#276: Stephen Meyer

Stephen C. Meyer is a philosopher and one of the hotshots of the Discovery Institute. And like some philosophers and all Discovery Institute people, he likes to make grand claims about scientific fields about which he must be counted as an illiterate. Meyer helped found the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute (DI), which is the major hive for the ID creationist movement. Meyer is currently vice president and a senior fellow at CSC, and a director of the Access Research Network. He has been described as “the person who brought ID (intelligent design) to DI (Discovery Institute)”, he contributed to the second edition of Dean Kenyon’s “Of Pandas and People”, wrote (with Ralph Seelke) the ID textbook “Explore Evolution”, was appointed by the Texas Board of Education to be on the committee reviewing Texas’s science curriculum standards, is the primary link to DI sponsor and Taliban theocrat loon Howard Ahmanson, and was partly responsible for the Wedge Strategy, as well as an active speaker and debate panelist.

In 1999, Meyer (with David DeWolf and Mark DeForrest) designed a legal strategy for introducing intelligent design into public schools in the book “Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curriculum.” (I mean, the point of ID is to get creationism and religion into the schools, not to do science). He is perhaps most famous for trying to realize the strategy through helping to introduce ID to the Dover Area School District (more extensively here), and for his ridiculous 2009 book “Signature in the Cell” (which a probably drunk/dementia suffering Thomas Nagel actually praised, flaunting his own ignorance of science). PZ Myers was offered a review copy by Meyer’s assistant Janet Oberembt, but never received it. The book actually makes twelve “predictions” for ID (although they are not predictions in the ordinary scientific sense because they are not derived from any concrete theory, and they all concern testing the theory of evolution, not ID). He also offers a “theory”. The theory is unrelated to the predictions. He derives no predictions from his theory. He offers nothing resembling a coherent justification either, so the book didn’t receive much positive feedback from actual scientists. He has offered some appeals to authority, however (“Thomas Jefferson wasn’t a Darwinist”).

In March 2002 he announced the “teach the controversy” strategy aimed at promoting the false idea that the theory of evolution is controversial within scientific circles, following a presentation to the Ohio State Board of Education. Since Meyer knows this is false, he was lying, but dishonesty isn’t exactly a surprising trait in ID advocates. The presentation included a bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles that were said to raise significant challenges to key tenets of what was referred to as "”Darwinian evolution”. When NCSE contacted the authors, none of the authors who responded (the authors of thirty-four of the papers) thought that their research provided evidence against evolution. Meyer also publicly claimed that the “Santorum Amendment” was part of the Education Bill, and therefore that the State of Ohio was required to teach alternative theories to evolution as part of its biology curriculum. Which is demonstrably false, but tells you a lot about the DI creationists.

Of course, he thinks there is active persecution of the purportedly fast-growing number of scientists rejecting evolution in Academia (probably because he cannot find any). He was interviewed about those claims in Expelled.

Diagnosis: One of the staunchest, most influential, most dishonest anti-science advocates in the world. Crackpot and complete hack.

#1848: Dean Koontz

Dean Koontz is a rather famous author of fiction. He is also a creationist, something that occasionally shows up in his novels, for instance Breathless (2010), where the following is stated by one of the main characters:

“They say – here are fossils showing the horse in its stages of its evolution. But they’re only assuming the fossils are related. These fossils may more likely be of different species instead of stages of the same one [yes, it’s the “no transitional fossils” argument]. They prove nothing. The other species became extinct. The horse didn’t. And the assumption that these fossils are arranged in the correct order, showing progression in certain features, can’t be supported with evidence. Neither carbon dating nor any method of fixing the period of a fossil is precise enough to support that arranged order. Again, they’ve been assumed to belong in that order, but mere assumptions do not qualify as science,” and later: “[b]ut the tiniest worm on earth could not have evolved from a one-celled organism in four billion years even if there had been a mutation in every one of those millionths of a second.”

Anyone with a minimal understanding of evolution would presumably discover some errors in these assertions. What is, of course, particularly sad is that readers who don’t know the basics of evolution might be fooled into thinking that Koontz has the faintest idea about what he is talking about.

But then: these passages are from works of fiction; can we really conclude anything about Koontz’s own beliefs from them? Well, Koontz also contributed a jacket blurb to Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt. That’s right: that Stephen Meyer. Koontz says: “Meyer writes beautifully. He marshals complex information as well as any writer I’ve read and far better than most. This book – and his body of work – challenges scientisim with real science and excites in me the hope that the origin of life debate will soon be largely free of the ideology that has long colored it.” Yeah. Thinking that what Meyer is doing has anything to do with “real science”, and that it is the scientists, and not the creationists, who are driven to errors by ideological bias: That qualifies you for an entry here.

