How literal can a creationist get? And do they all have such dirty minds?

Over at All-Too-Common Dissent, the conversation has turned to Terry Trainor. You’ve probably never heard of him; he’s one of those garden variety self-infatuated creationists who frequented talk.origins some years ago, using the pseudonym “American Patriot” (which does rather tell you a lot about him right there.) He has now retreated to his own little MSN discussion group, to which I will not link—he really doesn’t deserve the attention.

However, all the talk lately about Darwin as the source of all racism, and the comments that noted a peculiar tendency of creationists to think very, very literally, combined with the mention of Trainor to remind of a wonderful example of all of those points made in a
talk.origins thread 6 years ago. It was amazing.

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Darwin’s Deadly Legacy: what tripe.

Well, I just watched the much-ballyhooed Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, with D. James Kennedy. Here are a few quick comments.

  • The opening scene was perfect. Kennedy walked onto a stage decorated with flasks and beakers and graduated cylinders full of brightly colored water. One had a small flame going under it; the graduated cylinder was bubbling. It was practically an admission that all of the science in the show was going to be fake.

  • In a show purportedly about science, how desperate do you have to be to give Ann Coulter that much face time? Triple points for irony, though, when Coulter calls Eugenie Scott a “hack.”

  • The first half was all Nazis and Columbine. No mention of Hitler’s Christianity, of course, everything was driven by “Darwinism.”

  • The second half was all about the “crumbling theory of evolution.” All the old chestnuts were tossed out. We got “just a theory”, 747s being spontaneously assemble while monkeys write Shakespeare, Behe babbling about “molecular machines,” Strobel saying there were no transitional fossils, Nebraska Man, teach both theories, and that famous paleontologist, Ann Coulter, telling us that all forms of life suddenly appeared in the Cambrian explosion…and did you know you’ll get sued if you mention the Cambrian in a classroom?

  • Francis Collins is still in the program, in the second half. His contribution was to help Kennedy argue that evolution is inadequate, that “man is a special creature,” and go on and on about how complex the genome is. Collins is back on my shit list. He may not have supported the Hitler connection, but he is a creationist dupe arguing against scientific theories.

  • There were a couple of times when the collection plate was passed. Kennedy offers a copy of Tom DeRosa’s book, Evolution’s Fatal Fruit, for any donation. Go ahead, give ’em a dollar and tell them to mail it to you. The address is:
    D. James Kennedy
    Box 555
    Ft Lauderdale, FL 33302
    Or call them toll free at 1-888-334-9680.

It was a truly vile exhibition, the fans of this kind of crap will eat it up, and man, is it ever easy for these guys to lie.

The Death of the Republican Brain

Perhaps this is redundant, since Jon Swift has already taken care of it, but how could I possibly resist an article titled “The Death of Science,” posted on a “Blogs for Bush” site? It’s got wingnuts, it’s got irony, it’s got dizzyingly inane interpretations of science. It’s like everything that’s wrong with the Bush approach to science, all in one short article.

What reasons could a blinkered Bush supporter with a petrified brain and no background in science possibly advance to support the claim that science is dead?

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Fresh PIGDID

For more metaphorical execution of the ghastly Mr Wells and his dumb little book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, my article on chapter 3 is now available at the Panda’s Thumb, and if you want something fresh, Burt Humburg tackles the internal contradictions and fuzzy thinking of Wells’ theology. Not that I would ever imply that there is a theology that isn’t fuzzy and contradictory, but Wells seems to have bunged up the job particularly well.

More PIGDID is on the way!

We have a more complete demolition of the odious Mr Wells wretched book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design, on the way at the Panda’s Thumb. Different chapters were farmed out to different contributors (as you can see, I got the chapter on idiotic embryology), and others will be appearing periodically in the near future.

Reed Cartwright has put up an introduction to the whole enterprise, and once the whole collection has been placed on the web, he’ll tie it all together and organize them in an orderly fashion.

It really is a ghastly, badly done book, and unfortunately, while it only takes one dishonest fool to spin a lie, it takes a whole team to undo it.

If other bloggers want to help out, one really easy way to do it is a googlebomb: always associate the title of the book with a link back to the Panda’s Thumb, like this: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design.

Now Behe puts D. James Kennedy at arms length

Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, the program that Coral Ridge Ministries is airing this weekend that supposedly links Hitler to Darwin, is beginning to look like a public relations catastrophe for the organization. First Francis Collins repudiated the show, then the ADL put the hammer down, and now another of the “featured guests” is distancing himself from the content. Andrew Arensburger wrote to Michael Behe to find out about his contribution, and got this reply:

I’m “associated” with it only in the sense that a clip of my appearance
on a TV show of Dr. Kennedy’s from years ago apparently is used in the
film. I didn’t know this program was in the works, have had no
conversations with anyone from Coral Ridge about it, and had no input
into it.

This looks more and more like a pastiche of generic creationist interviews slapped together to prop up a weak thesis.