This is Don McElroy, the guy who used to run the Texas Schoolboard, stating he believes dinosaurs and humans walked side by side. Technically, he might be right — if one accepts that modern birds evolved from raptorial dinosaurs. A view McElroy would have a hard time accomodating. But what’s more interesting are McElroy’s reasons for believing this. Intelligent design creationists make a big dog and pony show about how empirical evidence is the sole crtieria in their rejection of evolutionary biology, or the age of the earth. But so many of them, like McElroy, just can’t keep their yaps shut about the real reason: his specific, narrow religious beliefs.
Texas accent.
Don McLeroy.
And yes, the more he talks religion, the easier it is for whatever position he advocates to fail the Lemon test.
For creationists, “empirical evidence” means “the bible told us so”. Everything else is just rationalizations.
A few days ago, I was listening a podcast interview with Ray “Banana Man” Comfort. I was almost instantly bored. He was repeating the same arguments creationists have been making for years without acknowledging that all them have been endlessly refuted in the past. Carbon-14 and other radiometric dating techniques are unreliable because he says so. Oh, and some volcanic rocks that were a composite of new and old rocks tested as ancient even though they “formed” just a few years ago. Again, he ignores the entire point about them being composite rocks. Every animal brings forth its own kind. Dogs never give birth to cats therefore, evolution is false, blah, blah, blah.
Oh, and now he insists he was right about the banana all along and that wild bananas never looked like, well, the way they actually did look.
It’s the same nonsense over and over again. No matter how many times you explain how they’re misrepresenting the current state of knowledge, five minutes later, they reshake the Etch-A-Sketch and begin again as if you never said anything. The bible tells them gawd created the Earth 6000 years ago and that’s all the “empirical evidence” they need. Anything that contradicts their belief is simply ignored and rationalized away.