The Discovery Institute just keeps plugging along, pointlessly

Ahh, the Discovery Institute. A patent pseudoscientific think-tank funded by right-wing millionaires. Doesn’t that make you want to trust them?

They are now cheerfully leaping onto the anti-vax quack bandwagon — it’s where the money is, nowadays. They’ve come out with a new book, The Price of Panic, that tries to claim that the problem isn’t the pandemic, it’s the government’s response to the pandemic.

The human cost of the emergency response to COVID-19 has far outweighed the benefits. That’s the sobering verdict of a trio of scholars—a biologist, a statistician, and a philosopher— in this comprehensive assessment of the worst panic-induced disaster in history.

I think there are about 673,000 Americans who might argue with that. Oops, they can’t — they’re dead. You can always trust those bozos to get everything wrong.

The book is published by Regnery. Enough said.

Stephen Meyer is also out there pushing his new book, Return of the God Hypothesis. It is, of course, boring garbage. I’ve read a couple of Meyer’s books, but I’m not going to bother with this one — it’s all tedious, tendentious, repetitive nonsense, and all of his books sound the same. He might as well call the next one Bride of the God Hypothesis, then Son of the God Hypothesis, and maybe I’ll express some interest when Abbott and Costello Meet the God Hypothesis comes out.

Anyway, Meyer wrote an advertisement masquerading as a press release pretending to announce a serious idea, and the New York Post snapped it up. It does give you a taste of his bad argument.

As crazy as it all sounds, scientists have long posited the possibility of aliens on our planet. In fact, Francis Crick (who along with James Watson won the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of the DNA molecule) once theorized that life on Earth was “deliberately transmitted” by intelligent extra terrestrials. Far from being scorned, Crick’s “Directed panspermia” theory was presented at a conference organized by Carl Sagan in 1971 and later published as a scientific paper.

One of the hallmarks of a Meyer book is the constant name-dropping. Oooh, Francis Crick! Famous prestigious scientist indulged in some fantastical speculation, and it got presented at a meeting (this is less impressive than you might think) and published! <swoon> It must be good stuff! No, it’s not. It’s a wild-ass idea that went nowhere. Crick is not famous as a panspermist.

I have theorized that life arose when a Space Winnebago flushed their toilet tanks while visiting Hadean Earth. It doesn’t mean anything. It is not evidence for anything. Unfortunately, I haven’t won a Nobel Prize so I haven’t been invited to fumigate a conference hall with my brain farts.

Oooh, Bill Gates next!

Watson and Crick discovered that chemical subunits in DNA function like letters in a written language or digital symbols in computer code. As Bill Gates explains, “DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”

Bill Gates is a college dropout who knows nothing about biology, and who got rich on predatory business practices. He is not an authority on this subject. DNA is not like a computer program. It’s a misleading metaphor, applied by a guy who made computers his business. If he’d gotten rich off model railroad gear, he’d be claiming that DNA was just like a track, with switches.

How about Richard Dawkins? He’s got a little more credibility on this subject (but not much, and diminishing every time he opens his mouth).

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins echoes this assessment, noting the “machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like.” In a recent tweet, he confessed to being knocked “sideways with wonder at the miniaturized intricacy of the data-processing machinery in the living cell.”

No, it’s not. He’s wrong. What does it even mean to speak of “machine code” of genes? Back in the ancient times of the 1970s, I sometimes wrote short bits of machine code, and I fail to see the appropriateness of the comparison. The cell and its genes are not computer-like at all, and it does not contain “data-processing machinery”, except in the vaguest sense of the phrase. This is word salad, written by someone who got a bit too excited about a metaphor. It serves Meyer’s purpose, though, so he goes ahead and uses it.

His purpose is to twist science, even Richard Dawkins’ philosophical atheism, into support for his favored assertion.

Believers in this kind of intelligence greatly outnumber believers in alien astronauts. They have long called this intelligence behind life and the universe by a different name.

They call it God.

It’s totally dishonest, of course. That’s written in the “machine code” of the Discovery Institute.

Meyer isn’t even a very good philosopher. He’s got one note that he bangs on, off-key, while desperately waving at out-of-context quotes from people who actually would strongly disagree with him.

Skip it. Ignore everything from that think-tank of lies.

