Conversations With RipChurch Contributors About Origins: on Vision Forum's Jonathan Park

IS THIS RATHER LENGTHY RIPARIAN CHURCH POST FOR YOU?

You might read this post if you’re interested in Young Earth Creationism, and more particularly the way that some Christians market bogus science to kids.   If you’re a parent with Young Earth Creationist leanings, you might benefit from this conversation with some incredibly well-informed and intelligent people.

If this does not interest you, or if you’re looking for good music and something to eat with it, consider our less controversial and tastier offerings.

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Riparian Church contributors Kathy and Touchstone and new contributor Ignatius J. Reilly recently had a conversation about Vision Forum’s Jonathan Park radio theater series.

Kathy has meticulously reviewed the Jonathan Park Series on her blog, and all the contributors at Riparian Church consider this a huge gift to the digital community.  So many parents who want to be diligent in their children’s upbringing simply do not have time to separate the gold from the pyrite, and Kathy gives the JP series a fair, impartial, but painstaking vetting for errors in fact and logic.

She wanted input for her forthcoming review of a new episode.  Ignatius and Touchstone were the guys to give it to her.

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KATHY:

(These quotes are from Vision Forum’s Jonathan Park Audio Adventure Series. I have 6 volumes of 12 episodes each, so 72 episodes.   They are very popular among homeschoolers. The friend whom I borrowed them from did not know how blatantly Young-Earth the series was. She lent them to me and after listening to the first few episodes, I decided to write reviews for them, pointing out the scientific, factual and logical errors.   I have written reviews for 25 episodes so far, so not even half-way through.)

Consider this statement:

It is amazing how strange things get when someone is confronted with undeniable evidence for a Creator, but will not accept that He exists.

(1) Is there a logical fallacy?
(2) What is the logical fallacy?

Some other statements in the program:

* Just goes to show how strange things become when we accept evolution and reject the Creator. (Appeal to Consequences, Appeal to Fear, Appeal to Ridicule)

* Design is irrefutable evidence that there is a Creator. (Argument from Design)

IGNATIUS J. REILLY:

Well, it’s not really an argument - the statement comes from a place far removed from any desire to defend a position or convince someone of something. It’s just self-satisfied gloating.

But if it were an argument, the problem with it would be a matter of begging the question - implicitly assuming the consequence in the premise - by claiming the evidence to be undeniable.

KATHY:

I was wondering if it could possibly be Appeal to Ridicule or Appeal to Consequences.

It is amazing how strange things get when someone is confronted with undeniable evidence for a Creator, but will not accept that He exists.

• If one rejects Creationism, then all sorts of strange beliefs will follow
• ‘Strange beliefs’ are undesirable
• Therefore it is better not to reject Creationism

TOUCHSTONE:

There’s an Appeal to Ridicule (and/or Fear), here, you’re correct. And the consequences implied are a problem, too. But really, that’s to miss the glaring problem with the statement, which is just a blatant misstatement of facts. There is no “undeniable evidence” for a Creator, and this is more true in its denial than as it is stated. Conspicuously, we have no evidence for a creator, and the more rigorous one gets about evidence, the more true this is — the “evidence” typically cited is some intuitive sense or philosophical/religious conjecture that doesn’t rely on “evidence” the way we typically use the term, as data that efficiently supports some physical model or natural theory. 

So this statement is just deceptive in its claim of “undeniable evidence”, and this pretty much dwarfs any logical flaws that attend it — it’s fundamentally dishonest prior to its being fallacious.

KATHY:

So, that they are assuming that there is a Creator is a problem? Would that be ‘begging the question’? 

 TOUCHSTONE:

Well, that would be begging the question, yes. But the statement isn’t explicit about that assumption. Maybe you know more about the speaker (Vision Forum, etc.) and from that have reason to think this is a working assumption here, but as stated, it just presents the naked claim that there is “undeniable evidence” for a Creator. As your quote reads, it isn’t necessary to assume there’s a creator, and in fact, it would be totally unneeded to assume such; there’s “undeniable evidence”, so any reasonable person will be convinced, no starting assumption for a creator needed! 

