#1391: Richard Bliss

I am not completely sure about his current whereabouts, but Richard Bliss used to be chairman of the Education Department of the California-based Institute for Creation Research. Since the ICR is one of the main American creationist organization, and since one of the primary goals for these organizations is to bring Jesus to public school children through education reforms, Bliss is certainly not a nobody in the anti-science brigade.

Though he traveled extensively in the 1980s presenting creationism (and how to teach it) to colleges, school boards and suchlike, Bliss is perhaps most famous for – as far as I know – introducing the very icon of modern creationism, the PRATT of PRATTs, namely the spectacularly failed bacterial flagellum argument for irreducible complexity. Bliss claims to be a biologist. He also claims to have accepted evolution as an indubitable fact (and been an agnostic) until he found Jesus in the 50s. He is furthermore committed to not bearing false witness, but - and this, of course, the reason why the phrase "liar-for-Jesus" was coined - fails to see the obvious tension between his claims and commitments. 

Diagnosis: We don’t know where he currently is or what he’s up do, but if he is still around, he can’t be up to much good.