#546: Kyle Butt

Kyle Butt has both a B.A. with a double major in Bible and communications, and an M.A. in New Testament. Clearly his science education is impeccable, and he seems to be viewed as a lofty authority in the circles he frequents, i.e. the hallways of the Bible department at Apologetics Press. His scientific outreach consists of being a speaker at at youth rallies, lectureships, Gospel meetings, “and so on”, and he is apparently editor for the Apologetics Press’s Discovery Magazine, “a colorful monthly magazine on Scripture and science for kids,” concerned mostly with miracles, Bible apologetics, and disproving evolution.

As you’d expect, Butt is an ludicrously insane young earth creationist who claims to have (conclusive) evidence for the flood. Unfortunately, Butt’s ability to distinguish evidence from imagination is less than fully developed, and his reasoning skills are not quite impeccable either. Here is his own argument that since science has made mistakes before – giving one example of a (putative) mistake that science itself corrected – the Bible is an accurate portrayal of verifiable reality, and “the idea that scientific ’findings’ trump every other source of information is simply false.” As he so eloquently puts it: “information in science books changes from year to year. […] Yet the biblical text has stood for centuries. Its integrity has surpassed that of any book ever printed. And the scientific information in it coincide perfectly with all factual data.” Assigning the (putative) unchanging commands of the Bible to dogma and confirmation bias in the face of falsifying evidence apparently doesn’t cross his mind. And all gaps in knowledge are evidence for the existence of God. There are some comments on his work here, and here.

Together with one Eric Lyons, Butt wrote “Dinosaurs Unleashed: A True Story Of Dinosaurs And Humans”, which is, needless to say, not a true story. It is picked apart in some detail here. Butt has also penned an interesting treatise; see comment 18 in this link) called “Defending the Bible’s Position on Slavery.”

Diagnosis: As the saying goes he tends to pull his ideas out of himself. Probably relatively unimportant, but his stuff gets linked to by the most incoherent internet trolls from time to time.