#887: Yingguang Liu

Yingguang Liu is a young earth creationist affiliated with Creation Ministries International and Professor of Applied Science at Maranatha Baptist Bible College, where he “teaches biology on a level that threatens the neoDarwinian paradigm every day” (he has no educational background in biology). “Creation science should include all scientific studies of creation,” says Liu: “My goal is to equip young Christians with the scientific knowledge and skills needed to strengthen their faith in a world of humanistic chauvinism. Good science done by creationists is a testimony to those who accuse fundamentalist Christians of being ignorant or anti-scientific,” which must be understood in a peculiar light given Liu’s thorough denialism of most of science. His current research interest is human endogenous retroviruses, and he has published such groundbreaking papers as “Were retroviruses created good?” in The Journal of Biblical and Scientific Studies (the article is discussed here; apparently Liu isn’t particularly concerned with facts, but that isn’t particularly surprising).

Together with creationist Charles Soper (who seems to be working in London) he also published “The Natural History of Retroviruses” in Volume 2 of Answers in Genesis’s house journal Answers Research Journal, which is a review paper of research done by other people on this topic. It even raises some challenges to creationism (“The findings of comparative genomics around the syncytin-1 loci is especially challenging to creationists. The gene is well conserved among hominoids – humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons, but not in the Old World Monkeys”), which the paper dismisses simply as examples of common descent after the Fall degradation of the genome – without even trying to provide evidence or explanation apart from the bald assertion that this is a better alternative explanation to natural selection.

And just to make sure: Maranatha Baptist Bible College is not a place to go for an education in reality-related matters. In addition to Liu, their Applied Science faculty includes people like Bud Downs, a Minister who is working on supplementing biology textbooks with a creationist perspective, and the chair is one Curt Malmanger, who has an MS in mathematics education and a BS in Bible. Needless to say, none of the facutly are scientists or have any background in anything resembling scientific research.

Diagnosis: Typical hardcore creationists who seem equally surprised every time their claims are met with requests for evidence or alignment with reality – when you have Jesus on your side, such requests are rather preposterous, aren’t they?