Jonathan Sarfati - Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by FeloniousMonk (talk | contribs) at 01:44, 8 February 2006 (→Articles by Sarfati: MoSed). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 01:44, 8 February 2006 by FeloniousMonk (talk | contribs) (→Articles by Sarfati: MoSed)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

File:Sarfati.jpg

Dr Jonathan Sarfati

Dr Jonathan D. Sarfati (born 1 October 1964) is a New Zealand/Australian young earth creationist with a Ph.D. in Chemistry. Sarfati is currently employed by the Christian apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis (AiG). According to AiG, his job description is "research scientist, author, and editor".

Sarfati, a FIDE Master, was the 1987/88 New Zealand national chess champion. He represented New Zealand in three Chess Olympiads. His continued interest in chess includes giving blindfold chess exhibits.

Biography

Born in Ararat, Victoria, Sarfati moved to New Zealand as a child, where he became a dual national. He attended Wellington College (New Zealand), and later he graduated from Victoria University of Wellington with a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Chemistry, based on his thesis: A Spectroscopic Study of some Chalcogenide Ring and Cage Molecules. He has also had papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals including co-authoring a "Letters to Nature" submission on high-temperature superconductors which appeared in 1987 in the journal Nature, when he was 22.

Ethnically Jewish, Sarfati converted to Christianity in 1984. He describes himself both as a Messianic Jew and Hebrew Christian, which he uses interchangeably (there are distinctions as well as overlap between the two movements).

In 1996, he returned to Brisbane, Australia to work for the Creation Science Foundation (now Answers in Genesis) as co-editor of their magazine, Creation magazine, and TJ (Technical Journal). Sarfati is married, with one stepson.

Writings

Sarfati has written numerous publications, including three books, with a fourth soon to be released. Refuting Evolution, his first book, was published in 1999, a rebuttal to the National Academy of Sciences' teachers' guidebook Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science (*). It has since sold more than 450,000 copies. This was followed by a sequel, Refuting Evolution 2, a response to a major PBS/Nova 7-part series and a Scientific American article.

His latest book, Refuting Compromise is a rebuttal of the day-age creationist teachings of Dr. Hugh Ross, who attempts to harmonize the Genesis account of creation with the belief that the earth is billions of years old, a position which Sarfati rejects. Sarfati has also authored a number of booklets, besides contributing chapters and articles to numerous books and magazines, as well as many of the articles on the Answers in Genesis website. He is a popular speaker at churches and conferences on the issue of creation versus evolution.

Sarfati was one of the top 1000 reviewers at Amazon.com. In addition to chess-related books, his reviews also cover religious and scientific books .

Moral issues

Sarfati has strongly defended the pro-life cause, thus opposes abortion for any reason except to save the life of the mother, and opposes embryonic stem cell research, while supporting adult stem cell research. He also also argued that the Bible contradicts slavery and apartheid.,, and argued that Nazism owed much to evolutionary ideas.,,

He defends marriage as one man and one woman, while opposing polygamy. Similarly, he opposes homosexual behaviour, while advocating "love the sinner, hate the sin," condemning the "vile murder of the homosexual Matthew Shepard by young thugs," and denounced gay-hater Fred Phelps as "on the lunatic fringe of Christendom, with virtually no support from conservative Christians."

Sarfati has endorsed Bernard Goldberg's suggestion that Roman Catholic priests who molest teenage boys should be called "gay priests" rather than "pedophile priests", since (as according to this position), the latter usually involves little girls. In the same article, he also referred to homosexuals who advocate the imprisonment of pastors who preach on the traditional teaching that homosexual acts are sinful as "homonazis" and "sodomofascists."

"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 Green 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"

Chess

Sarfati, presently club captain/director-of-play for the Logan City Chess Club, Australia, maintains a keen interest in chess that stems back to his early days.

A former New Zealand national chess champion (1987/88), he represented New Zealand in three Chess Olympiads: the 27th in Dubai (1986), the 28th in Thessaloniki (1988), and the 30th in Manila (1992). He also tied Rey Casse in the Australian Junior Championship (1981), but his (then) New Zealand residency made him ineligible to share the title.

In a 1988 tournament in Wellington, Sarfati achieved a draw against former World Champion Boris Spassky.

Sarfati gives frequent "blindfold" chess exhibits, and has been known to play twelve such games simultaneously (see some games and photos). His previous best was winning 11/11 at the Kapiti Chess Club in New Zealand (Roberts, E., New Zealand Chess 29(3):23, June 2003).

Scientist

Critics and supporters of Sarfati often disagree whether he should be considered a scientist. Young Earth Creationism is considered a pseudoscience by almost all scientists. Supporters would argue that he has a doctorate in physical chemistry and has published in undisputed scientific journals, so is a scientist. Another issue is whether one can be a scientist in some domains of work even if one advocates an ostensibly non-scientific position in others. However, the young Earth creationist site Answers in Genesis lists many creationists who are active in science (though many for work unconnected to creationism), and points out that many of the founders of modern science, such as Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell were biblical creationists. , though Darwinian theory was not seriously developed until after all of the preceding had died. In response, Sarfati has argued that in reality evolutionary ideas date back at least to Greek philosophers, and these scientists were well aware of them.

Sarfati received his PhD in physical chemistry. Thus, some critics find it reasonable to question his knowledge in apparently unrelated fields- namely the creationist perspective in biology and astronomy. Sarfati himself has raised this point regarding writers in skeptic journals, eg he called one such writer "An anthropologist, so anything he says about radiometric dating should be taken with a large grain of salt." In addition, Sarfati has written:

"We have always tried to avoid saying or implying ‘believe me because I’m a scientist trained in such and such a field’, therefore we were not guilty of this fallacy. Rather, we try to rely on the strengths of our arguments, the soundness or unsoundness of which are independent of who is making them. Hopefully, the only time we appeal to our qualifications is defensively, to refute the charge that ‘no intelligent person/no real scientist believes creation/doubts goo-to-you evolution, or to point out to ‘professional biologists’ resorting to that fallacy that we also have ‘professional biologists’ on staff. "