DWISE1'S CREATION / EVOLUTION POSITION STATEMENT

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Because so many of the angry emails I had gotten from creationists clearly showed that they had no idea what I was saying nor what my position is, I am laying it out for you, right here and now, as clearly as I can.

This page contains the complete outline of my position and is linked to from a more abbreviated outline on my home page. If you came here first, then you can get to my home page through the link given above. If you came here via my home page, then the back-arrow will get you back there.

My Position:

• Summing up my position in one statement:

  If you honestly and truly want to fight evolution, then at least do it right! Learn everything you can about evolution and then attack it, not some stupid strawman caricature of it. And do so honestly and truthfully!

  By refusing to fight evolution honestly and truthfully, but rather using "creation science" instead, you are constantly shooting yourself in the foot, dooming your cause to failure and your followers to losing their faith.

  That, in a nutshell, is my position. The rest is explanation.

• I draw a distinction between creationism per se and "creation science."
  • Creationism in general is belief in creation performed by a supernatural entity or entities; eg, as described in the first two chapters of Genesis. It is a religious belief and as such deserves the same respect as any other religious belief.

  • "Creation science" is a fraud and a deliberately crafted deception.
    • It was created in order to circumvent the courts in order to pursue a narrowly sectarian political agenda to dictate the curriculum of the science classroom, specifically to bar the teaching of evolution.

    • Its opposition to the teaching of evolution is motivated purely by religion, but since the striking down of the 1920's "monkey laws" circa 1970 no longer allows religious purposes for the banning of public school subject matter, "creation science" perpetrates the fraud that its opposition to evolution is purely for scientific reasons, whereas all of those "scientific reasons" are false, based as they are on misrepresentations of science and scientific sources and on false and even fabricated claims.

    • The basis for "creation science" and its "balanced treatment" and "equal time" arguments and strategies is the Two-Model Approach:
      1. The Two-Model Approach is so fundamentally important to "creation science" to leading founding creationists like Dr. Henry Morris and Dr. Duane Gish of the ICR that every post-1970 of theirs that I've read and every debate and presentation that I've seen them perform in always started out with their establishing the Two Model Approach. Then everything they said and did after that depended entirely on the audience having accepted the Two Model Approach.

      2. The Two-Model Approach employs the fallacy of the False Dilemma, AKA "False Dichotomy", whose only possible purpose is to deceive its audience into making a false choice. It's widely used in both political and religious demogoguery.
         1. In a true dichotomy, you have a small set of choices, usually two, of which one and only one has to be true. By process of elimination, you can determine which choices are wrong, whereupon the one choice that's left must be true ... but only in a true dichotomy! As Sherlock Holmes described it in The Sign of Four: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"

            An example of using a true dichotomy is proof by contradiction in mathematics, where to prove something you assume its opposite and then show that that opposite leads to a self-contradiction. Of course, for this to be a true dichotomy, the opposite of the mathematical statement to be proven must be constructed correctly.

         2. Requirements of a true dichotomy are that the whole be partitioned into two parts that are:
            1. jointly exhaustive: everything must belong to one part or the other, and

            2. mutually exclusive: nothing can belong simultaneously to both parts.

         3. A false dichotomy violates either or both of those requirements. In the case of the Two Model Approach, it is not jointly exhaustive A vast multitude of possible choices have been left out and their existence denied, leaving with the audience with two contrived and false choices: the "evolution model" and the "creation model".

            In correspondence with Dr. Henry Morris of the ICR, he described them thus:

            The evolution model is any naturalistic concept of origins (including most of the world's religions, ancient and modern). [my emphasis] The creation model ... is not just the Biblical record, but any cosmogony which postulates a transcendent personal Creator ..."

         4. While he gives lip service to other creation myths, in reality the only one that qualifies is their narrow sectarian interpretation of Genesis. A creationist recently pointed out to me that that would also exclude Judaism and Islam (even though there is a branch of Islamic creationism), and I would add most mainstream Christian denominations since they don't subscribe to young-earth creationism.

            While creationists are very careful to be very vague about the "creation model" and to avoid discussing it, the model has been published; eg, in an ICR article which shows that the "scientific creation model" is identical to the "biblical creation model" point for point, in the 1980 Arkansas "balanced treatment" law. The "creation model" does not merely "postulate a transcendent personal Creator", it also insists on including the fixity of life forms (no new species developing for old), Noah's world-wide Flood, and a young earth, to the order of 10,000 years of age.

         5. In comparison, the "evolution model" gets everything else dumped into it. Including all the old discredited and abandoned ideas about evolution (which is one source of quote-mining scientists to say that evolution has been disproven; not evolution, but rather creationists' contrived mess of an "evolution model"). Including most of the world's religions, ancient and modern, which means that the vast majority of creation myths, ones which not only involve gods but also multiple gods, are considered part of "atheistic evolution"! The vast majority of theistic and polytheistic religions are atheistic? Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot?

         6. So in reality, the "creation model" is pure Genesis, though only their sectarian version of Genesis. And their "evolution model" is a horrifically gigantic compost heap of totally unrelated ideas and thus has nothing at all to do with evolution.

         7. The Two Model Approach (TMA) approach is to dupe the audience into accepting the TMA and then they do nothing else but to attack their "evolution model". And by doing nothing else but attack their "evolution model", they believe that they therefore prove their "creation model", all without ever discussing their "creation model", or presenting any evidence for it, or even ever presenting it! That is how they employ the False Dichotomy fallacy and how they deceive the general public into supporting their cause and their political agenda. Pure demagoguic deception.

         8. Ironically, the Two Model Approach (TMA) cuts both ways. Just as creationists use it to "prove" creation simply by attempting to "disprove" their "evolution model", it can also be used to "prove" evolution simply by finding that the "creation model" is false. For example, the "creation model" requires that the earth be young, no more than 10,000 years old, and that there was a year-long world-wide Flood around 2529 BCE, right in the middle of Egypt's Old Kingdom (though "creation science" will allow it to slip a couple/few millennia further into the past in order to "hide the Bible"). Since these two claims are easily disproven, that means that the "creation model" has been disproven, therefore the "atheistic evolution model" has been proven. QED

            And what makes this doubly ironic is that "creation science" succeeds where no anti-religious endeavor could, to disprove God:

            1. Premise: if evolution is true, then God doesn't exist.

            2. Premise: By the TMA, since the "creation model" is wrong, the only other alternative, evolution, must be true.

            3. Conclusion: Therefore, God doesn't exist. QED

            Of course, both premises are false: whether evolution is true or not has no bearing at all on whether God exists, and the TMA is a false dichotomy so the "creation model" being wrong has no bearing on whether evolution is true. But it is still quite ironic, especially given that creationists would think that both premises could be true.

         9. And even if newer generations of creationists no longer explicitly promote the Two Model Approach, they still employ it as they avoid presenting any evidence for creation, but rather do nothing but attack evolution and science in order to "prove" creation.

         10. Although its scope has since expanded to such usages as indoctrination of church members, duping of potential converts, and preparing Christian-educated children to grow up to become atheists, its primary function remains the pursuit of its political agenda.

         11. It is a fraud that deserves no respect at all.

    WORD USAGE NOTE AND DISCLAIMER: In this site, as in most sites and discussions, the terms creationist and even creationism are used in the narrow sense of "creation science" and followers and promoters of "creation science." It is simply easier to write and read than to constantly use a dozen or more words in every instance of the term. When I am specifically referring to "creationism" in the general, non-"creation science", sense, I endeavor to make that clear through the context.

• I have no problem with creationism per se, even though I do not share such beliefs. However, I do have definite problems with "creation science."
  • "Creation science" is not science, but rather pseudoscience.
    • It doesn't follow the scientific method. Indeed, its latest front, Intelligent Design (playing the new game of "Hide the Creationism"), seeks to nullify the scientific method by completely reforming how science is conducted.

    • The goal of science is increasing our knowledge and understanding of the universe. "Creation science's" goals and agendae are political and social, primarily "killing evolution".

    • Science works to learn more about the universe. "Creation science" works to further its political agenda by seeking to sway public opinion along with getting anti-evolution state laws passed, pressuring local school boards, and getting their own stealth candidates elected to local school boards.

    • Science performs research. The closest thing to research that "creation science" performs is quote-mining scientists' work in order to misquote and misrepresent them.

    • Scientists communicate the results of their research with the scientific community by publishing in peer-reviewed journals. Creationists avoid communicating with the scientific community, they don't even attempt to submit any of their "research" to the journals, but rather publish only in creationist magazines and newsletters, on-line, and in presentations for churches and the general public.

      Actually, in his book, The Age of the Earth, geologist G. Brent Dalrymple related a 1975 visit to the US Geological Survey facility in Menlo Park, CA, by Drs Duane Gish and Henry Morris of the ICR, where the creationists presented their "findings" to the scientists. Their presentation led to very lively discussion where the scientists mainly tried to correct the creationists' many misconceptions about geology, physics, and other sciences -- apparently it was mainly the creationists' gross misunderstandings of the Laws of Thermodynamics that the scientists were addressing. I suspect that is when the creationists realized that scientists could see right through their nonsense and that that is why they avoid talking to scientists.

    • Part of the reason for peer-review is for other scientists to verify that there aren't any obvious errors in the article. And one of the reasons for publishing is so that other scientists can test and verify the findings, even to the point of repeating the experiments. In other words, since scientists will be basing their own research on other people's research, they have a vested interest in testing and verifying the veracity of that other research.

      A classic example of this process was the report of a nuclear fusion reaction at room-temperature, AKA "cold fusion." When the details of the experiment were published, other scientists tried to replicate the results of the experiment and could not, which helped lead to the demise of the idea.