Another silly scientific claim from Islam

The magic fly wings are back. I got this email yesterday:

Dear doctor Myers,
I’ve read your old article on the study about a saying of Muhammad that advised people to dip a fly if it landed on their drinks. Recently I’ve found an article (https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jnsv/66/Supplement/66_S283/_pdf) which honestly seems to me even more unscientific, but there is one thing that I don’t understand that I hope you may clarify. The fact is that this study doesn’t seem to have been published in a predatory journal, I’ve searched the journal and the publisher but I haven’t find them on the predatory publishing list. Maybe it is because the journal is Japanese(I’ve read articles about how many Indonesian studies were published in predatory journal but nothing about this specific publisher). By the way I’ve done a bit of research on this study and I found something which convinces me even more of my first thoughts, but I don’t have enough knowledge to debunk the study itself.

In the paper they quote 4 studies to support their claims:
-Reference number 9 was published on a predatory journal (called IDOSI).
-Reference number 7 is the experiment at Qassim University which you have talked about.
-References number 10 come from a book about miracles of the Quran, that was originally in Arabic and was later translated in Indonesian. It supposedly quotes a study from this book but since I don’t know the languages I don’t know how to search. But the fact that it quotes just the book and not the supposed study is very suspicious.
-Reference number 11 is from something in Indonesian language about “miracles” of the hadiths, I couldn’t find anything like this and the only other source where this is cited is from a larger paper (also in Indonesian)of the same author of this study, which basically talks about the same things.
All the sources are islamic, the study itself was done in a islamic university in Indonesia specialized in islamic teachings, probably by undergrad students of the nutrition faculty.

As I’ve said the only thing that I don’t understand is why this study was published on a non predatory journal, and I can’t refute it by myself. I hope you may give your opinion on this paper.

Here’s my article that they reference. The point being made on the basis of an Islamic hadith, If a housefly falls in the drink of anyone of you, he should dip it (in the drink), for the one of its wings has a disease and the other has the cure of the disease, is that the left wings of flies are dirty and full of bacteria, but the right wings have strong antibiotic properties. Only the right wing, mind you! This is from a book compiled in the 9th century, so it’s a remarkable assertion that was made without any application of scientific observation or empirical data collection — just poof, the idea came out of the mouth of some sage.

This, unfortunately, is the abstract for the new paper in question:

It’s a very badly written paper, like the work of a lazy undergraduate; of course, we also have to consider that this was written by an Indonesian student in English, not their native language. Still, it’s a naive bit of work that was done with little effort in the course of a few days that were somehow stretched out over 6 months.

It’s a simple experiment. Snip the wings off flies, dip them in water…wait, the protocol is weird. They have a negative control, water contaminated with E. coli, and a positive control, sterile water, (I feel like they labeled those backwards) but then they only test the right wings of flies dipped in contaminated water. This is peculiar, because they never test the left wings, despite the fact that this is a five-minute experiment that is then cultured on a petri dish for two days, with the assay consisting of simply counting colonies on the dish, and they only did it twice, with the only variable being the number (1, 2, or 3) of right wings they used. That’s it! And they published it!

You want to see the results? OK, here they are in all their glory.

I spent way too much time puzzling over this for such a garbage paper. There are five sets of data, but only two lines on the chart; the blue line goes up over time, but the legend says blue is either one right wing or the negative control (which is the water contaminated with E. coli), the orange is the positive control (the sterile water), which is flatlined as you might expect. There is no observable data for the different numbers of wings. In the text they state that the number of wings didn’t matter — all two of the measurements for one, two, or three wings showed no colony growth. They don’t even do a comparison of left and right wings, which is the heart of their claim about the accuracy of Islam.

It’s remarkably trivial and bad, and it’s little more than a grade school science fair experiment. And it got published.

To address my correspondent’s questions:

  • I don’t know how you’re going to define “predatory journal”. This looks like a journal with extremely low standards for publication, is that predatory? It’s more of a waste-of-time journal.
  • That the journal is Japanese or the authors Indonesian is irrelevant. There is extremely good research coming out of both countries, and there is extremely bad research published in American journals by American authors.
  • Lists of predatory journals are never complete. This particular journal has been around since 1954, has a low impact factor, and who knows what changes have occurred in the editorial board? It’s just flying under the radar.
  • Every science article needs to be evaluated on the basis of its content. It doesn’t matter if it’s published in Nature or the Journal of Nutritional Science and Vitaminology

    • (although, really, that title would make me question it), you have to consider each paper’s ideas. A journal like Nature has a rather more demanding filter than J Sci Nutr Vitaminol, obviously; that latter seems to be more of a wide open sphincter than any kind of filter.

Also, an article that in its introduction mentions that the idea they’re testing is contrary to the facts in the field, but that Muslims must still believe and be sure of the truth of the hadith is setting up a bias which demands a significantly more robust set of observations than this half-assed lazy casual “experiment”. If they are making a radical claim that defies all the observations and theories current in the field, they damn well better put in the work!

