AiG is losing their tax incentives, so they’re going through various arcane legal maneuvers right now to…it’s not clear. They’re trying to convince the city of Williamstown to build a fire station on a peculiar piece of property, surrounded by AiG land? They want to build a Tower of Babel attraction to get new tax incentives? They’re meeting behind closed doors with city officials? Nobody knows, except the overpaid officals at Answers in Genesis.

Seeing all the convoluted nonsense they can squeeze out of the Bible, wait until they’re done twisting the law.

I received an email asking about eye evolution.

hi dear myers, im a turkish student. i study EEE but i have a deep profound curiousity towards evolution. i know that you mastered in evo devo. even though i didnt read any of your books since i live in turkey and could not find them.. i wrote an article in my own way concerning evolution and tried to express my feelings. im learning english by myself, i didnt want to use translator so you can see my sincerity and effort. to be honest i just wanted to express my feelings and get some advices and opinions from you, im just confused..

Here is the article i have written:

That’s perfectly acceptable English, so he shouldn’t be shy. However, as you’ll quickly see, he seems to think “article” is a synonym for “paragraph”. It’s not much of an article. I agree, he’s confused.

One thing about evolutionary biology that concerns me and feels unable to perceive is cells and organisms acting like as though they know what to do when constructing an organ.

That’s a common and fundamental misconception, the reading of intent and purpose into a series of events. Cells don’t “know” what they are doing — their genes are responding in a mechanical way to the environment. So error #1: trying to impose teleology on the system.

although it happens through blindwatchmaker situation, i still cannot grasp. for instance, an eye is a complex system and it feels like even though some may say it is a trial and error state throughout the evolutionary process it seems it happened with permission of a creator..

“Complexity”…that always comes up, and it’s irrelevant. Chance processes can easily produce complexity, and trial and error is an effective (if wasteful) way to build an eye. Natural selection and drift don’t need permission. They happen whether you like it or not.

it is still unclear to me a system like an eye whether it can build itself in such a short amount of time. cells behave as if they know which part they contribute whenever building an immense and flawless eye.

What is a “short amount of time”? Developmentally, an eye assembles itself in hours, days, weeks, or months, depending on the species, using nothing but physics and chemistry, and no one has seen the finger of a deity coming down to nudge cells into place. Again, it’s not about the cells “knowing”.

Oh, wait, he means such a short amount of time on an evolutionary scale? Silly. I’ve seen a zebrafish eye assemble in less than 24 hours, so I’m not that impressed with an eye organizing over hundreds of thousands of generation. It’s pretty cool, don’t get me wrong, and there’s much to learn about the process taking place from the pre-Cambrian to 400 thousand years ago, but it’s not an intimidatingly difficult thing to accomplish. It’s well within the power of evolution, and we have examples of the intermediate steps.

some may say there are genes such as HOX which responsible for the case i mentioned, its still unclear to me ,since i approach the problems as a philosophical problem..by saying “approaching as a philo problem” i meant digging deeper the origins of it..

i hope i could transfered my inquiries…

Oh god. Everyone babbles about Hox genes even if they know nothing about them — this is a shortcut the writer is using to pretend to knowing something about molecular genetics. He doesn’t. You know, you could at least say Pax genes instead of Hox, since Pax is more directly relevant to eye development. Hox genes are patterning genes that define segment identity along the body (or limb) axis, while Pax genes are involved in tissue differentiation and organogenesis.

It’s especially bad to trot out the sciencey word “Hox” just before telling me you approach eye evolution as a “philosopphical problem.” I don’t care about your philosophy, I want to know about the material process, with evidence. Philosophy in this case is simply his efforts to make post-hoc rationalizations for his preconceptions — he’s giving philosophy a bad name.

Oh boy, chew on this comment on my YouTube channel:

Don’t bother with the included link: it’s just an old one-eyed man dancing. No real content.

This is somehow a reply to my video in which I said that evolution wasn’t simply made up by some guy, Darwin. The comment starts out OK, saying that Darwin developed a theory to explain what he observed in nature…but then they go on to say that Darwin invented memetics (not true, you can blame Dawkins for that one), and that it is a divine language and that you MUST believe it originated in a creator. I think we’ve all heard that before. Then they tell us that the smartest people throughout all of time held the belief of a creator, and concludes with a little flattery that being a smart man I must also believe.

I guess I’m not as smart as @Toytime believes, because that is a load of horseshit.

Nathaniel Jeanson, that incompetent “geneticist” who was employed by Answers in Genesis, has a new gig: he has been hired by Columbia International University as a visiting research professor. This is not a step up in prominence. It’s actually kind of a step backwards, but the creationists will crow about the words without recognizing the meaning.