      On the other hand, while creationists also depend heavily on the work of other creationists, they are not at all interested in the veracity of those other claims, but only in how convincing they sound, since their only interest in using those claims are to be able to convince their church and general public audiences.

    • Scientists want to test their findings and find problems in their work, not only to verify the research that they will base theirs on, but also in order to find where the problems are, which indicates where they need to do further research. Two professors, William Thwaites and Frank Awbrey, developed a very effective method of debating creationists -- basically, study "creation science" so you go in knowing the truth about their claims -- and in 1993 summarized their highly successful 15-year career of debating against the leading creationists, Our last debate; our very last. They describe having entered into the debates with the hope and expectation that:

      "... a creationist would dig up a real biological paradox, one that would prove to be an interesting brain-teaser for the scientific community. We hoped that we could use the creationists to ferret out biological enigmas much as DEA agents use dogs to seek out contraband. ... While we had discovered that every creationist claim so far could easily be disproved, we still had hope that there was a genuine quandary in there somewhere. We just hadn't found it yet."

      What they did discover after those 15 years was that none of the creationists ever presented any real paradoxes or genuine quandaries. The creationists had no actual case to present.

      In contrast, the last thing creationists would want would be to have their claims tested, since that would diminish their value in convincing people. And indeed, they do not allow their claims to be tested and when others do nonetheless perform those tests, they willfully ignore the results and continue to use those disproven claims in perpetuity. This creationist attitude and practice results in their claims being termed PRATTs, "Point(s) Refuted A Thousand Times", AKA, "having to slay the slain." PRATTs are so hard to eradicate because, even though some of the creationists hearing the truth may become disaffected and abandon "creation science" (among other things), P.T. Barnum's "a sucker is born every minute" remark is proven true by the continual arrival of new generations of creationists who learn the refuted claims but not the truth about them.

    • The concepts that "creation science" are based on, being supernatural, are untestable. However, at the same time their claims about the physical world are testable, they have been tested, and they have been found to be false.

      From a source that had been quote-mined by Dr. Duane Gish of the ICR in a dishonest attempt to discredit Judge Overton's decision in the 1981 Arkansas trial (McLean v. Arkansas), Science at the Bar — Causes for Concern by philosopher of science Larry Laudan:

      For instance, to make the interlinked claims that Creationism is neither falsifiable nor testable is to assert that Creationism makes no empirical assertions whatever. That is surely false. Creationists make a wide range of testable assertions about empirical matters of fact. Thus, as Judge Overton himself grants (apparently without seeing its implications), the creationists say that the earth is of very recent origin (say 6,000 to 20,000 years old); they argue that most of the geological features of the earth's surface are diluvial in character (i.e., products of the postulated Noachian deluge); they are committed to a large number of factual historical claims with which the Old Testament is replete; they assert the limited variability of species. They are committed to the view that, since animals and man were created at the same time, the human fossil record must be paleontologically co-extensive with the record of lower animals. It is fair to say that no one has shown how to reconcile such claims with the available evidence — evidence which speaks persuasively to a long earth history, among other things. In brief, these claims are testable, they have been tested, and they have failed those tests.

  • "Creation science" is not only pseudoscience, but it is also anti-science.
    • The creationist mindset is that their faith is under attack by science. That is not true, but what is true is that creationists have adopted a theology in which they have made their faith contingent upon several contrary-to-fact claims about the physical world; eg, a young earth not more than 10,000 years old, Noah's Flood, the fixity of species, no ape-to-man transition. Since science clearly shows that those contrary-to-fact claims to be false, which by creationists' theology would make Christianity false (albeit only their particular version of Christianity), which in turn leads them to view science as atheistic, anti-Christian, and attacking their faith.

    • Creationists attack and seek to discredit all sciences that they see as opposing their religious beliefs.

    • Of course evolution is a major target, but they also directly attack geology, paleontology, anthropology, physics, astronomy, etc.

    • They are also attacking all other sciences indirectly insofar as all sciences are interdependent (eg, biology and geology dependent upon chemistry, astronomy dependent on physics).

    • They also go so far as to attack any kind of science even though it has absolutely nothing to do with evolution or with any creationist claim.

      An example is their attacking scientists who point out that the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) found in the upper atmosphere are responsible for depleting the ozone layer. Their method is to ignore the fact that those CFCs are indeed found in the upper atmosphere through direct samples taken by sounding rockets, but rather insist that that would be impossible for such heavy molecules, and to post several "unanswered" questions while willfully ignoring the FAQ posted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that answers every single one of those "unanswered" questions. I would also point out that Bill Morgan posted that claim multiple times from 1998 to 2005 with full knowledge of the NOAA FAQ and that his claim is false. Indeed, he first posted it after having been made aware of the NOAA FAQ and has continued to choose to repost it, having gone through a few different websites, despite having had the truth that he already knew pointed out to him several times. And despite his empty boast that he would remove a false claim immediately. Thus he is deliberately and willfully lying to the public multiple times. Read here for further discussion on this particular claim.

      UPDATE:

      On 2011 Oct 31 Bill Morgan briefly renewed our correspondence and on 2011 Nov 01 said that he would have his "web master" remove that article. It took a while to happen (as of the end of that renewed correspondence, 2011 Nov 15, it was still up), but that article did finally disappear. It only took thirteen years of trying to get him to stop his deliberatly lying to the public. At this time (2014 Oct 02) Bill's site is down while it's being remodelled, so we'll have to wait and see whether he again chooses to include that false article as he had done repeatedly in the past.

      Then for the next two weeks, along with his usual sleazy misconduct, he tried to defend that article (while at the same time claiming he couldn't remember anything about it). It finally came down to his claim that if he personally could not understand how a heavy molecule much denser than air could be transported by air currents to the upper atmosphere, then it would be impossible for them to be there, regardless of the direct empirical fact of their presence in direct air samples taken from several layers of the atmosphere as mentioned above. The transporting of much denser material on air currents (eg, sand in sandstorms, hail being created by riding the air currents in storm clouds, droplets of metal such as nickel being transported in the upper atmosphere across the Pacific Ocean (a 1960 study of which was the basis for the ICR's earliest moondust claim)) is easily explained by fluid mechanics, a part of physics that mechanical engineers should be familiar with. Bill says that he is a licensed mechanical engineer and yet he has no knowledge of fluid mechanics? Is that license yet another of his innumerable lies?

      As best as I can figure, the purpose of these kinds of attacks against science is to discredit science and scientists in general. The reason for doing so is apparently so that they can justify picking and choosing which parts of science to keep and which parts to throw away; eg, they want to throw away everything that might conflict with their false theology, but still keep that which supports the aspects of technology that they happen to like, such as personal computers and flush toilets.

  • "Creation science" is bad theology.
    • It requires that the truth of Christianity be based on the truth of "creation science" and its claims.
      1. Eg, John Morris of the ICR:

         If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture has no meaning.

      2. Eg, John L. Groenlund, What is the Purpose of Creation Ministry, in ICR Back to Genesis Report No. 78, June 1995:

         "If evolution is true, then the Bible is not true."

      3. Henry Morris of the ICR, Biblical Cosmology, page 33:

         "No geological difficulties, real or imagined, can be allowed to take precedence over the clear statements and necessary inferences of Scripture."

      4. Eg, Henry Morris of the ICR, Science, Scripture, and the Young Earth, page 6:

         "The data of geology, in our view, should be interpreted in light of Scripture, rather than distorting Scripture to accommodate current geological philosophy."

      5. Henry Morris of the ICR, Scientific Creationism, 1974 [1985 2nd ed.], p. 255:

         "There seems to be no possible way to avoid the conclusion that if the Bible and Christianity are true at all, the geologic ages must be rejected altogether."

      6. Eg, two unnamed contemporaries of Darwin quoted in Andrew Dickson White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, Second printing, 1917, p. 71-72:

         "If the Darwinian theory is true, Genesis is a lie, the whole framework of the book of life falls to pieces, and the revelation of God to man, as we Christians know it, is a delusion and a snare." "If this hypothesis be true, then is the Bible an unbearable fiction; ... than have Christians for nearly two thousand years been duped by a monstrous lie. ... Darwin requires us to disbelieve the authoritative word of the Creator."

    • Since "creation science" claims are false and contrary-to-fact, that means that effectively "creation science" theology teaches its followers that if the real world is as it really is, then their religion is false. This puts "creation science's" followers in a very difficult position, one that leads them to dishonesty, unethical behavior, and a carefully maintained state of willful ignorance.

    • It leads to bibliolatry, worshipping the Bible.
      1. A common view that's been around for the past couple centuries is that God is the Author of the Universe; ie, that the natural world is God's Word. In the Enlightenment, this led to the attitude that the study of the natural sciences, being the direct study of God's Creation, was in effect reading the Direct Word of God.

      2. Since the Bible was written and edited by Man, however much inspired by God, it can at best only be the Indirect Word of God.

      3. When there's a conflict between the Direct Word of God and the Indirect Word of God, then giving the Bible precedence over Nature can be seen as engaging in bibliolatry.

    • But it isn't really that the Bible is being given precedence over nature, but rather that their theology is being given precedence over reality.
      1. Even though Christian theologies are supposed to incorporate Revelation, they still consist mostly of the feeble and fallible attempts of fallible Man to understand God, an infinite supernatural entity outside of Man's comprehension and ability to observe and study directly. These theologies are filled with fallible Man's fallible interpretations and imaginings. This makes each of the countless Christian theologies The Word of Man, which is as fallible as fallible Man, if not more so.

      2. "Creation science" is not based on the Bible, but rather on interpretations of the Bible.