Don’t you know that denying evolution is the main purpose of Christianity?

In a classic example of confusing belief with historical fact, Kylee Zempel at The Federalist is outraged at the very idea that Christians could be racist. She is so mad that she is going to defend her beliefs by misinterpreting Scientific American.

The Left Wants You To Believe The Bible Is White Supremacist So They Can Force Evolution Down Your Throat
It’s a no-holds-barred attack on Christianity to advance the opposing worldview, and if that means smearing as racist a — *checks notes* — time-tested historical account in which a divine Middle Eastern man is the central figure, so be it.

Can we right away clear up some misconceptions?

  • The Bible itself is a document written by diverse people over a long complex history. In itself it is not “white supremacist” — although you could argue that it promotes a belief in a kind of tribal supremacy.
  • That tribe was not white Europeans.
  • However, while the Bible is not a white supremacist document, your interpretation of the Bible can be.
  • Forcing evolution down people’s throats is not and has never been good pedagogical technique.
  • Your religion, Christianity, is not necessarily opposed to evolution, so teaching evolution is not teaching that Christianity is wrong.

Most importantly, I would point out that waving broadly at a Middle Eastern Jesus does not protect you from accusations of racism, especially when there’s such a long history of your peculiar, particular branch of the Christian religion portraying Jesus as a light-skinned Northern European man. But Zempel’s main point is that her narrow clade of fundamentalist, evolution-denying religion is the entirety of Biblical belief, and therefore supporting evolution is a direct attack on the whole of Christianity, which isn’t true.

“Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy” is Scientific American’s not-so-subtle way of saying this synonymous phrase: “The Bible is racist.”

Oh, that’s a synonymous phrase? Break it down. “Denial of evolution” is a synonym for the Bible? I don’t think so. The Bible contains a half a page of poetry about a creation week that is then denied in the next chapter by a completely different creation story. There is clearly some latitude of interpretation permitted in Genesis. Furthermore, I think most Christians, other than this narrow sect of fundamentalist literalist creeps, would be horrified that you can equate all the complex moral and ethical and historical lessons of their very messy holy book with “denial of evolution”.

Of course, I’d fully agree with the other half of her equation: white supremacy is a synonym for racism.

She rages on a little more.

It would be easy to dismiss the whole article as record-setting idiocy or editorial catfishing. After all, what editor at a magazine with “scientific” in the name green-lights an article arguing that the religion that worships a man born between Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq is “white supremacist”? There’s something more nefarious under the brainlessness, however, and we shouldn’t breeze past it.

This headline is just the latest in the left’s crusade not only to brand everything that challenges their worldview as racist, but also to grant scientific legitimacy to their race-baiting. This time, however, they’re aiming their fire straight at the heart of the scriptures on which Christians base their beliefs — and they aren’t trying to hide the reason why.

So the heart of the scriptures is evolution denial? What did Christians do in the 1800 years before Darwin published The Origin? Let’s take a look at the SciAm article.

I want to unmask the lie that evolution denial is about religion…

Wait, stop right there. So one of the arguments is that evolution denial is NOT about religion, and Zempel has distorted this into her view that evolution denial IS her religion? OK.

…and recognize that at its core, it is a form of white supremacy that perpetuates segregation and violence against Black bodies. Under the guise of “religious freedom,” the legalistic wing of creationists loudly insists that their point of view deserves equal time in the classroom. Science education in the U.S. is constantly on the defensive against antievolution activists who want biblical stories to be taught as fact. In fact, the first wave of legal fights against evolution was supported by the Klan in the 1920s. Ever since then, entrenched racism and the ban on teaching evolution in the schools have gone hand in hand. In his piece, What We Get Wrong About the Evolution Debate, Adam Shapiro argues that “the history of American controversies over evolution has long been entangled with the history of American educational racism.”

The major point of the article is that the scientific view encompasses the totality of human history, and that humans aren’t always light-skinned, and even modern light-skinned people had darker-skinned ancestors, so what’s with this idea that humans are only 6,000 years old and the different races were established at the time of Noah’s Ark? It doesn’t argue against Christianity at all, but only that one bad idea that creationists strive to get into our educational curriculum, and that historically, creationism has used racial divisions in America to promote itself.

The KKK was and is a white Christian organization. Pointing that out is not the same as saying Christianity and the KKK are synonymous.

Zempel continues on in her naive lumper ways and makes another point that I agree with, but that also undermines her argument.

