Paul Taylor

Paul Taylor

Part one

Paul Taylor's blog can be found at http://www.justsixdays.co.uk/.

Now that Philip Bell appears to have parted company with Answers in Genesis (UK), it is natural that our attention is drawn to his colleague, Paul Taylor. Bell had been expected to make a presentation in Winchester in October 2006 at the invitation of the fundamentalist Hyde Street Chapel. After Bell’s biography was pulled from AiG’s web site, Hyde Street Chapel continued to suggest that Bell would make an appearance in October, apparently alongside Taylor.

However, Hyde Street Chapel subsequently also dropped all mention of Bell. As far as we can make out, Bell now seems to have disappeared from fundamentalist circles. However, AiG (UK) appears not to be short of funding and we assume that a replacement for Bell is being sought. We have no idea why Bell has parted company with AiG.

Taylor, like Bell, is an ex-school teacher. In Taylor’s case his first degree is in chemistry. Taylor appears to have taught for about 17 years until 1999 (at the peak of the dot.com boom) when he abruptly changed career and became a web designer. He joined AiG UK in 2005.

Taylor admits that he was pushing the fundamentalist line on his pupils and that other teachers were, as a result, hostile. However, there is no evidence to suggest that he was pushed out of the school because of his evangelical tactics.

In the absence of evidence to suggest otherwise, we would guess that his change of career around 1999 was to do with money and the need to spend time looking after his children. Taylor is a single parent with three (now teenage) children. We guess that web design work allowed him to largely work from home.

However, it is Taylor’s planned visit to Winchester which is the reason for this article (written in the summer of 2006). We have come to the conclusion that the Hyde Street Chapel is emerging as a major, well organised, centre for fundamentalism in the region. Past creationist speakers have included such prominent creationists as Philip Bell, Andy McIntosh and Stuart Burgess.

Why should two established academics involve themselves in what is a tiny back street chapel a long was from where either is based? Apart from an historical oddity adjacent to Winchester Cathedral, the chapel is almost certainly the smallest church in Winchester.

Well, it now appears that another academic has actively been associated with Hyde Street Chapel. Step forward Dr. Jonathan Swingler of Southampton University (Southampton is about 12 miles from Winchester). He is also not the only Southampton University academic with connections to Hyde Street Chapel. Terry Hamblin was one of the 27 signatories to the notorious 2002 letter to Estelle Morris, then Secretary of State for Education. Both Stuart Burgess and Andy McIntosh were also signatories to that letter.

Swingler is listed as a Senior Research Fellow by Southampton University. Swingler is understood to have led open air meetings, in conjunction with the Open Air Mission, of Hyde Street Chapel.

(See http://about.zoominfo.com/directory/Swingler_Jonathan_691818146.htm.)

According to an article written in Evangelical Times by Swingler, "The ‘open airs’ in Winchester, conducted by Hyde Street Chapel in association with the Open-Air Mission, have been operating for over two years now. What is our approach?

A team of ten go out to the same spot in Winchester city centre on a regular basis. A regular spot and time is essential for people to get familiar with you being there — and they know where to come for help.

A board for visual aided talks acts as a focal point for the preacher. The other team members provide a ‘crowd’ and distribute leaflets as appropriate. We never give leaflets or talk to people who are listening to the preacher. We let them hear the gospel!

When they move off, we then engage with them. We also have team members giving testimonies to add variety. Our aim is to present the gospel in a clear, sane manner."

See http://www.evangelical-times.org/articles/jun04/jun04a14.htm for the full report.

Swingler admits that they made no converts. If there are any doubts in your mind that Swingler is a hard-line fundamentalist, read this: http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/volume120issue6_comments.php?id=P1799_0_39_0_C

Swingler appears to be active in the Southampton University Christian Union and the Netley Christian Fellowship. Netley is basically a suburb of Southampton. (Fundamentalists appear to be very active in the Christian Societies/Unions of some British universities – Paul Taylor spoke to the Christian Union of the London School of Economics in 2006).