This also points at an ad hominem fallacy implicit in this argument, that unbelievers are intransigent or incorrigible in their disbelief — a stance the Bible writers like a lot, as it happens; unbelievers are not honest brokers in their disbelief, despite their claims. They are either liars who are simply denying what it is obvious (see Romans), or just irrational in denying what is (reasonably) undeniable in front of their eyes. Either way, they’re *bad*, as opposed to just *wrong*. 

Thinking about that a little more, it’s really not an ad hominem fallacy, as the claims don’t rest on the personal attack. It’s just a personal attack embedded in the statement.

IJR:

After reading through several of your reviews (which I think are well written - nicely organized, thorough without being too long, charitable/respectful), I think Touchstone’s earlier point is worth repeating.

The problem isn’t so much that the recordings are rife with formal logical fallacies - that the structure of their arguments are flawed. The problem is that their prior commitments force them to ignore, distort and make up facts to support a view of the world that is contradicted by the evidence. There will be times when their ideological propagandizing can be revealed through faulty logical argumentation, but the far bigger vulnerability they face lies is having their misstatements of fact exposed and refuted.

KATHY:

The poor logic is one thing. But you’re right - some of the statements are just plain flat out wrong. In one episode (I haven’t gotten around to writing the review yet), they state that Uluru (Ayers Rock) is five miles long and four miles high. This is mentioned several times in the program and once in the Study Guide.

No, it isn’t!! 

It is five miles around and about half a mile high. To be fair, they did say ‘five miles around’ once in the program, but then they somehow changed it later and said ‘five miles long’ in another part of the program. I thought maybe I had misheard them about the height, but the Study Guide definitely says ‘four miles high’. 

The producers of this series neglect to reference their information in any form. No references are ever given either on the CD or in the Study Guide for ANY information presented in the series. Even the voice actors of the series are not given any credit anywhere. 

You can listen to snippets of episodes, but those snippets don’t have any science - they focus more on the adventure story. Hmmm…I just went over to the Jonathan Park website looking and cannot find the page where you can listen to snippets from each episode.  I can only find one snippet for each volume.

TOUCHSTONE:

Well, that’s a pretty devastating critique, right there. But as damning as that is, it’s sort of the end of the road, isn’t it? I’m wondering what I would offer as a critique, beyond “they don’t even cite any sources!” There’s very little to work with at that point, which may be a reason they deploy their materials this way. It’s just fluff.

I think my patience tank with creationism is pretty much empty at the moment. I went to the link, and read “50 Amazing creatures and and island creations that refute evolution!” at the top, and just closed the window. I might as well be trying to critique Holocaust denialism. More power to the folks who have the energy and patience to wade through all that crap and provide rebuttals, information, documentation and education about their denialism, and that is a groove I’ve been in off and on for a long time, but I just haven’t got what it takes at the moment to bother. People who buy this stuff and trust it deserve the mind and beliefs they get. If they want a balanced, real-world view, it’s just a few clicks away on Google to start learning for real. 

KATHY:

The CDs do make very brief mention of ‘sources’, eg, Dr Russell Humphreys, an ICR physicist, is mentioned as saying that if we examine all of the known physical indicators, 90% of them would show that the earth is much younger than what the evolutionists claim. (Episode 13) BUT, I would expect more information either in the Study Guide or in the CD info sheet. There is no CD info at all.

I don’t know why it literally took me until just yesterday to actually realise that no sources were cited! The Study Guide does not even have copyright information!

IJR:

It took a few tries to get “This Week’s Show” to play, but I eventually got it to work in Safari on a Mac.

The episode was pretty much what I expected. Fair-to-middling production values, script/plot, actors. Sort of wooden deliveries of sort of stilted dialog. Not horrible, and kids will likely be entertained.

The one bit of science-oriented content was about the origin of human language. The overall approach to the topic was to:

• name several godless evolutionary theories,
• mock them lightly without giving them a fair treatment,
• declare that language is very complicated and so the best explanation for where it came from is that God created people with the capacity for language fully-formed, and
• congratulate themselves for being both so scientific and faithful about it all.

