Jonathan Sarfati

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Jonathan D. Sarfati (born October 1, 1964) is a creationist who was trained as a scientist. His writings on creationism have attracted attention from supporters and opponents. He is also a master chess player.

Sarfati works for Creation Ministries International (CMI), formerly part of Answers in Genesis (AiG), a non-profit Christian apologetics ministry specializing in Young-Earth creationism. He is the author of Creation science articles and three books on the subject; Refuting Evolution (1999), Refuting Evolution 2 (2002), and Refuting Compromise (2004).

A FIDE Master in chess, he achieved a draw against former world champion Boris Spassky during a tournament in Wellington in 1988, [1] and was New Zealand's national chess champion in 1987-8,[2] representing that country in Chess Olympiads in 1986, 1988, and 1992.

Contents

Background

Born in Ararat, Victoria, Sarfati moved with his family to New Zealand as a child, where he became a dual national. He attended Wellington College in New Zealand, later graduating from Victoria University of Wellington with a B.Sc. (Hons.) in chemistry, and a Ph.D. in the same subject for a thesis entitled "A Spectroscopic Study of some Chalcogenide Ring and Cage Molecules."

He co-authored a paper on high-temperature superconductors that was published in Nature in 1987 ("Letters to Nature") [3], and from 1988 to 1995, had several papers on spectroscopy of condensed matter samples published in other peer-reviewed scientific journals. [4]

In 1996, he returned to Brisbane, Australia to work for the Creation Science Foundation, then Answers in Genesis and now Creation Ministries International, as co-editor of their magazine, Creation, [5] and their technical journal, Journal of Creation (formerly TJ). [6]

Fellow creationist Gary Bates, in an interview with Sarfati in Creation magazine, says:

"Sarfati means Frenchman in Hebrew. Despite having no religious upbringing, Jonathan was driven to investigate his Jewish roots after his conversion. As a Messianic Jew, he has also passionately imbibed knowledge about church history and theological issues."[7]

Writings

Religion and science

According to the Answers in Genesis website, Sarfati was a founder of the Wellington Christian Apologetics Society in New Zealand, and has long retained an interest in Christian apologetics and the creationism versus evolution debate.[8]

His first two books, Refuting Evolution in 1999, and Refuting Evolution 2 in 2002, are rebuttals to the National Academy of Sciences' publication Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science and the PBS/Nova series "Evolution," respectively.

Refuting Compromise, published in 2004, is Sarfati's rebuttal of the day-age creationist teachings of Dr. Hugh Ross, who attempts to harmonize the Genesis account of creation with mainstream science regarding the age of the earth and the possible size of the Biblical Flood, against which Sarfati defends a literal biblical timeline and a global flood.

Chemical evolution

He has written in the general field of chemistry criticising abiogenesis theories, pointing out what he considers difficulties in chemical evolution, such as polymerization,[9] chirality,[10] instability of building blocks,[11] and the origin of self-reproduction.[12] He also accuses many origin of life researchers, such as David Bartel of MIT and Gerald Joyce of the Scripps Research Institute, of having a religious kind of faith in materialism.[13]

Criticism of these writings

Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education called Sarfati's Refuting Evolution a "crude piece of propaganda",[14] while PZ Myers has labeled Sarfati's understanding of developmental biology as "hopelessly confused".[15]

Sarfati's critics, such as Reed A. Cartwright and Dr Douglas L. Theobald, rebut Sarfati's claims that evolutionists keep changing the definition of vestigial to match the evidence.[16] In their criticism, Cartwright and Douglas note that Sarfati's PhD is in physical chemistry, not biology. Sarfati himself has criticised some of his opponents for their lack of appropriate credentials, noting of one researcher, that he was an anthropologist, and therefore "anything he says about radiometric dating should be taken with a large grain of salt."[17]

Religion and morals

Abortion

Sarfati wrote in Prayer News: "Right throughout Scripture, murder — that is the intentional killing of innocent humans — is regarded as a heinous sin (Exodus 20:13, Matthew 19:18, Romans 13:9). Since abortion kills an innocent human being, it is nothing less than murder. So all the usual 'hard cases' pushed by pro-abortionists, e.g. 'What if the woman was raped?', 'What if the child is deformed?', 'What if she can't afford to keep the child?' are completely irrelevant. We should also remember Ezekiel 18:20, which prohibits executing a child for the crime of his/her father — this means that even the tragic cases of pregnancies due to incest or rape are no justification for killing the innocent child conceived." [18]

Racism

He has argued that "the Bible speaks against racism regardless of any way in which people have misused it." [19]

Marriage and homosexual rights

He defends monagamous heterosexual marriage as "God’s ideal" [20] (compare polygamy).