The complete title of Charles Darwin’s seminal book was “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.” In his book “The Descent of Man,” Darwin recorded, “The Western nations of Europe … now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors [that they] stand at the summit of civilization,” and said, “The civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races through the world.” In other words, Darwin’s white supremacy was underpinned by his evolutionary theory, the same theory Hopper champions.

Darwin’s white supremacist musings weren’t confined to the page. As Phil Moore noted, Darwin’s evolutionary theory influenced racism and genocide the world over. In America, it was used to justify the killing of Native Americans. In Germany, the Holocaust. In the Soviet Union, the murder of non-Russian people. The Serbs used it to rationalize the genocide against Kosovans and Croatians.

Yes! Darwin held racist views, as did many of the promoters of evolution in the 19th and 20th century. The theory has been greatly abused as an endorsement of genocide and oppression. That is entirely true.

But I can also say, in an accurately synonymous way, that Christianity has been greatly abused as an endorsement of genocide and oppression.

That does not imply that the theory or Christianity are necessarily false, or that opposing genocide and oppression are therefore directly opposing the science or the religion. You won’t see many scientists or Christians saying that we can’t condemn King Leopold II’s brutal and inhuman treatment of his African colony, or the slave trade, or the Holocaust, because that would be anti-evolutionary, or anti-Christian. We can oppose the false interpretation of science or religion without being anti-science or anti-faith.

But that’s what the goons at the Federalist want you to believe: by opposing their racism and misogyny and ignorance, we are opposing God himself.

Who are these “New Atheists” of which you speak?

It was stupid, misleading terminology when it was coined (by Gary Wolf in Wired in 2006), and it just became more muddled as everyone tried to make sense of it, and now it’s an embarrassing liability. Even before organized atheism imploded, “New Atheist” confused everyone — it wasn’t “new” after all, and it was only defined by listing a small group of people who were somehow representative. And now there’s more wrangling in the atheosphere about who belongs. Simple answer: no one, and we shouldn’t care.

Anyway, after a brief discussion with Abbey on our Discord server, I do decree a new title that is far more descriptive and less divisive, in some ways. Henceforth, the group of people previously described as “New” shall be addressed as the Smug Atheists. It covers a broader swath of the community and also has a more explicit and accurate quality.

So it shall be done.

“No” is less than “Why?”

If you’re looking for a calm conversation about the latest split in the atheist community (don’t ask, it doesn’t matter), here’s Thomas Smith, Kevin Logan, and Kristi Winters talking about it. I just wanted to pull out one YouTube comment that makes me see red — it’s the same attitude that I think is one of the major contributors to the poisoning of the movement, and one I’ve addressed before.

Atheism is a singular answer to a singular question.
The answer is “No”.
The Question, “Is there a god?”
Nothing else should be attached to this definition, by either the right or the left.

So…atheism is a dogma, I guess. There is one question and one answer, and then you’re done. Makes it easy.

I would just ask, how did you arrive at your answer? Is it built on any philosophical foundation at all?

And then I would ask, how does that answer inform your views on everything else? Or does it?

Those are the interesting and important questions, and the answer to those matter. “No” is just an empty negation in a vacuum and is spectacularly stupid and uninteresting.

Come on down to Kent’s Krazy Kult Kompound!

There’s something funny going on down in Alabama, at Kent Hovind’s Dinosaur Adventure Land. It’s getting a bit cult-like, with Hovind constructing various buildings with money of murky provenance, and whole families coming down to camp out on the grounds and attend the little repetitive indoctrination seminars he records and puts on his YouTube channel. He’s also up to his old con man tricks. It’s difficult to piece together because all we’ve got to go on are accounts from the kind of people who fall for Hovind’s line of patter and subsequently see through it all and get out. Like Mary Tocco, his second wife, for instance.

Kent is intelligent, charming, humorous and talented. I cannot deny that I fell in love with Kent and his ministry whole-heartedly and believed that he was the man that of God I was preparing my life for. I did not date him while he was married and I never spoke with him while he was in prison as some people have alleged. We saw each other professionally for the first time when I went to Pensacola, Florida in April of 2016 for the purpose of using Kent’s videography resources to produce an educational video on my own area of research that happens to be a cause that Kent supports. At that time I knew nothing about Kent’s personal or family life.

That’s reality — I might find Kent Hovind repulsive, but there are plenty of people who like the guy, like his message, and like him so much that they send him money…or marry him. Well, sort of: knowing Kent’s anti-government beliefs, they didn’t get a marriage certificate, but were married on the basis of Kent’s authority.

