#1358: Doug Batchelor

Doug Batchelor is a Seventh-day Adventist and the author of several books. His primary ministry is Amazing Facts, a worldwide television, radio, and publishing ministry, which should be read with an emphasis on “Amazing”, not “facts” (his “amazing facts” stand to “facts” as “toy horse” stands to “toy”). Batchelor is, for instance, a typical young earth creationist. Though he rejects evolution because it conflicts with a literal reading of the Bible, he also thinks evolution can be refuted on scientific grounds, and you can probably already suspect what sorts of PRATTs he’ll offer us (there’s a good discussion here). According to Batchelor, Darwin deliberately invented evolution to promote atheism, and atheism leads to eugenics and racism and the Holocaust and to the rejection of morality, Hitler (never mind that Hitler most likely rejected evolution, but you see: Batchelor’s claim is an Amazing Fact™, not a fact), as well as the end of all hope.

Apart from that objection, Batchelor maintains that carbon dating is untrustworthy since “14C has a half-life of 5,700 years,” which means that it cannot establish the age of anything older than that, according to Batchelor (also this). Everything is uncertain, and all of evolution is based on such tenuous assumptions (no, he doesn’t understand that the central point of science is that hypotheses are tested, or that hypotheses about the past predict observations at present). Therefore, evolution requires more faith than creation. Also, there have been proposed fossils that have turned out to be fraud, which shows that evolutionists falsify the fossil record for financial gain, and which means that the whole fossil record can be rejected out of hand.

No. Instead of listening to those who know anything about the field, Batchelor praises the “science” performed by RATE, a group that, according to Batchelor, has been “ignored or censored by evolutionists” (oh yes, they have been mostly ignored; to Batchelor “censored” is a synonym for “ignored” when it suits him). Indeed, anyone who questions modern scientific conclusions are “persecuted”, according to Batchelor. Just watch Expelled, I suppose.

“I still love science”, says Batchelor, but rejects it because it conflicts with the Bible.

Currently he runs his own educational institution, Amazing Facts Center of Evangelism, which surely doesn’t brainwash kids with the truth and which does allow dissent, only not from the strict religious creed of the school, of course. 

Now, rejecting science is just a small part of what Batchelor’s ministry is all about. Here are his musings on the role of women in ministry and in leadership (surprise: Batchelor is against women in leading positions: it “often comes with bad results, as was the case with Queen Jezebel, who usurped her husband’s authority”), but I think we have provided a fair and representative picture.