Diagnosis: Perhaps not as hardcore as many, and no one would presumably take him seriously as an expert; but few creationists reach a larger audience than Koontz, and if his readers ever were fooled into thinking that he has any idea of what he is talking about, then that would be a problem.

#279: Scott Minnich

Minnich is an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho, and a fellow at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. Together with Behe (and Ralph Seelke) he must count as creationism’s biological alibi. In fact, Minnich is the biologist who wholeheartedly swallowed Behe’s idea of “irreducible complexity” in bacterial flagella, which supposedly is evidence of intelligent design (although since ID remains unfalsifiable (partially because Behe and his accomplices counter all counterevidence by moving the goal posts), it couldn’t have been, but that’s another story). Minnich was thus an obvious choice for the defense in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Part of his contribution to the defense was the fact that the previous year, Minnich and Stephen Meyer had presented a paper to an engineering conference entitled “Genetic Analysis of Coordinate Flagellar and Type III Regulatory Circuits” and the Discovery Institute lists this as one of its “Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design”. The paper was, however, only reviewed for a conference presentation in engineering. I don’t think that counts insofar as scientific rigor is hardly the only (or even main) criterion for a conference presentation (more on the significance of Minnich’s testimony here). His actual publication record doesn’t show much sign of any support for creationism.

Minnich is also the co-author or “Explore Evolution” with Stephen Meyer (discussed under Meyer).

Diagnosis: Minnich tends to shy away from public debates and it’s hard to say how hard he rides his creationist hobbyhorse (most of his actual work seems to have nothing to do with it). Still, he does lend his credibility to the crazies, and must be denounced for that.

#1995: Eric Metaxas

Eric Metaxas is a fundie apologist, pseudo-philosopher, author, radio host (The Eric Metaxas Show) and a regular on various TV shows, such as Glenn Beck’s, Mike Huckabee’s and Laura Ingraham’s shows. He has also received various honorary doctorates from places like Liberty University.

Creationist

Metaxas is a creationist. According to Metaxas, the discovery of really old stromatolites that suggest that the origin of life occurred some 3.7 billion years ago, suggests to Metaxas that “evolution just got harder to defend” since it leaves only a few hundred million years for life to have first occurred after Earth got sufficiently habitable for it to exist. Nevermind that abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution (indeed, Metaxas’s article is an illustrative example of creationist confusion over this basic distinction) or that the discovery doesn’t even pose any actual problem for an explanation of abiogenesis without appealing to goddidit. Metaxas has no time for details like the absence of a genuine problem in his objections; neither do David Klinghoffer and Stephen Meyer, who seem to be Metaxas’s primary sources for this particular creationist take on the discovery. Apparently evolution is just full of assumptions. 

Indeed, Metaxas often claims that science is “increasingly” giving us evidence for God – and therefore, apparently, for creationism – and systematically does so in a manner that is willfully ignorant of the scientific findings he is interpreting. A good example is discussed here (more details here and here). Of course, being utterly ignorant of science, Metaxas relies on third- or fourth-hand sources for his claims, and tend to choose systematically unrealiable ones (like Meyer). So, for instance, arguing that the octopus genome is evidence against evolution and for design, Metaxas writes that the researchers who sequenced the genome found that “Compared with other invertebrates, the DNA of the octopus was ‘alien’: nothing like the genetic codes of what they thought were similar animals, like clams and sea snails,” which is directly contradicted by … the paper in which the results were published. Yup: Metaxas didn’t read the paper, didn’t understand the science, and then made things up from whole cloth to conclude that all scientists are wrong and evolution is bunk. Another example of the same is here. It’s a useful reminder if you ever end up reading anything else he’s written.

Metaxas does have a large array of creationist PRATTs at his disposal, though, and is not afraid to use them. Here, for instance, is the creationist argument against evolution from misunderstanding genetics (the “DNA is a code” claim) and the “odds are against evolution” canard, irreducible complexity and the “evolution cannot add information” gambit, which at least is decisive evidence that the person raising the gambit doesn’t understand the basics of evolution, genetics or information.

Hack

Among Metaxas’s books are If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Libertyand Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Lif, as well as various biographie, including an infamous biography on Bonhoeffer that was widely panned by historians and theologians. He has also written children’s books and Veggie Tales scripts.

