Troy Britain's
Creation/Evolution
Locus
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Troy & Kathy Britain
ell first off as the above photo indicates, I'm married. Kathy and
I have been together for about twenty five years. I'm not sure how she manages to put up with my constant
chatter about evolutionary biology, paleontology and antievolutionism, but she
does. To make money I was in the small press printing industry for over twenty
five year, however I recently transitioned into the biology adjacent job of insect trapper for the
Cooperative Agricultural Support Services Authority (which contracts me
out to the California Department of Food and Agriculture). Kathy works for a costume
manufacturer.
So how does a one time printer come to be interested in the creation/evolution debate?
Yeah, you guessed it, that's yours
truly at about age five dressed up for Halloween (just in case the
jack-o-lantern didn't give that away) as a T-rex (Mom made the costume). The
point of this photo is to show how I've been interested in dinosaurs and natural
history for quite some time, and how my parents encouraged this interest. It
wasn't just through Mom making me dino costumes or Dad giving me plastic
dinosaurs to play with (though those were some of my favorite toys!). No, every
other year or so we would pack-up the family van and go on camping trips all
over western North America, visiting such places as the Grand Canyon (see pic of
me holding my little sister Kindra), Dinosaur
National Monument (Utah), and Yellowstone. This fired my curiosity and sense of
awe at the wonders of nature all through my childhood. I also acquired a taste
early on for science fiction. Not only was sci-fi fun but it also feed my
interest in science. 
Unfortunately the general science education I got in public school was pretty
pathetic, and I never heard much of anything about evolution in public
school. However I read and watched TV documentaries on science, nature,
and history and absorbed a fair amount of information over the years but I
never got really serious about it, and pretty much took evolution for
granted. This was not because I was an atheist (which I wasn't), but
rather because I didn't see a conflict between the existence of God and the factuality
of evolution. God could have used evolution as his method of creation,
and I still feel that there is no necessary conflict between them.
Now, flash forward several years. I moved
out on my own, met my future wife, and had a series of different jobs ranging
from flipping burgers to driving a forklift at a mobile home factory (I would
never buy a mobile home...), none of which were particularly satisfying.
Then I got some training in printing (the subject of a shop class I had
somewhat enjoyed in high school), and got a job at a mid-sized print
shop. Printing is an OK job, somewhat tedious at times, but it certainly
beats manual labor or asking if the customer wants fries with their meal.
Anyway, once a press is set up and running the operator has time to chat with
other press operators, and one day (cir. 1989) I was chatting with a new guy
and somehow the subject of evolution came up.
My whole
world changed that day.
As it turned out the "new
guy" was a Christian fundamentalist and young earth creationist.
Beliefs that my fairly liberal Christian upbringing hadn't exposed me to. He
said things that flew in the face of everything I'd ever heard or read
before. He was so certain and brought up so many things that I began to
wonder if there might be something to what he was saying. I started to
become concerned about how the scientists could be as messed up as he was
saying they were. So I started looking into it, wondering if maybe there might
be something to all this "creationism" stuff.
I looked into it all right! I started looking at creationist literature
(as I recall
Darwin's
Enigma (1988) by the late
Luther Sunderland was
the first creationist book I ever owned, it was given to me by a pastor), and I
also started looking the writings of scientists and at their responses to the
claims of creationists. And the more I looked into it, the more
pissed off I got. Claim after claim made by the creationists turned out
to be distortions, half-truths and down right fabrications. Sometime
this seemed to be due to innocent ignorance of how science works or of the
facts. However, more often it seemed to be willful ignorance and
occasionally even to be deliberate distortions of the truth.
I was incensed. These people who espoused a devotion to "Truth",
who were supposed to be people of God, had attempted to mislead me. And
though I had not fallen for it, many, many
others had.
From then on I was hooked on the subject. I became determined not to let
the misinformed and/or dishonest claims of creationists to go
unanswered. I began reading scientific literature
voraciously. I became a regular at the public library, looking for
everything I could on the subject of evolution and creationism.
For a couple years I sort of wandered on my own, reading whatever I could find
on both creationism and evolutionary biology (Kitcher, Eldredge, Gould, Dawkins
etc.). This led me to not only reject creationism as a pseudoscience, but
it also fired my skepticism about other claims and popular beliefs.
Then, in 1993, I happened to hear an interview of Michael Shermer, of
the then newly (re) formed Skeptics Society, and
James (The Amazing) Randi on
the radio (the Tom Leykis Show). They were on the radio
announcing the rebirth of the Skeptics Society and its lecture series to be held
at the California Institute of Technology, the first lecture to be by James Randi.
Having read one of Randi's books I had come to admire him for his exposure of
fraud and fakery, so I made sure to attend this lecture. While I did not join
the Skeptics Society that day, my attendance did get me on their mailing list, and
a few months later I heard that the Skeptics were going to have an all day
seminar on the subject of creationism. Of course I had to go!
I sent in my membership (that way I'd get a discount), and signed up for the
seminar. It was there I met my now best friend Don Frack (picture on left is of
Don, cetacean paleontologist Dr. Larry Barnes and myself). Don not only
had the (anti) creationism bug like I did, but also had an actual academic background in
biology (a masters in zoology).
Through him I gained several biologist
friends (mostly entomologists), and learned a LOT more about biology, history of
science, and of course (anti) creationism. He
Finally Don introduced me to computers and used bookstores. My wallet has never been the same.
Once I was "on-line" (early 1995 and largely thanks to Don) I began to spend a lot of time in several discussion forums on CompuServe (the Math/Science, Dinosaur, Religious Issues, and Religion forums) and on the internet in general.
Since then I have become fairly well known as an
anti-creationist. I am currently a member of both the
Skeptics
Society and the National Center for Science Education.
I couldn't help being amused by the teaser on this envelope that I received, containing yet another Answers in Genesis fundraising letter. It refers, of course to Great Britain. No, not me silly, the other Great Britain. You know, the country, a.k.a. the United Kingdom.
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