#619: David DeWitt

Dr. David A. DeWitt, a neuroscientist with some background in biochemistry, is nevertheless on CMI’s list of scientists who accept a Biblical account of creation. Those who suspect a modicum of compartmentalization, dishonesty, and self-delusion are thus in for some easy predictions. DeWitt is a frequent contributor to Answers in Genesis, and responsible for a lot of AiG’s most egregious bullshit on evolution. He has also had some publications in Answers in Genesis’s House Journal, Answers, and his work has been used as a source in Ray Comfort’s legendary “Evolution: A Fairy-Tale for Grownups”, which is not something good people would mention on their CVs.

So where do you take your career when you have a real degree but no real understanding of the method of the field in which you have your degree? Yes, DeWitt is no less than the Director of the Center for Creation Studies at Falwell’s Liberty University, and teaches their mandatory “creation studies” course. You can see a report from an “advanced section” of his class (for biology majors) here, where he uses the movie “March of the Penguins” to illustrate that the penguins that get eaten are the ones who are unlucky (or, more likely, evil), not the ones who are less adapted. Hence evolution is false. Duh.

His book, Unraveling the Origins Controversy, is reviewed here. The reviewer (Rosenhouse) had to take issue with some examples of quote-mining, dishonesty, and distortions. Who would have suspected.

DeWitt and one Jed Macosko were also biological advisors to the free webgame CellCraft, and it sort of shows, in a rather subversive manner. He was also credited in Frank Peretti’s novel Monster, which really tells you all you need to know.

Diagnosis: Standard, zealous fuckwit, responsible for churning out shitloads of ignorant addleheads through his classes at Liberty U, and hence a significant negative force in the world these days.

#601: Jack Cuozzo

Jack Cuozzo is a dentist and Young Earth Creationist whose main contribution to the lunacy movement is his belief that Neanderthals were ordinary humans who lived for hundreds of years (as in the Bible) causing their skulls to continue to grow and morph – despite, of course, the fact that the age of fossilized individuals can be determined (and has been determined not to be hundreds of years) by other means, for instance by examining tooth development (as in here), which suggests that Cuozzo missed some classes during his training as a dentist. Cuozzo spelled out his view in his book Buried Alive, and used it to argue for the ridiculous idea that creatures have undergone devolution since the Fall, i.e. “a gradual loss of genetic information due to mutation” (Adam and Eve were genetically perfect, and it is a standard creationist canard that mutation can only lead to poorer functioning, never mind that they don’t have a clue about what the technical term “information” means). Hence, Neanderthals were just superior human beings. It should be unnecessary to point out that the whole creationist notion of devolution, which is based on medievalistic teleological assumptions about directions of evolution, has nothing to do with science. You can find a rebuttal of some of the falsehoods and dishonesties of Cuozzo’s book here, and a general review here.

Interestingly, Cuozzo also spends some efforts refuting the claims of fellow creationists that Neanderthals were just ordinary humans that suffered from arthritis or rickets or similar diseases, since that would contradict his assumption that the Neanderthals must have been better than us.

Cuozzo classifies most older hominid specimens as “apes” (rather arbitrarily), which is another piece of evidence that the creationist classifications of these are entirely arbitrary and that the hominids in question are actually somewhere in between present humans and something else (this one is illuminating).

Diagnosis: Standard fare. Though Cuozzo is surely an intelligent guy, his lack of understanding of evidence, combined with an unhealthy dose of confirmation bias, is not going to lead him to anything resembling reality. Sorry.

#586: Lita Cosner

Lita Cosner has a BA in Biblical Studies from Oklahoma Wesleyan University and is a member of Creation Ministries International. She has contributed frequently to such incisive, scientifically solid journals as Creation magazine, the Journal of Creation, and the Creation Ministries International's website, on topics such as pro-life, New Testament studies, alleged Bible contradictions and errors, and general apologetics topics, primarily from a presuppositionalist standpoint. She has, for instance, argued that the teaching of evolution makes it much harder for the church to expand and grow, since people start doubting the inerrancy of the Bible. Therefore evolution is wrong. And science is areligion, too. To bolster her argument from adverse consequences, she has also pointed out the inherent racist upshots of the theory of evolution. After all, evolutionary theory entails (according to Cosner) that “More ape-like = less evolved”. Of course evolution does not entail this, and the whole notion of apes being “less evolved” than humans is a mainstay of creationist misunderstanding. More interestingly is how Cosner can take the claim, even if it were true, to entail that evolution is racist – the tacit premise needed is rather illuminating. The whole thing is very similar to but better written than this. Creationism, of course, is not racist, since we are all descended from Noah – fully and deliberately overlooking the fact that one of the most prominent justifications for racism is exactly that very idea.

