Frying Garner Ted Armstrong's Fish

Head on over to Armstrong Delusion for a great article dissecting GTA's infamous farce on disproving evolution, Some Fishy Stories - About An Unproved Theory.

Looking at these booklets put out by Ambassador College is now an embarrassing experience.  Here was a "college" - supposedly filled with educated people - writing this absurd drivel.  Poor research and lack of education produces all kinds of appalling "dogmatic" statements.

Fish Fry -  Part 1
Fish Fry -  Part 2

I have written before about the lies we were told, specifically in the PCG, about the Theory of Evolution. In a way, I am at it again, only this time focusing on Armstrong’s lies about it. Specifically, this is the first of a multi-part series covering the Ambassador College booklets A Fishy Story, A Theory for the Birds, and A Whale of a Tale. In my first article, I was not trying to convince anybody that one side of the Great Debate was more true than the other–I was merely pointing out that we were told lies.

In this article, however, I aim to be more persuasive.


I am not trying to persuade you to abandon faith in a Creator–of some sort (although I, personally, can no longer believe in one). Although many feel the findings of science are incompatible with religious ideas, it is not necessarily so; there are all ranges of Spiritualism, or Deism that are compatible belief systems, and there is even Theistic Evolution for those who wish to retain a stronger faith in a “guiding hand” while not dismissing the evidence.

The fact is that we here at Armstrong Delusion have worked hard, have researched long, to find out “whether those things were so”–things like Prophecy, British Israelism, Divine Weather, etc. The subject of Evolution is just one more topic that needs to be addressed, for there is the reality that exists in the world, and there is the lie that exists in the world of Armstrongism.

In The Beginning

The booklet, Some Fishy Stories, first copyrighted in 1966, was written by Garner Ted Armstrong. It is, to be quite honest, 35 pages of “argument from personal incredulity” combined with “argument from ignorance“. These arguments can be seen as two versions of the same thing, so maybe he is only using one complex argument. Sadly, as I read through it, I could remember thinking the exact same things when growing up and (I realize now) stupidly arguing with the science teachers…other than the aforementioned argument(s), he uses a number of examples of different fish that he claims cannot possibly have evolved gradually.

Sadly, Garner Ted has been dead 10 years already. I say this is sad because he bemoaned the fact that, “never have we received a scientific explanation for the many great problems presented (in the evolutionary theory). Never have we received a point-by-point refutation of the truths we have published.” (Pg. 13). Though it is nearly 50 years since the original publishing, I hope to provide some satisfaction by doing just that.