#1384: Timothy Birdnow

Timothy Birdnow is a property manager in St. Louis associated with Tea Party Nation, who has somehow managed to make a name for himself on the delusional right, with all the pseudoscience and denialism you would possibly expect from someone like that. He thinks global warming is a hoax, homosexuality is evil, evolution is bunk, and that history is all about the ascent of Christian America.

Birdnow is, for instance, a hardcore creationist – he got an article published by the ridiculous webmag The American Thinker, the “scientific” content of which is pretty much the dozen most inane creationist PRATTs ever constructed and which are so legendarily stupid and wrong that it is almost hard to fathom, even for a creationist. Just one example:

“Furthermore, we don’t even see crossovers between the 5 Phylla (classes of animals) anywhere, at any time. Where are the giant mammaried mosquitos? Where are the snakes which deliver live young? I haven’t seen too many feathered fish around lately! The species remain distinct, and they shouldn’t if Darwin is correct. Consider the Permian Triassic Extinction, the so called ‘Great Dying’, 250 million years ago,in which 9 out of 10 marine creatures and 7 out of 10 land creatures died. Before the Great Dying five phylla walked the Earth; insects, mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles. After the Great Dying we had the same 5.”

I don’t think he would have impressed any biologists. Indeed, I don’t think most biologists would really believe it would be possible to write something so hysterically wrong and stupid if one tried really hard – and yes, that’s the quality of his points. Birdnow, however, blithely used the argument to conclude that all scientists must be wrong. He followed up with a response to critics (“Darwinists Launch Jihad Against Birdblog”), again being so obviously factually wrong about absolutely everything that it beggars belief; the critics were, in other words, not uniformly satisfied that their concerns had been satisfactorily addressed. Not that Birdnow would ever know. Here is a discussion of his comments on a 2009 creationist bill submitted in Missouri. It’s precisely up to his usual standards, and includes the Piltdown man, peppered moths, failure to understand the difference between laws and theories, as well as informing us that “Copernicus was a priest” and “Galileo was a devout man.” Indeed.

His argument that atheists are destroying Western civilization is hardly less delusional. He has also blamed the Sandy Hook shooting on teachers, called for schools to hire George Zimmerman, and exposed progressives as “hypocrites” for supporting portion control and gay rights: “If controlling the kinds of food and portion sizes that children are allowed is a state-sanctioned function, then shouldn't controlling homosexual imagery and experience be likewise?” asks Birdnow (the, uh, “argument” seems to have originated with David Barton). Completely without connecting the dots, he also warns that “the current ‘gay fad’” is part of “the advancement of socialism” and leads to “greater government control.” Yes, the argument is self-undermining, but Birdnow would probably not have cared if he had noticed, which he probably never will.

Diagnosis: One of the most ridiculous creationists on the rightwing, and that says quite a bit. This is Ray Comfort-levels without the style. Marvelous.