Dialogue On Creation and Evolution

Between Professor Arthur Wilder-Smith
and Dr Gordon Hewitt
Hosted By George Balani On
The Tonight Show (25 May 1987)

Radio transcript prepared by David H Lane
Published with the permission of Radio NZ

Participants:
George Balani (host)
Prof. Wilder-Smith (creationist)
Dr Gordon Hewitt (evolutionist)

Transcript

George Balani: ... Glad to have you with us on this Monday evening. It's the 25th of May and probably I guess one of the most important and basic questions that mankind has ever asked himself is where is it that we actually came from.

Did we come from the incestuous relationship of Adam and Eve as outlined in Genesis and as it went through in the first book of the Bible, or did we evolve from lesser animals over a long period of time? Well, I doubt very much whether we'll end up with any final solutions tonight. However, we'll end up perhaps knowing a little more about the subject. My very special guests on the programme this evening are Dr Arthur Wilder-Smith who has doctorates in organic chemistry, chemotherapy, and pharmacology and has written several works on creationism, and Dr Gordon Hewitt, senior lecturer in Zoology at Victoria University and former Dean of the Science Faculty there. We'll be talking with them in just a few moments ...

In a moment we're back to talk about evolution or creationism. It's eight minutes past nine....

Good evening this is the Tonight Show. My name is George Balani. It's ten minutes past nine and on the programme tonight we look at the question of evolution versus creationism, and my special guests this evening in our Wellington studio is Dr Arthur Wilder-Smith and Dr Gordon Hewitt. Gentlemen, good evening, welcome to the programme.

I presume Dr Wilder-Smith that you'll be speaking in favour of the theory of creationism. That's correct isn't it?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Yes I believe so. They tell me so anyway.

George Balani: Well it is the subject that you've studied and written several books on, in fact even produced a television series on.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Oh yes there are six television films on this and I've written about 35 books. That will be some sort of introduction.

George Balani: Dr Hewitt, you're in favour of the theory of evolution as a student of Zoology?

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Well I'd actually go further than that because I would say that evolution isn't a theory. I'd say it's a fact, just like the French Revolution or any other kind of historical knowledge that we have.

George Balani: O.K. Before you get started on that, we'll perhaps talk a little more about the fact and fiction as the programme progresses. I'd like to ask you both to tell me why you support the respective theories or facts and what evidence there is to support your position. I wonder Dr Wilder-Smith if we could start with you please.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Yes certainly. I think that if you say that evolution is a fact, you should be able to prove it. Now what the fact is of course is that there is a gradation.

George Balani: I wonder if I could stop you there Dr Wilder-Smith.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Yes.

George Balani: What I want to know is your theory. Why you support the theory of creationism and what evidence there is to support your position on creationism. We'll talk about evolution later.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well O.K., we'll do it. But you see I'm under attack, so I was going to justify myself from the evolutionists' point of view.

George Balani: Let me reassure you you'll have plenty of time to justify that stance. At this stage all I'd like to do is get an encapsulated sort of broad overview of what creationism is and why someone with your qualifications supports it, what your stance on it is, and what evidence there is to support creationism.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Do you have United States citizenship? You're asking for things in a nutshell and then I'm allergic to that. You can't do it.

Now look creationism simply says that in order to get teleonomic, that is purposeful structures of matter, like a cell is, or like an organism is, or like a machine is, any purposeful or teleonomic structure of matter, you've got to add information from outside. That's all and the evolutionists say that matter will organise itself if given time enough, that is that time will produce teleonomy if you give it enough. Now I don't think there's any evidence for that and that's the matter in a nutshell which you asked for.

George Balani: Actually Dr Wilder-Smith the question was why do you support your theory that creationism works and is correct and what evidence is there to support your position on that.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well I've just told you. Evolution...

George Balani: So you didn't listen. Ah now you've told me what evolution doesn't support and how you disagree with that.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: No, I said creationism says that to make a purposive or teleonomic aggregate of matter like a cell or a machine, you must add extrinsic or outside information to it. I don't care where you get your information from whereas evolution says the opposite - that you don't need to add anything. That you get automatic evolution of teleonomic aggregates of matter without any ... you get automatic organisation of matter if you like. And I say you don't get automatic organisation of teleonomic matter. That's all.

George Balani: I suggest to you that we've just spent 5 minutes with nobody understanding anything that you've talked about. Now could we start again and I'd like to know in relation...

Prof. Wilder-Smith: May I say that I've heard you for 5 minutes and I have not understood you.

George Balani: Could you explain to me what creation is in relation to our understanding of mankind, the theory of evolution, that sort of thing.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Yes, evolution says that

George Balani: No, no what creationism says.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: O.K. We'll put it the other way around if you'll have it like that. You mustn't be difficult with me because it will waste time. Creationism says that if you want to get a cell, a metabolic machine, because a cell is a metabolic machine, you've got to add external information to it, that is that matter by naturalistic laws does not organise itself to cells or machines. That's what creationism says and that's the period, that's the end of it.

