#1970: Charles H. McGowen

A brief glance at the signatories to the Discovery Institute’s silly petition “A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” yields preciously few actual scientists – and even fewer people with actual expertise in any relevant area – but plenty of people like Charles H. McGowen. McGowen is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, but we have found no actual research to his name. Instead, McGowen is the author of creationist books like In Six Days (1976), described as a “treatise on the creation/evolution controversy”, and its sequel In Six Days: A Case For Intelligent Design (2002), which is marketed as (yet another) “great teaching tool”; i.e. it is a book intended to hoodwink audiences, in particular children, with no background knowledge in the field. McGowen himself seems to have done no actual research on evolution or design, but then the Intelligent Design movement was never about science or research anyways, but about public relations.

McGowen apparently Rejects theistic evolution in part because it “requires a refutation of the absolute, inspired, inerrant truth of God’s Word,” which shows that his dissent from “Darwinism” is at least not a scientific dissent. McGowen is also Contributing Editor for the Reformation & Revival Journal.

Diagnosis: At least there seems to be little remotely scientific about McGowen’s forays into biology or his dissent from science. Just another fundie loon, in other words. There are plenty of those. At least he serves as a good example of the kind of people who signed the Discovery Institute’s petition.