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| Happily, our efforts have caused some buzz among the skeptics. Unhappily, that buzz has led to a vexatious attempt at suppression. Our first online announcement came when we posted the Producers’ Chat video on YouTube in August 2013. This was a simple interview with Gary Bates and myself to explain the reasons for the project and how it was going. It garnered only minimal attention, which was fine as it was made just to explain to our supporters where their donations went. | |||||
| Five months later, everything changed! | |||||
| In January 2014, we posted the first official trailer for the EAH movie on YouTube. This received a little more attention and was almost immediately ‘mirrored’ (pirate copies appearing on YouTube). The duplicate videos had the effect of reducing our ‘hit’ count, meaning our videos were bumped down the search list. We have had enough experience with verbal vitriol, insults and objectionable language from the opposition to know that we should turn off the comments feature for the video. Yet, the mirrored versions had comments enabled. Also, several of the mirrors were very low quality (one looked like it was filmed by a hand-held camera phone), making it look like we were creating poor-quality material. And, of course, there was no way for our supporters to know which video was legitimate, meaning that by watching one of the others they were inadvertently helping them and hurting us and being subjected sometimes to disgusting language in the comments. “Denial of free speech” and claims like that were used to justify breaking copyright law. YouTube at least acknowledged our rights and they deleted the mirrors promptly. Yet the damage was done. They had blunted our inertia during those first critical days. | |||||
| A concerted and well organized opposition | |||||
| After we posted the second trailer in May of 2014, a skeptic blogger posted a link to the trailer with several key words listed, one of which was “crazy people”. This post was picked up and mirrored by many other blog sites, including Richard Dawkins' site. Overnight, we had over 2,000 ‘dislikes’. Since the rank of a video in YouTube is based in part on the like/dislike ratio, this had the effect of driving the trailer off the first results page. We were happy that the skeptics were aware of our project, even if few of them actually watched the trailer, but their attention had a huge negative impact. | |||||
| Not satisfied with the fact that our videos were still available online, sometime in August 2014 all of the highest-ranked EAH-associated videos were flagged as “inappropriate”. There is no reason for YouTube (owned by Google) to flag this video, except based upon complaints. | |||||
| Yet, the Christian, family friendly Dove Foundation, after reviewing our documentary, gave us their highest rating, saying, “If we could award Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels more than five Doves, our best rating, we would!” | |||||
| Flagging our videos as inappropriate was obviously done with malicious intent. The result is that if someone now wants to watch our videos they have to deliberately disable Safety Mode, meaning they would then be exposed to very non-family-friendly search results and advertisements. Of course, we have notified YouTube, but at the time of writing, and after two weeks, we are still waiting for their answer. | |||||
| It has been an uphill battle, but the truth cannot be totally suppressed. We are in a war against powerful opposition. How should the Christian respond? Perhaps it would be good to heed the advice of Paul in Ephesians 6:10-11: | |||||
| Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. | |||||
| And when faced with malicious intent, 1 Pet 3:9 is appropriate: | |||||
| Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. | |||||
| We cannot stop the negative feedback. We cannot change hearts (only God can). We cannot do anything but stand our ground and attempt to give the best answer we can to the challenges of the skeptics, even if they do not play by the same rules as us. | |||||
| Would you like to help? You can help us by finding and ‘liking’ our videos on our YouTube channel, by joining our FaceBook page, by ordering our materials, by spreading the truth, by your generous donations, and by prayer. Our job is to provide you with the best arguments available so that you will be more confident in sharing the Good News with a dark and fallen world. Your job is to get equipped, and Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels is designed to do just that. If the opposition is determined to keep you from knowing about it, that is just more of a reason you need to order the book today (and you might as well throw in a copy for a friend)! | |||||
| Thank you for standing with us. | |||||
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| Robert W. Carter |
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