Truth In Science - Revealed
Introduction
The purpose of this entry in the BCSE Wiki is to take a detailed, step by step look at the materials and scientific claims made by the group calling themselves "Truth In Science" (TiS).
TiS actively campaign to get their own narrow religious views taught in British schools - as science. Yes read that again. They don't do this openly of course but have swathed themselves in a cloak of pseudo-scientific jargon and obfuscation. But if you look closely you can see their false claims for what they are. That is exactly what I will set out to do here.
TiS are not short of funds having sent out thousands of DVD packs to British schools and colleges in 2006. We don't know where these funds have come from. They do not reveal their financiers.
I am a father of three, with a full time job. So this entry actually developed over about 12 months and was limited by the time I have had available.
I am motivated in part by my love for science, also my love for the truth but also by a wish not to see kids lied to and the fact that I don't think religion has a place in science classes.
I firmly support the teaching of a wide range of religious beliefs in schools in the UK in Religious Education classes.
As I point out scientific errors I will back this up with appropriate references.
First we will look at the origins of TiS. Then I will give you a quick taster of their web site before we examine in detail the materials they sent to every high school and college in the UK.
The Origins of Truth in Science
Truth in Science claim some very upright sounding aims for themselves;
Welcome to Truth in Science, an organisation promoting good science education in the UK. Our initial focus is on the origin of life and its diversity.
Good science education? What has that got to do with this transcript of an advert from the Evangelical Times? (my emphasis in bold);
It is a concern to many when science is wrongly taught in our schools, colleges and universities. In particular, macroevolution is taught as though it were a proven and unchallengeable fact. For our children and grandchildren, God is thus robbed of His glory. Young people are encouraged into a way of thinking that leads to atheism, hedonism, despair and moral bankruptcy. Belief in a Creator is often ridiculed and anyone advocating such a view is portrayed as either foolish or naïve.
In reality evolutionary claims often constitute speculative beliefs about the past and use explanations that are contrary to the spirit of empirical science. For example, human origins are typically presented with simplistic diagrams supposedly showing the progression from ape-like ancestors to modern man. We believe this amounts to deception. Problems with evolutionary theory are well documented but many scientists seldom acknowledge this, choosing rather to gloss over them. This matters because a false view robs us of our sense of value and purpose before a Sovereign Creator God.
“If the foundations be destroyed what can the righteous do?” Psalm 11:3
To respond to this, a group of professional and business people are meeting under the heading TRUTH IN SCIENCE [TIS]. As citizens with a concern for the family we seek to encourage Christians to be confident that God’s spoken command in space-time history resulted in supra-natural creation. Non-believers must be challenged in such a way that they can no longer hide behind the delusion that science has disproved the existence of God. TIS seeks to encourage scientists to present the truth fairly and to expose as charlatans those who deliberately mislead. Our aim is to compliment the work of existing Creation groups by targeting education in particular.
Do you share this vision? We believe that as children of the Lord Jesus Christ, bought at the price of His own shed blood, we cannot sit back and allow this situation to continue unchallenged. Do you wish to see our children being taught the truth rather than having their moral and spiritual lives undermined? Although TIS have ways and means in mind, at this early stage we are flexible about the best approach. If finance is made available have you the time and ability and commitment to be the driving force, co-operating with us, in this venture to effect the education of young people in our land. If so, we wish to hear from you.
Steve Layfield, Professor Andy McIntosh,Willis B Metcalfe, John Perfect, Rev Maurice Roberts.
Our Council of Reference includes the following Dr John Blanchard; Dr Stuart Burgess; Gerard A Crispin;Prof. Derek Linkens; Prof. Richard Porter; Dr Stephen Taylor;
Please reply to TIS by email at – applications@TruthinScience.org.uk
This email address was given for those wishing to apply but can be used by those wishing to consider supporting Truth In Science. If you need a postal address to write to I can supply that upon request.
Here is a version of this same advert which is taken from the "Take Heeds Ministries" web/email which, although the original document was amended to remove the give away advert had been preserved on the web for all to see here.
Contrast this with these extracts from their own FAQ page which can be seen here;
Is Intelligent Design based on the Bible?
No. Plato, Aristotle and Cicero articulated early versions of design theory, as did virtually all of the founders of modern science. Indeed, most scientists until the latter part of the nineteenth century accepted some form of intelligent design. The scientific community largely rejected design in the early twentieth century after neo-Darwinism claimed to be able to explain the emergence of biological complexity through the unintelligent process of natural selection acting on random mutations. During the past decade, however, new research and discoveries in such fields as physics, cosmology, biochemistry, genetics, and palaeontology have caused a growing number of scientists and science theorists to question neo-Darwinism and propose design as the best explanation for the existence of specified complexity in the natural world.
