Background Information:
Ian Taylor is a well-travelled writer, speaker and researcher. After taking
a higher level of qualification in metallurgical engineering at London
University, Ian emigrated to Canada and was employed for more than 20 years
in the laboratories of the Aluminium Company of Canada, one of North
America’s corporate giants.
During this time Taylor specialized in metal physics, and obtained patents
for high-strength armour plate and a novel process for automated production
of aluminium heat exchangers.
In 1974 he was dramatically converted to Christianity, left industrial
research, and went into television production, eventually becoming
producer/writer of a science documentary series broadcast throughout the
U.S. and Canada. Many of the programs dealt with the creation-evolution
controversy.
Taylor’s next project was to spend three years researching and writing the
book, In the Minds of Men: Darwin and the New World Order (TFE Publishing P.O.Box 48220, Minneapolis, MN 55433, 1984). The book
fills a vital gap by relating the sciences to the humanities, and carefully
documents the history of the ideas that are the foundation of the
evolutionary worldview, and has become the definitive work in its field.
The book is now in its sixth printing.
In November 1994 Dr. Olga Polikovskaya, at that time the Russian Deputy
Minister of Education, phoned Taylor and commented:“This book [In the Minds
of Men] must go into every university and high-school school in Russia.”
Since then the book has been translated into Russian, and in October ’95
Taylor attended a Moscow conference at which he made a formal presentation
of the book to the Russian Ministry of Education.
In 1996 Taylor was asked to be the voice of Creation Moments—a daily
radio program that was at that time syndicated on 250 stations. The program
is currently broadcast on over 1000 radio stations throughout the U.S., as
well as stations in Canada, Puerto Rico, Moldavia and South Africa.
Since the publication of his book, Taylor has travelled thoughout North
America, Russia, Romania, Moldova, the Middle East, China and Hong Kong speaking on
the the scientific evidences for creation. Two other books are in
preparation. During the latter part of ’99 Taylor will go into the TV
studio to film a 13-part series based on his book and lectures. Taylor
currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Taylor’s Response to Lindsay:
July 12, 1999
This is a brief reply to Don Lindsay’s critique of my book In the Minds of
Men. I would first like to thank Mr. Lindsay for his diligence in finding
the grammatical error on page xv; this evidently escaped my editor as did
“metamorphosing” on page 105. Secondly, I want to thank him for pointing
out my statement that the current estimate for the beginning of life is
2000 million years ago. This was in fact the estimate when my book was
first published, but I will be happy to revise that figure to 3.87 billion
years in the next edition. Actually, this will make the case stronger for a
young sun; otherwise it now means that the sun’s energy output must have
been exactly what it is today for 3.87 billion years rather than only 2
billion. Many people find it difficult to muster up this kind of faith.
Regarding the remaining list of what he is pleased to refer to as “mistakes
in the scientific arguments”, I am tempted to dismiss this as born of
arrogance rather than the open mindedness expected of true scientists. I do
want to assure Mr. Lindsay that I did my homework before committing words
to paper. Moreover, I submitted each chapter to experts in their field
before publication. These experts incidently were not creationists nor even
Christians as far as I am aware, but mostly professors at the University of
Toronto. The tragedy of the Internet is that it is used by some as a
license to slander, and this is the reason for my reply. I will deal with a
sufficient few of his accusations, not for Mr. Lindsay’s benefit, but for
the benefit of others who may wish to see that his motives are based upon
his anti-God sentiments rather than upon good science.
“Ian caught lying”
This accusation arose from a debate I had in
Winnipeg eleven or twelve years ago where my opponent was evidently
sufficiently insensed that he put his version of the debate in print where
it has since gone world-wide on the Net. The “lie” devolved about my
statement that the British Museum withdrew their precious Archaeopteryx
from Professor Hoyle’s further investigation in 1986. I happened to be in
correspondence with Professor Hoyle and Dr. Lee Spetner so I knew exactly
what was going on between this team and the British Museum, and could
therefore speak with some authority. However, I thought it better not to
divulge this confidentiality at the debate, nevertheless, I did not lie.
“The frozen mammoth”
My statement, “presumably tens of thousands of other
frozen animals in the north ...” appears on page 99 and was the conclusion
drawn from Dillow’s work and that conclusion is really a criticism of
Dillow. Dale Guthrie’s book Frozen Fauna would not be published for another
four years after I wrote this, and Guthrie makes it clear for the first
time that only a handful of frozen creatures are complete with their soft
body parts, while all the remaining hundreds of thousands exist as bones
only. Fortunately, these bones and even some dinosaur bones have not
mineralized, making it possible more recently to conduct DNA analysis. The
results totally belie the claim that these remains must be millions of
years old.
“Rock flowing under pressure”
Mr. Lindsay’s remarks about my statement on
page 105 about fracture mechanics and so on really exemplifies his
arrogance in dealing with a topic with which he is evidently not too
conversant. Anyone familiar with pre-stressed concrete knows that under
compressive forces solid concrete can be bent provided the internal
stresses do not change from compressive to tensile. So then the geologists’
dictum that Lindsay parrots regarding rocks bending without tensile failure
while under very high compressive forces, is absolutely valid all the time
those compressive forces are present. And this is the point, the
illustration of a syncline given on my page 104, is clearly not of bent
strata under thousands of feet of compressive forces. In the same way that
pre-stressed concrete will shatter when under bending stresses once the
compressive force is removed, so too would those bent rocks have shattered
once erosion removes the alledged upper thousands of feet of rock. Belief
in erosion of this magnitude is another article of faith that may easily
have doubt cast upon it by the wonderful examples of anticlines at very
high peaked mountain tops showing no sign of erosion whatsoever.
“No geologic column” (page 103)
In the critique I received Lindsay simply
states this in his list of mistakes as there are indeed many other such
statements that simply serve to give the appearance of an impressive list.
I need only ask how many quotes would he like of well-tenured professors of
geology and even textbooks who have made written statements to the effect
that the geologic column in its entirety exists nowhere on this planet?
“Man evolved at four separate locations” (page 141)
Lindsay has clearly
missed the context of this statement which begins at the bottom of the
previous page. The context concerns the Bible-believing naturalists of the
nineteenth century and shows how the liberal church of today -- the
Washington Episcopalian Cathedral is given as the visual example -- has
emulated an outdated evolutionary view.
I think there is little need for me to pursue the tedious list of
accusations, and once more thank Mr. Lindsay for those few genuine though
minor errors that I will be pleased to correct in the next printing, which
incidently will be the seventh and should occur towards the end of this
year. I sometimes wonder how many books these self-proclaimed critics of
others have actually published that gives them the necessary credibility
and authority to do so?
Ian T. Taylor
