#2727: Vernon Cupps

Vernon Cupps is a somewhat curious figure. Cupps has real scientific credentials and was a radiation physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory until his fundamentalism got the better of him and he joined the Institute of Creation Research (ICR) instead. There, he is what they call an “ICR Research Associate”, though his output – like those of the institute’s other associates – consists of apologetics, pseudoscientific denialism and painfully dim pseudo-philosophy. Cupps has added nothing to science, knowledge or civilization as an ICR Research Associate, but he lends the institution a faint sheen of legitimacy in virtue of his credentials.

 

According to Cupps’s post “Modern Science and Vain Philosophy: An Ancient Deception in Our Midst”, modern science might seem deceptively attractive as an explanatory scheme for natural phenomena, but it’s really a deception: As the Bible covertly suggests (“hidden truths”), “Satan consistently tempts his victims through both outright lies and subtle deception”, and a crucial piece of Satanic deception is the “deceptions of modern science that try to undermine the authority of God’s Word” by suggesting that the Earth is older than a few thousand years, that the Universe came into being through the Big Bang, and that animals evolve. According to Cupps, “naturalism has turned much of modern science into a dizzy array of conjecture, wishful thinking, assumptions, and will-driven consensus far removed from the constraints of true science, which rests on observation and reproducible experimentation.” It’s somewhat painful to see someone with a scientific background espouse such fatally silly misconceptions about science (hint: science rests on reproducible evidence – whether it is in history, biology or astronomy – not primarily on experimentation: chemistry is not the only scientific discipline). Then he laments how scientists confuse good Christians with facts and evidence, when in reality facts and evidence is just Satan-speak. Cupps expands on his misunderstandings (and throws in some confusion concerning laws and theories and plenty appeals to “same evidence, different interpretation”) here, asserting in passing that flood geology is equally valid as an interpretive scheme as real geology.

 

And Cupps is a committed young-earth creationist: “Six days” means six days and is no metaphor for millions of years: “Genesis doesn’t fit with deep time”. Fortunately, according to Cupps’ assertions and a substantial amount of wishful thinking and denial, “observations and reproducible experimental data support the biblical narrative better than any of the current scientific hypotheses such as deep time that appear to contradict both the Bible and the data.”

 

Diagnosis: Denialist fundie nutter. There are lots of them, though very few with genuine and borderline relevant credentials: As such, Cupps is an invaluable asset for the denialist movement and general sad case for humanity.