Cedarville University is a fundie Bible school in Ohio where confused students can learn (and should not question) that women are subordinate to men, gays are evil, and the Bible is ultimately the only guide to government, law and science. Its staff include people like John H. Whitmore, Professor of Geology, a staunch young-earth creationist who is also affiliated with Creation Ministries International (CMI) and particularly known for pushing Flood geology and Flooddidit arguments. Cedarville’s geology program “holds to a literal six-day account of Genesis.” Students at the institution are not supposed to question the premise, but rather learn how to try to fit carefully cherry-picked pieces of evidence to the hypothesis and ignore the rest (they emphasize that they do also teach “evolutionary perspectives”, but not as a legitimate option for students to adopt and sufficiently distorted and selective to prevent it from becoming a live option). Cedarville University is apparently an official partner with Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum.
Though he might possibly have a legitimate degree, Whitmore’s publications seem to be focused on outlets like the Journal of Creation, and he is not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination. He is nevertheless a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s silly petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, and also on the CMI list of scientists alive today who accept the biblical account of creation, which further illustrates how intellectually bankrupt that Discovery Institute effort actually is. Whitmore, of course, have no legitimate background in biology: Even his M.S. in biology is from the Institute for Creation Research. His Master of Science in Geology, for that matter, is from the Institute of Creation Research, too.
He does fancy himself a real scientist, however, and has even attempted to defend the claim that “creationists are real scientists” in print, and in order to “completely demolish” the charge that they aren’t, he points out “that the brilliant inventor of the MRI scanner, Dr. Raymond Damadian, is a creationist,” which is a remarkably feeble appeal to irrelevance, even for a deluded creationist like Whitmore. He is, however, and like most creationists and fundies, not adverse to using lies, rank dishonesty and deception to try to make it look as if his views could be seen as scientifically legitimate.
Whitmore has published several papers in Answers in Genesis’s house journal Answers.
Diagnosis: Taliban-style fundie and liar for Jesus, Whitmore might actually believe that his creationist nonsense counts as science. It is instructive to note that, even though he genuinely believes his nonsense, he simply cannot refrain from engaging in deception to defend it.
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