She defends the writings of G.K. Chesterton (apart from the fact that Chesterton seems to have been too sympathetic to science), and claims that “Chesterton also successfully debated some of the leading anti-Christians of his day, such as George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow. 17 Against Darrow, he was much more successful than William Jennings Bryan, winning the audience vote about 2–1.” Clearly Chesterton’s rhetorical skills settle the issue.

Diagnosis: Cosner’s arguments and conclusion constitute a study case of what happens to the standards of good reasoning if truth is deemed unimportant and other standards are used instead (e.g. blind faith). Her influence is probably rather limited, however.

#148: Scott Gillis

I didn’t quite remember who Scott Gillis was, so I had to Google him. First hit was a chiropractor in Ohio – and that might qualify on its own. However, this seems to be the right guy.

Scott Gillis is one of the culprits at the international organization/website "creation.com" (along with such impressive names as Jonathan Sarfati, Skip Tilton, Jay Seegert, Michael Oard, Rob Carter and the utterly lunatic Gary Bates).

According to his bio Gillis “turned to” creationism after “a paleontologist demonstrated to him how scientific evidence actually makes more sense when interpreted within the clear context of the Bible's account of history” (I don’t think “demonstrated” is the right word, and the level of confirmation bias needed to reach that conclusion suggests preexisting bias – besides, nothing suggests that Gillis knows the first thing about paleontology). At November 14 he will talk on “Creation: Impacting our Culture, + Dinosaurs & the Age of the Earth” in Covington, Georgia, and in December he will give “Dinosaurs & the Bible, + Why is There Death & Suffering?” in Oregon, if anyone is interested.

Associates with Ken Ham, and interprets Genesis literally, of course.

Diagnosis: Loon. Insignificant loon, perhaps, but still a loon. Ardent, self-righteous and unhinged.

#60: Robert Carter

“Robert Carter” is a relatively common name, and indeed – behind “Robert Carter” we can find several worthy candidates for our encyclopedia. This guy is one nice example, but this Bob Carter (the rather famous namegiver to what is currently known as ”Cartergate” disqualifies himself by being British .

The intended Robert Carter is much less dangerous, unfortunately, but not quite toothless. He is head speaker/”scientist” for Creation Ministries International. Apparently he must be a great scientist, since Creationwiki (yes, such an entity exists) points out that ”in a [2007] debate with Rick Pierson that 590 people attended to Carter brought up a stumping question to Pierson that left him speechless, stopping him in mid sentence.” (the question isn’t quoted). His status as a serious scientist is surely bolstered by the fact that ”CMI-Canadian and Canadian churches are coming together to find a way to better equip citizens about the lies behind Darwin's theory. Robert Carter as one of the speakers are hoping to give Christians the knowledge and boldness to uphold scripture and use it for Christ's purpose.” I couldn’t find any peer-reviewed publications from him, however.

He specializes in preaching to congregations, however, and I think this calendar of events from the Minot Baptist Church tells you all you need to know. In particular, his talk "Dinosaurs and the Bible" – planned for all Home Schoolers, but ALL ARE WELCOME!, sounds rather ominous and can actually be argued potentially to cause more than a little harm (this seems appropriate here). He doesn’t really give much heed to facts, but neither does his audience – his honesty and integrity can probably be evaluated from this (sympathetic) report.

Oh, and according to his bio, Carter wasn’t always a creationist etc. His gang can be found here (note the welcome appearance of our old friend Gary Bates, the Christian ufologist, here as well).

Diagnosis: Godbotter and pathological Liar for Jesus. Crazy fundamentalist whose extremism might conceivably move the Overton window with respect to some of the choirs he’s preaching to. I'll count him as moderately dangerous, even if his impact is limited.

#15: Gary Bates

Bates is the author of “Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection", a central book within the Christian UFO movement. Bates is a Biblical literalist and creationist, conspiracy theorist and a UFO “scholar”. Official website here (apparently you can get a free anti-alien sticker for each book purchase; you can also take a quiz on the Bible and UFOs – Bates claims that the Bible is the best UFO book ever written).

Short story according to Bates: Alien stories are part of the conspiracy! There are no extraterrestrials – beliefs in these are just result of atheistic sci-fi writers’ biases and a distortion of the truth caused by the prevalence of the false theory of evolution (you can sort of see the strangely twisted reasoning here) . The true account of UFO-related phenomena is found in the Bible (demons and angels), but this true account is covered up by the liberal, atheistic government conspiracy.

You can read an interview here (from the creationist “peer-reviewed” journal Creation).

Diagnosis: Deranged dingbat who panders to not-entirely-conservatively-Christian but gullible UFO-enthusiasts and new age conspiracy theorists. Mad as a hatter. Impact: Might be able to influence the divisions of labor among already crazy fringe-cranks, and possibly able recruit some religious fundamentalists. Potential recruits must already be quite unhinged.