      3. If claims based on a given theology are proven to be wrong, then the fault lies in that theology.

      4. "Creation science" claims that if it is wrong, then Scripture is wrong and God either does not exist or is a Liar unworthy of worship. But rather, none of that is true; why should you still believe that part of "creation science" after you've learned that all the rest of it is false?

      5. Followers of "creation science" firmly believe, as so many of them have repeatedly insisted to me over the decades, that if "creation science" turns out to be wrong, then they must throw their Bibles in the trash and become atheists. This is supported by the Two Model Approach which forces you to choose between "creation science" and "atheistic evolution", both of which choices are creationist lies.

         Many creationist have indeed become atheists, or at least have come close to it. My Links Page links you to some of their stories.

      6. Rather, when "creation science" is found to be false, then that says nothing about Scripture nor about God, but rather about your misunderstanding and misinterpretation of those things and about your theology, your particular Word of Man. If your theology is wrong about something, then correct it.

  • "Creation science" leads to dishonest and unethical behavior and self-deception.
    • Because "creation science" claims are false and contrary-to-fact, honest and truthful treatment of them would only expose them to be false and contrary-to-fact.

    • Because "creation science" theology requires creationists to keep that from happening, upon pain of losing their faith, creationists cannot afford to engage in honest and truthful treatment of their claims. This requires creationists to be dishonest, or at least to avoid honest and truthful treatment of their claims.

    • While most creationists slip into dishonest ways only because they have no other resource available to them and they use it mostly for defense, there are many creationists who are deliberately dishonest. Most of the deliberately dishonest ones tend to be the professionals who create the new false claims, even in their own fields in which case they should know better. And also the wanna-be's who, like the professionals, are very active and have had their claims refuted many times and yet continue to use those same claims that they know to be false.
      1. Eg, Walter Brown and his "rattlesnake protein" claim that depends on extremely exact wording to be technically true. That it has to be worded so carefully, plus his changing the subject abruptly when telling a group about it and someone started to explain the truth about the claim to the others, show that he knows full well that it's false, so he was deliberately lying.

      2. Eg, Steve Austin, PhD Geology and Chairman of the ICR's Geology Department. Not only did he write creationist articles on geology while he was a graduate student in which he made statements that he knew full well were false (or else he never could have passed his undergraduate courses), but since getting his PhD he uses his training in geology to create "bad dates" as he did in their Grand Canyon Dating Project -- see A Criticism of the ICR's Grand Canyon Dating Project.

      3. Eg, when I emailed Kent Hovind asking about his solar-mass loss claim, he went to extremes to avoid answering the simplest questions about it (eg, what was his source), including twice trying to pick a fight with me over my email name, DWise1.

      4. Eg, a creationist on a forum who used the false "sea salt" claim. I explained to him what was wrong with it and he reached a point where he admitted that he was wrong. But then a couple months later, there he was using that claim on somebody else, even though he himself had admitted that it was false.

      5. Eg, wanna-be Bill Morgan of www.fishdontwalk.com who is deliberately lying to the public with his ozone layer claim as discussed above. I engaged in an extended email correspondence with him, during which he not only lied about everything that he could, but he also used every dirty dishonest trick known to Creationist in order to avoid discussing any of his claims. Over the decades, I had learned to not expect much from a creationist, but he single-handedly lowered my expectations down further that I could have ever believed possible.

         UPDATE:

         On 2011 Oct 31 Bill Morgan briefly renewed our correspondence and on 2011 Nov 01 said that he would have his "web master" remove that article. It took a while to happen (as of the end of that renewed correspondence, 2011 Nov 15, it was still up), but that article did finally disappear. It only took thirteen years of trying to get him to stop his deliberatly lying to the public. At this time (2014 Oct 02) Bill's site is down while it's being remodelled, so we'll have to wait and see whether he again chooses to include that false article as he had done repeatedly in the past.

      To be honest, I am at a total loss to understand how these über-Christian creationists can justify or rationalize their blatantly and egregiously dishonest conduct and abhorrence of the truth with Christian doctrine.

    • In order to protect their own faith, creationists need to keep themselves from learning the truth. This is most often done through willful ignorance, in which the creationist works at remaining ignorant of the truth.

      This has been seen in creationism classes and presentations when someone brings in materials that expose "creation science" claims; eg, at a John Peloza presentation when retired engineer Frank Steiger brought in copies of his articles on thermodynamics and how creationists misunderstand it, when fundamentalist Carl Drews brought to his creationism class his research about the errors in the previous week's class video. The other creationists there are only interested in "gathering more ammo", usually for street proselytizing or, nowadays, for use on-line. Hardly any of them would even go near those materials (only a third of Carl's class would even look at it; nobody at the the Peloza presentation would go near that stack of paper). What they don't realize is that that "ammo" is nothing but blanks:

      1. Scott Rauch:

         I still hold some anger because I believe the evangelical Christian community did not properly prepare me for the creation/evolution debate. They gave me a gun loaded with blanks, and sent me out. I was creamed.

      2. Dr Jonathan Sarfati of Answers In Genesis (AiG, a creationist organization) in AiG Negative Feedback, 02 December 2002:

         "As said in the original Don’t Use page, the harm is in using something which is not true, because the cause of the one who is ‘the truth’ cannot be helped thereby. And your own recent experience reinforces something else we said—that using discredited arguments can backfire on the user. So our aim was to help Christians to avoid arguments that are likely to backfire, and return their focus to the Word of God not ‘evidence’." ... "But more and more over the last few years, we have noticed tens of thousands of Christians excitedly using arguments over the Web, for instance, that are a plain embarrassment to those with scientific training. It was like watching your brother enter the ring thinking he had a killer punch, and watching him get cut to ribbons. Further, and most importantly, it had escalated to the point where it was a hindrance to soul winning, since it gave the hearers a ‘legitimate’ excuse to reject Christ. And all we did at that point was to publish an ‘advice’ article. The only time it became relevant to a specific creationist was when Kent [Hovind] himself decided to align himself publicly with a justification of false arguments. If it had been one or two minor points of disagreement, OK, but when it reinforces some of the most blatant fallacies, and even defends fraud, at what point does one NOT face one's responsibilities to the innocents being ‘slaughtered’ in the belief that they are getting sound ammunition?" ... " ... , we actually do know people who say they almost gave the faith away when they found out that a particular argument was fallacious, and who say that finding Christians with the integrity to avoid falsehood, no matter what the cost, helped restore it. Also, in the last day or so, a leading atheistic anti-creationist organization said that while they disagreed with almost everything we stand for, they said we were ‘admirable’ and ‘showed integrity’ in trying to persuade other creationists not to use bad arguments. Who knows what sort of witness this could be? We know of many people, outside and inside of the church, who will no longer even look at or consider the authority of the Bible in Genesis, in its history, cosmology, etc. because of bad experiences with blatant pseudo-arguments applied by enthusiasts who had been fed creationist non-arguments."

    • One of the things that creationists hate more than anything else is for us to take their claims seriously and try to discuss them with them. I believe that most instances of their going to extremes to avoid discussing their own claims is because those creationists honestly don't know what they are talking about. They heard or read that claim, didn't understand it, but it sure sounded convincing so they were convinced. But now when they repeat it to somebody who does understand it, they don't understand why that person is not convinced by it too. And when that person tries to discuss it with them, they are unable to respond, because they don't understand the claim, nor the science behind it, nor anything about it except that they had found it convincing. They have no appropriate response to make.

    • In order for a creationist to discuss claims involving science, they need to learn something about the science! Sounds so obvious, and yet it's something that they never seem to do and it's something that they seem to always refuse to do. Or else they back out of the discussion by promising to look into it, which they have absolutely no intention of doing.

      Why do they refuse to learn the science when their ignorance works so much to their detriment? Two possible reasons come to mind:

      1. I believe it is because they desperately need that ignorance in order to preserve their faith. Because by learning the science, they will also learn that their claims are false, which then would destroy their faith in accordance with "creation science" theology.

         To illustrate the delicate dance that a creationist must do to carefully maintain his willful ignorance while trying to learn something about science, I came up with this analogy in a forum:

         Not an admission, for to admit to the truth would doom their own faith as well. More of an unspoken realization, subconcious even, rationalized into something else. Around 1970 there was a sci-fi novel called Macroscope by Piers Anthony. A kind of background radiation of neutrino-like particles had been discovered that were affected by the mass of everything they passed through, such that a computer connected to a detector could recreate images of everywhere those particles had been, thus we could visually see anywhere in the galaxy. They also discovered a message transmission though this medium, which they called The Messenger. The Messenger would always start its broadcast at the last place the viewer had gotten to (from the beginning for first-timers) and establish a common mathematical language for understanding the rest of the message, which revealed all kinds of very advanced technology. Superimposed on The Messenger, obviously by somebody else, was The Destroyer that would destroy the mind of anyone who understood The Messenger's message. The story's protagonist, Archer, wasn't smart enough to understand the message, so he'd view The Messenger, always careful to not quite understand what he was seeing, and then relate what he had seen to the others who could understand it and then apply it. Because he could view the message without understanding it, he was able to avoid The Destroyer, but it was a very delicate balance he had to maintain to do it. And that is the analogy I see in operation with fundamentalists. They need to understand what's happening in the real world in order to deal with very real problems. But if they do understand what's really happening, then that could destroy their faith -- either they imagine that it will or it actually will, or both. So they avoid the truth instead of having to deal with it. That works for most whose everyday lives never need to deal with science or the truth. But those who must deal with such things need to find other ways to avoid the truth, other ways to understand just enough to get by but not enough to realize the truth and so endanger their faith. This is especially true of active creationists who try to carry on the fight against evolution; they need to know enough to discuss the subject matter, but not enough to actually understand the subject matter.

