I’m warning you. It’s a disaster waiting to build: when the newspapers start reporting creationist versions of stories without questioning them, without providing explanations of the fallacies, and without even bringing in authoritative scientific voices to knock their claims down, all you do is feed the confidence of the creationists. It’s even worse than “he said she said” journalism. That’s exactly what the BBC has done, though, with a piss poor story about attendees at Ken Ham’s preposterous creationist “museum”.

I’m going to be charitable and assume the author intended to hang the creationists with their own words; the quotes from the people going to the “museum” do make them sound like ignorant hicks. In particular, one pull quote — Why is Darwin buried with kings at Westminster Abbey? He’s not a king. — is a great big flashing idiot light, and will be especially noticeable in the UK (hint: they don’t just bury kings in Westminster…unless, of course, Isaac Newton and Herschel and Lyell and many other scientists were crowned when I wasn’t looking).

But still, look at the article as a creationist would. It’s going to go in a scrapbook or on a wall of reviews at the “museum”, and the gomers will stroll through, read it, and nod approvingly. Those quotes affirm their own beliefs; all they’ll see is that the BBC approvingly quoted sentiments they share. And there will be readers in England, even, who will be oblivious to the very understated sarcasm, and will be cheered further in their support of creationism. And other reporters will see that as a perfectly reasonable way to write a news story, and the plague of bland reporting will spread.

This part was simply disingenuous.

President and founder Ken Ham stayed resolutely silent about the fossil, called Darwinius masillae, which scientists believe was linked to an early human ancestor.

I’m sorry, but if you go to the Answers in Genesis web site, Darwinius masillae is featured top center in a big full color banner. To claim that Ham was resolute or silent is false: he’s been lying noisily and frantically about the fossil record.

Trust me, it’s been happening over here. Every article about creationism needs to eschew the subtleties and pound hard on the obvious, that creationism is bunk and its proponents are ignorant, because the creationists don’t get subtlety.

Ray has always been good for hours of hilarity — he writes amazingly stupid stuff. But now Ray has competition: Eric Hovind has a blog! It’s not quite as insane as Ray’s, but it does have more evil and stupidity.

For example, Eric likes a poem that he quotes — it’s a crude racist ditty that, I’m told, you can also find on the Stormfront web site. It’s written as if by some caricature of an immigrant, and ends like this:

We think America darn good place!
Too darn good for the white man race.
If they no like us, they can scram,
Got lots of room in Pakistan ..

Hovind has been shown that some of the statistics he used to justify vilifying immigrants were wrong, he’s admitted it, but he still likes the poem. That tells you a lot about him, right there.

On the evil side, he has a post called “The Evoluiton Hypothisis” [sic, sic]. He uses a diagram of what he calls the scientific method to argue against evolution’s status as a scientific theory.

I don’t much care for the diagram — it’s too rigid in its simplistic model of how science works, and it perpetuates the misleading idea that hypotheses gradually become theories (usually, theories emerge to explain large bodies of information already accumulated, and don’t slowly expand up out of single hypotheses) and that theories become laws if they’re confirmed enough. But I’ll let it slide… you’ll find many similar diagrams in introductory biology texts.

Where Hovind is stupidly wrong is that he looks at that diagram, and baldly claims that the “concept of evolution has never gotten passed the Hypothesis stage”. Ridiculous. All those papers being constantly published in the scientific literature are tests of the theory. The primary research literature is crammed full of tests of evolution, and more keep coming. You have to be profoundly ignorant of the state of biology to be able to make such a ludicrous claim. Oh, wait…he’s a Hovind. Of course he’s deeply ignorant!

Oh, if any of you decide to hang about and laugh at Eric Hovind’s goofy claims, would you mind reminding him now and then that I’m waiting for my iPod Touch?

Regular readers here may be familiar with WhoIsYourCreator, a creationist who blows through here and The Panda’s Thumb now and then to dump a load of creationist cut-and-paste in the comments. WhoIsYourCreator is actually Julie Haberle, a deranged creationist whose chief accomplishment to date has been to erect foolish billboards all over the place. To date — but now she can take credit for another accomplishment. Her billboards and organization prompted a Christian to dig deeper into this evolution stuff, and what he discovered was that Haberle and others in the creationist movement have been lying all along, which led him to this simple conclusion, which he shared with Ms. Haberle.

I’m simply writing to say ‘Thank You’ and let you know by sharing with you the information I’ve discovered, your organization more than any other entity has been the primary factor in the shedding my faith. Keep up the good work as there is no doubt countless others have and will continue to do the same based on your efforts.

Dishonesty has consequences, and creationists are fundamentally distorting the evidence to fit their desired conclusion. That hurts them when people take a moment to actually examine what they are claiming.