George Balani: Dr Hewitt, perhaps you can be a little clearer on what evolution is.

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Well George. It seems to me there are three major lines of evidence for evolution. The first of these is the evidence that we have from classifying things. If we classify the fossil record, what we find is that we, when we look at very very old rocks (ah) ... something in the order of 3 1/2 billion years old, we find the very first traces of bacteria, which are very very simple organisms. Then gradually over very very long periods of time we see traces of multi cellular organisms starting up, and then finally in the post Cambrian era we find fossils which are of more complicated organisms. Finally about 400 million years ago we start to find things that might just be vertebrates.

We then progress up through fossils which are very clearly fish ... others that are very clearly amphipods, sorry [I mean] amphibians; ones that are very clearly reptiles, and finally to vertebrates, and then to primates and so on. Now it seems to me this layering of very clear fossils from one place to another, the sequence in which they occur suggest very clearly to me at any rate, and to most biologists, that there is a history connecting these forms. That's the first line of evidence.

Second line of evidence comes from comparing different organisms. If we look at for example a whale, and a bat, and a horse say, we find that they have limbs which have very different functions. And yet when we look in detail at the skeleton of those limbs, we find there is an upper one. We find there are two ones that come after that and then variations of wrist bones and finger bones. Now all these limbs have very different functions, and yet we find a common structure. Now since the functions are different, the best explanations that we can come up with is that they have a common history, which means in other words, that they have evolved from some common ancestor that had this form.

Finally and most weakly I must say, is to extrapolate backwards from current knowledge. Now our knowledge of the process by which evolution occurred, at the moment is undergoing a lot of discussion. It's very exciting stuff. I have no doubt that the theory of evolution and here I mean the theory; the theory of how evolution occurred is going to improve a great deal as a result of all this discussion. But as to whether evolution actually has already happened, that's clear. That's a fact. We know it as we know that the French Revolution happened.

George Balani: Gentlemen sit tight. We'll be back in a couple of moments and we'll give you both the opportunity to expand on the discussion so far.... It's seventeen minutes past nine ....

I wonder Dr Wilder-Smith. I was fairly clear on what Dr Hewitt said. I'm still at a little of a loss to understand what you mean by creationism. I can understand this evolution thing that he was talking about. What's creationism relative to evolution.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well the reason why you don't understand is because you've heard it before, you have heard the evolution before. Everybody's heard it from kindergarten upwards and it's always easy to understand things the second or the 50th time you've heard it. What evolution says is that, as Darwin said, is that the primitive cell, as he called it; (there's no such thing as the primitive cell of course), but the primitive cell arose by auto (self) organisation. Once you've got the primitive cell then it divided to produce new cells, but not quite the same as the original cell, and that the mutations gave some advantages and some disadvantages. The ones with advantages were separated out and those without advantages died out. So you get your auto-organisation of inorganic matter up to Homo sapiens by forces which lie within matter. Now there's no experimental evidence to make that a fact. We've never seen a primitive cell or any cell arise spontaneously from inorganic matter and that's the first fundamental postulate of Darwinism. If you want to read that you can read it in Kerkut [1960].

Now the second thing is this. Once you've got the primitive cell then the evolution upwards from the primitive cell to man will occur by natural selection and mutation. That's the old form of Darwinism which is taught in all your textbooks. Now there's no evidence for that at all. There is evidence in the fossil series, let's say the Cambrian fossils contain trilobites and the recent fossil layers contain say Homo sapiens and higher mammals. But the fact is that the Darwinists maintain that this evolution upwards occurred by self-organisation, aided once life had been produced, by natural selection and mutation. Now the experimental basis of that is weak. I know what Dr Hewitt means when he says organisation is a fact. What is a fact is that there is gradation in the fossil evidence, and there is gradation in biology as we see it today. But gradation in the fossil evidence and in biology as we see it today is not proof that the gradation upwards has occurred by ancestrally being simpler than we are today. And it hasn't occurred by mutation and natural selection. Many, many scientists today know perfectly well that natural selection and mutation are not sufficiently powerful to change an amoeba to a man.

George Balani: I'd like to just stop you at that point because it seems that we're becoming bogged down in a lot of specific scientific data which is not going to lead us anywhere really, because I guess most of my listeners, like I, will be having difficulty understanding what you're talking about. Could we confine ourselves perhaps to just what your theory is, for example on the age of the earth and the universe.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well that's got nothing to do with age at all. I don't see that giving scientific data [i.e. discussing natural selection and mutations] is going to fog the issue. Scientific data are going to separate out and crystallise the issue. But if you talk and philosophise you will confuse the issue. I've done it myself so I know.