      2. Another possible explanation may lie in their misunderstanding what learning entails. According to the 1990 Science Framework for California Public Schools Kindergarten through Grade Twelve:

         We repeat here the fundamental conviction of this framework: Education does not compel belief; it seeks to encourage understanding. Nothing in science, or in any other field, should be taught dogmatically. But teaching about something does not constitute advancing it as truth. In science, there is no truth. There is only knowledge that tests itself and build on itself constantly. This is the message that students should take away with them.

         However, it appears that education has a different meaning for creationists. It appears that, in their experience, rather than being for the purpose of understanding, it's for the purpose of indoctrination, of telling the students what to believe. This would mean that they believe that studying evolution would require them to accept it, so they refuse to actually study it.

         1. In "creation science's" "balanced treatment" materials labeled for "public schools", we have repeatedly seen them trying to compel belief, repeatedly urging the students to choose what they believe; ie, compelled them to decide to believe in one thing or the other, counter to the goals of public education.

         2. In creationist rhetorics, they repeatedly describe public school education as "indoctrination" and accuse it of teaching their children what to believe. They appear to be projecting onto public education what they themselves do in their own schools.

         3. In my 25-plus years of on-line discussions with creationists, a number of creationists absolutely refused to learn about evolution, telling me explicitly that studying evolution would require them to believe in it. That makes absolutely no sense to a non-creationist, but it obviously does to creationists.

         4. In 1988, when the ICR's graduate school was being inspected for accredidation, the visiting committee found the school deficient in several ways, including "that the school's doctrinal tenets limited academic freedom" (citation). In one class the committee observed that they were using a standard graduate-level textbook also used in public universities, but the instructor was taking the entire class through the book page-by-page, telling them what to cross out because "we don't believe that."

      3. Whatever their reason, they are dooming themselves and their cause. They need to learn all the science and evolution that they can in order to actually attack evolution and not just some strawman effigy that the creationists have constructed. Ignorance does not work!
         1. 
            

            Sun Tzu, Scroll III (Offensive Strategy): Therefore I say: "Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril." (Sun Tzu The Art of War, translation by Samuel B. Griffith, Oxford University Press, 1963)

         2. 
            

            The Governor of Mississippi explaining why he was campaigning so hard for education reform in his state: We know that ignorance doesn't work, because we've already tried it! (Quoted from memory from a radio newscast circa 1990, give or take half a decade)

  • "Creation science" destroys faith and is a major contributor to the growth and spread of atheism.
    • By making contrary-to-fact claims which are proven false as soon as one learns actual science, "creation science" sets the creationist up to learn that his creationist teachers and religious leaders had been lying to him all this time. In the case of children growing up in the faith being taught "creation science", those teachers and religious leaders include their parents.

    • By making one's faith dependent upon the truth of "creation science", even to the point of teaching that the only alternative is atheism, "creation science" set the creationist up to lose his faith upon learning the truth. Steve Smith, a former creationist who went through this said:

      I would probably be a bitter agnostic and not because of science but because my Christianity set me up to fail. I suppose that is why this Creation/Evolution issue is so important to me. I know that I sometimes talk about this topic so much that others get tired of hearing it. I know my wife does and I'm sure that my pastor does too. But when one has a close call with spiritual death, it becomes a critical issue. Every year, I see young Christians go away to college with the idea that science, in one form or another, is some sort of Satanic conspiracy. Sooner or later they end up struggling with their faith in the light of new knowledge. Some will survive because their faith is strong enough to overcome any evidence - many do not. I have met some bitter people who left the church because they believe that their religion "lied to them". I hate seeing this when I believe that it is so unnecessary. We as Christians need to be real clear about what is important to our faith and what is not.

    • Those raised on "creation science" are especially vulnerable. Adults who had converted already know, even if barely sub-consciously, what evidence to avoid, already knowing even if barely sub-consciously, that their new-found faith has severe weaknesses that they must be very careful to not expose to themselves. The children raised on it have no such knowledge; they actually believe that stuff! So when they go off to learn actual science and to learn the truth, they are completely unprepared for what's about to hit them. And again, it's their religion that had set them up to fail.

    • The attrition rate among those raised on "creation science" is truly staggering. From a review of Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults are Leaving the Church and How to Bring Them Back, a book about church youth deconverting in droves:

      Young people aren’t walking away from the church—they’re sprinting. According to a recent study by Ranier Research, 70 percent of youth leave church by the time they are 22 years old. Barna Group estimates that 80 percent of those reared in the church will be “disengaged” by the time they are 29 years old. Unlike earlier generations of church dropouts, these “leavers” are unlikely to seek out alternative forms of Christian community such as home churches and small groups. When they leave church, many leave the faith as well.

      Even Kent Hovind, that arch-creationist, in one of his seminar tapes gives the rate at 75%:

      75% of all children raised in Christian homes who attend public schools will reject the Christian faith by their first year of college.

    • Again, the problem is not that the schools are hostile to religion; rather, they are neutral. And it's not that science is anti-religion; it is neutral about religion, extremely neutral. No, the problem is that the creationist schooling that those children received taught them a "scientific" world-view that is contrary-to-fact, that unravels immediately as those children learn real science. The problem is as Steve Smith described: their religion had set them up to fail.

    • What needs to be done instead is to raise those children on the truth. Don't lie to them. Don't let creationists lie to them. Teach them the truth. As former young-earth creationism "junkie", Ed, who described himself as being addicted to "creation science", describes it in his testimonial, My Search:

      I talked to my pastor (a young-earther), about my new discoveries. He warned me as so many other "creationists" have, that to continue on this path was dangerous and would only lead to me falling away from the faith. At times, that notion seemed true! He asked me, "do you want to end up like "R" (a college student) who now denies the faith after he tried to pursue scientific understanding?" That question hit me hard and weighed heavy on my heart; however, I would soon discover that that line of reasoning was also imaginary. Since then, I have corresponded with several Christians who have traveled the same path as I have. One thing that is always agreed upon is the damage young-earth creationism can do to souls; how many believers they have seen fall away. We have been taught that the Bible demands a young earth interpretation and when the facts of nature become inescapable - our faith becomes shattered! My pastor was wrong, and the opposite was the case. If "R" had been offered an alternative from the beginning, he would never have experienced the turmoil he went through. When "R" could no longer deny that the universe was billions of years old, the only option left for him was to deny the Bible. How many others have been disheartened in a like manner?

    • The only alternative that parents who teach "creation science" have to keep their children's faith safe is to keep them perpetually ignorant. In earlier times, when fundamentalists were able to keep a separate existence out of the mainstream of society, locked away in their own schools and colleges and in their own communities, that was possible. But no longer.

    • Raising your children on "creation science" will only rob them of their faith.

• There is no scientific "controversy" about evolution. The whole idea that there's an "issue" or any "controversy" is a creationist fabrication that they spin out of their "evolution model", which is a grossly misrepresentative strawman caricature that has nothing to do with evolution, and through their quote-mining of scientists' writings in order to misquote and misrepresent them into appearing to reject evolution.

• Nor is there any inherent conflict between science and religion. Creationists describe scientists as being atheists. While it may be that more scientists are atheists or agnostics than in other professions, nonetheless the majority of scientists are still theists of various faiths. Generations of scientists have been able to practice both their professions and their faiths with little or no conflict. One perspective that I've read is that religion tells us who created the universe to work as it does, whereas science tells us how it works; the difference is in the kinds of questions that religion and science are to answer.

  Of course, when religion starts making demands of how the universe is supposed to work and in the process makes many contrary-to-fact claims, then naturally that religion will bring itself into conflict with any discipline that deals with how the universe works. When that happens, it is the fault of the religion that makes such contrary-to-fact claims and the solution is for that religion to stop doing such foolish things.

• By the same token, there is no inherent conflict between evolution and Christianity.
  • Evolution is a scientific idea specific to biology with implications for paleontology and physical anthropology. Basically, it's just the study of the cumulative results of life doing what life naturally does. It does not involve religion, does not address any religious ideas, has nothing to say about religion, and has nothing to do with religion.

  • As in the previous item, the only way for there to be a conflict between evolution and Christianity is if particular Christian theologies decide that there should be such a conflict. Yet again, it is religion creating the conflict, not science.

  • The same considerations of the previous item apply, that any religion or theology that makes contrary-to-fact demands on the universe, must obviously place itself at odds with any other discipline that examines the real world.

  • There are two other aspects working here:
    • The multitude of different Christian sects along with their multitude of different associated theologies.

    • The multitude of different ways that evolution is understood and misunderstood by these different Christian sects.

    Different theologies involve different interpretations of basic Christian doctrine, interpretations which can and does often vary widely between different sects. These different interpretations are usually very detailed and believed in fervently.

    Where we see apparent conflicts between evolution and Christianity is when a fervently held sectarian interpretation collides with that sect's misunderstanding of evolution. Of course, that sect will blame evolution, and yet it is their own misunderstanding of evolution and their possible misinterpretation of Christian doctrine that is at fault. Employing the logic of "they all conflict with each other, so they can't all be right" leads us to the view that most sects, if not all, have gotten a lot of things wrong. If that is indeed the case, then the likelihood of a sect's interpretation being incorrect is fairly good. But still, their misunderstanding of evolution is a very big factor.