Why does the TiS Board of Directors and Council of Reference include Ministers of Religion?
The scientific controversy over origins has many spiritual and religious implications. This is acknowledged both by Darwinists and Darwin-doubters. Many prominent advocates of Darwinism are 'distinguished supporters of humanism' (according to the British Humanist Association) and Evolutionary Biologist Richard Dawkins' latest book is entitled: The God Delusion.
These issues should be discussed in Science classes. All GCSE and A-Level Biology Specifications mention "spiritual, moral, ethical, social and cultural issues" as something which should be considered by candidates. Ministers of Religion have much to contribute to these discussions.
This goes totally against the actual guidelines for teachers as issued by the government. The guidelines are introduced as follows;
There has been much debate recently about the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in the science curriculum. The 'Truth in Science' pack, which had been sent to all secondary schools, also generated media interest.
Intelligent Design is a creationist belief that suggests that the biological complexity of human beings is evidence for presence of a God or an 'intelligent designer'. It is sometimes erroneously advanced as scientific theory but has no underpinning scientific principles or explanations supporting it and it is not accepted by the international scientific community.
Creationism and intelligent design are not part of the National Curriculum for science, but there is scope for schools to discuss creationism as part of Religious Education - a component of the basic school curriculum - in developing pupils' knowledge and understanding of Christianity and other religions. This guidance is designed to clarify the place of these concepts within the National Curriculum.
The full guidelines can be found here (word document).
False claims on the home page of Truth In Science
This is an extract of the home page of the ironically named group "Truth in Science";
The theory of Darwinian evolution has been presented as scientifically uncontroversial and the only credible explanation of origins. This is despite the National Curriculum which states:
Pupils should be taught…
“how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting empirical evidence (for example, Darwin's theory of evolution)”
The National Curriculum for Key Stage 4 Science (Sc1: Scientific enquiry)
Few schools have taught this controversy. This is partly because many popular textbooks present Darwinism as the only scientific theory of origins and give little coverage to alternative theories, sometimes misrepresenting them.
New GCSE Science Specifications in September 2006 give a fresh opportunity to reconsider what is taught about origins in science lessons. These specifications place an emphasis on students understanding 'How Science Works'. This concept is explained as follows by the Edexcel Examination Board:
“How Science Works is primarily about helping students to engage with and challenge the science they meet in everyday life. Students need to adopt a critical, questioning frame of mind, going ‘behind the scenes’ to understand the workings of science and how it impacts on society and their lives.”
We consider that it is time for students to be permitted to adopt a critical approach to Darwinism in science lessons. They should be given fair and accurate presentations of alternative views.”
Ok, lets just take the key points here in order.
TiS categorically state that the theory of evolution has been presented as scientifically uncontroversial. This is true. The reason why it has been presented as such is because it is uncontroversial. Let me try to prove it to you.
Look here at the "Steve Project" which has the names of PhD’s who have signed up to a very strongly worded statement that says this;
Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools.
You can only sign up to this statement if you have a PhD and if your name is Steve or a derivative or sound alike of Steve - say Stephanie. This is actually about 1% of the population of PhDs. They currently have 775 or lets say 775 x 100 = 77,500 scientists signing up to this.
Creationists/ID ers have also generated various lists - with much weaker statements - with fewer signatures and without making sure they are all PhDs.
The most optimistic lists I can find only have about 600 signatures. A quick calculation based on these numbers shows 99% of scientists very strongly backing evolution and stating explicitly that ID is rubbish. So no, evolution is not scientifically controversial.
Truth in Science then quote a part of the curriculum which talks of scientific controversies being taught. They then say few schools have taught this controversy.
Now bearing mind what I have just said about how un-controversial this subject is then why would the government as part of the National Curriculum imply that it is? Something’s not right here.
The fact of the matter is that this is NOT, in truth, what the Government are actually talking about - why would you think they were? Oh yes Truth In Science “accidentally” gave you that impression didn’t they?
Truth in Science is currently pushing Intelligent Design. This is what Jacqui Smith, Minister of State for Schools, had to say about it in April 2006:
Intelligent design is sometimes erroneously advanced as a scientific theory but it has no underpinning scientific principles or explanations supporting it and it is not accepted by the international scientific community. - Jacqui Smith MP, Minister of State for Schools and 14-19 Learners
This was months before TiS issued their packs.