George Balani: Is it not creationist theory that in fact the universe is at most 10,000 years old?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: No.

George Balani: That it was created in ...

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Period. It's not. No!

George Balani: So when was the earth created in creationist theory?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: It's not a matter of time at all. It's a matter of the origin of the information which is not a matter of age.

George Balani: Do creationists believe in Noah's flood?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Some do. Some don't. Some believe the earth is old. Some believe it's young. I personally believe it's young. I've very good reasons for believing so, but that would take scientific details of a higher order to get at that.

George Balani: Well could you tell me how old you consider the earth to be.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: No. I consider it to be young.

George Balani: Well, young in relation to how many thousands of years are we talking about?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Young in respect to the 5 billion years they bandy about.

George Balani: So what is young in fact?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well relatively young. Say 1% or less. I'm not going to name a number of years because you'll nail me and say immediately I said the earth was 5,000 years old which I don't [believe].

George Balani: What I'm asking you, is do you consider it to be less than 10,000 years or more?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: It might be, it might be less, it might be more. I'm talking about scientific evidence.

George Balani: Dr Hewitt, what is the evidence to support the theory of evolution or the facts that you outlined before as being facts.

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Well, what I outlined before were simply observations in fact and I think Dr Wilder-Smith has confirmed that we see a gradation of organisms in the rocks. For example, when we classify fossils, that's what we see. Now the question is whether in fact this involves evolution. And I think some of the confusion has arisen, as far as I'm concerned, with some of the arguments that Dr Wilder-Smith has put forward, because Dr Wilder-Smith is arguing that we should have experimental evidence for evolution. Now he says that we have heard a lot about evolution at school and that's true in some schools. It varies from school to school here. But I think what we tend to do in schools, is we tend to teach that all science is experimental because obviously the chemists and the physicists have had a lot of success with their experimental science. We sometimes forget I think that a lot of science is historical.

When we study evolution we are studying something which has already happened. When we study cosmology, the history of stars we're studying something that's already happened. [The same holds true] when we talk about the drifting of the continents which is very exciting. We've just recently measured the rate at which continents are moving around the oceans and they move at about the rate that our fingernails grow - about between 2 and 10 cm's a year and we've actually measured that, which I find very exciting. These are ... when we look back at where they were before, we're looking at a historical situation. Now when we study history, even if it's scientific history we can't do it experimentally. There's actually no way that we could set up the French Revolution and have it all over again as an experiment. In the same way we can't set up evolution and have it all over again as an experiment.

What we need to do, is we need to look at classification. That is, if we classify the fossil organisms what do we find is a gradation. Now we believe that's because evolution has occurred. If we look at homology, at comparing different organs between species, we find similarities which have nothing to do with the function of the organism. And again we believe that implies history. So what we are talking about here is historical science, not experimental science and I think that's where some of the confusion has come in the discussion with Dr Wilder-Smith.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Can I answer?

George Balani: Yes please.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Oh good! Wonderful. Now look, this idea that because its historical it isn't experimentally repeatable is a specious argument. Historians know well that if you repeat the conditioning which precipitated the French Revolution you'll get similar results to what we had in the French Revolution. The Marxists have done that and they've proved it. So I think this, that if scientists, [that is] evolutionists say that their first postulate is that life arose spontaneously from inorganic matter, such as Carl Sagan says, such as David Attenborough says, such as ... they all say it ad nauseam. If they say that that happened in the past under certain conditions and if matter has remained unchanged - the valency say of Carbon has remained unchanged since the big bang ... or whatever you like to say ... then you should be able to get the conditions in which the French Revolution or the biogenesis of the simple cell should repeat itself. Now we know perfectly well Pasteur proved it and its been proved a million times since then that the first postulate of Darwinism is not experimentally repeatable. But we do know that we can make a virus if we do so under the conditions which the creationists advocate. That is if we add to inorganic matter the surprise effects, or the bits and bites of information which are necessary and are normally stored on the genetic code; if we add to those the inorganic matter then we do know that a living virus will come out. Now that is the basis, and that is why I was so shocked when we started off about creationism. Because people have got preconceived ideas, which make creationism a sort of pseudo-science, and I'm here to stop people saying that creationists are pseudo scientists. Now some creationists are. I'll admit that. Some evolutionists are too. I'll admit that. But what I am saying is this that if you repeat the conditions which the creationists insist for producing the first cell, you will get it repeated and everybody is working at it today.

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Could I ask Dr Wilder-Smith at this stage ... he keeps talking about inputs of information. Does he mean by that a supernatural act, an act by God?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: I do not mean an act by God. No I mean the addition of surprise effects (known to any person who knows information theory) to matter which will produce teleonomy, that is purpose.

