#623: Harvey & Marilyn Diamond

“Fit for Life” is a fad diet book based on “Natural Hygiene” and on the legendary woomeister Herbert Shelton’s reality-oblivious theories of food combining – if one eats the food in the wrong order they “cause fermentation” in the stomach, and “dead foods clog” the body, whereas “living foods cleanse” it. The ideas have been refuted by research, but this seems not to matter for Harvey and Marilyn Diamond, who have sold millions of books promoting the bullshit. Harvey Diamond has his degree in nutrition from a diploma mill, and it shows – most of the book is firmly based on the ecological fallacy, including the ridiculously false and misleading but exasperatingly common idea that “animals in nature are magnificently healthy in comparison to the health that we humans experience” whereas pets and zoo animals develop “many of the problems of humans” (there are alternative and better explanations for why it is rare to see debilitating diseases in the wild than invoking natural as some sort of white magic). The main claims of the Diamonds are covered here, though see also this admirably comprehensive list of dubious health practitioners.

Diagnosis: There are quite enough of these loons around, and exposing them will probably help little or nothing. Still, we have a duty to try, and the Diamonds constitute yet another scheme to exploit human biases and anecdotal evidence for purposes that have little to do with truth or well-being, regardless of what the Diamonds themselves may believe. 

#622: Jimmy DeYoung

Jimmy DeYoung a noted prophecy teacher and conference speaker with a Bible school “doctorate”, a radio host (WNYM in New York), author, and producer of much audio and video material on the standard batshit crazy endtime stuff, which he fully endorses (yes, he is one of the RaptureReady guys). DeYoung is currently actually located in Jerusalem, presumably as a means to being able to experience the imminent endtimes first hand, to evangelicize (bring Jesus to the Jews), and to convey garbled idiocy in the form of opinion pieces back to his US audience about the persecution of Christian majority everywhere. His knowledge of Middle Eastern politics is breathtakingly lacking for someone who has lived there for even a short time, but he seems to try to make up for the lack of insight in appallingness and insane conspiracy theories.

Among his video productions is The Daniel Papers and its accompanying study guide, which explains Daniel's calculations for the coming of the Messiah, his outline of the end times, and his description of the coming seven years of tribulation. Among his more outré beliefs is the claim that the Ark of the Covenant must be found in order for the Jewish people to build the Temple. “I believe it is underneath the Temple Mount,” said DeYoung, because prestigious rabbis have (apparently) been “mere inches” from seeing it. He doesn’t seem to mention Ron Wyatt, and is apparently also semi-oblivious to the fact that it is dusting away in an American storehouse, as per the real-time documentary “Indiana Jones”.

Here’s DeYoung on Glenn Beck. Although DeYoung “agrees with him politically” he can unfortunately not accept Beck as a spiritual leader because Beck is a mormon.

Diagnosis: Breathtaking moron

#621: Penna Dexter

When you come across something called the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, you can be pretty sure its purpose is not to promote ethics or religious liberty. Penna Dexter is a member of  the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and she used to be a cohost in the fundamentalist radio talkshow “Point of View” (host: Kerby Anderson). Dexter’s main concern – despite what she might, in fact, think herself – is not liberty.

Instead Dexter is extremely concerned about zeh Gays: “It's not politically correct to say so, but the greatest threat to America … today is the advancing homosexual agenda” (also here). The main problem with that statement is not that it is not politically correct; in any case, to remedy the gay situation, Dexter therefore calls on Americans like herself, who are concerned about “so many attempts to silence God's word,” to pave the way for political action with “fervent prayer,” and I suppose it would be a good thing if people like Dexter restricted themselves to prayer as a strategy but you suspect she won’t. She has also been caught blaming the suicide of homosexual teens on themselves.

Dexter’s other main schticks include the obliteration of the separation of church and state, in line with how she and people of her ilk understand “religious liberty” (i.e. not). After all, the First Amendment, the way Dexter has read it (hardly) just means that everyone has the right to be Christian. Then there is the usual anti-healthcare stuff, her admirably unambiguous position in the ongoing War on Christmas, climate change denialism (“Climate doom and gloom is a ruse to empower a world body and to spread the wealth,” case in point: “Climategate”), and exposing the liberal conspiracies that are the U.S education system, in particular universities (I won’t link to her articles on these issues; you’ll have to seek them out herself).

Diagnosis: Completely typical representative of the mass of batshit crazy nuts who makes up the Taliban alliance against reality. I suppose Dexter is not particularly influential, or particularly extreme; she is still a flailingly insane bigot, and as such dangerous.

#620: David DeWolf

David DeWolf is a law professor (Gonzaga) and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. In 1999 DeWolf, together with Stephen Meyer and Mark DeForrest, coauthored the 40-page booklet “Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curricula: A Legal Guidebook,” in which a strategy for legal cases involving teaching Intelligent Design creationism in public schools was laid out, claiming that Edwards v. Aguillard mandated “teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind” subject to a “clear secular intent of enhancing ... science instruction.” If only ID had been a scientific theory, it would have been good to go, of course, but it isn’t so DeWolf and his gang needed a backdoor. The strategy they developed did not help particularly much in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. In response to Kitzmiller v. Dover, DeWolf et al. whined that ID is a “valid scientific theory”, that the court should not have addressed the question of whether it was a scientific theory, and that the decision will have no effect on the development of ID as an alternative to evolutionary theory (the latter of which is of course true, since ID-ists were never in the business of developing a theory anyways but rather to get anti-evolution into schools). Their screeds are discussed here, and absolutely demolished here (note also the discussion of an amicus brief containing some rather astonishingly disingenuous claims authored by DeWolf for the case)

He – and in particular his ardent support of “teach the controversy” (i.e. manufactroversy) –

was cited at length by Santorum in the latter’s Address to Congress regarding the infamous Santorum amendment, and it appears to have been a law article by DeWolf that provided the blueprint for Santorum’s amendment.

Diagnosis: In many ways DeWolf is a fine symbol of the Intelligent Design movement. His efforts are of course all about legal strategies for implementing creationism in public education. And that, of course, is what ID is about – it has never been about doing science.

#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.