#1197: Ian Taylor

Ian Taylor is a creationist author associated with the Institute for Creation Research, perhaps most notable for his appearance in D. James Kennedy’s hysterical creationist film Darwin’s Deadly Legacy (yup, it’s the imagined Darwin-Hitler link) and for running the Creation Moments two-minute radio program.

His views are least unsystematically laid out in his book In the Minds of Men, which really is an evangelical tract rather feebly disguised as science (as conceived of by creationists like Taylor); some of the audacious lies and misrepresentations in that book (and in Taylor’s other presentations) are explained here; the exchange with fellow creationist Jim Long is particularly telling. In general, Taylor has focused quite a bit on efforts at using Nebraska Man, a hominid fossil discovered in 1922 an briefly hypothesized to be an “anthropoid ape-man”, as evidence of apparently typical frauds committed by those who subscribe the evolution (he’s not the only one). Of course, his case for “fraud” is rather weak if you remove the fake quotes and misrepresentations Taylor uses to build his case – and yes, the significance wouldn’t be much to write home about in any case, but it is telling that Taylor is pathologically unable to even get the basic facts straight. He has also devoted some “research” into what he perceives as the archaeopteryx hoax.

You can see a summary of a debate with Ian Taylor here. A summary of Taylor’s talk “The Genesis Flood” at the 1993 International Creation Conference was held in Beaverton, Oregon is here (old, yes, but creationism hasn’t evolved much the last 20 years).

Diagnosis: A typical summary of a typical religious fanatic who desperately and rather feebly tries to pass his religious beliefs off as science. Admittedly, Taylor may in fact be Canadian, and hence formally disqualified. But he is at least a loon, so we don’t feel to bad about covering him here.