Dr Gordon Hewitt: I think most of our listeners probably don't know a lot of information theory. I wonder whether you could give some concrete example of what you mean by an input of outside information.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well you see that's the reason why evolution has got away with it all these years, because evolution is not so much wrong as deficient. And it's deficient in the addition of surprise effects known as information.

Dr Gordon Hewitt: I'm sorry, [but] I asked for a concrete example of a surprise effect. Could you give me one please.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Yes, I can give you a concrete example. I'd be absolutely delighted to give you one Sir. If you'd read my book you would have had it.

Dr Gordon Hewitt: I have read your book. I'm just giving you a chance to put it in your own words [laughter]

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Thank you for giving me the example. If you want to make an amino acid which is absolutely essential to make an enzyme or a protein ... if you want to make it vital, that is if you want to make it capable of life, you've got to have the left-handed mirror image form and separate it from the right-handed mirror image forms. There are two forms like Alice in Wonderland, Alice through the Looking Glass. Now chemistry, natural law chemistry - what we call stochastic or chance chemistry - produces 50% right-handed and 50% left-handed. And from 50% right-handed and 50% left-handed you will never, never, never, never on the basis of scientific theory ever get an enzyme or a protein that works. You've got to separate it. Now the only way to separate it is to add a surprise effect, one bit of information for one molecule so you get out the left-handed one instead of the right. That's what I mean. It's a scientific theory and if anybody doesn't know it, then they don't know their science.

George Balani: O.K. Could I stop it there.

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Can I just come in on that one there George because

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well I really would like

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Because Dr Wilder-Smith has actually made a prediction here. He's predicted that we will never do something and I'm afraid he's wrong. He's predicted that it's not going to be possible to separate out left and right-handed amino acids. Now in fact Davies only three weeks ago at Oxford University produced a substance that will happily do this. So it's very dangerous I think for us to put in God simply, whether we call it information or whatever else we want to call it, simply because we can't do something at the moment. Scientists who predict we will never be able to do something tend to come very heavily unstuck.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Now look here Sir. You must not misquote me like that right to my face. That is a blatant misquote. An absolutely blatant one [Hewitt omitted the absolute necessity of extrinsic information, stressed by Wilder-Smith]. Because I got my first Ph.D. in separating left-handed molecules from right and I made kilograms of them. The way you do it, is you add the DNA information of the plant that makes brucine to the molecule and get out the left-handed form.

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Davies used a simple derivative of iron. He didn't put in any information. He used stereo chemistry. [Hewitt as Wilder-Smith was trying to explain, was quite wrong in his explanation of the significance of Davies work ¹].

George Balani: Let me interrupt you both for a moment and get you to sit tight. We'll be back shortly. This is the Tonight Show. I had thought we'd be discussing the question of evolution versus creationism. I'm beginning to understand evolution better but becoming more confused than ever about creationism, but more about that shortly. It's 28 to ten.

George Balani: This is the Tonight Show. The time is 26 minutes to ten ... and in our Wellington studios as my guests this evening, [I have] Dr Gordon Hewitt, senior lecturer in Zoology at Victoria University and former Dean of the Science Faculty there, and Dr Arthur Wilder-Smith who has doctorates in organic chemistry, chemotherapy, pharmacology and is quite an expert as you will have gathered on creationism. Though maybe I should say Dr Wilder-Smith you're not doing very well on actually imparting the information to me. I am still as confused as ever about what you're talking about. Perhaps I could call on Dr Hewitt to translate some of what Dr Wilder-Smith's been saying. Dr Hewitt are you able to perhaps put that in terms that I can comprehend, because it's pointless going on if you can't.

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Well I think ... I don't really like to do this but ... I think what Dr Wilder-Smith is saying is that naturally when we make proteins up with the little building blocks which are called amino acids; you can get left-hand ones or mirror images of the left-hand ones, which are called right-hand ones. And what he's saying is that to separate them out you need to put in some sort of outside information and I think he's equating this outside information with some sort of act of creation.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: No!!

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Oh. He says he's not, so perhaps I'd better let you ask.

George Balani: O.K. Well what are you equating it with?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: I'm equating it with a separation which stochastic, ordinary straight-forward, common garden organic chemistry cannot do. In order to make a protein which is necessary for life, the building blocks have got to be 100% left. Now you can do it by certain complicated techniques. Now I won't defuse or confuse you again with how you do it. I've done it myself many times. You can do it, but not by simple naturalistic laws of chemistry in order to make life appear. Life will not appear until you get your active enzymes, and your active proteins and your DNA molecule full of information to do it.

George Balani: O.K. Let's ...

Prof. Wilder-Smith: I must put this in. There are two necessities to produce life (a) to get amino acids which are left-handed. Ordinary inorganic chemistry can't do it. The second thing is to get the DNA molecule, which is full to the brim with bits of information which chemistry doesn't supply. You've got to have that to control the proteins and to make them. Where are you going to get the information?