And this, again from the Minister for Schools;
The scientific controversy referred to in the programme of study is that arising from Darwin's rejection of existing scientific theories based on the evidence he had collected. An example of such a theory is inheritance of acquired characteristics supported, among others, by the French scientist Lamark and based on the available scientific evidence at the time.
Creationism cannot be used as an example of a scientific controversy as it has no empirical evidence to support it and no underpinning scientific principles or explanations. It belongs in a different realm of knowledge, that of religion.
The full letter can be seen here
So TiS should have known that they were making false claims when the issued their pack and set up their web site. Since then the government have issued specific denials of the truth of TiS claims (see the origins of TiS section above).
So there we are; Truth In Science have deliberately set up the main page of their web site to mislead people and also to misrepresent the governments position. They still have not changed their web page to point out that their suggestions are not permitted under the national curriculum and are in fact explicitly excluded in the governments guide for teachers. An honest and forthright approach from TiS? No.
DVD materials sent to British schools and colleges: a review
In September 2006 the group calling itself Truth in Science sent a pack of two DVDs and a booklet to every high school and college in the UK.
I obtained the pack form my local school and have looked at it for myself.
This is one of two videos sent to all UK high schools in September 2006 with a letter saying that it will help staff teach students "to adopt a critical questioning frame of mind". The videos promote "Intelligent Design" which is the latest form of Creationism. Both creationism and Intelligent Design are excluded from science lessons according to the National Curriculum and these actual materials are explicitly excluded from use in the teachers guidelines (see above for more details).
I sat down with pen and paper and at the end of the hour could list the main claims made in this programme as follows;
1) No one can explain exactly how a bacterial flagellum evolved.
2) No one knows exactly how life started.
3) Life looks like it was designed because its really, really complicated and it looks like it was designed.
The video then leaves a rather large door open ready for someone to start talking religion - but stops at that point.
A rebuttal can be simply made as follows;
1) There is no evolutionary explanation for the existence of bacterial flagellum - yet.
Who is setting the deadline? Or are they film makers claiming it is impossible to explain this? If so, why would it be impossible? Much good scientific work has been done to show this is bunk - have a quick look in the literature and you will find it.
Here is a good up to date summary.
2) We don't know how life started - yet.
Well science is working on this question as well - again the video seems to claim we never will know but gives no evidence for why this should be so. None of this proves evolution theory wrong. The theory of evolution does not claim to have solved this scientific puzzle, in fact it does not comment on the origin of life at all.
3) Life looks like it was designed because its really, really complicated.
Well, in fact, evolution theory explains this apparent design. The theory of evolution describes a process which does produce design, blindly and unintelligently, and without any intelligent designer.
The videos simply ignore the huge mass of other evidence we have which supports the theory of evolution.
What exactly is the theory of intelligent design?
Sometime, someplace, somehow, someone/thing designed something intelligently.
Feel the detail!
Just to let the other shoe drop - yes - this is a bunch of devout Christians trying to scrape any kind of case together to preserve their belief that a literal interpretation of the bible is true. 6,000 year old earth, dinosaurs on the Ark etc.
You may wonder why a group with such disparate qualifications got together. There are lawyers and philosophers here as well as a few scientists. Well they all have this same religious belief in common which means that they "know" evolution is wrong because it says so in the Bible - not exactly an unbiased scientific assessment of the evidence.
PS. they use an analogy of a mousetrap in the videos. Whilst this has some merits at the molecular level I have seen this completely confuse people as it absolutely does not work as an analogy for anything more complicated like the eye etc. This is pretty obvious to anyone who has tried to explain evolution with these kinds of stories and so not to clarify it's use in this case is tantamount to deliberate disingenuousness.
Several of the people on the video were embarrassed if not completely humiliated by the court judgement in the US at the beginning of 2006 which completely dismissed any claims that these ideas and theories are scientific and not religious
The second DVD contains the same material but split up into 10 minute segments. This is rather ridiculously called ; "Where Does The Evidence Lead?".
At the risk of pointing out the obvious it is funny because the people at Truth in Science don't follow the evidence to the truth because they already know what that truth is - it says what it is in the Bible.
Letter sent to British schools and colleges: a review
The letter is addressed to the Head of Science and is signed by Prof. Andy McIntosh. Prof McIntosh believes the earth is 6,000 years old and that Noah's Ark was real. I have heard him say this first hand and an account of this can be found here.
