FOR more than a decade, my life has been dominated by creationists. I did not
plan it this way. It was just that as a professor of geology at the University
of Melbourne, I got fed up watching them using what I consider to be bad science
to stand up their claims.
It all came to a head in 1992 when Allen Roberts, a creationist in Sydney,
embarked on a lecture tour claiming he had found the remains of Noah鈥檚 Ark. I
attended two of these lectures to ask questions about his geological evidence,
and about the speaker鈥檚 claims to a doctorate and to have been kidnapped by
Kurds. I was thrown out of the meetings and served with a Supreme Court writ for
defamation, which was later settled out of court.
Rather than simply defend myself, I decided to go on the attack, and launched
a case in the Federal Court of Australia to try to show that Roberts鈥檚 lectures
were misleading and that he was using false information to sell products such as
books, tapes and videos. I wanted to tell the public that creationism was not a
science and that it had no place in school classrooms. Although the court judged
that Roberts had indeed made misleading scientific claims, it concluded that he
was not involved in trade and so had not breached Australia鈥檚 fair trading laws.
I lost the case. I appealed, and lost again.
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I had to sell my house to pay part of my A$1 150 000 (拢450 000)
legal costs, but that was the least of my sacrifices. For a decade now I have
been the target of a hate campaign, much of it orchestrated. I have had many
aggressive telephone calls and letters, some of them from fundamentalist
Christians who tell me that they鈥檙e praying for me, others abusive and full of
bile and invective. I have had several death threats. One letter said simply:
鈥淒ear Sir, drop dead.鈥� The serious threats are from unbalanced people, and these
are the most frightening. The creationists tried鈥攁nd failed鈥攖o have
me removed from my Chair at the University of Melbourne.
All this has put enormous stress on my home life. I鈥檝e come to live a random
existence, with secret addresses, no listed telephone number, no record on the
electoral roll and a foreign passport. I鈥檝e needed police guards when giving
public lectures. My work has slowed up over the past five or ten years because I
haven鈥檛 had the time to do any research. I have had moral and financial support
through all this from colleagues and the press, and from groups abroad such as
the Geological Society of London and the German Geological Society. But I have
had scant support from professional bodies in Australia and at the trial I felt
I was virtually fighting the case alone. I suspect they were put off by the
creationists鈥� reputation for litigation.
Do I have any regrets? I certainly do not regret for a minute fighting the
battle for science against creationism. It has cost me greatly, financially and
personally, and I long to have a stable life again. I鈥檇 love to work regular
hours, to know where I鈥檒l be in a few weeks鈥� time. Hopefully one day I will. Of
course, if someone threatens geology again to promote creationism, I鈥檒l be
prepared to fight them.