The author of this paper must admit that he has no memory of seeing these people in the centre of Winchester. However, Winchester High Street is pretty notorious amongst locals for the number of street hustlers and dubious-looking Holy Joes trying to sell whatever. In recent years the Mormons have decided to try their luck on a big scale. Everybody can spot them a mile off because they all look as if they are straight out of a business conference for bill-board salesmen – complete with clip on name badges, shiny white teeth and Dale Carnegie-type smiles.

Anyway, talking about dubious-looking Holy Joes brings us back to Paul Taylor. He was born in Ashton-under-Lyne in North-West England. That should ring a bell amongst anti-creationists. It’s the base of Randall Hardy and Creation Research (UK). Apparently Taylor became a creationist from reading some literature in a Christian bookshop there. He was brought up in nearby Stalybridge, a place which should also ring bells in the minds of anti-creationists. For it is there that creationist Sylvia Baker, one of the 27 signatories to the Estelle Morris letter, founded and ran a fundamentalist school for years.

Taylor is too old to have ever attended this school (but he was privately educated). However, the locations again add anecdotal evidence to that fact that fundamentalism in the UK is primarily a product of the old industrial heartlands of Northern England.

A plausible explanation is that the mainstream Church of England failed to penetrate the new towns and cities that sprung up in the industrial revolution. These were basically (in England) in the North (and in South Wales). It was the non-conformist denominations, with their tendency towards Calvinism, which dominated religion in these areas, as a result. How Winchester, today, fits into this pattern is quite beyond us. Winchester was, and still is, dominated by the Anglican Church. It’s the see of one of the top five Anglican bishops in Britain.

Taylor took a degree in chemistry from Nottingham University before entering the teaching profession in state comprehensive (secondary) schools.

Surprisingly he rose to be head of department (although it isn’t clear that this meant head of chemistry or head of science). We say surprisingly because AiG states that "as a schoolteacher, Paul frequently challenged pupils to think through the issue of origins for themselves, rather than accept evolutionary orthodoxy. These teaching methods, particularly as Paul began developing curricula, frequently brought him into conflict with more evolutionary-minded staff."

It is difficult not to conclude from that statement that Taylor was pushing his own religious agenda onto the children without the agreement of his peer group (fellow teachers). One wonders exactly what biology, geography or geology teachers in the same schools thought of this. Or, indeed, what the parents thought.

Part two

Does Paul Taylor of Answers in Genesis UK distinguish himself from other creationists? No, he uses the same techniques and practices that have been honed in the United States.

He deceives and twists what others say to meet his own agenda. He uses evidence completely contradictory to his own views to support them. He uses smear techniques to cast doubt.

Let’s have a look at Taylor in action. The following is a letter he wrote to the Leicester Mercury newspaper that, apparently, followed a "debate" about creationism in March 2006.

George Jellis, mentioned in the letter, is an active member of the long-established Leicester Secular Society and is also a member BCSE.

Answers in Genesis is not a US-based organisation. It's headquartered in Kentucky. That’s, er, in the United States. The outfit that employs him, Answers in Genesis has the same name as Answers in Genesis in the USA. It’s web site is one and the same Answers in Genesis web site as that of the Kentucky-based organisation. If you order books, DVDs or whatever online, you use this very same web site. And the materials being sold are exactly the same for the alleged two different sister organisations. The UK operation publishes little material of its own. It’s basically re-selling stuff published by Answers in Genesis in the USA.

The creationist arguments put forward by both are exactly the same. The UK operation has members of the alleged US sister organisation as trustees. None of the 11 employees in the UK are trustees of the UK arm. People from both "sister" organisations were deeply involved in the organisation of and presentation of papers to the "Creation Without Compromise" conference in Swanwick (Derbyshire) early in 2006. Finally, the whole operation, down to its core beliefs, has the same organisational model as the US "sister".