  • The area of study dealing with defending Christianity from criticism or from conflict with outside data (eg, the "real world") is called Apologetics. The Creation/Evolution article, Creationist and Fundamentalist Apologetics: Two Branches of the Same Tree, quotes and interprets Francis A. Schaeffer thus:

    Francis A. Schaeffer, surely one of the most prolific and influential writers on, the contemporary fundamentalist scene, explains the nature and purpose of apologetics: "There are two purposes of Christian apologetics. The first is defense. The second is to communicate Christianity in a way that any given generation can understand. . . . It is unreasonable to expect people of the next generation in any age to continue [to believe] in the historic Christian position, unless they are helped to see where arguments . . . brought against Christianity . . . by their generation are fallacious." (The God Who Is There, p. 139) In other words, the apologist for the faith must seek to soothe the doubts plaguing the faithful and to remove the roadblocks in the path of unbelievers who might otherwise come to faith. The apologist tries to defend the faith by showing that it is reasonable; one need not kiss one's mind goodbye in order to convert.

    Those "doubts plaguing the faithful" need not come from arguments against their faith, but can also come from the realities of everyday life, as well as from the study of how the universe works.

  • It is my opinion that every person needs to be able to resolve conflicts, both apparent and real, between their beliefs and the real world. Of course, this may well require that that person change his mind about something.

  • It is my opinion that every person needs to think about what he believes and to question his beliefs. I believe this questioning is necessary because everybody, being a fallible human, is to some extent mistaken in his beliefs and understanding and it is only through questioning and testing his understanding of what he believes that he has any chance of correcting it. This is not to say that he should question God or his religion's doctrines, but rather he should question his own (mis)understanding of God and of doctrine. I believe that it is only in this way that one can be actively engaged in his faith, rather than just mindlessly accepting and following what some other fallible human tells him.

  • I believe that this process of harmonizing needs to deal with the evidence and with reality.

  • Creationist apologetics does not deal with the evidence nor with reality.
    • It ignores and denies the existence of the evidence that it doesn't like and misconstrues the rest.

    • It generates claims that are contrary-to-fact.

  • Creationist apologetics does not successfully harmonize its theology with reality.

  • Employing creationist apologetics can only lead to disaster for creationists. And it promotes the growth and spread of atheism.

• Evolution isn't creationists' enemy, but rather a philosophy that could be called "evolutionism" would be.
  • "Evolutionism" is an archaic term that was used to denote ideas and interpretations that were ostensibly based on evolution. It is not commonly used in science and in its current form is primary a creation of "creation science."

  • Creationists use the terms "evolution" and "evolutionism" interchangeably, in part to support the rhetorical ploy of claiming that evolution is a religion; if you can't successfully raise creationism up to being science, then drag evolution down to being religion.

  • "Creation science's" "Two Model Approach" dumps both evolution and evolutionism together into their "evolution model" (along with just about everything else there is, including most of the world's religions both ancient and modern) and then mix them together, labelling everything in the "evolution model" "atheistic" and "anti-Christian" despite most of it consisting of theistic religions and even Christian denominations.

    Evolution is a scientific idea and is about as atheistic as gravity or optics. As a philosophy, however, evolutionism could be deemed atheistic and conflicting with the narrowly sectarian theology of "creation science". But again, the two are not the same thing.

  • Are there adherents to the philosophy of evolutionism? There are certainly some. "Creation science's" use of the term and of the Two Model Approach has exposed many people to the false idea that the choice is between "creation science" and "atheistic evolutionism", fooling them into buying into that idea (eg, the elementary school children in the "balanced treatment" class in Livermore, CA who were urged to make their choice so they chose atheism). It is uncertain whether that had created those "evolutionists" (another term not used in science, but rather reinvented by creationists) or merely greatly augmented their numbers.

• Based on three decades of studying "creation science" and over two decades of discussing it on-line with creationists, I have a very low opinion of "creation science":

  • I have seen an incredible amount of dishonesty being practiced by the creationist community, so much so that dishonesty seems to be an integral part of "creation science". The best that I can understand why that would be is that truthfulness and honesty are antithetical to "creation science":
    • Since "creation science" was created as a deliberate fraud, its very basis is built of lies and deception. Employing truthfulness and honesty would only serve to reveal the truth about "creation science", which would be counter-productive to the creationist cause.

    • Since the claims of "creation science" are false, truthfulness and honesty would only serve to expose those claims. Since creationists have been taught to believe that the truth of their faith depends on those false claims being true, they cannot allow those claims to be exposed as false, especially not to themselves.

    • To creationists, the value of those claims is in convincing others, regardless of whether they're false. They're practicing "the ends justify the means" morality while preaching absolute morality.

    • When an experienced creationist encounters an "evolutionist" who knows what he's talking about -- and especially if that "evolutionist" has studied creationist claims -- , then he knows full well that he must disengage as quickly as possible and by whatever means necessary; I discuss a number of those techniques on my encounters with creationists page.

      Of course, an inexperienced creationist will not know what he's stumbling into. If he survives hearing the truth about his claims, then he will gain experience and will start down the path of creationist self-deception. Unless he is fortunate enough to have started thinking.

  • "Creation science" is a fraud and a deception based entirely on false and misleading claims. Most of my research has been in checking out creationist claims.
    • "Creation science" was created as a deliberate deception in order to circumvent court decisions that had struck down religious purposes for barring the teaching of evolution.

    • "Creation science" has been justifiably called "the game of 'Hide the Bible'", as creationists try to hide the fact that "creation science" is not the least bit scientific, but rather purely religious. Actually, they only play "Hide the Bible" with the courts and with the general public (eg, in their debates, in trying to sway public opinion in their favor), but they are forthright about their religious nature and goals when preaching to the choir. Their game of "Hide the Bible" is especially transparent in their "public school materials", which are blatantly religious even though explicit religious references -- eg, Bible quotations, references by name to God, Noah, Adam & Eve, etc. -- had been removed. As soon as the US Supreme Court ruled that "creation science" is religious in nature (Edwards v. Aguillard, 1987), creationists adopted "intelligent design" (ID) as their new front, starting their new game of "Hide the Creationism". And since the courts have now identified ID as just another form of creationism (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 2005), we are waiting to see what the new game is going to be.

    • Creationists claim that their "creation science" objections to evolution are entirely based on science, but in reality all their "scientific" objections are false and that whole charade only serves as a smoke-screen for the real reason for their objections, which are purely religious and based on narrowly sectarian theologies.

      More specifically, their claims will be:

      1. based on old, out-dated sources which have been superceded by more recent discoveries. Creationists are well-aware of this criticism, so they try to counter it with "new" sources, even if they have to misrepresent it.
         1. E.g., the "solar neutrino problem" in which we were detected far fewer neutrinos than we'd expect from a sun running completely on nuclear fusion, so creationists used it to support their "shrinking sun" claim. In 2002, we discovered that neutrinos aren't massless after all and were changing into types that our detectors weren't looking for. All neutrinos are now accounted for, but creationists still use this claim citing pre-2002 sources.

         2. E.g., claims about the lack of any transitional fossils for flowering plants based on an early 1960's source, which was published shortly before we did finally find those transitional fossils.

         3. E.g., Henry Morris in a debate I attended tried to counter the criticism of their using out-dated sources by citing a "1976 NASA document, written well into the space age" (apparently required incantation, since every creationist I've seen cite it have repeated the incantation) that used direct measurements of meteoric dust to determine that an ancient moon would be covered by a layer of dust over 200 feet thick. Turns out that NASA document was a 1967 printing of a 1965 conference, years before we landed on the moon. Although Morris cited that NASA document, his real source was a fellow creationist who had given him that false information, and I suspect that that creationist source had similarly been lied to by his creationist source, and so on down that long sordid chain.

      2. based on second-hand or third-hand, etc, mention of discoveries or research. Many such "discoveries" end up being flawed, such that they never get published or get retracted without the creationists' audience ever knowing about it. Others are so fragmentary that creationists start to expand upon it, making up new "facts" as they go, especially as the new claim passes from creationist to creationist like an urban myth.
         1. E.g., Eddy and Boornazian's "shrinking sun" discovery mentioned in 1979 in an editorial in an science popularization magazine, only to be found through refereeing that their data contained systematic errors that invalidated their results, so they never published whereas the creationist claims based solely on that editorial continues to be used 30 years later.

         2. E.g., a one- or two-paragraph mention in an industrial chemistry journal of a complete whale skeleton fossil having been found in Lompoc, Calif, at an angle became a creationist polystrate fossil claim that the skeleton was buried standing on its tail, whereas in reality it was lying flat within the layer of diatomateous earth in which it was buried and that layer had been tilted at a 45° angle.

      3. based on misrepresentation of their cited sources through a number of different misquoting techniques.
         1. By lifting the quote out of context, AKA " quote mining", that great creationist pastime. An example of lifting the entire quote out of the context in which it was written would be the Steven Jay Gould misquote making it look like he was admitting to a lack of intermediate fossils, whereas the context out of which it was lifted clearly shows that he was presenting that argument solely for the purpose of refuting it. A similar example would be to quote-mine the Bible as saying that there is no God, whereas reading that verse in context will show that that is not what the Bible was actually saying.

         2. By deleting portions of the quote. While it is common practice to make a quotation more brief by removing non-vital portions of it (eg, examples meant to illustrate the premises) and replacing the deleted portions with ellipses ( ... ), ellipses can also be used to remove context and information contrary to the misquoter's intent. In some cases, I have seen entire paragraphs swallowed up by ellipses, in order to link together in one "sentence" two clauses that were talking about two entirely different things. Whenever you see ellipses in a quotation, always go back to the original source to see just what had been removed.

