Last year, Creation Ministries International announced a new documentary called “Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels” which was supposed to be revolutionary and like no other creationist movie. Did anyone see it? Anyone? I didn’t, but I just ran across some notes on it, so I rummaged around the web to find out what happened.
Here’s what was supposed to make it “special”.
The book is like no other work that we are aware of, in that it is authored exclusively by 9 Ph.D. scientists.
It’s all blatant credentialism! You know, I’ve got stacks and stacks of books in my office that were written by people with Ph.D.s, far more than 9, and and none of them have gushing blurbs announcing that the authors have a Ph. frickin’ D. It’s weird to see. If having a Ph.D. is such an amazing heroic thing that bestows brilliance on its possessors, why do these people ignore the masses of science articles that come out every week by people with doctorates, all endorsing evolution?
And there’s more!
The documentary involves even more PhD scientists, 15 in all, and features striking footage and brilliant computer animations. All of these scientists received their doctorates from similar, secular universities as their evolutionary counterparts. Each is a specialist in various relevant fields.
The fifteen Ph.D. scientists include Donald Batten, Robert Carter, David Catchpoole, John Hartnett, Mark Harwood, Jim Mason, Jonathan Sarfati, Emil Silvestru and Tasman Walker.
I know of some of those people, and no, having them listed as authors does not improve the reputation of the book or documentary. Sarfati? Really? You can watch the trailer and see what I mean.
All those claims are absurd, and they really give no evidence to support them in this short trailer…and I have no confidence that they will do so in the full movie.
So it’s been “out” for a year, by a loose definition of “out”. The premiere was apparently held in a high school gymnasium, sponsored by a local church. At least it’s a step above the traditional church basement, although I suspect that that’s where all subsequent showings occurred.
It’s a strategy that has some interesting effects. There are no negative reviews out there (one exception: Steven Novella wrote a criticism of the trailer, but doesn’t seem to have seen the whole thing). That means that the only people who have watched it are the kind of people who’d watch a movie shown in a church basement.
So IMDB gives it a 7/10 star rating. 15 out of 18 reviews at Amazon give it the highest rating
And I have no interest at all in shelling out $15 for the video, or $10 for a kindle copy of the book
I think they’ve found the magic formula for getting good reviews: make a movie so bad and formulaic that no one watches it, other than the fanatics who already believe your lies.
No doubt you think they are deluded, PZ, but they don’t tell lies. Lying is anathema to fundamentalist Christians.
Except to convert the heathens, or defend the faith, then anything goes.
The stupid, it burns. I noticed Australian accents. Ken Ham would be proud.
But how the fuck can’t these presumably intelligent people overcome their indoctrination? What’s so difficult to understand about natural selection? Feckin’ eedjits!
Not even then. Christians don’t have an equivalent of the Islamic ‘taqiyya’.
CMI was the original Australian creationist organization; Ken Ham was part of it, until he split away with their mailing list to establish the American Answers in Genesis.
And no, Mr Nixon, they are lying. They openly and blatantly misrepresent the state of biology, and frequently peddle claims that have been soundly refuted multiple times. They are not stupid people. They are dishonest people dedicated to a bizarre religious belief that legitimizes lying for Jesus.
Why oh why did you have to link to the trailer? My brain just blew several fuses and my IQ went down several points. Even worse my Aussie accent is now even thicker.
The speaker with the three beam scale and the little bottles of colored water in the background told me all I needed to know. They had to make it look “sciencey” , such a poor and obvious fake staging. It is laughable.
But the comments about carbon 14 were so off base as to make my jaw drop. These folks have to be willfully ignorant to make those statements.
While we are at it Ross Nixon Islamic taqqiya is a bigger myth than Hambone’s creationism.
Another variation on the “no true Scotsman” argument. It’s also argument by tautology: no Xian fundy lies, therefore everything they say is true, therefore evolution is false. No evidence required. I like this one better: God is love, love is blind, Stevie Wonder is blind, therefore Stevie Wonder is God. Same reasoning. Best of luck.
The background music was somewhat pleasant.
Some people have a real fetish about credentialism, as if an advanced degree endows the possessor with universal expertise. Nope. It’s just a professional certification in a particular field (often a very narrow field). I just published an informal primer on calculus and the marketing people insisted on referring to me as “Dr.” every single bloody time I was mentioned in the blurbs. How does that get across the notion that it’s a non-technical and user-friendly book? Sheesh!
I know this is foolish because I have a doctorate and am thus an expert on everything, including marketing.
@Ross Nixon #1:
Translation: “I believe it, therefore it is not a lie!” I believe that’s bullshit. Who are you to question my beliefs?