Let’s take a deeper look at the detail. Answers in Genesis in the UK is registered at the Charity Commission as the Creation Science Foundation. Well, this just happens to be the original name of Answers in Genesis so the UK operation hasn’t, by chance, just got the same operational name as the USA. It’s deliberately adopted it. As a limited liability company its board of directors include Ken Ham, Michael Zovath (out of AiG in the USA) and Carl Wieland (out of AiG in Australia – he may have since stood down)

Moreover, Answers in Genesis consists of just two operational arms, that in the USA and that in the UK. There are no other "sister" organisations. The other "sister" organisations split off and went their own way in February 2006 as Creation Ministries International, a month before Taylor wrote the letter. As a senior member of staff, Taylor knew that this had happened at the time.

So why is he lying? I guess because the letter is PR puffery. It makes for bad PR to allow the idea that AiG is an American organisation to float around amongst potential "converts". But then, fundamentalists are incapable of distinguishing fact from their own religious opinions. It’s OK to lie in the name of the cause because they are saving souls.

Well, now lets start with the first sentence of the letter. The detailed principles of heredity, as first developed by Mendel, are central to the evidence supporting the theory of evolution by natural selection. Far from not supporting it, they were the first substantive pieces of evidence that followed Darwin’s original work.

Francis Crick never believed that the world was created 6,000 years ago as implied by Taylor. Nor does his idea of abiogenesis have anything to do with the Theory of Evolution by natural selection, as implied by Taylor. The latter stands without it. This is an old fundie wheeze – to suggest to the lay public that leading scientists have doubts, can’t be trusted and creationists know better. Crick did not believe in the world being created 6,000 years ago, as Taylor otherwise implies.

Well, can Taylor be trusted as a scientist given that he is making scientific claims?. He has never been a practising scientist and has never had a peer reviewed paper published in any scientific journal whatsoever, let alone any covering his junk science. Strange, isn’t it, that a Nobel Prize winning scientist is quoted by Taylor as supporting his views when Taylor’s pseudo-science has about as much chance of winning such a prize as a tom cat’s bum.

Having fabricated a suggestion that Crick supports Taylor’s position, Taylor goes on to fabricate other evidence to support his crackpottery. The Science report of finding soft(ish) material in the bone of a female Tyrannosaurus rex does not state it was unfossilised (indeed, they are part mineralised at least). Taylor doesn’t understand what a fossil is. Moreover, the paper doesn’t say it included cells. It states that there appeared to be "cell-like structures". No cells were discovered. Nor is there the slightest evidence that the organic remains are only 6,000 or less years old. If they where, Carbon 14 dating would, no doubt, show this up.

Let’s have a look at the views of the talented scientist, Mary Schweitzer, who made the T.Rex discovery: She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. "They treat you really bad," she says. "They twist your words and they manipulate your data." Just as Taylor has done. There, straight from the person whose science Taylor lied about. (http://www.smithsonianmagazine.com/issues/2006/may/dinosaur.php?page=1)

And the obvious interpretation for the T.Rex data – it’s a major breakthrough in understanding and supporting evolutionary theory. And Schweitzer believes the T.Rex she is looking at is, er, 66 million years old, not 6,000 as Taylor’s statement could be interpreted by a lay-person.

In dating this specimen, 86 different tests were done on 3 different types of minerals using four different radiometric methods, all yielding dates between 63 million and 66 million years old. Surely if the radiometric dating methods are as inaccurate as creationists claim, we would see a much wider range of dates, especially when different methods are used. Funny how this part of the work never makes it into creationist discussions of the fossils.

But Taylor’s approach isn’t to show you science; it’s to cast doubt on and smear, by PR puffery, people who don’t hold his extreme religious opinions.

As he does in the letter with the Bishop of Leicester. Just look how he juxtaposes the Bishop’s position with the term atheist. The old, old, fundie trick.

