 And interestingly, it's only been within the last 75 years that we've embraced evolutionary science. So what does that say about all the years before that? Why were people coming here then? He continues by saying that creation is holding people back. He says when a portion of the population doesn't believe in that, it holds everybody back. Now, first question is, what are we holding people back from? Second, does he really honestly want to stand behind that statement? Knowing that men like, say, Sir Isaac Newton, a man that studied things like physics calculus, mathematics, light, color, astronomy, a guy who believed in God and the Bible, was he holding us back? Because you see, it was Sir Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists of all times, who made the statement. He said, I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than any profane history whatsoever. This was a guy who refuted atheism and defended creationism. Was he holding us back? Or maybe, what about Johann Kepler? Johann Kepler, one of the founders of the field of astronomy. This guy went to seminary for two years. He said astronomy was thinking God's thoughts after him. Here you've got a guy who helped field or found the field of astronomy that's been hijacked by Big Bang theorists. Or Blake Pascal. This is a guy who studied hydrostatics, differential calculus. This is the guy who came up with the famous Pascal wager. He said, how can anyone lose who chooses to be a Christian? Was he holding us back? Or maybe Robert Boyle. Robert Boyle considered to be the father of modern chemistry. And yet, here's an interesting thing that we don't teach much in classrooms anymore. When this guy died, he left a large sum of money for the Boyle lectures to be held every single year. And you would think the father of modern chemistry would want to have lectures on chemistry every year, right? His lectures were for proving the Christian religion. Sir Isaac Newton, born in 1642, made absolutely tremendous contributions to almost every field of science. It's hard to overstate his importance in the foundation of natural sciences. He was also a theologian and his beloved of anyone trying to prove that creationism has somehow advanced science. Let's look at two things, though, that Dr. Herob seems prepared to sweep under the rug. One, Sir Isaac would not have much approved of Dr. Herob's version of the faith, and they share little in common on theological grounds. Newton was a believer in a God, but he was an anti-Trinitarian. In his private writings, he said many things which would have earned him excommunication from the church of the time. He considered any talk of Jesus being the son of God as a blasphemy, and he held a number of other views in direct opposition to modern church teachings. Two, Sir Isaac Newton, like most 17th century scientists, had never considered anything but creationism. Newton was a man of his times. He helped to bring about the Enlightenment age, but he was also somewhat mired in old superstitions. He was a well-known alchemist, someone who believed in the magical transmutation of substances. He championed the false idea of an eternal ether that pervaded the universe. I have no doubt that he held a number of other ideas that were common at the time that we would today find ridiculous. Remember that Newton died over 130 years before the origin of species. There were no competing theories with creationism that had any basis in fact. Newton's many contributions include a great deal of biblical hermeneutics, the study of interpretations and word choices, but little or no contribution to biology or biological diversity. Three, while Newton was a man of his times, his work wasn't based on his religious or superstitious beliefs. In most cases, Newton's cherished beliefs actually held him back from discovering scientific truths we know today. This is nothing to be ashamed of. Most scientists have difficulty seeing past their own prejudices and biases. That's why when someone like Darwin or Einstein comes along and challenges what we know or think we know, some people have difficulty adapting. People like Dr. Herob. Dr. Herob also mentions Johannes Kepler, though he butchers the name, and blazed Pascal. Pascal died in 1662, Kepler in 1630, long before Darwin was even born. Neither of them made any contributions of note to biology. The two of them can serve as introductions to some of the ways that religion and superstition has retarded scientific progress. Kepler famously was forbidden to teach at universities in Catholic Germany because of his Calvinist beliefs. His mother was tried and convicted as a witch and spent 14 months in a jail cell, spared from a descendants only by her son's legal pleading. Pascal's wager is usually cited as one of the worst theistic arguments because of the base and deceptive nature of the wager. It suggests that you could trick a god or play the odds on the eternal. Pascal didn't really become interested in theological matters until he was about 31, when he had a vision he considered a visitation from God. He abandoned all his scientific work and devoted his time entirely to theology and philosophy. So you could say in a very real way that his beliefs ended his brilliant career in mathematics. A portion of his most productive years were actually taken up with his struggles against the Catholic Church as his family belonged to a heretical group called the Jansenists. The argument from historical scientists that Dr. Herob is using here is flawed in one very simple way. Creationism itself has been entirely unproductive in every field that I can think of. Famous scientists may have held creationist beliefs, especially in the years before Darwin, but it was not those beliefs that they based their science on. In fact, in many cases it was a Christian scientist who opposed the scientific positions of the Church by disproving a religious supernatural explanation for natural phenomenon. The scientific field contains people of all faiths, most of whom have mastered the art of keeping their religious dogma separate from their scientific process. However, creationists like Dr. Herob have yet to use their creationism to make any advances or produce any new knowledge. If I could propose an altered version of Pascal's wager, it would be this. In the whole of human history, there has never been a single case when the supernatural explanation turned out to be the right one. Betting on science when it conflicts with religious belief is a pretty sure bet. Thanks for watching.