It didn’t take long, just a few minutes, but there was enough content to turn into a list to memorize, regurgitate and grade. It was followed up later in the episode with a section about evidence - flood stories from around the world prove that the Genesis story of the flood is true. The bottom line is that the real purpose of this lesson was not to teach, inform, inspire or promote independent thought. The purpose was to inoculate. There is no science going on here, not even a retelling of a former curiosity about how the world works. The answer must conform to a particular reading of the Bible, and the question will be molded to fit the necessary answer. The superficial subject matter is irrelevant. The thing they’re talking about on the surface can be anything at all - it’s just a prop brought on stage long enough to set up the audience for the real message, which could probably be outlined with a little more care than this, but off-the-cuff:

• The Bible is true and easy to understand.
• Believing the Bible equals believing God.
• Not believing the Bible (and not believing God) is more a matter of sinful rebelliousness than of intellectual error.
• It matters more that a person have the right attitude toward God than well-formed, well-informed ideas.
• There are dangerous people with dangerous ideas out there, and we need to know how to counter their error-filled, sin-inspired deceits.

If a science curriculum that pursues pedagogical objectives along those lines appeals to someone, this episode (and presumably this series) would be a good supplement to such a curriculum.

In addition to the few minutes of anti-scientific derision, there was also a substantial subplot focused on repentance and conversion. And those bits were tied together by the bulk of the episode, which was a cheesy adventure story filled with people who are very clearly either for God or against God.

If delving further into this would be helpful for the larger project of your review of the entire Jonathan Park project, I’d be happy to take it more seriously. Let me know if this is a conversation that you’d like to keep pursuing.

KATHY:

Fantastic! I should let you write the reviews!

More seriously, though, I have decided to take a different approach, namely to pin-point exactly where those errors are as they appear in the episode. Which is why I quote and reference the time in my reviews. Otherwise, people might say that I didn’t really listen to the episode and I’m just spouting anti-Creation sentiment. Yes, this has happened.

Busy homeschooling moms are just not going to have the time to do the research to make sure that the information presented in the series is correct. So, they like JP because the work’s been done for them: it’s Christian, it’s Bible-based, it’s scientific!

IJR: 

I wasn’t trying to compete or show you how I think the material ought to be reviewed. What really happened is that Touchstone left me feeling guilty about the way I was ripping on the material without ever having listened to it - I was going mainly off of your review, and extrapolating from the little bit I know about Vision Forum. So, having been (in my mind) called out on that sloppiness, I wanted to make amends by ripping on something specific they had published.

Let me suggest that we explore the idea of your target audience for a while. The question of how people work through the decision of which curriculum to use seems like an interesting one. What kinds of help are people looking for? Which groups tend to use which kinds of advice or guidance? Who do you imagine the reader of your reviews to be while you write them? What kind of feedback are you getting? What kinds of measurements count for you in terms of evaluating the success of your undertaking?

KATHY:

In my small homeschooling circle of friends, there are some who are ‘afraid’ to teach science. They are afraid of mainstream, secular science that makes no mention of God. They are afraid their children will get confused if they read about things that do not agree with the Bible. They want something that will provide them with knowledge and at the same time build their faith. Jonathan Park does all this for them! Finally, there is something they can use and not be afraid.

I guess if people see the factual and logic errors, I’ll be satisfied. This is what I am trying to highlight in my reviews.

I do want people coming back to read more. My friend who said she was keen to read future reviews told me that my review came across as ‘reactive’ and ‘combatant’. Yeah, I guess it does. So, I want to tone it down if possible, and just present the facts. Which is another reason why it takes so long to write a review. I have to separate my emotions from the facts.

The idea that “the Bible can be trusted on scientific matters” is so crucial to this way of thinking.  

Therefore, pointing these things out as ‘problematic’ is not going to work. These are affirmations, not problems!

This is one of the reasons why I have decided to take the approach of pointing out the factual errors found in the episodes. I affirm where possible, but then point out the problems that arise if one chooses a literal interpretation.

Comments

[Kathy]

Thanks for doing this.

[Kathy]

Just to let you and your readers know that the Jonathan Park Study Guides are available on the internet.

http://www.jonathanpark.com/learning_zone/homeschoollessons/

You can see all the science and Bible lessons there.

[Otter]

Thanks, Kathy. I'm not sure I'm going to like what I see there, but if anything there changes my mind about Vision Forum, I'll be sure to post it.

[MAC]

If someone is interested in taking on another Vision Forum-related spin on history (this time), there's a new project out there by Geoffrey Botkin/Western Conservatory of the Arts and Sciences: Navigating History.

https://navigatinghistory.com/home