What he is trying to do here is put into peoples’ minds that there is a simple division of position – Christians, by HIS definition, support his extreme religious opinions. Anyone else, by definition, is an atheist, including the vast majority of Christians who don’t believe in his crackpot opinions. That’s what he wants you to believe.

Yet even then his organisation lies. Answers in Genesis claims to be non-denominational.

It’s not non-denominational. It’s a hard line, fundamentalist evangelical Calvinistic Protestant organisation based in the Bible-belt of the United States.

But lying is par for the course with Taylor just as he states that Darwinism is atheism. Let’s look at just how preposterous this statement is. He attacks a Bishop on this basis. A Bishop of a denomination whose head, Rowan Williams, states that the old age of the earth and evolution are accepted by it. And, indeed, the old age was universally accepted in the church as far back as 1855 – four years before Darwin published his book on evolution. Taylor would have you believe that the entire Church has been in the hands of atheists ever since.

No doubt like the Roman Catholic Church which strongly believes in both the old age of the earth and evolution. It certainly doesn’t believe in the nonsense that Taylor believes in. But, of course, fundamentalists frequently hate Catholicism with venom.

Then of course, there’s the 650-member Christians in Science organisation who think Taylor is completely bonkers.

And, then, of course, the world isn’t, and never was, divided between Christians and atheists. Or creationists and Darwinists. Science is an international activity pursued by people of a vast number of different religious faiths as well as agnostics, the religiously indifferent and others. What Taylor is claiming is that science is wrong because it is anti-Christian. Therefore the only valid science is that practised by Christians of his own extreme religious views.

Except that Taylor isn’t a practising scientist. He’s an ex-school teacher and web-designer.

But then those that oppose his views are all "Darwinists". Well, bad news, Taylor, because a belief in the old age of the earth is not conditional on any knowledge of the theory of evolution (Darwinism, as he calls it. It’s a fundie term, not used by Scientists). The old age of the earth was established and accepted before Darwin identified natural selection as the central process of evolution. Indeed, old age is accepted by people who don’t believe in the theory of evolution. The organisation pushing this argument is the Discovery Institute, probably number two of the fundamentalist "science" organisations.

But Taylor’s game is to cast doubt, not to provide an alternative. He hasn’t got one. Just ask him to produce the scientific theory of creationism. It doesn’t exist.

Let’s look again at how he rubbishes the Bishop of Leicester. Well, according to Taylor, the Bishop must be wrong otherwise Joshua would have taken 7,000 years at Jericho and thus, scientists have based their ideas on shaky grounds and are losing public support and credibility.

How does he manage to put these two together to produce such blithering rubbish?

Let’s have a look at the unsubstantiated claims that scientists who believe in the old-age of the earth and evolution are loosing credibility and public support. Taylor’s apologists in Intelligent Design lost the Dover court case in 2005 – big time. That case demonstrated that there was no scientific credibility whatsoever to creationism. It determined that it was entirely a religious opinion. The Discovery Institute (see also this link) is increasingly seen as a joke organisation whose chief protagonist, Michael Behe, is on record as saying that his definition of science encompasses astrology.

Let’s have a look at the number of practising scientists in academia in the UK who believe in Taylor’s hocus pocus. The author of this report has counted eight such activists; well down on the number as recently as 10 years ago. Yet a closer look at these eight show that five are not scientists, they are engineers. Of the remaining three, none are of any significant academic standing or reputation. Not one has ever had a creationist scientific paper ever published in a peer-reviewed journal. Of the three, one tells me his position is wavering. In contrast, the Christians in Science organisation, based in the UK, has more than six hundred and fifty members. Forty percent of American scientists claim to be believing Christians.

After 20 years, Answers in Genesis has only managed to collect a list of 154 scientists world-wide that accept its BS.

