Some people are skeptical about UFOs and alien abductions-but for all the wrong reasons.

Gary Bates is the latest in a long line of Australian creationists who have mounted tours of New Zealand since the early 1990s. Every year, speakers from Creation Ministries International (formerly Answers in Genesis, and before that the Creation Science Foundation) make the journey across the Tasman to address church halls full of the faithful on the importance of adhering to strict biblical literalism, and to distribute an ever-expanding catalogue of books, videos and magazine subscriptions. This strategy, dubbed ‘linking and feeding’ by CMI chief executive officer Carl Wieland (see NZ Skeptic 45), is quietly but very effectively establishing a broad-based creationist movement in this country, avoiding the largely unsuccessful head-on confrontations with the educational establishment which have characterised the creationist movement in the US. There are now several locally grown speakers on the circuit, groomed by the New Zealand branch of CMI from its base in Howick.

In October I was one of four local skeptics who attended a meeting addressed by Bates in Rotorua. He began with a reminder that their ministry was fully ‘faith-funded’, and urged his audience to support it by purchasing his merchandise during the intermission. This was to be a recurring theme throughout the night. A form was passed round on which people could subscribe to CMI’s Creation magazine; there were plenty of takers.

He then launched into the now-standardised CMI patter. We are engaged in a “War of the Worldviews”, he said, with our allegiances determined by where we think we came from. Morality is a Christian virtue, grounded in Genesis, and those who refuse to accept that book’s authority have no basis for ethical behaviour. This, he maintained, was the root cause of the modern world’s ills. We had a choice between accepting the words of men or the Word of God.

Well, no, actually. We can’t climb Mt Sinai and ask God Himself whether He wrote the Bible. We only have the word of men like Bates that He really is its author. So it comes down to making a choice as to which set of men one listens to.

Bates then turned to some of the alleged evidence against evolution-20-year-old fossilised felt hats, “unfossilised” T. rex bones containing red blood cells, complex geological structures formed in a matter of days at Mt St Helens, and the way dead fish float, rather than lying on the sea bed to be fossilised. None of this material was new, and space precludes a refutation of it all here, but I’ve appended some websites which cover it.

But Bates has a point of difference from other creationist speakers. He is the author of Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection, and after the intermission (and more exhortations to purchase stuff) he outlined the book’s argument. In a nutshell, it is that life elsewhere in the universe does not exist, and that reported encounters with extraterrestrials, including UFO sightings and alien abductions, are actually the work of demons, who are on a “crash and burn” mission to bring down as many human souls as they can in order to spite God, in a cosmic war that began in Eden.

Ironically, there was some material that a skeptic could agree with. He did a fair job of explaining the sheer immensity of the universe and the difficulties that would confront any would-be space-farer wanting to visit our little blue dot, although some basic errors (the Hubble telescope in “geosynchronous” orbit, Proxima Centauri the closest galaxy) revealed a strictly limited knowledge of astronomy. But then he explained there couldn’t be any aliens to make the trip anyway, because the Bible said so. If aliens existed elsewhere, they would be under the curse of Adam. Since the Church is described as Christ’s bride through all eternity, and since Christian marriage is monogamous, he cannot have brides (ie churches) on other planets. Nor will he be crucified and raised again elsewhere, because his death and resurrection was for all of Creation. Many in the audience dutifully nodded at each of these points.

Belief in aliens is predicated on evolution, Bates says, and Lucifer is using this belief to mount a campaign based on deception. By creating apparitions of UFOs, he encourages people to doubt biblical truth, and by subjecting people to alien abduction experiences he spreads misery and sows confusion. In the past he has adopted other guises, says Bates. Among these were his appearances, disguised as an angel, to Muhammad and to Mormonism founder Joseph Smith.

His audience lapped it all up, although after almost two and a half hours some of the children were dozing off. Finally, he came to an end and the small skeptical contingent headed home for reviving hot chocolates. We didn’t buy anything.

Websites

T. rex bones: home.austarnet.com.au/stear/YEC_and_dino_blood.htm

Floating fish: home.austarnet.com.au/stear/fossil_foolishness.htm

Mount St Helens canyon: home.comcast.net/~fsteiger/grandcyn.htm

Rapid fossilisation: talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC361.html

Other creationist arguments used by Bates and others: www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

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