Mark Matthews is a creation scientist with a full B.Sc. in
Nuclear Engineering. He is one of many creationists who show up and give talks
at various creationist conference where garbled misunderstandings and
misinterpretations of physics are taken as evidence for the Bible (and the
Bible as evidence for their garbled misunderstanding of physics). At the Sixth
International Conference on Creationism, for instance, Matthews argued that the
Fingers of God are evidence for a divine signature indicating the Earth really is at thecenter of the universe,
and hence pretty much that the constellations reveal a divine signature –
presumably like clouds and toasts.
They don’t, and the idea is rather embarrassingly silly (even creationist John
Hartnett, author of such books as Dismantling
the Big Bang: God’s Universe Rediscovered pointed out that Matthews’s
interpretation was less than fully convincing).
According to the Creation Science Association of Mid
America, Matthews has also done “fascinating research” on the true age of
Bristlecone Pines, usually claimed (pretty well backed up by obvious evidence) to
be thousands of years old, and on dendrochronology.
His research does not seem to have made any significant impact on mainstream
scientific treatments of these issues.
Diagnosis: There are literally hundreds of these guys out
there, and singling out Matthews might seem a little unfair (there is little
that distinguishes him from the others). We cannot cover them all, however, so
this entry may be viewed as an indictment of the whole tradition that spawned
people like Matthews.
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