Judging from the phone calls and emails we have received, many of you did and all who have contacted Creation Research were incensed by the way the Bible was ridiculed by Jeremy Bowen. Bowen, now a Special Correspondent, joined the BBC News in 1984. He has reported news stories from around the world besides presenting their Breakfast programme for 2 years. His years of experience in reporting from war zones seem, at least to the BBC’s Religion & Ethics department, to have qualified him to make unchallenged assertions about the reliability of the Scriptures. If, like me, you gave up an hour of your time to watch this glossy, hi-tech representation of sceptical thinking, you may well come away thinking it was probably one of the worst programmes the BBC has ever produced. As someone has already said, "The programme was very poorly researched but very well presented."
Bowen’s basic objective was to add weight to the now long-in-the-tooth claim that the Genesis account was a reworking of part of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. However, even his relating of that epic tale was much watered down - gone were the fantastic geographies and exotic characters; exhausting quests and difficult journeys; heroic battles with monsters, supernatural beings and natural forces. Instead we, the viewers, were presented with a greedy merchant king caught, along with his family, in a flash flood. This Noah was a trader through and through, who even argued with his wife because she insisted on giving the animals and children their precious cargo of beer after the water supply ran out. In this respect it was an excellent example of how the 21st century materialistic mind seeks to reduce everything to bite-sized chunks which can be rationalised away. Even the Sumerian vessel pictured in the programme was just a number of floating boxes tied together to form something not much bigger than a large coal barge. However, the clay tablets which contain this tale record Utanapishtim describing his vessel quite differently:
It was not just the scientific data which was shoddily treated in this programme. The Bible’s record of events was also badly researched. There were many examples where the Scriptures were misrepresented, as they commonly are by their critics. Perhaps the most obvious was the farcical account of Noah trying to gather 30 million species of animals into the ark with only his teenage sons and their wives to assist him. The difficulty he must have had was graphically emphasised by Bowen, in modern clothes, trying to assist an ancient Noah to load the animals on board. Several times clips were shown of him struggling with a stubborn camel, trying to drag it by a rope up the shortest of gangplanks onto the ark. Clearly he and his team had not bothered to read Genesis, where it is made quite clear that Noah did not have to fetch or cajole a single animal to come inside. Gen. 6: 20 "Of the birds after their kind, of animals after their kind, and of every creeping thing of the earth after its kind, two of every kind will come to you to keep them alive." Notice that, "will come to you" - God ordered the animals to go to Noah for their own safety. They were selected and gathered by The LORD Himself. Noah didn’t even have look round the back of the ark for any stray ones! Notice too, it was 2 of each "kind", not species which came to Noah. Later in Genesis we read that The LORD shut Noah, his family and all the animals in the ark, but Bowen stood and watched them struggle to raise the door with the rain already falling.
There is one final aspect of this façade which must also be exposed. Several times experts were called upon. One of these was described as "Ian Plimer - Geologist". Such bland descriptions leave the average viewer with the impression that this man is a honest scientist able to objectively asses the evidence from a neutral position. It would have been at least reasonable to ask him whether his association with "The Australian Skeptics Inc." (an association dedicated to promoting secularism) could affect his ability as an independent assessor. In 1997 Professor Plimer took Dr. Allen Roberts, a creationist (and good friend of John Mackay), to court over claims he had made about possible sightings of the ark. The Australian Skeptics web site still carries the page which announced, "The Australian Skeptics Science and Education Foundation has promised a substantial sum of money to Ian Plimer’s defence…". Plimer (Australia’s Richard Dawkins) lost the case but not, it seems, his credibility with producers and presenters like Jeremy Bowen. Like MP’s, should not so-called "Expert Witnesses" have to declare an interest when discussing important issues? Previously (1994) Plimer had authored a book called "Telling Lies for God" which was an out-and-out attack on creationists, especially those based in Australia. This book lists many of the common criticisms made of those who believe the Bible is an accurate record of the origin of the universe and the human race, such as those which were repeated in this programme. John Mackay was mentioned by name several times in the book. This prompted John to research Plimer’s claims, and our video "Your Answer to Bible Skeptics" refutes the ones Plimer considered to be overwhelmingly persuasive. This video provides a wealth of information to answer the sceptics toughest questions about Bible science. As the BBC is unlikely to show any response to Bowen’s programme, never mind this video, the only way to see it will be to purchase your own copy - see www.creationresearch.net and click "videos" for more details (or download a UK order form from www.amen.org.uk/cr/videos ).
It should be no surprise to Christians that programmes of this nature are given such resources and prominence in today’s world. Increasingly the predominant philosophy in western nations is humanism. This ball picked up speed when Darwin published his "Origin of Species" 150 years ago. Before this Charles Lyell had paved the way for Darwin’s proposals with his book "Principles of Geology", central to which was his commitment to a uniformitarian view of history. This is summed up in the catch phrase, "The present is the key to the past", and this has become the dominant mind-set in scientific thought and is now flowing into all aspects of life. Because Bowen and Plimer are trained to think in this way, thoughts of trees very different from today’s miniatures as possible raw materials for the ark don’t enter their minds, even though Plimer at least should know of their existence. They also assume that animals were initially wild and have only been domesticated relatively recently, which is why Noah could not have gathered them together. This is not the understanding which the Scriptures provide us with - all the animals came before Adam to be named. It is also why they and many others would expect the Flood to leave just a layer of sediment several metres thick as its hallmark. In 2 Peter 3, we find a much more devastating event described - "the world that then existed perished" by being destroyed with water. The Flood was an earth-changing cataclysm, and its testimony goes much deeper into the earth’s crust than a 12 ft (4 M) band of mud in present day Iraq.
In this passage the apostle Peter also asserts that the wilful exclusion of the Flood from history, based on the assumption that everything has always worked as it does today, will be the major cause of people not taking the return of Jesus Christ seriously. This often-overlooked prophecy is being fulfilled before our very eyes. Programmes such as this one, rather than discrediting the Biblical record, demonstrate how accurate it is at recording history past, present and future. In one way at least, this was a most encouraging programme.