A crackpot of some note, Neil Huber is a Biblical literalist
with a PhD in anthropology. He used to be associated with Wisconsin State
University (though he can hardly be described as a particularly active
scientist), but renounced science in 1990 and decided “to start with the assumption of the authority of the Bible, looking at all the evidence that it
presents for trusting it. Then build your science from there, based upon the
Bible’s truth.” He is currently affiliated with the Imago Dei Institute, a
Bible college. Of course, given that he does, indeed, have a PhD, Huber is also
a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism,
but at least he is pretty explicit that his rejection of evolution is not based
on science. He is also on the CMI’s list of scientists alive today who accept the Biblical account of creation,
even though he is not a scientist by a long shot.
There is a brief report from one of Huber’s presentations
here (which also offers summaries of presentations by John Johnson, Tom Greene and
Heinz Lycklama; the last, in particular, is a magnificent trainwreck). Huber
tries, unsurprisingly, to run the “same-evidence;
different interpretations” canard, neglecting to mention that creationists
not only interpret the evidence differently according to their presuppositions
but i) also just refuse to look at the vast majority of the evidence (the stuff
that doesn’t fit), and ii) that science also tests its presuppositions. Actually, Huber tried to address one
problem: the problem that different fossils are systematically and without
exception found in different geological strata (because they lived at different
times), which is hard to reconcile with the favorite creationist assumption
that all fossils are remnants of creatures killed in one single cataclysmic
flood.
Well, Huber claimed that fossil animals are found at different strata in a
particular order because they were running from the flood water, and so more
primitive animals were not able to outrun more advanced ones. In other words,
the moles outran the velociraptors and outflew the pterosaurs (not his
examples). He didn’t mention plants.
Diagnosis: Amazing crackpot. Probably pretty harmless in the
grand scheme of things.
"A crackpot of some note, Neil Huber is a Biblical literalist with a PhD in anthropology. He used to be associated with Wisconsin State University (though he can hardly be described as a particularly active scientist), but renounced science in 1990 and decided “to start with the assumption of the authority of the Bible..."
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know, there is no "Wisconsin State University." There used to be, but when UW-Milwaukee was subsumed into the University of Wisconsin there ceased to be. That would be in 1971, so cleaarly BEFORE his 1990 date.