Too funny. Ross Nixon posts two lines and they are full of lies.
The three sacraments of fundie xians are hate, lies, and hypocrisy.
@raven #13
Stylized in fundie xian fashion, those sacrements are known to them as “love”, “truth” and “virtuousness.”
I’d never heard of any of those “15 Ph.D’s.
Characteristically, what you find is that the creationist kook Ph.D.’s are in unrelated subjects like engineering or compter programming. Or they are very old and live in the deep South USA. Or sometimes they are just…dead.
I looked up two, Catchpoole is a plant physiologist in Australia which is at least biologically related. Our entire agriculture systems that feed 7 billion people are based on evolutionary theory so it is hard to see how he can twist his mind into a pretzel.
Silvestru is a geologist. Which doesn’t exactly give him expertise in “Evolution’s Achilles’ Heels”. Rocks aren’t living organisms, just in case any creationists are reading.
And that is enough of my time wasted on these guys.
“Sarfati? Really?”
The world would have been better off if he had kept on playing chess. Look at this gem:
http://creation.com/how-did-all-the-animals-fit-on-noahs-ark
Bingo!!!
Another ringer. Hartnett is a physicist and knows as much biology as my cat.
Told you fundie xians are liars. Technically this isn’t lying but it is very dishonest in intent.
To get their 15 Ph.D.’s they seem to have scoured the world and netted up scientists with no qualifications in the field they are claiming is false. And if you ask most of these, they freely admit they are creationists because they are fundie xians.
Maybe someone can find a aircraft engine designer or English Ph.D. in the rest of the list.
As PZ said, I have at least one book in this room that was written by at least nine folks with PhDs and it talks about processes that take millions of years to occur (and had to occur for the Earth to exist).
About the only thing I can think of is ‘we are aware of’ means that the writers have no clue about scholarly work in any field of science*. Which strikes me as having the strength of ‘my cousin linked me this on Facebook and it seems legit’ in terms of endorsements. (Or less, depending on one’s cousins.)
* Lying is also an option. You get a choice between ‘liar-liar-pants-on-fire’ or ‘incredibly ignorant’.
Kooks. He is also a Big Bang denialist.
Hartnett seems to be a low temperature solid state physicist and competent in his field. He still doesn’t know as much biology as my cat.
Ross Nixon,
Was that the punchline?
*interrupt the thread*
Oscar report. Neil Patrick Harris just introduced, while mentioning accents, the British actor who played MLK in Selma. And zinged the crowd that the actor wasn’t nominated.
*resume standard discussion*
If this were actually true, there would be no fundamentalist Christians in this world.
I… I thought Ross Nixon was making a very hilarious joke when they mentioned that “Lying is anathema to fundamentalist Christians.” I mean, it’s so blatantly obvious that they DO lie, and they lie often, that it had to be sarcasm!….. And then I realised it apparently isn’t. And I had a sad.
Lying is anathema to fundamentalist Christians.
Waaaay back in my innocent youth I believed that. Then I met the creationists.
(I also realized that there were more categories than “Honestly mistaken, but telling the truth as best one knows it” and “Deliberately and knowingly lying through one’s teeth”. There is, for example, “Persuading oneself that absurdities are true, then repeating it to others” — which I at first charitably refused to call “lying”, but the creationists quickly wore out my patience. Lying is lying, even if your first victim is yourself.)
Rowan, #23
Same here. Then I checked the Facebook page.
Speaking of major cinematic triumphs:
‘Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas’ sweeps the anti-Oscar Razzie awards.
I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news for you, but first I think we’d better discuss that nice Nigerian Prince you’ve been making arrangements with.
Ross Nixon must know a different set of fundamentalist Christians than the ones I come across.
Or Muslims. I have not the slightest clue how “taqiya” has anything to do with permitting one to lie for missionary or apologetic purposes.
PZ, I think this is it in 4 parts on Youtube, save your cash and watch it (if you care)…
Sorry , I thought just the link would appear, not the actual thing !
My Dad got me this book to see if I could refute it all, and so far I haven’t had the mental strength needed to bother, but here are the chapters and the people writing them, since they’re so proud of their Ph.D.s:
1. Natural Selection – Dr Donald Batten. Ph.D. Plant Physiology, University of Sydney, Australia.
2. Genetics and DNA – Dr Robert Carter. Ph.D. Marine Biology, University of Miami, USA.
3. The Origin of Life – Dr Jonathan Sarfati. Ph.D. Physical Chemistry, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
4. The Fossil Record – Dr Emil Silvestru. Ph.D. Geology, Babes-Bolyai University, Romania.
5. The Geological Record – Dr Tasman Walker, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, University of Queensland, Australia.
