Joel Duff has endured an AiG lecture and fisked it to within an inch of its life, sparing you both the tedium of listening to YEC mendacity, but also exposing the usual AiG sophistry and the utter intellectual dishonesty of their anti-evolution message:
AiG employs some very effective speakers. But the talks are really only
as good as the information content that a very small core of staff
scientists are creating for them. In this case, the talk was very
powerful and probably very persuasive to many in the audience. But
because the the content suffers from many misconceptions and incorrect
statements any truth that was really presented is diluted by the baggage
of bad information that came along with it. I liken it to listening
to a Joel Osteen lecture – I can’t call them sermons. There are bits
of truth in some of his words but there is so much there that is wrong
that it really isn’t worth listening to on the whole.
Harsh? Hardly. AiG take advantage of the fact their audience is scientifically naive and therefore will not be able to question the absolute howlers made by the speaker. As Duff notes, when commenting on an AiG speaker appealing to a creationist:
Osborne [the AiG speaker] introduced the quote above by saying: “I love this quote from
this secular scientist..” Again, another Dr. Spetner quote that
includes misconceptions of how natural selection, genetic drift and
mutation actually work in populations. Quoting Spetner is a bit like me
lecturing to a group of scientists about the meaning of an Old
Testament and quoting Joel Osteen as my source of Biblical scholarship.
If the audience doesn’t know who Joel Osteen is they will assume that I
am presenting them with the best available understanding of OT theology
but in reality they will walk away with a very poor understanding of
meaning of the text.
Duff's post can be found
here.
Geologist Jonathan Baker has a guest post at his Age of Rocks blog by former YEC David MacMillan who uses whimsy and humour to skewer the YEC mindset in a post entitled "Mr Creationist Goes to Court":
Defense: Your honor, my client is not guilty. He
has already explained that he only drew his gun to check the safety, and
it went off by mistake.
Prosecutor: You’re joking, right?
D: Absolutely not! How could you joke at a time
like this? One man is already dead and an innocent man’s freedom hangs
in the balance!
P: Innocent? The victim is dead because your client shot him. Four times. That is not an accident.
D: Now, I think we all know that’s just your assumption. Don’t act like your whole “four shots” theory is fact.
P: It is a fact. The victim had four bullet holes in him.
D: Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t, but I’m just
saying, let’s not let your obvious assumptions get in the way of
justice. After all, you are the prosecutor; it’s not like you’re unbiased.
P: Four bullet holes. Four.
D: I wish you’d stop repeating that assumption. Look here, bullets can bounce, right? You assume the so-called victim was shot four times but only one bullet was actually in his body!
P: The victim was shot twice in the chest, once in
the abdomen, and once in the head. There are clear entry and exit
wounds on three of these, and the fourth bullet was found embedded in
his spine.
D: Fourth bullet? There you go again with your
biased assumptions. How can you possibly know which bullet was fired
last, especially when we don’t even know for sure that there was more
than one shot? Have you even considered the bounce theory?
Those familiar with the tortured logic, paranoia, and science denialism of YECs will quickly know where the defence is going here. There's a nice sting in the tail too. Full article is
here.
MacMillan has been on a roll recently; at the always-excellent Panda's Thumb blog, he tears apart the latest attempt by AiG to show how a small number of animals on board the Ark could post-flood hyper-evolve in a short period of time to produce the diversity of life we see today:
In the buzz of excitement surrounding Opening Day at the Ark
Encounter, the team of writers at Answers in Genesis continues their
struggle to explain how all terrestrial life could have been shoved
onboard the Ark and then exploded back out into millions of species in
only a few dozen centuries. The more they write, however, the more
difficult it becomes to make sense of their approach. Nathaniel Jeanson
has a new post that further compounds my confusion.
One of AIG’s youngest writers, Jeanson sports an impressive Harvard
degree in cell biology and has previously worked with the Institute for
Creation Research. Given his degree, it must be assumed he has enough
education to understand the subjects he is writing about. Jeanson
appears sincere, and it is evident he believes his conclusions
fervently. He has to know, though, that his arguments are completely
detached from those conclusions. He writes with the awkward obfuscation
of someone trying to defend a sinking ship while earnestly attempting to
remain tenuously bound to the uncomfortable constraints of reality.
Is it really that bad?
Indeed it is.
