#1133: G. Thomas Sharp

G. Thomas Sharp is a grand old man of creationism. That is, Sharp is hardly a central authority, but he has been in the game doing his small contributions to damage awfully long. Even back in the sixties Sharp, at that time already an experienced “science educator” and pastor in Alabama, started researching what he perceived as the roots of the staggering domestic problems in the lives of his church members and students, culminating – in 1985 – in his three-volume Science According to Moses. The books “revealed” that Darwinian evolutionism has lead to the downfall of the Bible (creation in particular) as the foundation of America’s worldview, thus giving apparent “scientific” sanction to the moral decline of society, and therefore promoting the need for “a return to our Biblical foundation (Genesis 1-11) in complete faith and practice”. Sharp formed the Creation Truth Foundation, Inc. in 1989 to do precisely that. As of 2009, at least, he was still touring with his sideshow through the Bible Belt, giving presentations such as “The Truth About Dinosaurs”, “A Thousand Years in a Day: The Mount St. Helens Catastrophe”, “Radiometric Dating” (actually, he seems to leave that to one Charles Jackson), and “Evolution: The Greatest Deception of All Time”. Here is a summary of his presentation on dinosaurs. The reviewer was not impressed.

Sharp’s main points seem to be that if death was in the world before humans (Adam) existed, then humans were not responsible for the Fall, and thus Christ’s sacrifice is meaningless. “Liberal social engineers” and “the uncircumcised philistines of Hollywood” (his words) deliberately use dinosaurs as candy to lead children away from Christ into the windowless van of secular humanism; and “never, ever take a scientist’s word, no matter how many degrees or studies he has, over the word of God.” Why, pray, don’t scientists pay proper attention to tour-de-force arguments like these?

Diagnosis: There is no point in bothering trying to refute delusional morons like Sharp, who won’t hesitate to argue in bad faith if it serves his overall point (Jesus). But at least I hope we can help civilization by exposing him, if only just a little.