA or any UWA research’. (81) What’s your topic here, John? ‘A creationist cosmology in a galactocentric universe’, eh? ‘The observations that place the earth near the centre of the universe are consistent with God’s focus on mankind.’ (73) Well, John, if you say so - but I’d rather hear it from an astrophysicist.

David A. DeWitt is an associate professor of biology and the director of the Centre for Creation Studies at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. (96) (How’s Jerry Falwell these days, David? - you know, the founder of Liberty University and co-founder of the defunct Moral Majority.) DeWitt received a PhD in neurosciences from Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, but here he’s considering whether ‘a jaw muscle protein mutation [led] to increased cranial capacity in man’, which I hope doesn’t overtax his knowledge of genetics. And I note that his references include a couple from that well-known science journal TJ.

Bill Worraker, BSc (Hons.) in physics and PhD in engineering mathematics (University of Bristol, UK) specialises in fluid flow phenomena. He argues in his paper that ‘[e]vidence from [our] galaxy centre suggests that the contents of the region may be much younger than uniformitarian [i.e. mainstream] scientists believe’. (97) We’re getting closer here, as Bill is also an astronomer - an amateur, it’s true, but I guess it’s better than nothing. (106)

Jerry Bergman holds various degrees in fields such as biology, chemistry and psychology, his highest qualification being a PhD in measurement and evaluation, minor in psychology, from Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan (1976). His (to date unchallenged) entry in Wikipedia notes that he was once denied tenure at an institution ‘because of problems with the standard of his scholarship’. The entry continues:

In 1992 [Bergman] received a PhD in human biology from Columbia Pacific University, San Rafael, California. This degree is legal, but the university faced accusations that it was a diploma mill and had its accreditation removed in 1997.

Bergman’s TJ article is entitled: ‘Are “defective” knee joints evidence for Darwinism?’ (107) He is not a knee specialist, nor does he have the paleoanthropological background to make authoritative pronouncements about the evolution of the knee, but he seems to have some relevant training in biology and biomedical science. However, he draws on several creationist sources and I am extremely doubtful whether this piece would be accepted by any other ’scientific journal’.

TJ Volume 19(2)

Alex Williams has two articles here about the ‘inheritance of biological information’. Williams holds a BSc in Botany from the University of New England and an MSc (Hons.) in radioecology from Macquarie University. (He also has various theological qualifications.) Given his interest in botany, Williams must have received some training in genetics, but look at the scope of his project: a ‘new understanding’ of inheritance ‘needs to be based on biblical creation’ etc.; ‘… Darwinists [cannot] come to grips with the reality of biological information because they reject the idea of purpose’! (29) Sorry, Alex, but even your rising to the giddy heights of honorary botanist at the Western Australian Herbarium doesn’t quite cut it.

Jerry Bergman appears again, this time asking, ‘Can evolution produce new organs or structures?’ (76) He advances an argument based around the concept of ‘irreducible complexity’ which neither he nor anyone else can sustain. In terms of qualifications, he is a biologist, but is his training extensive enough to bear the weight of his sweeping anti-Darwinian conclusions?

Charles Soper is a renal physician (and ex-missionary). (95) He seems perfectly entitled to write about ‘the paradoxical urinary concentrating mechanism’, but is certainly not entitled to present this mechanism as ‘an excellent example of “irreducible complexity”‘. However, at least Soper seems to be writing in his field.

Pierre Jerlstrom, a PhD in molecular microbiology from Griffith University (and also co-ordinator of the TJ editorial team) and Henry de Roos, an agricultural scientist-cum-biochemist, join forces in an article demonstrating that an alleged plesiosaur carcass washed up on the Nova Scotia coast was actually the remains of a basking shark. (109) While in my opinion both authors are writing outside their fields, it probably doesn’t matter too much as the article seems to have little or no relevance to creationism.

At last, a palpable hit! John K. Reed has a PhD in geology and actually writes an article about geology. (119) Unfortunately, Reed is also the geology editor for America’s Creation Research Society Quarterly and his paper trumpets the virtues of rescaling the geologic column from its present 4.5 billion years to - oh, I don’t know - call it 6,000 years, give or take. You see, the Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras could become the Recessive Deluge and Postdiluvian Eras respectively. Looks much better, doesn’t it?

TJ Volume 19(3)

A number of authors reappear in this volume, still straying beyond their fields of expertise e.g. Alex Williams and John Hartnett. Hartnett’s conclusion to his ‘Cosmological expansion in a creationist cosmology’ is worthy of note:

…[I]t would seem we have a universe that places our galaxy at the centre of an enormous spherically symmetric distribution with all others speeding away from us. This actually is due to God having stretched out space like a curtain with the galaxies tied to it. (101)

Carl Wieland MB BS treats us to a lecture about ice-cores and the age of the earth, but at least this time he calls in a couple of atmospheric scientists, Michael Oard and Larry Vardiman, to help him. (51) Oard happens to serve on the board of America’s Creation Research Society while Vardiman works at the Institute for Creation Research Graduate School in California. Wieland has a second article answering objections to creationist ‘dinosaur soft tissue’ experiments, ably assisted by David Menton, a biology PhD and speaker with AiG, USA. (54) One would like to think that former family doctor Wieland was not the primary author of these short papers, but then, one would like to think a lot of things.

Jonathan Sarfati writes on ‘plant death in the Bible’. (60) You’ll be happy to learn that ‘plants do not die in the biblical sense’, and that the appropriate qualification for telling us this is evidently a PhD in physical chemistry. Botanists need not apply.

Michael Oard (retired meteorologist), John Hergenrather (bachelor’s degree in geography) and Peter Klevberg (Bachelor of Engineering Science) combine their talents in ‘Flood-transported quartzites - east of the Rocky Mountains’. (76) Where’s the geologist?

Justin K. Taylor writes about ‘the speed of matter’ in relation to the problem (for creationists) of distant starlight. (91) Is Justin an astrophysicist? Actually, he’s a student of mathematics and physics at a US university. But he is ‘an amateur astronomer and plans to study astrophysics in graduate school’. Good luck, Justin.

Finally, veteran creationist Royal Truman, with a PhD in organic chemistry from Michigan State University, presents an article called ‘The ubiquitin protein: chance or design?’: ‘Probabalistic calculations suggest evolutionary processes did not produce’ the known functional sequences of ubiquitin. You didn’t convince me, Royal, but you do get a great big elephant stamp for sticking to your field.

Conclusion

With the best will in the world, I can identify only a handful of authors who are clearly qualified to write the articles presented in the 2005 issues of TJ. The publication is certainly not a ‘refereed scientific journal’ in any meaningful sense of the term, and to make such a claim seems misleading and contemptible.

AiG, of course, sees things rather differently. Jonathan Sarfati has announced that ‘… the [AiG] ministry’s axioms are the propositions of the Bible, not the theories of fallible scientists.’ (TJ 12[2], c. mid-1998, 150) And Answers Prayer News of Jan. 2006 (16) warns us of our fate should we humanists, skeptics and sundry malefactors continue to spread our ‘evolutionary propaganda’, especially among school-children:

Jesus said: ‘But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.’ (Matthew 18:6)

(This article was originally published in The Skeptic Autumn 2006 (Vol. 26, No. 1).
Republished with permission.)