So, in whose eyes’ are scientists who contradict Taylor’s religious beliefs losing credibility? It’s not amongst fellow scientists. Amongst the public? Well, not in the USA. No evidence there at all despite the rampancy of creationism there. Position in the UK – one (just one) ambiguous BBC poll which Taylor fails to cite. Well, there’s the 17 UK signatories to the Discovery Institute's poll of scientists but the poll doesn’t ask them whether they belief in Taylor’s hocus pocus.

So why is there no substantiation from Answers in Genesis about the increase in belief in Taylor’s hocus pocus. Surely this outfit can demonstrate something, such as an increase in its circulation figures for its paid-for journals suggests more converts?

Or is it closer to the truth that good and bad science are not decided by public opinion and that most members of the public are scientifically illiterate and also don’t give a stuff about Taylor’s extreme religious opinions?

Finally, there is the last sentence of Taylor’s fraudulent letter; it’s all the fault of atheists. People who think he is a crackpot must, by definition be heathens, pagans or whatever, who have an active policy of bludgeoning stupid members of the public. Well, Taylor manages in the space of a single letter to claim that the public are increasingly on his side and, at the same time, says they are not.

But then, he reveals his true extreme God-fearing fundamentalist position. Those that disagree with him, he claims, do so out of fear of him and his opinions. Oh, the arrogance!

But, then, Taylor's job is to push fear and ignorance.

Footnote: If you think Taylor is deceptive – take a look at AiG’s web site (http://www.answersingenesis.org/). "Today it is running s report that a US professor is teaching his students creationism. This is what it says: "We wish to protect the anonymity of the professor. Even though this creationist Ph.D. has tenure at this public university and thus possesses a greater amount of academic freedom than what might be typically seen with a non-tenured professor, his dean has the power to cancel future such classes. Therefore, the less the public knows about this origins class the better."

So, it’s official – the less you, the public, know about teaching creationism, the better. When it comes to AiG’s aims, you do not count. As we have long stated, the aim of fundamentalists is to set up an undemocratic theocracy with them in charge. As a tax-paying voting citizen, you are not to know what universities you are paying for, studying at or employing people from, teach creationism.

An update from a correspondent who went to see Paul Taylor speak in the spring of 2008;

Intro

Paul Taylor is the Head of Media and Publications of Answers in Genesis (UK/Europe) in the UK. He has a Chemistry degree (BSc) from Nottingham University and many years experience as a schoolteacher and department head. As with all AiG UK staff, he has no formal qualification in biology, geology, astrophysics or theology.

Despite this lack of scientific training, Taylor is one of three speakers at AiG's 11-person operation in the UK. [http://www.answersingenesis.org/prayer/Department.aspx?id=33] As such, he holds the AiG line, insisting that the Bible is inerrant and that the entire universe was created in just 6 days. Taylor has written two books: 'The Six Days of Genesis' and 'Truth, Lies and Science Education'. He is a frequent speaker at churches, although sadly he chooses not to answer questions at these events, instead running a stall of books and DVDs at the end of his sermon.

The Blog

Taylor has stated controversial opinions on a number of issues. His blog requests that all contributors abide by a statement of faith that runs to a full 19 points, including such choice gems as: "That Christ is the vine and Israel is the true branch(es). The church is the wild branch that is grafted into the true vine.", and that God "has foreordained everything that happens" (so much for free will!). The original forum failed to attract any postings other than the Statement of Faith itself. It has since been re-launched in a new format and has rocketed to three posts at the time of writing. All three are tests from Taylor.

The blog also includes a link to a 'J6Dpedia'. The link is now broken, but according to WikiChristian this was "an online Bible commentary with a 6-day-creation viewpoint."

The blog itself is primarily concerned with invective against Christians who disagree with Taylor's opinions, atheists, the European Union, secular schoolteachers and anyone else who Taylor dislikes, in roughly that order of frequency. Taylor has also used it to express his disaproval of religious tolerance [http://www.justsixdays.co.uk/wordpress/?p=137].