         3. By substituting different meanings for key words, AKA "semantic shifting". Science is full of specialized terminology, most of which are relatively common words that are given a different, well-defined meaning when used within the context of that scientific field. Semantic shifting involves quoting a source, usually a scientific one, and reinterpreting it by substituting different meanings for the terms the source used.
            1. E.g., in common parlance, a transitional fossil would be one that is intermediate between two taxonomic groups, such as a reptile-mammal transition. In the more specialized terminology of one of the sciences that classifies species, a transitional form would need to have all or at least most of its features intermediate between the two taxa. There's no reason to expect evolution to work that way and, indeed, very few such strictly transitional fossils have been found, though a great many intermediate forms have been found. So creationists will quote a scientist using his highly specialized terminology saying that transitionals are not to be found and then they semantically shift that quote to change the meaning to there not being any intermediate forms, which is not true.

            2. E.g., the word "theory". In common parlance, it means something that's little more than a guess. Yet in science, it means a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules (called scientific laws) that express relationships between observations of such concepts. A scientific theory is constructed to conform to available empirical data about such observations, and is put forth as a principle or body of principles for explaining a class of phenomena. A scientific theory is constructed out of bundles of hypotheses which have been repeatedly tested against the evidence and corrected, refined, or replaced by better hypotheses. As such, a scientific theory has undergone repeated testing and is strongly supported by the evidence. A far cry from what creationists think the word means.

      4. By misrepresenting the nature of their sources.
         1. Eg, by presenting a popularization or a media piece as a scientific source. I've even seen creationist sources being cited as scientific sources.

         2. Eg, by citing a scientific source when in fact their real source was another creationist who had claimed that scientific source as his source, whereas in fact his source was yet another creationist, etc, etc, etc.

      5. By ignoring inconvenient facts and evidence. This is a form of "cherry picking", picking and choosing only what you want to use and ignoring the rest. That is the antithesis of how science is conducted, wherein all the evidence must be considered -- indeed, the evidence that doesn't fit can produce the more interesting results.
         1. Eg, transitional fossils. They usually employ a form of semantic shifting in which they use the fossil's classification to pronounce it 100% that thing, ignoring all intermediate features, such as they do with Archaeopteryx. It becomes fun with the ape-man transition with creationists claiming that there's a clear separation between apes and man, yet prominent creationists cannot agree which is which and even disagree with themselves. There is no clear separation; that's the point!

            Even more blatant was in a TV debate on CBN that I caught early in my education. The evolutionist showed the differences between the human and the chimpanzee pelvis, very distinctive characteristics. Then he showed that a hominid pelvis had both human and ape characteristics, showing that it is intermediate between the two. The creationist kept pointing to the human characteristics and completely ignored the ape characteristics and pronounced it "100% human". That taught me a lot about the creationist mentality which has been repeatedly confirmed in the 30 years since.

         2. Eg, geological evidence. Creationists cite what they consider to be evidence for Noah's Flood and a young earth, while completely ignoring the mountains of geological evidence that contraindicate the Flood and indicate an ancient earth with a long complex history. And they go so far as to make their religion totally dependent on a young earth.

            Glenn R. Morton was a young-earth creationist trained in geology by creationists. When he went to work as a field geologist and hired other creationist-trained geologists, they all suffered severe crises of faith from having to deal day after day with rock-hard geological evidence that creation science had taught them did not exist and could not exist if Scripture were to have any meaning. Morton himself was driven to the verge of atheism by this, as a result of young-earth creationism. He tells his story here and here. Most highly recommended reading.

         3. Eg, falsely claiming that scientists have no explanation for creationist "challenges". The major problem with these "challenges" is that they are filled with errors and are false. Plus, they are intended to be impossible to explain, such that creationists don't know what to do when they do get a response ... except to ignore the response and immediately throw another "challenge" at the responder.
            1. Many "challenges" are just plain nonsense.
               • A classic example would be "If we evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?", which surprisingly does keep appearing in the wild as a sincere "challenge".

               • A more recent example is in an article on Kent Hovind's site, Creationists Point to Huge Holes in Evolution "Theory", in which the author urges creationist students in public schools to stump their teachers with questions such as, "Where did the thousands of compounds we find in the world come from?". Since a minimal acquaintance with basic chemistry would answer that "stumper" immediately, creationists should not have the bad manners to act surprised that teachers who have to deal with such mindless idiocy year after year would have such low opinions of creationists.

            2. These "challenges" are based on ignorance of science and gross misrepresentation of science. In short, the creationists who write these "challenges" either don't know what they are talking about or else they are being deliberately dishonest ... or both.

            3. These "challenges" are not intended to be answered and so are frequently worded thus. The intent is to stump an "evolutionist" opponent or a target for conversion -- many training materials offer scripts in which the Christian hits the target with several unanswerable "challenges" leaving the target so shaken and unsure that he becomes ripe for the picking. In the case of "stumping" an opponent, the intent is to discredit his position in the eyes of the audience or, if lacking an audience, to remove the opponent from the discussion so that he can no longer ask questions about the creationist's claims or point out inconvenient facts.

               A common technique in crafting a "challenge" is to demand of the "evolutionist" complete and perfect knowledge of past events, such as the exact course of evolution from bacteria to blue whales. Another common technique is to demand of the "evolutionist on the street" detailed knowledge of scientific subjects, such as quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, and cosmology. Again, these techniques are intended to intimidate one's opponents.

            4. Even though a creationist will absolutely insist that he wants his "challenges" answered, the moment that you do answer it, he loses all interest and lobs another "challenge" at you, again absolutely insisting that he honestly wants an answer. This immediately exposes his real intent.

            5. Evolutionists do want to see real challenges, because it's only by challenging ideas and theories that they can be tested and that science can advance. The problem is that none of these creationist "challenges" are real.
               • In The Transformation of a Young-earth Creationist , Glenn R. Morton, a geologist trained by the Institute for Creation Research (ICR, whose founders literally wrote the book on Flood Geology) and whose field work opened his eyes to the truth, talked with all 8 other ICR graduates who had also gone to work in the oil industry and asked them all this simple question:

                 "From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true?"

                 None of them could think of a single one.

               • In 1993, professors William Thwaites and Frank Awbrey wrote an article that summarized their highly successful 15-year career of debating against the leading creationists, Our last debate; our very last. They describe having entered into the debates with the hope and expectation that:

                 "... a creationist would dig up a real biological paradox, one that would prove to be an interesting brain-teaser for the scientific community. We hoped that we could use the creationists to ferret out biological enigmas much as DEA agents use dogs to seek out contraband. ... While we had discovered that every creationist claim so far could easily be disproved, we still had hope that there was a genuine quandary in there somewhere. We just hadn't found it yet."

                 What they did discover after those 15 years was that none of the creationists ever presented any real paradoxes or genuine quandaries. The creationists had no actual case to present.

            6. Now true, when scientists first encountered those "challenges", often as a participant in a 1970's creationist "debate", they were dumbfounded that anyone would make such nonsensical and blatantly false claims, but within the constraints of the debate (which is weighted heavily in favor of the creationist) could not come up with a proper response. For one thing, the creationist was usually engaged in a Gish Gallop, a rapid-fire piling on of one erroneous claim after another, such that it would take their opponent hours to untangle that mess and to explain the truth to the audience. Plus, they would first have to research the sources of the creationist's claims, which, when they did do the research, revealed how the creationist had misrepresented that source. But those scientists and professors and teachers did do their research into creation science and its claims and by 1980 were turning the tide and starting to win those debates.

               In this account, a former young-earth creationist describes his reaction to a debate tape that opened his eyes: "Scientists have answers for each point raised, e.g., shrinking sun, polystrate fossils etc., they were not surprised at all!" Yes, they do have the answers to creationists' "challenges", but they need to have done their "creation science" homework.

      6. By misrepresenting science. This can be mainly because they don't understand the science, but since many of the leading creationists had at least engineering degrees, they needed to have had at least some training in science. Basically, creationists create a strawman misrepresentation of what science is and what it teaches, so that it can then either use that strawman to support another false claim or they can put on a big show of attacking and defeating that strawman, fooling their audiences into believing that they had defeated that actual science instead.
         1. Evolution. Of course, this is the big target for creating strawmen. It would take an entire web page to list all the ways in which they misrepresent what evolution is and how evolutionary theory says that it works. And all their attacks against evolution are based on those misrepresentations, not on evolution itself.

            I have yet to see a single creationist be able to accurate describe evolution or evolutionary theory. No, I have to take that back. There was one creationist who posted the standard gross misrepresentation of punctuated equilibria (AKA "PuncEq") and then, in response my pointing out the misrepresentation to him and asking him what he understood about PuncEq, he wrote a wonderful description of PuncEq that was pretty accurate. But then he continued to use the gross misinterpretation, indicating that although he knew better, he deliberately chose to misrepresent science; ie, he chose to deliberately lie.

         2. Geology. Two very major components of "creation science" are "Flood Geology", the teaching that a single recent (circa 4500 BCE) year-long world-wide flood laid down most of the earth's geological formations and buried most of the fossils, and the young earth, that "[i]f the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture has no meaning." Since the geological facts and evidence contradict both "Flood Geology" and a young earth, there isn't much else that creationists can do except to misrepresent geology.
            • Discussion of the Lewis Overthrust fault, Thrust faults, is an example of how creationists get geology wrong.

            • Many creationists offer the absurd view of geological strata forming at a strictly uniform rate, claiming literally that they formed a tiny fraction of an inch each year. No geologist would say such a a thing. Well, at least one, Steven Austin, PhD Geology, a creationist whose education was paid for by the ICR so that they could boast having an actual geologist with a real doctorate degree on staff -- several creationists have bogus or highly doubtful degrees, which ruins creationists' reputations in general. While he was working on his degree, Austin wrote articles on geology for creationist publications, though under the pseudonym, Stuart E. Nevins, so that his professors wouldn't catch wind of it. I read one of those articles and in that article he offered precisely the argument that I mentioned, that strata form at a strictly uniform rate, a tiny fraction of an inch each year for millions of years. Since he wrote that while he was working on his PhD, at which time he was very well schooled in what geologists actually think and know and what their methods actually are, he knew better than to have made such an absurd and false claim. And yet he did precisely that.