The honeymoon didn’t last, though, and Tocco left him because he was scheming and scamming and dodging tax law, and she didn’t want to end up like his first wife, sent to prison for being an accomplice.

Finally, I requested the opportunity to address these concerns in a meeting with Kent and the trustee of the DAL board. I had learned enough to be able to ask specific questions about how the business was being conducted. Much to my dismay, their side of the discussion was a terribly disappointment, and more accurately appalling. I shook my head in disbelief as I heard statements repeatedly such as, “well, that’s a gray area” and “I think we could explain it this way to defend ourselves, if we had to in court”. I was told to forget my concerns because they would likely be civil issues anyway, not criminal. It was one of the most unacceptable discussions I have ever witnessed, especially given the past of the men speaking.

Yeah, he’s playing games with his taxes again. Fortunately for Tocco, she got out.

Kent removed his wedding band three months later. In November 2017, he renounced his marriage to me and informed me he was looking for a new wife. He is now married to his third wife, Cindi Lincoln, who was previously my friend when I lived in Alabama.

That is so telling. To Hovind, marriage isn’t a mutual contract, it’s something he can decree or renounce one-sidedly. Read any of the accounts by the people who have escaped his orbit, and it’s non-stop alarm bells.

Then there’s his association with a convicted pedophile. This is where it gets tangled, and the story suffers because, goddamn, none of these people know how to put together a clear journalistic narrative. So there are these patchwork scrapbookings of assembled Facebook posts that are really hard to read, and rambling videos by unhappy ex-followers. To boil it down a bit, Kent Hovind has a mutually loyal relationship with a guy named Chris Jones, the convicted pedophile. There are excerpts in which he baldly states that sure, he’s a convicted pedophile, but he was convicted by the same system that found him, Kent Hovind, guilty of tax dodging, so it’s all a lie. Besides, he’s down there at Dinosaur Adventure Land all the time, helping out with the work of running the place, helping the families who come down, playing with all the kids they’ve got frolicking about…

What did I tell you? Alarm bells. Great shrieking sirens.

If you don’t believe me, a liberal radical college professor, here’s a good ol’ truck-drivin’ Southern boy, a man who was briefly under Hovind’s spell and then saw the light.

I didn’t think I would be back over here talking about Kent Hovind on this channel but it’s where my platform is so that’s where I’m at. But some authorities definitely need to start stepping up their investigations of this so-called christian organization. It is nothing less than a cult at this point. What other “theme park” is building churches in the middle of their conpound. Dinosaur Adventure Land definitely needs child protective services over watching them. From accusations of child abduction to a child drowning and now a child that nobody knows of his whereabouts…..or at least nobody has been informed even people have asked…..and this child was traveling alone with a convicted child m0lester.

Now I might just be some dumb truck driver but at the same time I do know how to put two and two together and see that there is a lot of fishiness going on. Numerous people have come out stating how unsafe Kent Hovind’s Dinosaur Adventure Land is.

After this last year with Kent Hovind openly and publicly stating that he has an open invitation for Chris(the convicted child abuser) to come at anytime to DAL…… I do not understand how any parent in their right mind would have their kids there.

But certainly if these accusations are true about this boy and Chris then the authorities obviously need to get involved as well as answers from Kent and anyone else involved in any sort of cover-up.

And of course you would have people out there asking why Kent Hovind would have anything to answer for when it’s only his friend….. quite simply due to him openly inviting him to a place that Kent himself admits is intended for children and Kent knows his criminal history makes him culpable for anything that happens.

There’s a lot I’ve skipped over, like the child who drowned, and the missing child, and who knows what else.

There is definitely a lot of fishy stuff going on in Alabama, and it needs exposure. Any journalists want to take it on? Or shall we wait until something truly tragic and sordid and scandalous happens, and the True Crime authors can take over?

AiG thinks incest is just fine, after all

At their Creation “Museum” and at the Ark Park, Answers in Genesis does have displays justifying all the incest in the Bible — everyone was less corrupted by the Fall back then, you know. So an editor publishing an article in a journal he edits, run by his employer, is perfectly fine, I guess.

The article below is from Dan Phelps, who happens to be a real geologist.

Today I received a press-release (provided below) for a paper published by Answers in Genesis’s geologist, Dr. Andrew Snelling. The paper claims, among many other things, that certain rocks in the Grand Canyon were folded before they were lithified (turned to rock) and this “proves” the rocks formed recently in Noah’s Flood of 2348 BC. This is total nonsense. I read the paper, which includes much extraneous material that appears to be present to impress AiG’s supporters rather than to convince geologists. The paper presents sundry creationist claims about radiometric decay as if they were widely-accepted when they are not considered such outside of Young Earth Creationist (YEC) circles. The paper concludes that the rocks in question formed during the “global Genesis Flood cataclysm about 4,350 years ago” This paper is, in reality, a parody of a scientific paper, designed to impress non-scientists.