It starts benignly enough with the following;
New GCSE Specifications emphasise that students must understand how science works, to help them engage with and challenge the science they meet in everyday life. Students need to adopt a critical, questioning frame of mind, understanding how science impacts society and their lives.
Minor quibble - that last bit sounds a bit American to my ears - shouldn't that be ". . .impacts ON society. . .".
The next bit starts to stretch the truth a little;
To help staff at your school teach these topics . . .
Which topics? Ah - critical thinking and questioning - but wait for it . . .
. . . I have pleasure in enclosing free copies of the DVDs Unlocking the Mystery of Life and Where Does the Evidence Lead? These are classroom resources that outline a current scientific controversy over the origin of life and its diversity. They describe evidence for and against Darwin's theory of evolution, and a current alternative theory of Intelligent Design.
Here we go again. This is a variation on the cleverly implied claim on the TiS home page that evolution is a controversial science. Here we also have the conflation of Evolution theory with theories on the Origin of Life. Evolution theory makes no comment on the origin of life at all.
With regard to the diversity of life and evolution I covered this subject above and demonstrated why evolution is not controversial at all by any reasonable person's measure of "controversy".
The issue of the origin of life is not scientifically controversial either, but rather interestingly, for almost exactly the opposite reason. Evolution has a ton of evidence from many different fields backing it up and is not controversial in that very, very few scientists don't accept it as fact (all of whom - surprise surprise - think the bible is absolutely and literally true).
Work on the origin of life has so far provided little evidence to back up any of half a dozen semi popular current hypothesis. No one seems to be claiming that they have any evidence that they know how life did actually start. Science so far has gotten no further than establishing when it happened, sometime between 3.9 and 3.5 billion years ago, and the fact that various "building blocks of life" can be easily generated by replicating conditions we think existed on the early earth. So this isn't controversial in the sense that no one has proposed anything at all as proven so there is not anything to disagree with and have a controversy about.
Half an hours web surfing has also failed to turn up any reference to the origin of life in any UK Science National Curricula so this appears to be a complete non-sequitur.
Having watched the DVDs I strongly dispute the claim that they make that they show evidence for evolution - they have very little content at all. We do get some pretty shots of the wonderful wildlife of the Galapagos with comments such as; "variations in beak shape and size of the Galapagos finches provides evidence for evolution". We get no overview of the theory itself and the claims it actually makes to help us understand why different beak shape and sizes are good evidence and we get none of the other evidence for evolution which the National Curriculum covers.
In my view the filmmakers are deliberately setting up a particularly weak strawman version of the actual Theory of Evolution (ToE), to better enable them to cast doubt on it later on.
Finally in this paragraph of the letter they mention a "current alternative theory". The evidence we covered in an earlier post shows this be a simple lie - it is not accepted as an alternative in any sense of the word.
They also label Intelligent Design a "theory". In the scientific usage of the word, theory means an explanatory framework or idea which is backed up by lots of facts. In scientific talk, quite contrary to everyday usage, a theory is higher up the hierarchy of truth than a fact because it is in fact based on lots of facts.
In addition for a theory to be accepted as scientific it must be falsifiable; i.e. be capable of being proved false in some way. In other words it must be possible to make some observation or do some kind of experiment where the result proves that the theory is false. Evolution passes this test very easily and could be shown to be false in thousands of ways. E.g. a static fossil record, later forms of life fossilised out of developmental order men with dinosaurs, true chimeras, that is, organisms that combined parts from several different and diverse lineages (such as mermaids and centaurs) and which are not explained by lateral gene transfer, which transfers relatively small amounts of DNA between lineages, or symbiosis, where two whole organisms come together; a mechanism that would prevent mutations from accumulating; observations of organisms being created.
Intelligent Design fails this measure of science because you can always claim that your intelligent designer did it that way for reasons of their own which we don't or can't understand. In other words the idea that "god did it" can not be disproved at all by anything at all.
There was an infamous court case in the US where the teaching of Intelligent Design in science classes was challenged. In the US it is against the constitution to teach religion in schools. To defend themselves the ID side simply had to show that their claim that life was intelligently designed was science. After weeks of evidence they were dismissed as liars and pedlars of creationist propaganda.
To recap, so far we have seen misleading statements, outright lies and clever distortions of the truth and I have only covered the first two paragraphs in the letter - there are three more yet to come.
Mark Edon 2008
Click here for the next page of Truth in Science Revealed.