As for the Bonhoeffer biography, Metaxas responded to critics – historians and theologians who actually have some expertise on the issue – by asserting that “there’s not a syllable in my Bonhoeffer book that isn’t true” before dismissing those critics as “liberals” who are “very vicious” because they can’t handle the truth. This is demonstrably false. In any case, the biography seems primarily to have been an excuse for going full Godwin over his political opponents. (Indeed, many of the most delusional members of the religious right appears to view themselves as modern-day Bonhoeffers insofar as there are critics who don’t think they should be free to force others to conform to their views on social issues, and have therefore understandably been positive to Metaxas’s mischaracterizations). In 2014, for instance, Metaxas argued that “[j]ust as Bonhoeffer tried to get churches in Germany to link arms and fight Hitler, so too must churches in America rally together to push back against the government’s increasing tyranny.” Apparently “[t]he parallel today is simply that you have a government, a state, which is getting larger and larger and more and more powerful.” In a moment of dim self-awareness, Metaxas conceded that “people think that’s incendiary or I’m being hyperbolic,” which he countered by asserting that “I’m not.” 

In his 2012 speech at the National Prayer Breakfast Metaxas compared legalized abortion to the Holocaust. And in 2014, he argued that the existence of gay-inclusive churches was proof that America is turning into Nazi Germany (“We see that obviously happening in issues of sexuality, but how can you say that most mainline denominations in America today are profoundly Christian when they have given up the ghost on all of these fundamentals of the faith? You had the exact same thing happening in Germany. It’s just setting things up so that when evil comes, where do people turn?”)

His book If You Can Keep Itis reviewed here, here, here, and here. As you’d expect, the book is the work of a true hack, straight out of David Barton’s playbook (indeed, Metaxas admitted to using Barton’s pseudohistory as a source), portraying Founding Fathers as religious extremists, the Puritan settlers as defenders of religious freedom (utter lunacy), and whitewashing slavery, all in attempt to support the familiar but mythical portrayal of The US as a Christian Nation. There’s a good discussion of Metaxas’s attempt to distort history in the service of his political agenda here.

Here is a fine example of Metaxas’s blatantly lying.

Wingnut

For the 2016 election Metaxas supported Trump. This election, said Metaxas, represents as critical a turning point as the Civil War or the American Revolution, since Clinton would nominate judges who “legislate from the bench” – activist judges, in other words, where “activist judge” means any judges who comes to a different conclusion than Metaxas (who, needless to say, is rather far from being a legal scholar).

Diagnosis: It’s still a little baffling to us that people who consider themselves so pious and faithful show such blatant disregard for truth and accuracy. Eric Metaxas is a systematic liar and a hack, and the respect and influence he has gained accordingly both a damning indictment of his fans’ claims to value honesty, truth and accountability, and deeply frightening.

#1660: Steven Gollmer

If nothing else, the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism nicely illustrates the bankruptcy of the DiscoTute anti-evolution campaigns (and their Intelligent Design movement, which really is just an anti-evolution movement). Of course, the value of appealing to petitions in discussing scientific questions is one thing; another is that the signatories they actually got constitute a motley crew at best, many of whom are non-scientists and few of whom are actually experts in any relevant areas; and even if they were experts, which they aren't, they would in any case only comprise a negligible fraction of working scientists in the fields. To illustrate that, the National Center for Science Education initiated their own tongue-in-cheek response, Project Steve, a list of living scientists named “Steve” (or variants of the name) who support evolution. As of 2012 the list contained 1187 signatures – as many as the total number of signatories to the Discovery Institute list – of which two-thirds are qualified biologists; and, as random searches quickly reveal, the Project Steve signatories are overall far more consistently active scientists and researchers with real credentials than the Discovery Institute list. To underscore that point, the Discovery Institute’s list had 12 or 13 signatories whose names would have qualified them for the Steve list as of 2012 (possibly a few more if you count middle names, which are usually not given on the Discovery list), of whom at least two are non-scientists (Stephen Meyer and Stephen Cheesman), one a certified crackpot (Stephan Gift), and a single one of whom is a biologist, C. Steven Murphree, who has later regretted his involvement with the Discovery list and signed Project Steve instead. One almost feel sorry for them.

