#105: Donald B. “Don” DeYoung

It seems like creationist crackpots have flocked around the middle entries of the letter ‘D’, and here is another one. Don DeYoung is a young earth creationist and a physicist whose life work is to overcome the hurdle of explaining how observable nature and science is consistent with literal Biblical six-day creation and deluge. No easy feat if you want to keep “goddidit”s at a minimum (as in here, though Don himself doesn’t particularly care for RATE).

He sums up his worldview thus: “My scientific belief in creation is largely based on two thermodynamic laws of nature. The first law states that energy is conserved or constant at all times. This rule ensures a dependable and predictable universe, whether for stars or for human life. The second basic law…describes unavoidable losses in any process which involves the transfer of energy. This law is directly related to the Curse which was placed upon nature at the fall of mankind in Eden. Secular science has no satisfactory explanation for such laws of nature, and these laws are entirely consistent with the biblical, six-day creation.”

Perceptible readers with at least a cursory knowledge of science might detect some holes in and problems with that one. Don doesn’t, however.

He is the current president of the Creation Research Society (a different beast than Tom DeRosa’s Creation Studies Institute, though their worldviews are more or less interchangeable); he also conducts workshops for children with practical and theoretical Bible-science activities, and contributes to Ken Ham’s repugnant pile of nincompoopery, Answers in Genesis. DeYoung has written several books, including “Thousands … Not Billions” and “Our Created Moon: Earth’s fascinating neighbor” (with John Whitcomb, who will appear later).

For more on Creation geophysics, see here.

Diagnosis: Possibly a nice and quiet guy, but certainly a fullblown loon. He seems to have some impact on the fringes (those already convinced; wingnutty homeschoolers and Ken Ham’s kind of people, and so on), but has rarely been considered worthy of notice elsewhere.