He opposes homosexual behaviour, while advocating "love the sinner, hate the sin." [21]

He has endorsed Bernard Goldberg's suggestion that Roman Catholic priests who molest teenage boys should be called "gay priests" rather than "pedophile priests." In the same article, he used the terms "homonazis" and "sodomofascist" to refer to gays who advocate the imprisonment of pastors for calling homosexual acts sinful:

"Homosexuals are now a politically protected victim group, about which it is verboten to say anything negative. And certain homonazis want Christians punished if they quote from the Bible against homosexual behavior. Indeed, 63-year-old Pastor Åke Greenh was jailed in Sweden for just that, because they have such a sodomofascist law restricting Christian freedom. Fortunately his conviction was overturned on appeal, to the ire of homosexual activists, by a higher court because it was such an egregious violation of Sweden's free speech laws." [22]

Politics

Sarfati frequently expresses his conservative views on some blogs, most notably that of columnist Andrew Bolt of Australia's Herald Sun newspaper. He has supported Bolt's position on the conservative side of Australia's culture wars. [2][3]

Chess

Sarfati (at left, on dias) playing blindfold chess at 12 boards simultaneously
Sarfati (at left, on dias) playing blindfold chess at 12 boards simultaneously

A New Zealand national chess champion in 1987-8, he represented New Zealand in three Chess Olympiads: the 27th in Dubai [23] in 1986, the 28th in Thessaloniki [24] in 1988, and the 30th in Manila [25] in 1992. He also represented New Zealand at the 5th Asian Teams in New Delhi [26]. He also tied Rey Casse in the Australian Junior Championship in 1981, but was not eligible to share the title because he was a resident of New Zealand at the time. [27]

He is currently the club captain/director-of-play for the Logan City Chess Club, Australia. [28]

He is known for giving blindfold chess exhibits at creationist conferences [29] and chess clubs, [30] and has played twelve such games simultaneously. [31]

His previous best was winning 11/11 at the Kapiti Chess Club in New Zealand [32].

Bibliography

References

  1. ^ Chess Games
  2. ^ Poison Pawn
  3. ^ Mawdsley, A., Trodahl, H.J., Tallon, J., Sarfati, J. and Kaiser, A.B. (1987) Thermoelectric power and electron-phonon enhancement in YBa2Cu3O7-6 Nature 328: 233-234.
  4. ^ Five articles can be found by searching for Jonathan D Sarfati at Science Direct
  5. ^ CMI's Creation magazine
  6. ^ AiG's Journal of Creation Archive
  7. ^ Creation on the Web article An awesome mind - A talk with one of Christianity’s foremost defenders, Jonathan Sarfati by Gary Bates. First published: Creation 26(3):36–41 June 2004. Referenced May 18, 2006.
  8. ^ Sarfati's biography at CMI-Australia, Creationist Physical Chemist and Spectroscopist
  9. ^ Sarfati, J. (1998) Origin of Life: The Polymerization Problem Journal of Creation 12(3):281–284
  10. ^ Sarfati, J. (1998) Origin of life: the chirality problem Journal of Creation 12(3):263–266
  11. ^ Sarfati, J. (1999) Origin of life: Instability of building blocks Journal of Creation 13(2):124–127]
  12. ^ Sarfati, J. (1997) Self-replicating enzymes? A critique of some current evolutionary origin-of-life models Journal of Creation 11(1):4–6
  13. ^ Creation on the webarticle "Does ribozyme research prove Darwinian evolution?" by Jonathan Sarfati
  14. ^ Scott E.C. and Branch G. (2003). Antievolutionism: Changes and Continuities BioScience: 53(3):282-285
  15. ^ PZ Myers' blog
  16. ^ Cartwright, R.A. and Theobald, D.L. (2001) Citing Scadding (1981) and Misunderstanding Vestigiality: Another Example of Poor Creationist Scholarship, Talk Origins archive.
  17. ^ Sarfati argues that Colin Groves, an anthropologist, is not an expert on radiometric dating [1]
  18. ^ Creation on the web article "Abortion — The answer’s in Genesis" by Jonathan Sarfati First published in Prayer News (Australia), May 1998, page four.
  19. ^ Creation on the web series Feedback from its 2001 article titled "The Bible vs slavery and apartheid" by Jonathan Sarfati.
  20. ^ Creation on the web article "Does the Bible clearly teach monogamy?" by Jonathan Sarfati.
  21. ^ Creation on the web series Feedback from February 6, 2004 titled "Objections to homosexuality article" by Jonathan Sarfati.
  22. ^ Creation on the web series Feedback from February 18, 2005 titled "The disingenuous and anti-Christian nature of 'gay rights' rhetoric" by Jonathan Sarfati.
  23. ^ Chess Olympiad 1986
  24. ^ Chess Olympiad 1988
  25. ^ Chess Olympiad 1992
  26. ^ Asian Teams 1983
  27. ^ Search for Rey Casse and Chess
  28. ^ Logan City Chess Club
  29. ^ Creation Ministries International Camp brochure
  30. ^ Croydon chess club photos
  31. ^ Chess games at Logan Chess Club site
  32. ^ (Roberts 2003)

External links

Opposing views

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