The Science

In his public speeches, as in his blog, Taylor devotes much of his energies to attacking perceived heresies. He argues against the day/age theory on scriptural grounds, pointing out that no-one takes other Biblical phrases (such as Josua's attack on Jericho) as having taken thousands of years (though he neglects to mention that Adam is condemned to die "the same day" as eating the fruit from the Tree).

When it comes to science, Taylor is on shakier ground. He has several set-piece talks, and what follows is not an exhaustive listing of all his claims. Some of his more unusual claims are that:

• All creatures were created by God as vegetarians and T Rex teeth were designed for eating mangoes (he doesn't mention the other predatory features such as forward-facing eyes and a small digestive system, not does he seem aware of evidence of bite-marks on some fossil dinosaurs). He further backs this up by pointing out that modern carnivores are able to survive on a vegetarian diet, using the example of the lions in London Zoo which survived on a diet of cabbages during the Second World War. The Zoological Society of London has responded to this claim in an email from their press office:

• The Australopithecine fossil 'Lucy' was fully ape-like, with no human characteristics. As part of this, he claims that Lucy did not walk upright, and devotes much time to attacking the Natural History Museum's reconstruction of Lucy, which shows her with human-like feet, despite the Lucy remains not having any feet. In conversation, Taylor has admitted that he is aware of other Australopithecine remains that do have the feet preserved. These feet are intermediate, with a grasping toe but a human-like heel, and would have been suited to an upright gait. Taylor shows no recognition of the fact that the pelvis and spine of Autralopithecenes are also distinctly bipedal.

• Traditional Creationist solutions to the 'starlight problem' (how light from stars millions of light-years away can reach the Earth in just 6000 years) fail - a changing speed of light would have many consequences we do not observe, and starlight created already en route to Earth would imply a deceptive creator (something that Taylor cannot countenance). Instead, he subscribes to the 'White Hole Cosmology' - the idea that the entire universe is inside the event horizon of a massive white hole, with the Earth at its centre. Aside from a few obvious problems (why can we not see this nearby 2 light year-wide radiation source from Earth? Why doesn't the relativistic compression of 14 billion years worth of starlight into 6000 years fry the Earth?), this is considered pseudo-science by every qualified astrophysicist in the world, not leastly as is requires us to assume that the Earth is in a uniquely priveledged position in the Universe, an assumption that has been unpopular since Copernicus' day. It also contradicts measurements of the cosmological constant. In his talks, Taylor breezes over these points by simply saying they are 'technical'.
• Taylor, like many Creationists, actually accepts most of what Darwin said. However, he seeks to distinguish between 'microevolution' - apparently defined as 'evolution on a scale that Paul Taylor can reconcile with his interpretation of the Bible' - and 'macroevolution', which is everything else. As an example of 'microevolution', Taylor uses the Brassicas - the Family of plants that includes the cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, turnip, rapeseed, mustard, radish, horseradish, cress and watercress, as well as Taylor's personal bugbear the Brussels sprout. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassicaceae]. Taylor is happy to accept that all these plants evolved from a single common ancestor. However, he offers no explanation for how we can tell that these specific plants evolved from each-other, but that other plants such as peas did not. Could this be because if he did explain his reasoning, it would also support evolution at much greater levels than he can accept? It is also strange that Taylor is able to accept evolution at the Family level among plants, but rejects the idea that humans, chimps, gorillas and orang-utans constitute a similar Family. His only justification for this is the concept of 'information', though he does not explain how we can tell whether a pea contains more information than a cauliflower.
• Taylor says that we should take the Bible literally. However, his interpretation of what constitutes a 'literal' reading of the Bible can be quite unusual, and often seems to owe more to his personal opinions than the text. He claims that the Bible predicted relativity on the basis of verses such as Psalm 90: "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night". He also gives this strange non-sequitur on his blog:

• He has also claimed in public that Gregor Mendel discovered natural selection prior to Darwin.