BCSE Revealed, Revealed
David Anderson is a YEC who was based in Belper, in the UK until late 2007 and who set up the blog and web site called BCSE Revealed.
His smear blog and smear web page are a font of made up "facts" and innuendo mixed in with a generous helping of logical fallacies. Part of his "material" was obtained by hacking into private discussion forums.
Whilst we could spend a long time here refuting all of his various accusations and innuendoes, instead we will just give you a few facts so that you can get a measure of the man and his postings. Here is a link to an archive of the Yahoo Mailing list "Blackshadow" which David likes to suggest is a web of deceit and intrigue. The reality is instead a convoluted tale of an eclectic bunch of people of various backgrounds and world-views who slowly and messily got their act together to fight the rising tide of creationism in UK schools.
One of our committee members, Mark Edon came across Anderson's smear blog at the same time as he first stumbled across the BCSE i.e. way before he became a committee member, and not as Anderson has since claimed, in any way as a deliberate plant by the BCSE. Mark engaged in an email correspondence with Anderson and has the following comments to make;
My exchanges with David Anderson were extremely revealing and showed just how little he knows or cares about scientific truth, the scientific method and either of these being taught to kids in Britain today.
As a father of 3 - one at University, one in High School and one in Junior School, I am committed to keeping religion out of the science classroom. I am also in favour of religious education for all, with a range of faiths and belief systems being covered. I am an atheist myself (well ok an agnostic if you push me into strict technical definitions).
David has stated that I approached him apparently innocently but in fact as part of a devious plot dreamt up by the then BCSE committee. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was almost exclusively my encounter with David and his extreme views that convinced me that I needed to try to counter some of his activities for the sake of my children. It was David Anderson that convinced me I needed to join the BCSE and to try to do my bit.
David has refused my offer to write up our exchanges jointly - he would not say why. When I told him what I had written up he reacted with the comment that he would have polished things up much more for general publication. So I offered him the chance to change anything which is covered here and he refused - he would not say why. He has also refused to publicly answer direct questions about his views on science, education, the scientific evidence for evolution and the age of the earth, and when the dinosaurs died out. Try it yourself. He simply deletes any questions he doesn't want to reveal the answer to. It was this deliberately concealing and deceitful approach which convinced me that the wider world needed to know that he was nothing more than a religious fundamentalist pretending to be an unbiased observer. (I am going strictly by the dictionary definition of the word fundamentalist here - although he also claims the dictionary is wrong)
I have refused to lower myself to his mud slinging level and have instead restricted myself to only those topics relating to the only aim of the BCSE - to keep religion out of science classes in the UK. This is, of course, the one topic that his smear web page and smear blog utterly fail to cover.
Anderson on Education
When I asked David which sciences were suitable for general classroom teaching without reference to his own particularly extreme religious views he told me that;
"All of life is religious. As such, I believe that the idea of non-religious education is impossible. The only question is *which* religion - the secular one, the Muslim one, the Christian one, or another. You shouldn't infer from that that I want to take over any state schools - I don't!"
Personally I am very much against segregated religious schools, we have seen the impact they have in Northern Ireland. I much prefer religious education which covers a range of faiths and atheism for all.
Anderson on Science
I had mentioned to David the now famous Kitzmiller vs Dover trial in the US which covered the relationship between science and religion. David told me that he does not . . .
"accept the "upper-storey/lower-storey" water-tight separation of religion and science. All science must operate on the basis of certain religious assumptions about reality."
That’s telling it to us straight. Another classic "argument" of his was that . . .
"Until you can prove that rationality exists, you cannot rely on it. But you cannot prove anything without rational arguments. Therefore, you simply have to assume it. Christianity cuts this knot by teaching that God has impressed innate knowledge upon our beings, and that it is not a case of needing to prove it - it is a case of being perverse and deliberately ignorant if we deny it."
Most people take being rational as a pretty sensible way of life (including many religious people) but David’s religious views (which are pretty extreme and rare in the UK) seem to be against it.
Anderson on Irreducible Complexity
David seems several decades behind the latest creationist arguments about Irreducible Complexity regarding the Bacterial Flagellum;
"An eye would be irreducibly complex, because without a number of inter-dependent parts, it can't do anything useful."
This particular argument was demolished by Darwin himself in 1872 - full details here
When scientists make arguments which are demonstrated to be false then they stop using them - just another reason why creationists and IDers are not scientists.
Anderson went on to demonstrate to me a lack of any kind of understanding of the anatomy of the human eye or any of the huge amount of knowledge we have regarding the many independent times eyes have evolved in nature.
Anderson on the Bible
David toes the YEC party line and believes that the Bible is utterly incapable of error;
"if any real fact contradicts the Bible, then the Bible can't change - it must just be adjudged to be false. If the universe wasn't created in six days by Jehovah, or if Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead bodily, then Christianity is false."
Anderson on the Age of the Earth
Yes he thinks it is only 6,000 years old. He doesn't like to admit this though. Direct questions on this subject on his blog or web page are simply deleted. His thoughts on Dinosaurs ;
"They were created on the sixth day, as man was (which is why scientists have actually recovered real dinosaur flesh and blood - which is impossible if they died 65 million years ago - and why there are many evidences from history of man seeing dinosaurs)."
How does he know this? He told me;
"It is possible to tell, because the Bible tells us."
I have all of our email correspondence on file and can back up all of these comments with this evidence if need be.
My one little victory with David was to get him to stop stating that he has a "Science Degree" on his blog and instead to state the actual truth i.e. that he has a "Maths Degree". But as you will see on his blog and web site he has managed to convince himself that he is right and I am wrong, even after he changed the wording as I suggested!
Conclusion
So can you trust David Anderson to give a reliable and unbiased account of the BCSE? I don't think so, but please have a good look around and make up your own mind.
David can't even give a reasonable and unbiased account of the changes he makes to his own web site about his own qualifications so I seriously doubt his credentials as either an unbiased or a rational observer.
The BCSE is here to keep creationism out of the science classroom, David's purpose in life seems to be to get creationism into all aspects of other people's lives. It is no wonder he seems to hate the BCSE so much.
His current blog, which mostly stays away from BCSE topics, reveals even more extreme opinions from him including the revelations that he is against democracy and that he calls homosexuals perverts.
Having a chap with those kinds of views smearing the BCSE is perhaps not such a bad thing after all.
Other creationist activity has included attempts to subvert the Wikipedia entry on Truth in Science. See our Links page for more details.