Note that the paper is published in AiG’s own “journal” (Answers Research Journal) which Snelling, himself, is THE editor. The instructions for authors of this self-published journal (below) are rather revealing. Papers are judged for publication based on their “biblical stand” and other religious criteria. Specifically, the instructions for authors states “The editor-in-chief will not be afraid to reject a paper if it does not properly satisfy the above criteria or if it conflicts with the best interests of AiG as judged by its biblical stand and goals outlined in its statement of faith.” This is, quite obviously, not what a real science journal would do. The paper was not submitted, to my knowledge, to a peer-reviewed journal such as Geological Society of America Bulletin, Geology, or any of a number of journals devoted to structural geology. If Answers in Genesis really wishes to convince the scientific community as to the validity of their claims, why is this? Wouldn’t impressing the scientific community with convincing arguments be more important than convincing laypeople and potential donors if AiG’s goals were honorable?

The claims that these rocks were soft when deformed have been presented by young earth creationists for a number of years and geologists find them laughable because of evidence to the contrary and creationist’s apparent ignorance of the dynamics of how folded rocks form. See for example a chapter on this very subject in the book Grand Canyon: Monument to an Ancient Earth. Available here: https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Canyon-Monument-Ancient-Earth/dp/0825444217

The press-release for the paper put out by AiG is found below.

Here are the instructions for authors of Answers Research Journal: https://assets.answersingenesis.org/doc/articles/research-journal/instructions-to-authors.pdf

See especially page 13:

Answers Research Journal’s instructions for authors-

“VIII. Paper Review Process

Upon the reception of a paper, the editor-in-chief will follow the procedures below: A. Notify the author of the paper’s receipt
B. Review the paper for possible inclusion into the ARJ review process
The following criteria will be used in judging papers:
1. Is the paper’s topic important to the development of the Creation and Flood model?
2. Does the paper’s topic provide an original contribution to the Creation and Flood model?
3. Is this paper formulated within a young-earth, young-universe framework?
4. If the paper discusses claimed evidence for an old earth and/or universe, does this paper offer a very constructively positive criticism and provide a possible young-earth, young-universe alternative?
5. If the paper is polemical in nature, does it deal with a topic rarely discussed within the origins debate?
6. Does this paper provide evidence of faithfulness to the grammatical-historical/normative interpretation of Scripture? If necessary, refer to the following: R. E. Walsh, 1986. “Biblical Hermeneutics and Creation.” In Proceedings First International Conference on Creationism, vol. 1, 121–127. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship.
Remark:
The editor-in-chief will not be afraid to reject a paper if it does not properly satisfy the above criteria or if it conflicts with the best interests of AiG as judged by its biblical stand and goals outlined in its statement of faith. The editors play a very important initial role in preserving a high level of quality in the ARJ, as well as protecting AiG from unnecessary controversy and review of clearly inappropriate papers.”

Here is the press release AiG issued today.

Creation Scientist’s Ground-Breaking Research at Grand Canyon Published

4-Year Study Helps Confirm Rapid Formation of the Canyon’s Layers by Massive Flooding

Petersburg, Kentucky, June 23, 2021 – A bedrock belief of evolutionary geologists has been convincingly undermined today with the publication of ground-breaking Grand Canyon research conducted by geologist Dr. Andrew Snelling of Answers in Genesis (AiG).

A scientist with the highest credentials, Dr. Snelling spent more than four years studying layers in the walls of Grand Canyon in Arizona, especially where those rock layers are not lying flat but are folded. Dr. Snelling, a creationist, has just released his stunning findings in the peer-reviewed Answers Research Journal. His research helps confirm a rapid formation of those massive Canyon layers and contradicts the belief that they were formed over millions of years, as is commonly accepted by geologists. His in-depth paper can be found at https://answersingenesis.org/geology/rock-layers/petrology-tapeats-sandstone-tonto-group/.

Throughout Grand Canyon, thick rock layers appear which are smoothly bent (some close to being at a right angle—see photo). Dr. Snelling observes: “Normally, solid rock cannot bend without breaking, so this leaves only two options for bending: either the rock layer was bent while still soft, shortly after being deposited by water, or after the layer had fully hardened, it was bent by pressures which made the rock plastic, like playdough. Geologists who believe the layers were laid down over millions of years accept the latter option.”