Steven Gollmer is another “Steve” on the Discovery Institute list, and a fairly typical entry. Gollmer does have a PhD in Atmospheric Science from Purdue (which has little to do with evolution) and is currently affiliated with Cedarville University, a small Bob-Jones-University-like institution in Ohio that teaches young-earth-creationism and requires all students to have a minor in Bible studies. Like most institutions of that kind, Cedarville faculty is notoriously inbred (i.e. many of their “scientific” faculty have their degrees from … Cedarville), but Gollmer is apparently an exception. What about his scientific credentials? In line with the school’s position Gollmer has declared that “[o]ur approach to science and origins is based on the presupposition that our highest and ultimate authority is the unchanging Word of God,” which effectively means that he rejects the science part of it all. He has also been active in creationist attempts to impose lesson plans on the Ohio State Board of Education, and is a signatory to the CMI list of scientists alive today who accept the biblical account of creation.

Diagnosis: He might have a degree, but Steven Gollmer is not a scientist, and he hates science to the core of his being. Like so many of the signatories to that Discovery Institute list.

#374: Richard Sternberg

Richard Sternberg was an editor for the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (affiliated with the Smithsonian Institute). In 2004 he approved for publication an article by Stephen Meyer: “Intelligent Design: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories”. Afterwards Sternberg came under fire for bypassing the normal peer-review process for the journal – understandably enough, since that was what he explicitly did to be able to contribute to the promotion of creationism by giving it a publication in a respectable journal. Equally understandably, the Council of the Biological Society of Washington issued a press release pointing this out (as well as the obvious fact that the paper was garbage).

No prize for guessing Sternberg’s reaction: “help, I am persecuted by the Darwinists for my religion” (yes, he even filed a religious discrimination complaint). He claimed that he received disparaging comments from colleagues at the Smithsonian (probably true, one hopes), was targeted to have his job removed and (a lie), had his keys taken away and lost his office (such twisting of facts that it must be considered a blatant lie). The full, accurate story is here. Sternberg also consistently pointed out that he was not an Intelligent Design advocate, which is – of course – also a lie.

His story subsequently made it to Expelled, which of course did not bother to fact-check it (come one: if they had been concerned with fact-checking there would never have been a movie). Neither did Indiana Congressman Mark Souder and his degenerate buddy Rick Santorum; follow-up here; also here. The Discovery Institute, no fans of facts themselves, often cites the Souder report as evidence that Sternberg specifically, and design proponents in general, are victims of persecution, and they have made some feeble attempts to defend Sternberg (West here; Luskin here). Oh, and of course WorldNetDaily threw their two cents into the debate with all the predictable garbled ignorance.

See more, similar cases of “academic freedom” here. Sternberg himself was after the incidents put on wingnut welfare, and is currently associated with the Discotute’s Biologic Institute.

Diagnosis: Paranoid, demonstrably dishonest conspiracy theorist and general nutjob. Like Guillermo Gonzalez, he is hardly dangerous himself, but the propaganda machinery at the Discovery Institute is doing its best to present his story in a manner that generates some real harm.

#1129: Ralph Seelke

Creationism is littered with fake experts and people with expertise in fields irrelevant to the study of evolution. Ralph Seelke is one of few exceptions. Seelke is Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Wisconsin, Superior, and has even published in relevant fields (though nothing, of course, that challenges evolution). He is nevertheless a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism, on the board of the pseudoscientific think tank known as the Biologic Institute, and on the board of editors of their pseudojournal Bio-Complexity. Indeed, given the scarcity of people with a comparable background among creationists, Seelke is quite a bit of a celebrity among his fellow denialists, and frequently called upon as an expert. He testified for instance in the Kansas Evolution Hearings and was, with Stephen Meyer and Charles Garner, selected by the Texas Board of Education for their review panel for educational materials in 2008 (also here and here).

Seelke is perhaps most famous for being the coauthor of Explore Evolution, a 2007 piece of propaganda put out by the Discovery Institute to replace Of Pandas and People as part of their wedge strategy, in which the idea was to push the concept of teaching the “strengths and weaknesses” when teaching evolution in public schools. (The Wikipedia page for the book is here; the valuable Explore Evolution Exposed website is here; a brief, succinct review can be found here). The book is not to be confused with the NSF educational program of the same name, and the creationist book title is likely to have been chosen to engender confusion. There is a good review of the books and the Discotute agenda here.

Diagnosis: He has the formal training, but evidently lacks the expertise. Seelke may not be the loudest of the pseudoscientists employed by the Discotute, but given his formal credentials he is, in fact, one of the more dangerous.