Yesterday I spent a few hours being filmed in an interview for a DVD being put out by Creationist Ministries International, a 20-year retrospective on the 1988 debate at the University of New South Wales between Duane Gish and Ian Plimer. I went back and forth a few times about whether I should do it, finally concluding that it would be worthwhile.
I have no fear of an “Expelled”-like distortion in this case–the questions were provided to me in advance, and I negotiated the terms of the release agreement and had my attorney review it. I have the right to use the full footage myself (to put on YouTube or otherwise distribute or broadcast), so if I were to find myself misrepresented through creative editing (which I don’t believe will happen), I would be able to demonstrate it.
My involvement was requested because of the role I played in criticizing Plimer and certain of the Australian Skeptics for misrepresentations of the creationists, which I wrote about first in the article “Some Failures of Organized Skepticism” in The Arizona Skeptic, and later in “How Not to Argue with Creationists” in the Creation/Evolution journal, “How Not to Respond to Criticism” which is available online through the talkorigins.org website, and in my review of Plimer’s book Telling Lies for God, on my website. In preparation for the interview, I dug out my file folders regarding these articles, which amounts to a stack of paper
about six inches thick. Reviewing the files, I re-read some of the correspondence I had with Mark Plummer, then president of the Victoria Branch of the Australian Skeptics, and former executive director of CSICOP (now CSI). At some point, I should put some of that stuff online–it was quite unbelievable.
I thought it went pretty well, though it took me several takes to get through some of the questions, and I didn’t say everything I wanted to say. The one item that I kick myself for forgetting to say was to emphasize the point that Duane Gish, debater for young-earth creationism, has two things that he always refuses to debate–the age of the earth and flood geology. Those also happen to be the two main areas of positive claims that make up young-earth creationism, which he rules out of court at the start of every debate.
The interviewer, Tim, is a CMI supporter who once applied for a job with Answers in Genesis and is now happy that he didn’t get it, since he feels he was deceived by them about their split from CMI. The cameraman, Mike, who was hired for this job, was also a Christian, but didn’t seem to be a young-earth creationist. He frequently films both interviews and outdoor nature footage, often for science documentaries, and he expressed his love for knowledge and science. We had an interesting discussion after the interview about creationism, Christianity, and science.
Tim took the position that young-earth creationism is an essential part of Christianity, because God must have been able to communicate his word accurately in the first place, because Jesus endorsed the truth of Genesis, and because death before the Fall in Eden would imply that God didn’t create a perfect universe. He also holds the position that only “operational science” is valid science–that which can take place in the laboratory and be “directly observed” (which philosophers of science know is very little, since instrument-assisted and even naked-eye observation is “theory-laden”). (Tim’s view of science, where it came from, and what’s wrong with it is the subject of Christopher Toumey’s excellent book, God’s Own Scientists: Creationists in a Secular World.) I pointed out to him that that’s the kind of choice–young-earth creationism or atheism–that helped drive me to atheism.
Mike, by contrast, didn’t think young-earth creationism was essential to Christianity, but that the discoveries of science open more possibilities for religious interpretation. Today, I agree with Mike–given what I know about religions and how they work, Christianity is not defined solely in terms of the content of the Bible, even for evangelical Christians. Fundamentalism as it exists today didn’t exist until the early twentieth century. And even within evangelical Christianity, there are those who have argued very forcefully against young-earth creationism (I pulled out my copy of Daniel Wonderly’s Neglect of Geologic Data: Sedimentary Strata Compared With Young Earth from the Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute, and could have also pointed to Davis Young and Howard Van Till’s Science Held Hostage: What’s Wrong with Creation Science and Evolutionism, or pointed to Mike Beidler’s blog, “The Creation of an Evolutionist”).
I think it’s interesting that if all Christians took Tim’s viewpoint rather than Mike’s, there would probably be a lot more atheists and a lot fewer Christians.
UPDATE (January 1, 2009): I wrote up my initial reaction to the completed documentary here, and you can view the video yourself here.
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