Dr. Snelling points out that for hardened rock to bend without breaking, it must undergo metamorphic changes in its mineral content as well as its structure, including at the microscopic level. At the outset of his research, his question was: is there any evidence of the hard rock in the bent layers being metamorphosed?

Dr. Snelling examined samples from two prominent folds in Grand Canyon. His research concluded: “By comparing the Tapeats Sandstone samples from the folds with other Tapeats Sandstone samples located far from the folds, no metamorphism has occurred. Therefore, our four-year research project confirms that these rock layers were bent while they were still soft, after rapid deposition.” Dr. Snelling also concludes: “This is tremendous evidence that the Canyon’s rock layers were laid down during a massive flood and subsequently bent before any of the layers had hardened.” Dr. Snelling suggests this evidence is consistent with the effects of Noah’s flood and its aftermath.

The “uniformitarian” argument—namely, that the layers of rock (or “strata”) at huge canyons like Grand Canyon were laid down over millions of years—has been powerfully challenged by this seminal study of rocks Dr. Snelling personally collected inside the folds of the canyon.

The quandary now for those who argue for millions of years for the canyon’s layering is: how could these hard layers, which were bent supposedly 450 million years after they formed, not shatter during the bending process? Dr. Snelling declares: “Observational science tells us that rock layers must be soft when they fold. But over the supposed 450 million years, how could they possibly have remained soft until they were then bent?”

Ken Ham, CEO and founder of AiG, states: “Dr. Snelling’s monumental research confirms what should be obvious to all geologists: such folds must have been formed relatively quickly before the thick rock layers hardened. It’s a major blow to long-age geologic thinking.”

Dr. Snelling, with an earned doctorate in geology from one of the world’s leading institutions, the University of Sydney, had long recognized that more creationist research in geology was needed to explain the formation of the massive layers exposed in canyon systems around the world—and whether they could be explained catastrophically (e.g., massive flooding) as opposed to the dogma of uniformitarian long-age thinking. (The arguments for a global flood, including from Dr. Snelling’s decades of research, are presented at AiG’s attractions, the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum.)

The evolutionists’ story about the formation of Grand Canyon in Arizona is that the rock layers at the Canyon were laid down over very long ages. Then the Canyon was carved through them over millions of years by the slow erosive powers of the Colorado River. Because of their dogmatic thinking, officials and academics associated with Grand Canyon National Park tried to prevent Dr. Snelling from conducting this study, expressing disdain in emails about his religious and creationist beliefs. In 2017, international media reported that Dr. Snelling finally received the research permits he had first requested from the park in 2014 so that he could continue his field work inside the canyon. Presented with the clear-cut, documented evidence of an anti-Christian bias in the permits’ denial, the Departments of Justice and the Interior agreed; the Grand Canyon National Park changed course and issued Dr. Snelling’s research permits.

Ham hailed Dr. Snelling’s research: “This scientist with top credentials has offered powerful new evidence of the rapid formation of Grand Canyon’s layers during the global flood of Noah’s day followed by the canyon’s quick formation. His superb work exemplifies AiG’s ongoing original research, conducted by full-time PhD scientists from renowned institutions who have published in leading science journals. Our faculty also work in other fields such as genetics, paleontology, and astronomy to help confirm the Genesis account of origins as well as Noah’s flood.”
Research Background

Dr. Snelling collected rock samples on a research trip through the Grand Canyon in August 2017 in order to investigate the nature of the folding of strata in the Canyon. Dr. Snelling stated: “The Tapeats Sandstone is a formation 30-100 meters thick that prominently outcrops through the walls of Grand Canyon for about 500 kilometres. Erosion of the underlying Precambrian basement rocks produced what’s well-known in geological circles as the ‘The Great Unconformity,’ upon which the Tapeats Sandstone was deposited. The Great Unconformity, in fact, has been traced across several continents.”

Dr. Snelling added: “The mineralogical content, textural features, sedimentary structures, continental-scale deposition, paleocurrent directions matching continental patterns, and even the tracks and traces of transitory invertebrates, all indicate rapid burial and are consistent with the catastrophic erosion of the Great Unconformity near the initiation of the global Genesis flood cataclysm, only about 4,350 years ago.”

Dr. Snelling is a member of eight professional geology groups. One of his prior research projects included a study at the Koongarra uranium deposit in Australia. Dr. Snelling is also the author of the two-volume Earth’s Catastrophic Past and hundreds of articles on geology. Several more articles are to come on Dr. Snelling’s original research at Grand Canyon.