            • Creationists make much about any evidence of rapid depositation, such as in the case of polystrate fossils, which are often trees. Falsely claiming that geologists believe in slow and absolutely uniform rates of depositation (in large part through semantic shifting of the term uniformitarian), they claim that any evidence of rapid depositation is evidence for their world-wide flood and falsely claim that according to geologists those layers that a polystrate tree extends through represent millions of years. In reality, geologists not only accept varying rates of depositation, but they even have techniques for determining whether a given stratum had formed rapidly or slowly, so they can very readily detect the effects of flooding ... local flooding, which is all that rapid depositation alone would indicate. And geologists have understood how polystrate fossil trees formed since the 19th century, didn't have any problem explaining them then and certain don't have any problem now.

            • Back in 1990, I wrote an essay on the geological evidence for posting on CompuServe: Geological evidence of an ancient earth.

            • Another good source of information on geology and creationist is by Glenn R. Morton, former young-earth creationist and professional field geologist: The Flood Page: Articles on Noah's Flood and Young Earth/Anti-evolutionist Page, with his main page at Glenn Morton's Creation/Evolution Home Page -- it appears that he's recently had to move it, so some of the links are broken as he's bringing it back up, kind of like my site is right now.

         3. Physics. Of course creationists' misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Thermodynamics is near legendary. They will also misuse other concepts, such as conservation of angular momentum, to create other false claims.

      7. By misapplying scientific methodologies to doctor data into producing the results they want. Part of their technique is to cherry pick data points, but they will also apply tests and mathematical models that are invalid.
         1. Eg, Setterfield's "decay of the speed of light" claim. In this one, Setterfield cherry-picked historical attempts to measure the speed of light in order to create an exponential decay curve.

         2. Eg, the fundamental basis of "creation science", the "Two Model Approach" (TMA), as an example of cherry picking two extreme diametrically opposed choices (their "creation model" and "evolution model", which is a gross misrepresentation of evolution and other sciences) out of the countless real choices that exist. This allows them to use the False Dilemma fallacy to not only force their audience to choose between God (and their narrowly sectarian fundamentalist beliefs) and atheism (yes, that's what their "evolution model" boils down to), but it also enables them to "prove" their "creation model" solely by attacking their "evolution model" and without ever having to discuss or defend their "creation model" or even present it. Pure demagoguic deception.

         3. Creationists will send fossils to labs for dating, but request the wrong test in order to get a wrong result so that they can then claim that the dating method doesn't work. Carbon dating is usually targetted. Because of C-14's short half-life, carbon dating can only work on samples less than 50,000 years old, so if you test a sample that's older, it will be dated at 50,000 years. So creationists will submit samples that other dating methods say are millions of years old and they'll claim that the methods don't work because carbon dating said those samples are only 50,000 years old. Misusing a test doesn't make the test wrong, but rather the person who's deliberately misusing the test.

         4. Radiodating is very reliable, but there are conditions that will cause errors; eg, the "reservoir effect" affecting carbon dating in which aquatic organisms got most of their carbon from reservoirs of "old carbon" such as dissolved limestone and deep ocean food chains, non-homogeneous melts or partial remelting affecting isochron dating. These conditions are well-known and widely published and geologists are taught to watch out for them. It is through this literature that creationists know about those conditions and thus know to seek them out in order to "disprove" dating methods. For example, Steve Austin, PhD Geology and Chairman of the ICR's Geology Department, uses his training in geology to create "bad dates" as he did in their Grand Canyon Dating Project -- see A Criticism of the ICR's Grand Canyon Dating Project.

         5. Harold Slusher's formula for calculating the expected depth of meteoric dust on the moon's surface. The formula was his own, but by misrepresenting his source in order to include an extraneous factor and then by violating mathematical rules for working with average rates in order to include a second extraneous factor, he was able to inflate his results by a factor of 100,000 and thus "predict" that an ancient moon would be covered by a layer of dust 284 feet thick, whereas when his formula is corrected by removing those two extraneous factors it only predicts a layer that's a small fraction of an inch thick. See my discussion, MOON DUST "White Paper".

         6. Creationists have created several "dating methods" of their own that they use to "prove" that the earth cannot possibly be old. In most cases, they cherry picked their data in order to exclude contradictory evidence. They also based their "methods" on faulty assumptions, such as assuming that the straight line that their data points plotted was actually an exponential decay curve:
            • Thomas Barnes' decay of the earth's geo-magnetic field. He cherry-picked recorded measurements of the dipole component of the field, ignoring the field's other components and how energy transfers between them. He also ignored other independent evidence that the field fluctuates in intensity over time. And even though his data points yielded a straight line, he extrapolated that back in time as an exponential decay curve. Though I have seen that curve "corrected" more recently by other creationists, wherein the historical data is plotted as a fluctuating sinusoidal curve, only to then suddenly shoot up into that exponential decay curve for no apparent reason.

            • Henry Morris' human population growth model, AKA "The Bunny Blunder. The first instance of it that I have found was in his 1961 book, The Genesis Flood, and he continued to develop and present it over the years. It's an overly simplistic model (AKA "pure birth model") that was simplified even further by his having cherry-picked historical population counts in order to come up with a satisfactory (for him, at least) uniform growth rate to apply to yet another exponential curve, which was unaffected by population limiting factors such as availability of food, disease, etc, all of which he ignored in his cherry-picking. The term "bunny blunder" comes from applying his model to the world rabbit population, thus showing that the current population had to have originated from two bunnies 100 to 200 years ago.

            • Countless creationist probability arguments. In each case, the probability model that the creationist uses does not properly model what he says it does. Each creationist probability argument is a classic case of GIGO, "garbage in, garbage out", only they treat it as "garbage in, Gospel out." And they come up with really big and impressive numbers, so they don't mind in the least that those numbers are completely wrong.
              1. A common argument presents what it claims is the probability of something evolving. But it doesn't even come close to modelling evolution, which is based on cumulative selection, but rather is based on single-step selection which is much closer to creation ex nihilo. I discuss both forms of selection and compare the probabilities that they generate in my analysis of my WEASEL program, which I named MONKEY; WEASEL programs are based on Chapter Three of Richard Dawkins' book, The Blind Watchmaker, in which he also presented and discussed cumulative selection. Bottom line is that single-step selection produces events with extremely low probability of happening such that they are virtually impossible, whereas cumulative selection produces events that are virtually inevitable (ie, there is still an extremely low, virtually impossible, chance that a cumulatively selected-for event will still not happen). Read my analysis of MONKEY to see why that is.

              2. Another common argument claims to examine the astronomical improbability of a protein forming "by chance".
                 1. First, "by chance" is a common creationist misrepresentation of evolution and it is a gross misrepresentation. Saying that something evolves "by chance" exposes your ignorance as quickly as saying "it's just a theory" would.
                 2. Second, these arguments invariably employ single-step selection by requiring a jumble of amino acids to spontaneously fall into place and link up. Evolution would not use single-step selection, but rather creation would. Nor does the process described bear any resemblance at all to how evolution would produce a new protein.
                 3. Third, the argument over-specifies the protein's amino acid sequence. Just by comparing the same protein in different organisms you can see that their sequences vary widely. A small number of sites on the protein may require a specific amino acid, but a number of other sites on that protein may require any of a certain type of amino acid, while most of the sites in the sequence can be filled by any amino acid. By over-specifying the sequence, the creationist has doctored his claim to produce extremely low probabilities that are contrary to reality.

            • Attempting to limit the earth's age with ephemeral features on the earth. Yes, these claims are really dumb, but they keep getting used. Examples include Niagara Falls and the Mississippi River delta and erosion rates and even the oldest known tree (which is younger than the 11,700-year-old King Clone creosote bush that somehow survived their world-wide Flood 6,000 years ago). They may as well argue that the earth can't be any more than 13 years old because that's how old my dog is; it's the exact same logic.

      8. By creating complete fabrications.
         1. Eg, a classic example would be Duane Gish's bullfrog protein that supposedly showed humans to be more similar to bullfrogs than to chimpanzees. He even claimed to have documentation for that protein and promised to present it, but never would. It was a complete fabrication which he claimed came from a joke he had once overheard. And he claimed that if the teller of that joke had misled him, then that wasn't his fault.

         2. Making up statistics and claims on the spur of the moment in a debate. Actually, that is what Gish's bullfrog protein claim was. His mistake was to create it while being taped for a nationally-aired TV show, so that scientists could review it and ask him about it. The last thing that any creationist wants is for someone to research one of his claims.

         3. And of course their entire stance that there's some kind of "controversy" about evolution in the scientific community is a complete fabrication, which they create by misquoting and misrepresenting their scientific sources. While there are many controversies in science over how certain aspects of evolution work, there is no controversy as to whether it happens.

      9. By repeating other creationists' claims without acknowledging their actual sources. This is far worse than you might think. Creationists, even the leading ones, rarely do their own research, but rather they take claims made by other creationists and use those claims as their own. That wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that instead of citing the creationist they got the claim from, they cite the non-creationist source that their creationist source had cited. And what do you want to bet that that creationist source hadn't done the exact same thing, plagarized from yet another creationist? And in each case, the creationist never bothered to even look at the original source.