George Balani: You're becoming more and more confusing about the question. Let's come back to the question of creationism versus the theory of evolution. Let's talk about it in relation to Christianity, in relation to the Bible, in relation to those teachings. After all, what we're talking about is did we evolve or were we created by a Divine Creator? And the question that I'm trying to get you to answer for me Dr Wilder-Smith, which I'm having a lot of difficulty with, is do you believe in that theory, in the biblical theory of creationism.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Now that's a loaded question. I'm not a theologian. I'm a scientist. And if you want me to talk about theology you'd better get somebody else, because I won't do it. I'm not qualified to do that. But if you want me to say whether I believe what's in the Bible as a scientist - I do. But that doesn't control my creationism. My creationism is firmly bound upon, built upon comparative and experimental organic and biochemistry and pharmacology, firmly on that.

George Balani: O.K. Let's accept that and put that to one side. Let's talk about where the Bible sits in relation to creationism and to evolution. It obviously doesn't fit very well with evolution. How does it fit with creationism?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Oh, it fits with creationism perfectly. You see it says in the first chapter of the Bible. I'm not going to be a theologian here, but it does say that God took the dust of the earth, then he formed it, just as a chemist forms it, and out of the formation of the dust of the earth arose the living soul. Now the same thing happens in science today when Sol Spiegelmam takes the inorganic parts which make up a virus. He made a certain virus you know in the lab, next door to me when I was at the University of Illinois. When you add the information which is not in the chemistry to those molecules, out comes your life. I don't think there is any difficulty there at all.

George Balani: Dr Hewitt, any comments?

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Ah yes, as far as creation and the Bible goes I also am not a theologian. I would hate to talk on the subject at length, but I would say that many of my colleagues of course are Christians and scientists and have deep respect for the Bible. Some would even, I think, say that the Bible was inerrant, that [is that] it doesn't contain errors, and at the same time [they] seem quite happy to believe in evolution. Because what they believe, as I understand it, is that God did in fact create the earth, but that God created the earth using natural laws, scientific laws, and that God operates through laws which are scientific laws, and which we can understand, that God didn't sort of keep on popping in and stirring things around, but rather God set up the laws which in fact have produced the result which we call evolution and life.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Yes I think that God made the natural laws. Where are you going to get law without that? But I don't think that it's scientifically sound to say that those natural laws made life. You can say that the natural laws plus extrinsic information, that is plus bits of information from outside, that then life arose. That's what science has proved and that's what's also in the first chapter of Genesis, the first 3 chapters. And I know that one time in his life Dr Hewitt was a person who believed that because he worked in the Crusaders? Right or wrong?

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Yes certainly. The idea that evolutionists are evolutionists because they're brain-washed I know to be wrong, because I started off very much as believing that particular narrow view of how we're supposed to understand the Bible. I actually gave it up in part because it seemed to me that if it were true that we could scientifically prove the existence of God to an extent that removed our free will, and it was really after I had those sort of doubts that I started to read evolutionary theory; and all of a sudden, all of these observations which I knew, of the fossils and so on started making sense. And for me I'm afraid, I am just unable to go back to the 18th century, which requires us to have a flood, or a series of catastrophes to explain the fossils or any of those things. It seems to me we have many lines of evidence which fit together very nicely in the theory of evolution, I mean the fact of evolution, as an event and the theories of evolution which we're now starting to construct, groping still but starting to explain the process by which this has happened.

George Balani: Well I find that easier to understand with respect Dr Wilder-Smith than I do the theories you're expounding tonight.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well of course the theories I've put out to you are new. I went through the same development as Dr Hewitt. That's why we understand one another and we're good friends. I was brought up a Christian in England in Oxford and when I got into evolutionary theory with Sir Gavin de Beer and E.B. Ford and the rest of them, Sir Robert Robinson in Oxford; I took up the position that Dr Hewitt now recommends and represents, that is that he doesn't believe as he says the narrow biblical view. Well after I got into that, and fallen away from all my Christianity as Dr Hewitt confesses that he has today; what I did was I had to take up in the interests of the DNA molecule that I was working on, information theory and the study of information theory has brought me back 100% to what does stand in Genesis 1,2 and 3. I'm sorry, that's how it worked with me and the day that I think Dr Hewitt comes to understand what the basis of Shannon and Wiener's information theory is, the huge development in the last 20 years, he'll come back to see that his chemistry will neither supply the biogenesis to produce the first cell nor the development from the amoeba up to man. You need information theory to do it and the information theory is not in matter.