6. Radiometric Dating – Dr Jim Mason, Ph.D. Experimental Nuclear Physics, McMaster University, Canada.
7. Cosmology: Exposing the Big Bang’s Fatal Flaws – Dr John Hartnett, Ph.D. Physics, University of Western Australia.
8. Ethics and Morality – Dr David Catchpoole, Ph.D. Plant Physiology, University of New England, Australia; and Dr Mark Harwood, Ph.D. University of Sydney, Australia (doesn’t say what in, just that he’s a “telecommunications specialist”).
Apart from the last two, who might as well be wizards for all their qualifications matter, I can see how someone like my father would think that these people are talking about their specific fields of expertise. Except chapter five too, I guess. But the religious do love their appeals to authority.
I’d be happy to mail the book to anyone that actually DOES want to read it and write a thorough critique of it.
@32, sayke
My first thought would be to see if the list of creationist claims already covers all of it. Most times I find they already have things covered, and why waste braincells doing debunking that someone else has already done? Though they are fairly brief, and referring someone to that list kinda lacks a personal touch, they do provide some references.
So I have something I want to say about what I think of people like these PhDs and Ken Hamm and such, but I just realized that it could be read as slander, and I don’t want to get PZ into trouble…
But I really want to post it…
Err…
It probably isn’t hard.
I read a bit of Hartnett online just now. It’s pure fundie xian garbage mixed with gibberish. He even backs up his science with…bible quotes. He’s an open Presuppositionalist who assumes the universe is 6,000 years old.
I’m sure the other chapters are equally as pointless.
The creationists just keep on recycling the same old lies over and over. Some of them are millennia old and predate the invention of xianity, i.e. one of their key ones, The Argument From Design is from the ancient Greeks.
I reckon we could make up any bullshit theory we wanted to and round up 30 people with PhDs willing to make a crappy “movie” defending it just from the horde. The challenge is really to come up with something even more laughable than creationism…
I just read some more of Hartnett. No suprise.
Besides the gibberish and garbage…it’s full of lies.
Religion can really mess your head up. Only difference between him and an ISIS terrorist burning people alive is that Hartnett is burning the truth alive. For the exact same reason.
Re Sarfati, the best chess player I’ve ever known – who was still by his own admission a patzer by any real standard, but could wipe the floor with me even if he was blind drunk – reflected that nobody has ever been able to determine whether insanity causes chess to be attractive to you, or whether becoming good at chess causes you to become crazy.
Either way, though, the correlation is undeniable.
Somebody has a PhD? Coulour me unimpressed. Don’t get me wrong. If you have a PhD from a legitimate university you worked for it. Usually that means you got a rather broad education as an undergrad and once you worked on your PhD you worked within a pretty narrow field.
My BIL has a PhD in biology, yet I swear his niece beats him at zoology hands down and she is 7. But he’s a really good virologist, working on using viruses to fight brain tumors.
I think I forgot the part where the above makes sense. Sorry, they’re drilling holes in the flat next to mine…
The point is: Somebody with a PhD is usually an expert in their field. Their opinion on things outside their field of expertise, even though it is in the same subject (biology, chemistry, physics, English…), is not necessarily worth more than that of somebody with a Master’s degree, probably less than that of somebody whose degree is in that specific subfield.
Outside of their subject, their opinion is that of a smart layperson.
And of course, all opinions of experts should only be accepted provisionally…
Too right, i have a friend with a PhD in Biology and Biochemistry, she is brilliant and VERY good at what she does. She, however, couldn’t tell you the difference between a lizard and a salamander, or comment on the Ediacaran fauna, because she has never heard of it…
She is very qualified to speak on certain subjects. She is completely unqualified to speak on others, even if they are part of the field of Biology…
I always though the Ediacaran fauna was descended from the shoggoth…
Anyway, it is obvious that El/Jahwe made the fossils with a 3D printer. Creation just happened to overlap April 1st.
Well that’s easy: lizards have pointier toes.
azhael
Well, my BIL claimed that cheetas and leopards were the same animal. Also, caribous are an African antelope….
Wow. Fifteen PhDs.
Wait a moment.
[grabs book of shelf behind me] 00 Bernissart Dinosaurs and Early Cretaceous Terrestrial Ecosystems ( Godefroit, 2012)
Sixty–seven PhDs, PhD candidates, and post-docs, all from departments of Earth Science, Natural History, Paleontology, Biology, etc, from major institutions — Copenhagen University, Universite Lyon, Jilin University, etc. A book about palaeontology and evolution. By palaeontologists and biologists and geologists.
