#2877: Sid Galloway

 

An old one, but still perhaps worth mentioning: Sid Galloway is a Louisiana-based retired education counselor and former zookeeper and a creationist lecturer with something called the Good Shepherd Initiative – he has also written articles for Answers in Genesis.

 

According to himself, he is merely “seeking to train my students to scientifically challenge all hypotheses, theories, and laws”, but that would, given what he is actually doing, be a misrepresentation: He does indeed try to challenge scientific hypotheses and theories, but the challenges themselves are certainly not scientific, as his six-hour lecture at the chapel at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge campus on why ‘the Bible is more rational than evolution’ amply illustrates. He quickly dismisses the “atheistic science” of the Big Bang, for instance, by pointing out that the “theory is that nothing somehow became something”, and “zero plus zero equals zero” (no, he hasn’t actually tried to grasp anything, of course). Evolution is just as easily dismissed, since mutations, the mechanism he argues “drives” evolution, don’t actually lead to evolution, but to devolution: “Mutations don’t add,” says Galloway: “Mutations take away.” (Again, bothering to try to understand how anything works – or even take a cursory look at basic biology – is not really Galloway’s schtick). And as evidence that mutations are slowly eroding humanity’s gene pool, Galloway just needs to point to the lengthy life-spans of people in the Old Testament. So there. And also evolution is racist: “If you read ‘Descent of Man’ [which we are willing to bet Galloway has not] it’s obscenely racist,” Galloway says: “At the core of Hitler’s belief was evolution.” It most certainly was not.

 

There is much more (six hours and 200 slides worth at least), but there is no point.

 

Diagnosis: Gibbering moron and fanatic who struggle to apprehend even the basic features of reality around him and don’t seem to care all that much about getting it right (as opposed to getting it Jesus the way he wants Jesus to be). The frightening thing, though, is that there is some evidence that Galloway has at some point been involved in teaching or advising students. We know that standards tend to be lax in Louisiana, but come on!