#733: Anne Habermehl

Update: Turns out the photo we had up here was not here. Apologies to everyone for the mixup.

Anne Habermehl is an independent creationist writer, researcher and scholar. Habermehl thinks that evolution is, as reported here, not just a theory that teaches about a big bang, species evolving and the earth being billions of years old, a rather bad start for anyone pretending to research the subject, but a ploy of Satan to entice people into believing that there is no God. Evolutionists do not believe in sin, she complains, only an imperfect system, and if there is no sin, there is no need for a savior. (Her own way of putting it is generally less coherent.)

She has written several articles for Answer in Genesis’s house journal Answers on these topics. For volume 3 she contributed “Those Enigmatic Neanderthals: What Are They Saying? Are We Listening?”, which discusses which of various creationist theories better explain Neanderthals. Habermehl defends the view that Neanderthals were humans who lived for hundreds of years and that they disappeared when humans didn't live long enough to develop their Neanderthal characteristics (in 4000 years). The idea resembles those promoted by Jack Cuozzo, but that is not a complement.

She also contributed a letter to the discussion topic “Baraminological Analysis Places Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis, and Australopithecus sediba in the Human Holobaramin”, which criticized fellow creationist Todd Wood’s view that other hominids could be “human.” Habermehl provided a slam dunk objection: “Let me point out that we creationists can tell, merely from reading our Bible, that some fossils are human and some are not; we do not need statistical analysis to confirm this.” And you doubted that baraminology was serious science? She also admitd that “Historically, we creationists have rather made a laughingstock of ourselves among evolutionists in claiming that we can tell the difference between human and nonhuman fossils, and [Wood’s] paper does nothing to reverse that situation.” Indeed.

For volume 4 she contributed “Where in the World Is the Tower of Babel?”, in which she admits that she doesn’t know (duh!) but that “[t]here is a possibility that we may yet find the actual site of the Tower of Babel, but this will require further research as well as onsite archaeological excavation,” which may be a plea for donations.

You can read a rather exasperating report of a seminar headed by Habermehl, creationist Danny Faulkner (author of Universe by Design who thinks the dinosaurs were on the ark) and Bourke Bokma, a dentist who likes to talk about creation and dinosaurs, here.

Diagnosis: As dense as they get, Habermehl is a religious fanatic completely devoted to being as thoroughly stupid as humanly possible. Her impact is probably limited but may not be entirely negligible.