George Balani: ... It's 17 1/2 [minutes] to ten. This is the Tonight Show. It's coming up to 16 minutes to ten and my guests in our Wellington studios are Dr Arthur Wilder-Smith and Dr Gordon Hewitt. We're talking about evolution versus creationism. And again what you said sounded very interesting Dr Wilder-Smith, and I have to say that although it may appear that I'm playing thick, I'm not. I really am having difficulty with it. Let me come back to a couple of issues O.K. If creationism is as plain and simple and clear and scientifically acceptable as you outline why is there so much controversy particularly in the United States, where by virtue of regulation, they're not allowed to teach religious teachings in schools; where some 23 American State assemblies had been looking at giving time to creationism in schools, but in actual fact only two States passed it. Both have since been thrown out by legal appeals to court and indeed in Arkansas the judge who heard the case ruled that creationism was not science but was aimed at advancing one particular religious view.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Yes I know that, I've lived in America for many years as a Professor, so I'm perfectly well aware of that. But the real reason is of course that most people are coupling creationism to the, what Dr Hewitt is happy to call the narrow biblical view. Now I personally believe in the biblical view, but I don't think it is right to classify a scientific theory just on the basis of a narrow biblical view. I believe it myself, but I don't think it is right to ask other people to believe just what I did. Now may I just read this little it from Dr Hewitt himself and this'll clear the whole matter up. "We have all great difficulty," says Dr Hewitt, "in admitting that we are wrong". Now he has that difficulty, he says. So do I, and I labour under that difficulty. However, [he adds] "underlying scepticism is the mark of science and means that scientific theories can change". Now I am underlyingly sceptical about the evolutionary theory because I've been in that and I know that these theories will change. Maybe some of the creationist theories will have to be changed. But I am not going to take the point of view that I am the authority and I am going to decide that schools teach only evolution, because evolution is going to change.

I would ask the children to consider evolution and consider creation carefully and leave with them the chance of making up their own mind. I don't want to tell people what to believe. What I do want to tell them is how to arrive at a conclusion when presented with evidence of any type. I want people to learn not what to think but how to think, and therefore I think that the court cases in America are very very regrettable indeed.

George Balani: Let me talk a little about some of the theories of creationism that I had until tonight thought were creationist theories, such theories as when the earth was formed for example and that's one you won't give me an answer to. You know ... the question of the great flood.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Yes

George Balani: ... in Noah's time. I mean are you an adherent to that?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Yes, I do.

George Balani: So the Flood took place?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Oh yes, absolutely, and a world-wide one too.

George Balani: And it was a world-wide flood ?

George Balani: Yes.

George Balani: Now I'm curious scientifically to know where the water came from and where it went afterwards.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Oh, there's plenty of water to flood the earth today. The only thing is you've got to push up mountains and let down valleys to have some dry land. If you didn't push up mountains and let down valleys we'd all be covered with - I don't know how many meters of water - there's plenty of water there to do it. Now let me tell you this, this might interest your listeners. There is in America one of the top notch, top scratch labs, namely Los Alamos, which worked out the Atomic Bomb with Oppenheimer. Now that lab has people out now and has been out three or four times before with all the most modern apparatus you can have, ground radar and all the rest of it, looking for the remains of the Ark. Now that is done with Government money.

George Balani: I hope they find it and I hope you're accurate in that statement. I wonder Dr Wilder-Smith if you could tell me assuming that you believe in the flood, that means that you believe in the biblical story of Noah?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Oh, of course.

George Balani: O.K. Now could you describe for me how large the Ark was?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well the measurements are given very carefully.

George Balani: Well could you give them to me.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: I haven't got those in my head and I'm not a theologian. I didn't bring my Bible with me, but its a pretty huge battleship I'll tell you that.

G : Its 125 meters by 25 meters by 15 meters.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Thank you very much Sir. I'm glad for the information ... [you're] a good theologian.

George Balani: Let me ask you Dr Hewitt, because I actually find it hard to comprehend a vessel of that size holding the number of assorted animals as the Ark is alleged to have... and you know including food for the period of the flood and so on and so forth. It would have been a hell of a job clearing it out too I would have thought.

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Indeed, in fact in the 18th century Linnaeus who ... invented the system of naming organisms that we currently use, when he got to 14,000 organisms he gave up the idea of the Ark because he just couldn't see how you could fit 14,000 organisms on an Ark that was 125 meters by 25 meters by 15 meters. And he decided that the organisms must in fact have been stranded on mountain tops. Well that was with 14,000 organisms.

We now believe that there are approximately 30 million different species of organisms. So how you would fit (and over half of those are terrestrial) ... so how you'd fit that number of organisms on an Ark that size I certainly find very difficult to work out. Of course, then Linnaeus had the problem because as we know in New Zealand our Tuatara is very peculiar. We've got Tuataras and we've got flightless birds and so on. He started, Linnaeus started to get students coming back from all over the world with these strange organisms from other countries. So he then had to move to having a series of hill tops around the earth that could have the organisms on during the great flood.

Of course now geologists tell us there is absolutely no sign of a great flood. They know what flood remains look like and they tell us there is absolutely no sign of a world wide flood. There are plenty of great floods including a large flood in the area where the biblical history was all developed ², but nothing in the nature of a world wide flood that they are able to detect.

