The mother of all conspiracies

Posted at 09:00 on 30 May 2022

Some people insist that the theory of evolution, and deep geological time with its millions and billions of years, are all a lie, and a complete fabrication by the scientific community. But could this really be the case?

First of all, consider what kind of a lie we are talking about here. One that spans millions of research papers published by millions of scientists over a period of more than two hundred years. One that is detailed, meticulous, comprehensive, mathematically precise, and very self consistent. While not every study fits precisely, those that do not are the exception rather than the rule, and only ever concern the fine details and not the overall bigger picture.

It is not possible for such a level of deception to be sustained merely through casual fraud by individual researchers. To get the level of detail that we see in the scientific record, millions of scientists worldwide across multiple different disciplines -- geology, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, paleontology, anthropology and more -- would have to have been consciously and deliberately acting in collusion for more than two centuries to squander trillions of dollars on systematically misinterpreting, misrepresenting and even fabricating evidence in a tightly coordinated and disciplined way in order to weave such a narrative.

Such a deception would have to encompass scientists from all walks of life -- from undergraduates and postgraduates through to retirees, as well as people who have made career moves from paleontology, evolutionary biology or geology to other lines of work such as software engineering, who would no longer have any incentive to remain silent about it.

It would have to include scientists working in areas such as oil exploration and cancer and vaccine research, whose financial and professional incentives are to produce results that are correct rather than ideologically convenient.

It would have to include not just atheists but Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews. It would have to include scientists from multiple different nations, including places such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, where you would expect the prevailing Islamic religious climate to incentivise exposing such a deception rather than being complicit in it.

Every other scientist working in academia and industry would have to be turning a blind eye to it, even though they were having to compete with it for funding for their own research projects.

Accountants and administrators in academia and industry would have to be complicit in it, even though they in particular would want to scrutinise what the money they were managing was being spent on, and what return it was giving on people's investments.

Politicians worldwide would have to be complicit in it -- including the Islamic authorities in oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, and young earth creationist politicians in the USA. None of them are demanding investigations into what all the government grants on evolutionary science are being spent on, nor are they demanding that scientists develop additional rules and protocols to tighten up and prevent such deception.

Furthermore, the millions of people worldwide involved in the deception would all have to be so adept at keeping it under wraps that there is not a shred of evidence for it on Wikileaks or the dark web. Investigative journalists too would have to be complicit in it, because investigative journalists build their entire careers on sniffing out and exposing scandals such as this, and such a story would be the scoop of the century.

If this really were happening, then it would be the mother of all conspiracies. NASA faking the moon landings, 9/11 being an inside job, MI5 being behind the death of Princess Diana, chemtrails, alien spacecraft in Area 51, and the US Navy covering up the existence of mermaids are all child's play by comparison. If this really could be happening, then it is difficult if not impossible to think of a conspiracy that could not.

I shall leave the final word on that one to Charles Colson, who had this to say about conspiracies in his book Born Again:

I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world — and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.

Featured image credit: Beatrice Murch