Gene B. Chase, Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science
at Messiah College (a fundamentalist Evangelical institution), is a signatory
to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism,
and pretty representative of those signatories: real credentials, but not a
scientist by a long shot (instead he claims to work on the relationship between
mathematics and faith, and has duly established that “it’s impossible to be
both gay and evangelical”). But Chase might be too minor even for us.
Slightly more significant, perhaps, is Shun Yan Cheung.
Cheung is also a signatory to the Discotute petition, but Cheung is also an Associate
Professor at Emory University – not in a field relevant to assessing evolution,
of course, but Cheung does at least have a full-time position at a major
research institution, and has, indeed, some publications in a totally unrelated
field. Cheung is also a hardcore creationist who runs a webpage presenting the
overwhelming evidence for the accuracy of the Bible and the falsity of
evolution. The site is targeted at non-specialists, of course – don’t expect
any engagement with science or scientists – and all the standard creationist
PRATTs are predictably there. Here is his apparently incontrovertible evidence for the accuracy of the Bible (“Rational
Evidences for Christ Jesus – heavy
emphasis on rational”). Words fail.
Diagnosis: Oh, dear. Good thing Cheung is an engineer and
not a scientist, since he wouldn’t be able to distinguish evidence from wishful
thinking if his life depended on it. His influence is probably pretty limited,
but I suppose he still plays his small role in the battle against sanity,
reason, science and truth.
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