George Balani: Is it correct that it's creationist theory that the dinosaurs that we had on this earth prior to the flood actually perished in the flood.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: No, I don't think ... I've not heard that one. But the other thing you've got to remember though ...

Dr Gordon Hewitt: That's the I.C.R. [Institute for Creation Research, San Diego, CA] view on the matter.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well O.K. I don't care what they say. The thing is that if you go to the top of Everest you'll still find sedimentary, marine sedimentary rocks there and trilobites and things in them, so there's no difficulty about that. It's been pushed up and pushed up relatively easily. Now the reason why Linnaeus and why Dr Hewitt and all the others have forsaken their old faith and their old love, is that they didn't read the Bible carefully enough. It says that on the Ark were only the air-breathing animals so that cuts out a huge number of animals of species and things like that which Linnaeus and others got. The other thing is this, you know that all animals including the human animals are perfectly capable of going into hypothermia. They can hibernate for a number of years without being fed at all. We have a substance called phenothyazine which will put any human into hypothermia and he'll sleep and vegetate for as long as you give him the substance so there's no difficulty about clearing out dung and manure and all the rest of it and feeding them. If they went into that state - every animal is capable of doing it including ourselves.

George Balani: How would they have gone into that state?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well I don't know how it was done, but I should think that the One who made the nervous system is capable controlling it if you know how complicated the nervous system is.

George Balani: So what you're actually saying is that God, whoever He or She may be, or It, did it.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: I think if He judged the earth in mercy, He can do that so I think He'll do worse things than that today if things are going on as they are.

George Balani: I have to ask you both. The theory as I understand it is that there are lots of creationists who are scientists, and its fairly obvious there are brilliant people on both sides of the fence. Is that not right?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well I wouldn't like to pass an opinion on that, but I'd say there are lots of brilliant evolutionists and lots of creationists who are not so brilliant. I mean I've been very careful in what I say.

Dr Gordon Hewitt: Well I'd say that there are only a very small number of people who would refer to themselves as creationists, who are working scientists who publish regularly. This is the interest in Dr Wilder-Smith because he is one of these rare individuals, and it's a delight to meet somebody who's got such an unusual point of view. The I.C.R. in the States claims something like 650 graduate members, but in fact a study of the amount of publications by these people actually showed that the number of working scientists among them was very very small given that there are hundreds, probably hundreds of thousands of scientists in the world now. There are many many scientists of course who are creationists, who believe that God created things according to the scientific laws. The number who believe as Dr Wilder-Smith, who was just saying now that God steps in from time to time and does something very unusual which we have no way of studying scientifically, ...is quite small.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Yes, but you must remember Dr Hewitt that I didn't say that God jumps in and overcomes and overrules natural law supernaturally. I said He did it by the scientific entity known as information. Now the other thing that I wanted to tell you - this is very very important about evolutionists and creationists. There are lots of creationists who have brought science into their present state who were creationists of the sort that I am. The only thing is that they lived 150 years ago. Now it's only since Darwin that that race has died out because they hadn't seen the scientific inadequacy of the Darwinian theory. The only way of showing Darwinian theory to be deficient (I won't say wrong, because there are lots of things right about it. I would be mad to say that all things that Darwin produced - I mean his wonderful works on barnacles and things like that are masterpieces), is [in its lack of] understanding of information theory and it's information theory which is rapidly (the progress of it) ... throwing out the theories that Darwin put forward 120 to 130 years ago. "The progress of science", as Dr Hewitt himself says in this little paper I've got here in front of me "causes the change of theories and I'm open minded myself to know that although it's difficult to change your theories in the light of advancing theory" (because as we get older we get dumber you know), although it's difficult to do that, it's important to allow the possibility of change.

The Darwinists have set up [their beliefs] as authoritarian. Read what they themselves say. Read what Stephen J. Gould says. I don't think it's right to be authoritarian.

George Balani: I wonder. We're rapidly running out of time here Dr Wilder-Smith and I must come back to the question of the teaching of creationism and why it's not allowed to be taught in schools in the United States when evolution is. Now it's fairly clear to me that far greater brains than mine, and perhaps even yours Dr Hewitt have gotten together to present evidence to the courts in the United States that have actually spoken against the teaching of creationism. If it's a respectable and credible science why is that the case?

Prof. Wilder-Smith: Well it isn't, it isn't that case at all, because it is sub judice now and it's before the supreme court and there are nine judges who have got to decide on it. They've already handed down a preliminary notice and that preliminary notice was eight against seven; seven said that creationism being metaphysical has a necessity in science and should be taught and eight were against it. But they said that evolution being also metaphysical and a contrary theory, which is metaphysical should also be taught so where are you? There are eight against seven. Now the next judgment comes out in the next few weeks and will decide either a full scale trial or the nine judges will decide and that will be the end of it.