To read Dr. Snelling’s research paper, visit: https://answersingenesis.org/arj.

Answers in Genesis is an apologetics (i.e., Bible-affirming) ministry based in northern Kentucky. Its Ark Encounter opened in 2016 and features a 510-foot-long Noah’s ark. West of the Cincinnati Airport and next to the AiG headquarters, the Creation Museum has also become a major family attraction. Both venues are experiencing huge crowds this month, with some record-setting days.

Hucksters hear the blunt facts about the Serpent Mound

The Serpent Mound in Ohio is an amazing artifact of a past culture — earthworks over 400m long in the shape of a snake.

You can imagine how the European colonizers of the area regarded this immense communal work of architecture…or don’t imagine, just see what a mess they made of the story.

“Unfortunately the Serpent Mound has become the epicenter of efforts to appropriate sacred American Indian sites and replace the Indigenous story with all sorts of fantastic, absurd stories,” said during his solstice presentation.

“Let’s be absolutely clear. At the heart of these myths and fantastic stories is the racist notion that American Indians were too stupid to have built something so wonderful,” he added.

Right. There’s Graham Hancock, of course, babbling about “The Ancients” and a world-spanning civilization of New Age stargazers, or various people on the History Channel claiming that it’s evidence of a race of giants, because, after all, American Indians were too short to build large structures, so there had to be a population of 9 or 10 foot tall giants to build these mounds. It’s disrespectful and nonsensical.

In recent years, activities at the mound have taken on the quality of what Barnes describes as a minstrel show disrespecting and appropriating Native cultures.

Since the 1987 Harmonic Convergence, the mound has become a mecca for followers of New Age spirituality. The idea of the Convergence was created by author and art historian Jose Arguelles who claimed August 16-17, 1987, were significant dates in the Maya calendar and represented an especially auspicious time to meditate for global peace.

Some New Age activities such as digging and burying items in the mound, forwarding information purporting that the effigy was built by aliens from space or prehistoric giants and misrepresenting Native connections to the site has been of growing concern to tribal leaders like Wallace and Barnes. Of even greater concern was the way that past managers of the Serpent Mound site often turned a blind eye to these activities, sometimes allowing such practitioners to manage and stage events at the mound. This sent a message to the public that these wild theories were part of the official history of the site according to Wallace and Barnes.

It was supposed to be a kind of cosmic bomb shelter for people at the end of the world predicted by the Mayan calendar to occur in 2012, for instance. You may have noticed we didn’t achieve world peace in 1987, and the world is still here in 2021, and that whole Mayan calendar thing was nothing more than the end of a calendar cycle. That reminds me — I’ll have to get a new calendar in January. Either that, or the world is ending at midnight on 31 December. Hey, what do the Maya have to do with the native people of Ohio, anyway?

Jason Colavito has a thorough dissection of the absurdist pseudo-history of Serpent Mound. Would you believe that some claim it is a cathedral for a global penis-worshipping cult? Of course you would. There are loonies everywhere, and they tend to get rewarded with a “documentary” series on the History Channel.

The summer solstice was just this past weekend, so I took a look at the calendar of events for Serpent Mound. There was some good stuff about the history of the area and the archaeology of the mound, but also…Bigfoot? Nephilim? New Age quacks peddling crystals and herbs? Whoever runs this event has no integrity at all and willfully misrepresents the truth to make a buck.

The good news though, is that at least this time the organizers invited some of the descendants of the people who actually built the mound to come speak. That’s a little progress.

The Shawnee tribe returned home to the Serpent Mound on the longest day of the year.

The Summer Solstice, June 20, the longest day of the year, marks the first time that the Shawnee tribe has officially returned to the Serpent Mound located in Ohio to present their history and connection to this place that they called home so many years ago.

Although it was certainly ancestors of the Shawnee people who built the magnificent serpent shaped mound, the largest earthwork effigy in the world, Ohio failed to involve the tribe in conveying its meaning to the public until now.

Glenna Wallace, chief of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and Ben Barnes, chief of the Shawnee Tribe, also located in Oklahoma, spent the weekend telling visitors to the Serpent Mound historical site about their peoples’ and ancestors’ connection to Ohio and the mound.

I also like the title of the article: “Shawnee reclaim the great Serpent Mound: Ancestors of Native Americans, not prehistoric giants or space aliens, built the mound in Ohio”. The white people who run the solstice event ought to be embarrassed that they had to invite Indians, who had been dispossessed from the land and treated as primitives who couldn’t have built the structure, to come back and tell them the simple truth.