Thank you, creationists, but no thank you. I’ll stick with people who have a clue about reality.
Regarding fundamentalists lying: After seeing a lot of them in action over the years, I’ve started to wonder if they believe there is such a thing as truth.
I’ve seen them erect straw men that are easily refuted by scrolling upward and looking at what the real person actually said. I’ve seen many make halfhearted concessions when refuted in one thread, only to start the same refuted arguments over again in the next thread, even when the same people are present in both. I’ve seen them retroactively change their position from one form of Creationism to another so that they can laugh at people for refuting the wrong Creationism. I’ve seen some weasel out of making any definite position statements, as if they need us to collapse a quantum wave function by refuting Creationism A, B, and C to find out they’re actually advocating Creationism D. Then they claim victory because we couldn’t read their mind, even though we can refute Creationism D just as easily.
If you have a PhD from a legitimate university, you MAY also be a near-complete flop even in your field. I work in a research department, and my spousal critter is a professor, so I see how the sausage is made. Once in a while, a student squeaks into a second-rate department, then proves incapable of doing much of anything scientifically. More often than not, these people get their PhD after their advisor does half their work and all of their thinking for them.
We turn out enough PhDs in the sciences that even though the frequency of those who can’t research their way out of a wet paper bag is low, it still adds up to enough people that finding a dozen PhD quacks is not difficult.
I like how they start with Achilles’s heel, then immediately have to define it, and to draw a picture. They should have just let it go in favor of . . . I dunno . . . “The Unfitness of Evolution”. (I just came up with that without getting out of bed, and literally one eye open.)
Especially amusing to me is the use of a mythological figure in a discussion of their religion. I’d not want anybody even thinking about legendary figures and their godly protectors and their made-up deaths, whilst pushing my religion out as a science. The professors with their chalkboards and vials of colored water was more the thing. But Achilles? Mentioning him was kind of meta.
The one guy talking about how we are just bags of pond scum was disturbing. Not that I object to being pond scum (some of my best friends are pond scum), but the snarlingly hateful dismissal of non-Christians and their values and their common sense really came through. The strawman was bad, but the glimpse of Christian compassion was scary.
Yes, natural selection does not produce anything new, if you look at it as just the elimination of the least-suited. But mutation and genetic shuffling are continually producing new things, upon which natural selection works. The whole combination gets one name. To say what that guy did was intentionally misleading.
And salamanders are fire-resistant!
What do they teach the children these days?
Great, Sarfati. Met him once:
http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=13639
Not impressed.
Note that on their youtube page, “Comments have been disabled for the video”. So there is no chance of telling them what one thinks about B.S. artists like Sarfati or Tas Walker:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Sarfati
–for stuff about Tas Walker just go to the “No Answers in Genesis” site.
Creation Ministries International has the same kind of “statement of faith” that AiG has:
http://creation.com/about-us#what_we_believe
Quote:
Facts are always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information. By definition, therefore, no interpretation of facts in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.
As the people from the old site “No Answers in Genesis” say: Oath-taking is not science.
It doesn’t matter if they have Ph.D’s or not. Once they agree to that statement of faith above, they are directly contradicting the scientific method.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Creation_Ministries_International
I wonder if they’re misrepresenting their own C-14 argument.
The usual objection to Carbon-14 dating is that it assumes a constant rate of atmospheric carbon throughout history (it doesn’t really), that it’s not reliable for dating things older than about 60,000 years (so what?) and that things can get contaminated (which is why it’s not used for things that have been soaking in sea water for thousands of years). In other words, because it’s complicated enough that actual professional scientists write journal articles about how not to screw it up, it should be completely ignored in age of the earth arguments. Which it pretty much is, as there are numerous better ways to date something 4.5 billion years old.
Well, I tried watching the YouTube vid – thanks for the link – and kinda fizzled out 2/3rds through that first quarter of. I was impressed by how much they said that wasn’t actually wrong, in that they were lying, but was just presented in the wrong sense, or they omitted the context. I was imagining a court of law, with them saying that what they had said was not untrue, and somebody else trying to make a case out of “Yeah, but …”.
That was the disturbing undertone from reading John Hartnett.
He seems to be a hater in general, and an all around rather vicious and unpleasant crackpot. My comment about his similarities to ISIS didn’t come from a vacuum.
It wasn’t that long ago that people like him killed people like me.
PS This book and movie aren’t aimed at normal people. It is to shore up the reality denying beliefs of extreme fundie cultists who watch Fox NoNews, Glenn Beck, and think Alex Jones is a prophet. Lunatic fringers. They aren’t even trying to sound coherent.