George Balani: Yes, we actually contacted the New York Times today to find out if any judgments of any kind had been handed down in that particular case and they knew nothing of any.

Prof. Wilder-Smith: The final matter is sub judice still so I won't say anything about it. But the seven against eight has been published and it is eight against seven, eight for evolution and seven for creation. Now I would like to say one thing if I might, if I have a second or two to say so. The reason why creationists don't publish is the same reason why I haven't lately. I did the Huxley Memorial Lecture at Oxford at the Oxford Union, speaking to Richard Dawkins and Maynard Smith. Now I sent in the manuscript for that. We had 800 students and I had a wonderful reception even from Maynard Smith and quite [a] good [one] from Dawkins. I tried that in four journals. I tried Science. I tried Scientific American. I tried Nature and I tried New Scientist. All of them said we don't publish creationist material, period, the end of it. That's why you can't publish. Now it's mean to stand up and tell the creationists they don't publish when the thing is run by a small monopoly intent on carrying out the authoritarian view of the establishment.

George Balani: I have to stop you on that note. We've run out of time apart from which it's unfair to be critical of the editorial staff etc. of these magazines when they're not here to defend themselves. But gentlemen I'd like to thank you both for being with us on the Tonight Show this evening. Maybe we leave as confused as we were when we started. It's 1 1/2 [minutes] to ten.

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References

[1]. Dr Hewitt clearly does not understand the chemistry involved. Molecules which lack a symmetry axis of improper rotation (rotation and reflection combined) exist in two forms. These forms are non-superimposable mirror images i.e. they are related in the same way as your left and right hands are related. Such molecules have the property of chirality (from the Greek word for hand). The compounds used by Stephen Davies were chiral iron acetyls (CIAs) and the two enantiomers (mirror image forms) are indistinguishable in most physical properties (e.g. melting point, boiling point, solubility). They cannot be separated by the usual methods of fractional distillation or fractional crystallization. In fact they can only be distinguished using another chiral phenomenon. An analogy is your right and left hands; their grip on a cylindrical are identical as far as the bar is concerned. But their grip on another person's left hand are quite different. On the molecular level, another enantiomerically pure chiral compound is needed to effect a separation. Davies resolved the iron acetyls into separate enantiomers prior to using them as a "template" to 'hybridize' the 'information' onto the amino acids. Naturally occurring chiral compounds are optically active (have an unequal amount of left/right forms) because the enzymes that bring about their formation - and often the raw materials from which they are made - are themselves optically active. As Wilder-Smith stated one needs to add 'information' to the amino acids before one can produce a solution containing 100% left-handed forms from a racemic solution (containing 50% left and 50% right-handed forms). Bioorganic nature (or life) is 'one-handed'. Virtually all proteins are made up exclusively of L-amino acids including the cell machinery (nucleic acids DNA, RNA) which produce the proteins (which include all enzymes). (Proteins containing D amino acids are often lethal). Natural alkaloids such as brucine, strynine and quinine; as well as bread, meat, and paper are made of enantiomerically pure compounds. Ordinary stochastic chemistry (involving natural law) will not achieve the separation of the enantiomers. When a chiral substance is synthesised in the laboratory, a racemic modification is normally produced. This is because of probability laws. However, living organisms can synthesise chiral molecules predominantly with a specific 'handedness' (see New Scientist 19 January 1984). Pure forms of either are termed optically active since they rotate the plane of plane-polarised light to the left (laevo (Lat.) = left, L) or to the right (dextro (Lat.) = right, D). This occurs because plane-polarised light is a superposition of right and left-handed circularly polarised beams which interact differently with any particular enantiomer. One of the general rules of stereochemistry is that synthesis of chiral compounds from achiral reactants always yields racemic modification i.e. optically inactive reactants yield optically inactive products (Morrison & Boyd, Organic Chemistry [1973], p. 228). Evolutionists postulate that chance processes synthesised amino acids, and that by chance, only left-handed acids were used to make proteins. However, the chance of synthesising even a small protein with only 100 left-handed amino acids equals 10 -30 (i.e. one in one thousand billion, billion, billion). [Back to Transcript]

[2]. For an interesting introduction to the subject see André Parrot, The Flood and Noah's Ark (Studies in Archaeology No. 1) transl. from French by Edwin Hudson (London: SCM Press, 1st English edition, 1955). Parrot was Curator-in-Chief of the French National Museums, Professor at the Ecole du Louvre, Paris, and Director of the Mari Archaeological Expedition. He provides details on the Baylonian version of the flood - The Epic of Gilgamesh and archaeological evidence for a Mesopotamian flood. The majority of young earth creationists maintain that Noah's Flood was world-wide in extent, as indicated in the Genesis account. [Back to Transcript]

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