#824: Dean Kenyon

Dean H. Kenyon is professor emeritus of Biology at San Francisco State University, and one of the grand old men of the modern form of creationism known as Intelligent Design. Kenyon is, for instance, the author of the infamous Of Pandas and People (with Percival Davis), the textbook that laid the foundation for the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial (after being quickly turned from a creationist book into an Intelligent Design book, which was possible since the views are the same). And yes, there is a pattern here – Kenyon, as most proponents of ID, are concerned with getting creationism into schools, writing textbooks, popular books (especially for children), and participating in debates. The ID movement isn’t, and has never been, about doing science. It should be mentioned that Kenyon still subscribes to young earth creationism.

Kenyon first started promoting creationism (the young earth variant) in the 1980s, calling it “scientific creationism” and trying to teach it in his classes at San Francisco State. That didn’t go down particularly well with his more scientifically minded colleagues. The fact that they determined that creationism couldn’t be taught as science didn’t exactly change Kenyon’s mind, so he continued teaching it in other courses, leading to some major controversies at the university (where Kenyon claimed that “objections to his teaching rested on a positivist view of what constitutes legitimate science,” which is just a weasel phrase for “I should be allowed to teach my intuitions and convictions as being scientific regardless of whether they are backed up by evidence”). In the 1980s he became infamous for his involvement in the standard-setting McLean v. Arkansas and Edwards v. Aguillard courtcases. In fact, Kenyon pulled out right before he was expected to testify in the first case. In the latter, Kenyon supplied an affidavit which ended up constituting the main part of the defense.

In the 1990s Kenyon became affiliated with the Discovery Institute. He is currently board member for the Kolbe Center, a Catholic YEC group.

Diagnosis: A grand old man of the wingnut fight against reality when reality don’t align with their wishful thinking. Has made major impacts and must still be considered dangerous.

#825: Douglas Kenyon & the people at Atlantis Rising

Douglas Kenyon is the publisher of Atlantis Rising, a magazine devoted to “alternative news”, i.e. such batshit crazy pseudoscience, conspiracies and new age woo that it may ultimately compete with educateyourself.org. Its website is here. The name of the magazine is presumably taken from one of its specialties, atlantology. For instance, here you can see one of the magazine’s regular contributors, Frank Joseph, discuss “the beasts of Atlantis;” according to Joseph “Plato spoke of them, but what can they tell us about the lost civilization?” Nothing, of course, but you can imagine Joseph arriving at a different answer. Harry Sivertsen, on the other hand, suggests that we should rather look for Atlantis in the stars.

As expected, another focus area of Atlantis Rising is astrology. Here, for instance, Julie (Judy?) Loar discusses whether your “Sun sign” can change, and what is at stake in the discussion (again, nothing, of course, though, again, Loar reaches a rather different answer), and here she discusses what Ceres can tell us about immortality.

Then of course, there are the “out of place artifacts”, such as the Abydos helicopter, which Joseph Robert Jochmans discusses here, and the Baghdad battery, which is discussed here (and if you want evidence for time travel? Jochmans presents none here, though he would not agree with that description of what he is doing). Surely ordinary science cannot explain these things! And for “ET presence”, Arlan Andrews has a very, uh, psychologically interesting article, “Aliens and Indians”, here. Meanwhile, David Childress discusses Underwater bases and alien presence with evidence straight out of The Abyss, and for a real clincher, see the legendary Zecharia Sitchin discuss the alien-Vatican connection here.

The star reporters for the magazine are some rather familiar characters, namely Michael Cremo and Jeane Manning, who seem to be willing discuss everything from 2012 doomsday prospects (here) to cold fusion (here), where “discussing” means “presenting some possibilities and choosing the craziest and most far-fetched one.” It is all about wishful thinking as a guide to one’s view of reality, and these people seem to have some fascinatingly crazy wishes.

Diagnosis: If science and reality do not give you the evidence you want, some people respond by inventing their own science that follows its own methodological rules. And suddenly the results they had hoped for would come rolling out. Isn’t it fascinating? On the more serious side, Atlantis Rising seriously contributes to the current popularity of pseudo-science, and their negative influence should not be completely written off.

#385: Charles Thaxton

Charles B. Thaxton is a chemist, signatory to A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism, and, in short, another intelligent design author and Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. He has a doctorate in physical chemistry from Iowa State, and has co-authored several books, including “The Mystery of Life's Origin” (with Walter L. Bradley and Roger L. Olsen), which employs (in effect) the second-law-of-thermodynamics gambit in favor of creationism, and “The Soul of Science” (with Nancy Pearcey).

He is most famous, however, for being co-editor (with Percival Davis and Dean Kenyon) of the first edition of “Of Pandas and People”, the creationist book (book review here) that spurred the Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial. During the trial Thaxton explained that he “wasn’t comfortable with the typical vocabulary that for the most part creationists were using because it didn’t express what I was trying to do. They were wanting to bring God into the discussion, and I was wanting to stay within the empirical domain and do what you can do legitimately there.” Translation: “I didn’t like the formulations, but the content was fine, and I would have preferred to conceal the blatantly religious agenda somewhat better.” His contributions are discussed here.