Oh, the “scriptural record” NEVER requires any Interpretation? I did not know that, all the priests (RCC) I ever knew, always said, “The Word, needs priest to interpret God’s truth for us.” That the Bible was “inspired”, but the fallible scribes put their inspiration into fallible word form, so Priests gotta interpret those writings to tell us what God was REALLY sayin to those poor scribes. But, then, RCC has no authority, that the CMI must obey. The CMI has every god-given right to interpret the BOOK however they think makes the most sense to them. That’s the problem with closing eyes, and sticking fingers in ears, and singing lalalalala. No one got no authority to make you know what you no want.
yeah… he got that degree doing spectroscopy work.
he’s never done a day of science. really. no actual science was even involved in his thesis work. it was all grunt work.
OTOH, he’s a frikken genius at chess.
go figure.
his primary work has been with the equivalent of AIG in Australia (can’t recall the name) for decades now.
he’s not produced anything of actual substance in all that time.
what a waste.
Ken Hamm is a piglet fucker.
what?
https://www.google.com/#q=ken+ham+rapes+piglets
Hey, Ross…
still think Safarti is honest?
think again:
http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/does_dr_jonathan_sarfati_have_any_integrity.htm
Oh, BTW, that’s an exclusively Shiite concept (Sunnites generally don’t even know it exists), and it has nothing to do with spreading or defending the faith: you’re allowed to deny being a Muslim (or, I’m sure, a Shiite) if your life or someone else’s is in immediate danger, that’s all.
So… they had a geologist, but he didn’t get to write the chapter on the geological record and had to leave that to an engineer instead?
What is this, the Chewbacca defense?
And, y’know, scales.
And if you’re already looking at the toes, count them: salamanders have just four fingers per hand, lizards five.
To be fair, that’s just an abstract volume from a conference. I know, because I’m in it.
And postdocs by definition have a PhD degree.
Yep. My alma mater would even retract their degrees for this.
David Marjanović @58:
Just checked index and contributors. Didn’t see your name. Where? Which paper? (I am excited!)
For that matter, it’s not even necessarily exclusive to Islam. While there’s not a term for it, I have read similar interpretations of the Gospel, specifically this bit:
Normally, of course, this is read as Peter being told he’s going to be weaker than he thinks, as well as underlining how bad Christ’s suffering is, because religio-BDSM apparently also includes humiliation play. But the text can also be read (and, again, I recall a couple readings that took it this way) as Jesus instructing Peter–basically, telling him what it’s going to take to get through the night. Back when I was a Christian, I even preferred this interpretation–it makes it seem more like JC cares about his disciples, rather than just telling Peter that he’s a weak-ass squealer. It also fits better with the Christian idea of both free will and omniscience, to an extent–if JC actually knows that Peter is going to admit knowing Christ, then there’s no free will at all; if, OTOH, he’s just telling Peter to keep his head down because he’s going to get questioned three times (something an omniscient fellow would know), then it’s an act of compassion and protection.
David Marjanović @58:
That’s how the lizard people have been able to infiltrate so well. The salamander people never stood a chance.
I dunno, Colin J. Everybody knows about the lizard people, but nobody has ever heard of us salamander people . . . I mean the salamander people.
Emil Silvestru, lol. What a coinkydink – he said many idiotic things for the Bob Jones University Press earth “science” textbook. In fact, this week’s Adventures in Christianist Earth Science Education rips him apart. Tune in Wednesday to see his “ideas” in action. Meanwhile, here’s an idea as to the quality of his “geology.” Like the other Young Earth Creationists, he’s not going where the evidence leads. He’s proceeding to fold, spindle, and mutilate the evidence to fit his cockamamie idea that Genesis is fact, not poetry.
Here’s a sneak peek of Wednesday’s article for ye:
“Eventually, after soaking in creationist claptrap, he concluded that the Flood (which totes happened and must have been global because the Bible never exaggerates for poetic effect) made things that normally take ages happen superfast, yay, problem solved! Which is probably why the vast majority of the papers he’s got on Google Scholar are babble printed in creationist publications: next to no papers printed in mainstream journals appear, and most of his citations are him citing his own work. I suppose that’s only to be expected for someone who works for Creation Ministries International (formerly Answers in Genesis).”
And even with all that, they still didn’t have him write the chapter on geology? LMAO.
I wonder how the cave expert explains Carboniferous clay deposits in caves which can’t be older than 6-10,000 years
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08120090500507362
Well, the trailer caused my phone to crash; twice. I’ll take that as an indication that my phone is incapable of processing bullshit concentrated to that degree. Did I miss anything particularly hilarious? I’d watch it on my computer, but I’m afraid it would somehow torch my master boot record.