         The best model I can think of to describe creationist scholarship is that of urban legends. These claims originate from somewhere, but it's nearly impossible to track that information down. They get repeated and passed around with no way to track them. One bit of confusion this "urban legend" operating style can cause is that when a creationist advances a claim, we will frequently identify the creationist it came from and name him, whereupon the creationist will state that he had never heard of the guy. One way that happens is that the creationist had gotten the claim, verbatim nowadays with copy-and-paste, from a creationist source who had copied it from the creationist we ID'd as the source. Another way is that the creationist we ID as the source had himself copy-and-pasted that claim from yet another creationist. In other words, both we and the creationist we responded to got the same claim, complete with near-identical wording, from two different points in its long urban-legend chain.

         All that really matters to a creationist is that the claim sound convincing, even though what sounds convincing to a creationist can be very different from what sounds convincing to a non-creationist. Having a scientific or scientific-sounding source cited by the claim makes it seem more convincing. The truth of the claim is unimportant, so no creationist ever thinks to look up the cited source to check it out. Of course, this is the complete opposite of how science and proper research operate, where the truthfulness and validity of the material is important so sources are actually used and verified. In a forum discussion I had listed the differences between science and creationism and started to convert that into a web page. It's not finished yet, but it has a table with a side-by-side comparison that should prove edifying.

         1. The story of Henry Morris' moon dust and the NASA document claim is a classic example. One of the reasons why I'm so familiar with it is because I am the one who did the research on it, though two others also researching the claim published before I did. Here's the chain of events, tracing it back through each creationist:
            1. Henry Morris used the claim in 1985 at a debate I attended. He made the standard moon dust claim and backed it up with a "1976" NASA document. Actually, he was using that claim to counter the common (and true) accusation that he used out-dated sources, so that "1976" date, "well into the space age", was very important to him.

            2. I wrote to the ICR for more information. Gish replied with the name of the NASA document and also included a copy of a letter written by Harold Slusher which gave both the reference to the NASA document and the formula he created to calculate the expected depth of the layer of moon dust and in which he included two extraneous factors that inflated his results by a factor of 100,000. Later I also found the same "1976" NASA document cited in a footnote on page 152 of Morris' book, Scientific Creationism (2nd ed., circa 1982).

               The document was cited by all three creationists as (copying it here from Slusher's letter):
               

               Hawkins, G.S. ed., 1976. Meteor Orbits and Dust, Smithsonian Contributions to Astrophysics. Volume II, Smithsonian Institution and NASA, Washington, D.C.

            3. While browsing for another document in the NASA documents section of my university library, I happened upon Meteor Orbits and Dust and pulled it down from the shelf, which in itself immediately refuted Henry Morris' claim. On the cover, it said that the papers in the document were presented at a conference in August 1965. On the inside title page, the print date was given as 1967 (nineteen sixty-seven). Also, the front cover said that this was Volume 11, not Roman numeral two, a clue that I missed for several years. And looking up the pages cited by Slusher in his letter confirmed that this was indeed the NASA document they were talking about and yet had misrepresented.

            4. I wrote back to Gish informing him of what I had found and included a xerox copy of the front cover. Even with that hard evidence in front of him, his response was to insist that the document was indeed from 1976. When I replied with yet another xerox copy of the front cover, he cut off our correspondence. A few years later when Gish made an appearance locally, I attended and afterwards asked him about that document. He feigned not knowing anything about it but wrote down my address and offered to write to me with the answer. He never did send me an answer, except to abruptly cancel my subscription to the ICR newsletter, Acts & Facts, through which I had gotten Gish's schedule of appearances. How was that for an answer?

            5. I also wrote to Harold Slusher. He never replied and I learned from another source that he's notorious for ignoring questions.

            6. A few more years after those events, I told a fundamentalist relative the story and he wrote to the ICR asking about it. This time he got a reply from one of their graduate students who told him that they don't use that claim anymore because the methods for measuring the dust are so unreliable. So they have distanced themselves from the claim, and yet Morris' book, Scientific Creationism, is still in its second edition (and will remain there, since Morris died in 2006). And it is still being sold with that error still in it along with the false moondust claim, 20 years later. Which means that every new creationist will still be fed false information that had been refuted 20 years ago. SOP for creationism.

            What that told me was that, even though Morris and Gish claimed that that NASA document was their source, they had never seen that document before in their lives. We know that, because just looking at the front cover immediately refutes the claim that it was dated "1976". Their real source was another creationist, Harold Slusher, and they just posted his source as their own, deliberately lying about their claim. And I have seen other creationists repeat the claim and they also would cite the same "1976" NASA document as their source. Though after having informed Gish of the discrepancy, I have noticed some creationists citing it with the correct 1965 date.

            Remember the document's volume number? The clue that I had missed? Here's what I think happened. Slusher did the same thing that Morris and Gish and all the creationists who plagarized from them had done: he had gotten his information from yet another creationist and had claimed that creationist's source as his own without ever having seen the document himself. Furthermore, I believe that that other creationist, whose identity we will never know since Slusher doesn't answer his mail, had given Slusher that information in hand-written correspondence. The font on the document was very clearly Arabic numerals; there is no way 11 could have been mistaken for II. But if it had been written down by hand, then an Arabic eleven could very easily have been mistaken for a Roman two. And it's even possible that that unnamed other creationist had himself gotten the claim from yet another creationist. There's no telling how many creationist are in that chain, nor whether it was Slusher who had changed the document's date or one of the creationists who had preceded him. Such is the nature of creationist urban-legend scholarship.

         2. Another creationist who is infamous for plagarizing other creationists is Kent Hovind. He even recycles Duane Gish's old jokes. He also would very rarely write anything, but rather would always present his claims verbally and would "publish" by distributing videos of his presentations. And yet, quite surprisingly, in at least one short article he wrote for his web site, a list of claims about astronomy that has been posted across the Web on countless creationist sites, his bibliography was real. Instead of citing the other creationists' "sources", he cited the creationists themselves. Amazing! Like a broken clock, even a creationist can on rare occassions do at least one thing right! And with that rare truthful creationist bibliography, I was able to trace most of the history of the infamous "leap second" claim (see below).

            Along came a new creationist site, QuestionEvolution.com and its creator contacted evolutionists on some forums to respond to the long list of claims he posted so that he could post our responses. We did that, which overwhelmed him. He had thought that nobody would be able to answer those questions, as he stated on his home page (and still does, thus deliberately lying): "The questions found on this site remain unanswered by the evolutionist." Since he was overwhelmed by the response in which every single one of his claims was answered quite fully, one of us helped him out by creating a web site to hold our responses and that he could link to from his site, which he did do ... for a while. Then one day he quietly removed that link. His site still claims "The questions found on this site remain unanswered by the evolutionist.", which is a complete and utter lie; we answered every single one of those questions. He also claims: "We even have an entire page set up for evolutionists to have their say, and your comments will either end up there or we will reply via e-mail"; again a complete and utter lie. The site containing our answers has been taken down, but the site has been archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20091027151144/http://geocities.com/chastity403/questionevolution/index.html.

            Since the list looked like it had been copied from Hovind's article, I used Hovind's bibliography to start with. But then the site creator revealed that he had gotten that list from a class he had taken decades ago, such that it pre-dated Hovind's article by nearly 20 years and Hovind's "ministry" by at least a decade. So it would appear that Hovind and this guy's teacher had gotten their lists from the same unnamed creationist source. Or from different points in the long urban-legend chain of creationist scholarship.

            Go to this page in the answers site and scroll down to his question #9, "Earth's spin is slowing at the rate of almost 1 sec/year. How fast was it spinning 1 billion years ago?". I gave him a very comprehensive response that thoroughly explained what is wrong with that claim and what is really happening. Then I traced the claim back to its origins. Starting from Hovind, I used his reference to Scott Huse (1983), who in turn cites Wysong (1981). Wysong then cites Popular Science (1973), Time (1966), and a creationist source, an ICR Impact article. That part of the paper trail ends there. Though I found that while Hovind gives a rate for the earth's slowing, neither Huse nor Wysong give a rate. For that matter, Huse's write-up (quoted on that answers page) is very similar to Wysong's, stating their conclusions of how fast the earth would have been spinning a billion years ago and how it would flatten the earth like a pancake or pizza (which was the subject of that Impact article), but no indication of how they had arrived at those conclusions. Since Walter Brown has long been considered to be the source of the "leap second" claim, I read his version of the claim from 1981 and he does give the rate as being one second per year, the same as the questionevolution.com guy wrote from his notes, though Hovind's cited rate is about a third of that.

            The interesting part of that research was being able to see how that particular claim had developed over time and what changes each creationist it passed through made. The opportunity for such research into creationist claims and their development is rare, given the urban-legend nature of the creation and spread of the vast majority of creationist claims.

            On the question of whether Walter Brown was the ultimate source of that claim, I found a PDF of creationist hand-outs that included a hand-out dated 1979 written by Walter Brown in which he presented the same claim as he later made in 1981. That, along with Brown citing Air Force periodicals (NAVSTAR, a largely Air Force project, went on-line in 1980, giving us GPS), strongly indicate that Walter Brown, a retired officer who would have had easy access to those USAF periodicals, was the ultimate source of the claim. That claim was resoundingly refuted in 1982 ( As the World Turns: Can Creationists Keep Time? by William M. Thwaites and Frank T. Awbrey, Creation/Evolution, Issue IX, Summer 1982, pp.18-22.) and, in yet another extremely rare moment of "creation science" history, Walter Brown no longer uses that claim. Of course, Hovind still does/did (he's serving a 10-year sentence in federal prison), as do countless creationist web-sites, including several to whom the blatantly obvious falsehood of that claim has been pointed out, but who continued to present that false claim, yet more cases of deliberate creationist lying.

First uploaded on 2011 August 15.
Last updated on 2014 October 02.