Together with his wife Carole he runs the “KONOS Connection”, an educational Christian organization in Fayetteville, GA.

Diagnosis: Yet another clueless science denialist (who rejects facts when they don’t conform to dogma), and one who has actually caused some harm. One to scare your kids with.

#276: Stephen Meyer

Stephen C. Meyer is a philosopher and one of the hotshots of the Discovery Institute. And like some philosophers and all Discovery Institute people, he likes to make grand claims about scientific fields about which he must be counted as an illiterate. Meyer helped found the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute (DI), which is the major hive for the ID creationist movement. Meyer is currently vice president and a senior fellow at CSC, and a director of the Access Research Network. He has been described as “the person who brought ID (intelligent design) to DI (Discovery Institute)”, he contributed to the second edition of Dean Kenyon’s “Of Pandas and People”, wrote (with Ralph Seelke) the ID textbook “Explore Evolution”, was appointed by the Texas Board of Education to be on the committee reviewing Texas’s science curriculum standards, is the primary link to DI sponsor and Taliban theocrat loon Howard Ahmanson, and was partly responsible for the Wedge Strategy, as well as an active speaker and debate panelist.

In 1999, Meyer (with David DeWolf and Mark DeForrest) designed a legal strategy for introducing intelligent design into public schools in the book “Intelligent Design in Public School Science Curriculum.” (I mean, the point of ID is to get creationism and religion into the schools, not to do science). He is perhaps most famous for trying to realize the strategy through helping to introduce ID to the Dover Area School District (more extensively here), and for his ridiculous 2009 book “Signature in the Cell” (which a probably drunk/dementia suffering Thomas Nagel actually praised, flaunting his own ignorance of science). PZ Myers was offered a review copy by Meyer’s assistant Janet Oberembt, but never received it. The book actually makes twelve “predictions” for ID (although they are not predictions in the ordinary scientific sense because they are not derived from any concrete theory, and they all concern testing the theory of evolution, not ID). He also offers a “theory”. The theory is unrelated to the predictions. He derives no predictions from his theory. He offers nothing resembling a coherent justification either, so the book didn’t receive much positive feedback from actual scientists. He has offered some appeals to authority, however (“Thomas Jefferson wasn’t a Darwinist”).

In March 2002 he announced the “teach the controversy” strategy aimed at promoting the false idea that the theory of evolution is controversial within scientific circles, following a presentation to the Ohio State Board of Education. Since Meyer knows this is false, he was lying, but dishonesty isn’t exactly a surprising trait in ID advocates. The presentation included a bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed scientific articles that were said to raise significant challenges to key tenets of what was referred to as "”Darwinian evolution”. When NCSE contacted the authors, none of the authors who responded (the authors of thirty-four of the papers) thought that their research provided evidence against evolution. Meyer also publicly claimed that the “Santorum Amendment” was part of the Education Bill, and therefore that the State of Ohio was required to teach alternative theories to evolution as part of its biology curriculum. Which is demonstrably false, but tells you a lot about the DI creationists.

Of course, he thinks there is active persecution of the purportedly fast-growing number of scientists rejecting evolution in Academia (probably because he cannot find any). He was interviewed about those claims in Expelled.

Diagnosis: One of the staunchest, most influential, most dishonest anti-science advocates in the world. Crackpot and complete hack.

#611: Percival Davis

A.k.a. Bill Davis

Percival Davis is an author, young earth creationist, and proponent of teaching intelligent design in public education (since young earth creationism, what he really believes, won’t fly). Davis does indeed have a master of arts in zoology from Columbia, and is also a visiting professor of biology at Clearwater Christian College (which strongly suggests that this ain’t a place to go for an education), but is hardly a legitimate authority on biology.

In fact, Davis is – together with Dean Kenyon (to be covered) – responsible for popularizing the term “intelligent design,” particularly through writing the infamous ID creationist textbook Of Pandas and People, which presented intelligent design in a manner the creationists (after McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education) deemed suitable for school kids for legal purposes – in other words, Davis is another prime example of the creationist agenda of trying to convert kids instead of actually doing science to support their silly ideas. “Of Pandas and People” was of course the book that subsequently formed the backdrop for the Dover Trial, for those who are unfamiliar with the details of ID propagation.

The book suggested that Darwinism had outlived its usefulness, primarily because of irreducible complexity, which the authors took as good evidence for the unfalsifiable and hence unverifiable theory that an intelligent designer was behind it all. And yes, it contained all the standard creationist fallacies, PRATTs, quote-mining, and Gish gallops in the book; and yes, it is only about objecting to evolution – no positive case is made for ID, and the authors seem to assume that if evolution fails, creationism must be right, which is quite simply a mistake. It is reviewed here. Concerning the obvious agenda behind the book, Davis commented “Of course my motives were religious. There's no question about it.” Here is a selection from the Dover ruling showing what role Of Pandas and People was really supposed to play. You can read how the ID crowd reacted here.

Davis has also co-written Case for Creation (with Wayne Frair, also to be covered in the relatively near future). 

Diagnosis: One of the stalwarts of the utterly dishonest insanity movement that is the Intelligent Design movement, and a complete fucking moron. Dangerous.