To depart from Scripture at any point is neither safe nor right.

Joubert 2012 p. 81

Answers in Genesis (AiG) is one of the two major young earth creationist (YEC) organizations in the world, the other being the Institute for Creation Research (ICR).

Answers in Genesis is an apologetics (i.e., Christianity-defending) ministry dedicated to enabling Christians to defend their faith and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus particularly on providing answers to questions surrounding the book of Genesis, as it is a foundational book of Christianity and the most-attacked book of the Bible. We also desire to train others to develop a biblical worldview and seek to expose the bankruptcy of evolutionary ideas and their bedfellow: a “4.5 billion-year-old” earth (and an even older universe).

About Answers in Genesis

AiG is widely known for its Creation Museum and Ark Encounter, but also has a streaming service called Answers TV and since 2008 has published a research journal called the Answers Research Journal (ARJ).

When Answers Research Journal launched in January 2008, the Internet buzzed with controversy. Skeptics claimed the journal would never produce quality scientific research or discussion. But thanks to the Lord’s guidance and blessing, they have been proved wrong.

Andrew Snelling, ARJ Editor-in-Chief

Notably, ARJ styles itself as a scientific journal, but requires that papers support a specific religious stance, something that no legitimate research journal does:

The following criteria will be used in judging papers:

1. Is the paper’s topic important to the development of the Creation and Flood model?
2. Does the paper’s topic provide an original contribution to the Creation and Flood model?
3. Is this paper formulated within a young-earth, young-universe framework?
4. If the paper discusses claimed evidence for an old earth and/or universe, does this paper offer a very constructively positive criticism and provide a possible young-earth, young universe alternative?
5. If the paper is polemical in nature, does it deal with a topic rarely discussed within the origins debate?
6. Does this paper provide evidence of faithfulness to the grammatical-historical/normative interpretation of Scripture?

… The editor-in-chief will not be afraid to reject a paper if it does not properly satisfy the above criteria or if it conflicts with the best interests of AiG as judged by its biblical stand and goals outlined in its statement of faith.

ARJ Instructions to Authors Manual p. 13

ARJ is really an apologetics journal, meaning the topics are all related to defending YEC. AiG subscribes to what’s called presuppositional apologetics:

… my presupposition is that God exists and He has given us His Word (the Bible) that is absolute truth. So I use the Bible as the basis for how to think, interpret evidence, explain the world around me, and read the Bible.

… An axiom (often used in logic) is a proposition that is not susceptible to proof or disproof; its truth is assumed. The Bible takes this stance, assuming God’s existence to be true and not something to be proven[.]

David Wright, What Is “Presuppositional” Apologetics?

So ARJ is a supposedly scientific research journal that exclusively publishes articles that assume YEC and biblical literalism. This produces articles that are absolutely absurd and yet difficult to even begin refuting. What is there to do with a biology paper that cites the Bible as an authoritative scientific source beyond dismissing it out of hand?

One of ARJ’s favorite topics is ascribing various atrocities to belief in “Darwinism,” including: the Vietnam War, the Korean War, the Rwandan genocide, early 20th century American eugenics (and again), the Cambodian genocide, the Holocaust (again and again), Marxism, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and so on. As RationalWiki states, “even if these claims were true, it is hard to see how they would undermine the scientific theory of evolution.”

Several YouTubers have dissected ARJ papers in detail, including Dapper Dinosaur and Gutsick Gibbon. The debunk by Gutsick Gibbon (Erica) was particularly devastating, even prompting a response from AiG researchers. You see, research by Jeffrey Tomkins published in ARJ claimed that human and chimpanzee genomes are significantly less similar than is reported in mainstream scientific literature (85% compared to 98%). Erica painstakingly repeated Tomkins’ methods and exposed serious, really embarrassing flaws. For example, Tomkins averaged percentages without weighting them, a very basic math error.

To illustrate, imagine we have 50 students divided into two classes so that one class has 40 students and the other has 10. If the average grade in the first class is 70% and the average grade in the second class is 90%, then it’s not true that the average grade of all 50 students is 80%. Instead, the real average is 74%.

(.70 + .90)/2 = .80 Incorrect

(40*.70 + 10*.90)/50 = .74 Correct

Tomkins computed percent similarity of several different corresponding segments of DNA and then averaged the similarity, ignoring the fact that some segments were several orders of magnitude longer than others. In other words, if we were comparing two genomes (let’s pretend they’re ATTCGACAAC and ATTCGACAAG) broken up into segments as follows:

ATTCGACA and AC

ATTCGACA and AG

then Tomkin’s method would show these genomes to be only 75% similar when they are in fact 90% similar.

(1.00 + .50)/2 = .75 Incorrect

(8*1.00 + 2*.50)/10 = .90 Correct

Using Tomkin’s own data, Erica showed that correctly weighing the average yields the scientifically accepted value showing an extremely close relationship between humans and chimps. This alone would be devastating to ARJ’s credibility if they had any.

References

About Answers in Genesis. (N.D.). https://answersingenesis.org/about/

ARJ Instructions to Authors Manual. (N.D.). Answers in Genesis. https://assets.answersresearchjournal.org/doc/articles/research-journal/instructions-to-authors.pdf

Joubert, C. (2012). What Makes Us Human, and Why It Is Not the Brain: A Creationist Defense of the Soul: Reply. Answers Research Journal 5, pp. 81–87. https://answersresearchjournal.org/creationist-defense-soul-reply/

RationalWiki (N.D.). Jerry Bergman. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Jerry_Bergman

Snelling, A. (N.D.). Word from the Editor. https://answersresearchjournal.org

Wright, D. (N.D.). What Is “Presuppositional” Apologetics? https://answersingenesis.org/presuppositions/what-is-presuppositional-apologetics/