Saturday, November 9, 2013

#786: Cornelius Hunter


Cornelius Hunter is an adjunct professor of biophysics at Biola University (though there isn’t much evidence that he is involved in actual research), Fellow at the Discovery Institute, and signatory to the institute’s A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism. He also runs the website Darwin’s Predictions, where he displays his failure to understand the theory of evolution – and science and its methodology in general – through a series of claims to the effect that the theory has been falsified (a good example of his possibly unintentional dishonesty and breathtaking lack of comprehension is found here; the mistakes he makes here are less easily explained as being unintentional).

Hunter has, for instance, bought hardcore into the “Darwin’s critics are persecutedmyth, and concerning the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover case, he attempted to maintain that it “was a disaster for evolution” since “evolutionists paid a […] cost which can’t be measured in dollars. They gave up their soul.” At least that’s what Hunter tries to keep telling himself.

Famous internet troll Larry Fafarman awarded Hunter a “Friend of Jefferson” award in 2010, though the criteria for the award were unclear and Fafarman is most famous for being a relatively rare example of someone who is actually thoroughly fractally wrong.

Diagnosis: Entrenched crackpot with non-negligible though limited influence.

4 comments:

  1. You guys should have the decency of respecting a scholar and his knowledge. This site is preposterous.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Explorerguy,

    "You guys should have the decency of respecting a scholar and his knowledge. This site is preposterous."

    Surely you jest. Guys like this individual do not know the meaning of decency and respect. The concepts are completely foreign to them.

    They like to believe they are all about 'the science' when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. They are nothing more than name calling pseudo intellectuals who think if you insult someone's intelligence frequently enough you will win the argument. In short, they are total losers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. While researching "how do we know that the rates of radioactive decay do not change beyond what we can observe" I somehow came upon a paper he wrote in 2015.

    I read the intro and the conclusion at first and saw no specific evidence cited regarding his thesis that evolution is not a biological process. So I clicked on the "The pentadactyl pattern and common descent" link on the side to try to find some evidence.

    The gist of this part of the paper was that since some tetrapods lose their 5 digit like features and then some of those that list them gain them back, that forms are not related by common ancestry as evolution predicted.

    This is the absolute first argument I randomly found of his. An argument that completely ignores DNA. I would be surprised of he hadn't read about how genes can be present but not activated. And though those genes are not activated for tetrapod digits, they are still passed down. And the genes can be reactivated.

    Entirely dishonest character

    ReplyDelete
  4. This entire blog is a pathetic exercise in lunacy - LOONacy - worthy of the worst, most vitriolic smear campaigns in history. It is a despicable attempt by pathetic, psychotic little twits to build themselves up by putting smarter, better people than themselves down. The authors need a good shrink. Logic, reason and decency fall off them like water off a duck.

    ReplyDelete