A “visiting research professor” is often a prestigious appointment, but it’s not an effective research position — it’s more of an attempt to bring a big name into connection with a university, and possibly forge new partnerships (Note: Jeanson is not a big name, except to the intellectually impoverished creationist community.) I’d be interested to know what the quid pro quo here might be, because he’s not going to improve the reputation of CIU.

Curiously, if you read that announcement from CIU, there’s no reference to Answers in Genesis anywhere in it. They name-drop Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, but the noisy loud creationist/Christian organization that has been associated with him for years? Not a whisper.

It’s unclear what they are going to accomplish with this appointment. He is still employed at AiG, they don’t discuss what his teaching duties will be, other than just talking to students. This is purely an attempt to swap titles and connections, but CIU is going to do this without openly acknowledging AiG.

This is also not going to help Jeanson’s career. CIU is a private Christian college that used to be called Columbia Bible College. It requires a whole lot of fundamentalist bullshit to graduate from there.

There are seven doctrinal points which students must consent to as a part of their admission to and candidacy for a degree from CIU. These are biblical inspiration, natural separation of humanity from God, salvation by grace through faith in Christ, the historical doctrine of the Trinity, the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the believer, and the evangelical mandate to witness to the gospel of Christ. The doctrine of Premillennialism is officially held by the school, but students are not required to adhere to this doctrine. CIU requires all teaching faculty to affirm Premillennialism.

That’s a fake school. It’s a Sunday School with delusions of grandeur.

This morning, I was surprised by a comment on this YouTube video, in which I pointed out the fallacies of a creationist, Rob Carter. That video starts with me summarizing my relevant background as a developmental biologist. This commenter then makes this scurrilous accusation!

First of all, did this guy even listen to the video before he rushed in with his knee-jerk defense of Rob Carter?

Secondly, I am not a population geneticist. I am a professor at a small liberal arts college, which means I have to be a jack-of-all-trades within my discipline — I can teach population genetics at the undergraduate level, but I would never claim to be a pop gen guy. That’s the domain of people like Dan Stern Cardinale and Zach Hancock on YouTube, and they could tie me in knots with their expertise. They definitely shred Rob Carter, who doesn’t even understand it as well as I do.

I am primarily a developmental biologist. That’s my focus and my interest, although in recent years I’ve been expanding that focus into eco-evo-devo…I’ve taught courses in that. My research is all about looking at the development of local spiders, to identify what factors in each species development shapes their adaptation to a particular niche, and how we can have so many different species of spiders co-existing in my backyard. To claim that I don’t understand the multiple factors that affect development is ludicrous. Rob Carter is just droning out buzzwords with little comprehension, and to someone who actually knows the subject he is discussing, he comes off as a fool.

Just a reminder: 15 years ago, in Dublin, Ireland, I was confronted by a group of Muslim apologists who tried to bamboozle me with claims about Mohammed’s revelations about development. They asked (at the 7 minute mark), Are you an embryologist?, to which I said “Yes,” and set them aback a bit.

I’ve always said I am a developmental biologist. My commenter was trying to make a peculiar ad hominem, suggesting that I was wrong because I’m only an old-fashioned population geneticist, and then rattling off a bunch of concepts that are actually the meat-and-potatoes of developmental biology.

Also, that DNA is just a passive information data repository nonsense is a strategem used by creationists to deny the significance of changes to the genome in evolution.

I just posted about building a ship model, and what happens? Ken Ham posts about building a model ark. I begin to suspect that he’s copying me.

We’ve partnered with an Australian businessman to produce a beautiful model kit of Noah’s ark (based on the Ark Encounter’s design) made from authentic Australian hoop pine. Available in three different sizes from “small” (over two feet long and 506 pieces) to large (over four feet long and 760 pieces!), this scale model is extremely detailed and comes apart to show off the three decks. Once complete, it makes a great display for your home or for churches, or it can be used as a conversation starter for outreach.

It’s not that detailed because it fails to include the large concrete office building asymmetrically grafted onto one side. The article reveals the construction method of the model.

Ick. It’s assembled from thin sheets of laser-cut pressboard, one of the cheapiest, laziest way to make a model…and which will almost certainly be incapable of holding together in water. It wouldn’t be worth the $200 and/or $800 they are asking for the two model sizes. I guess the extra layer of fakery and religion must add value to this piece of crap. My model only had love added, and I didn’t charge anyone for it.

Don’t waste your money on this inauthentic, cheaply-made nonsense.

It’s been afloat for about 10 years. When the notion was first proposed in a gambit to get state tax subsidies, Ken Ham & Co. said it would bring in 1.6 million tourists in the first year, and that that number would go up by about 4% each following years, with occasional surges by 10% as new planned exhibits were opened. By those 2015 estimates, they should be bringing in 2.5 million visitors this year. Are they?

• Year 1(JY 2016-JE 2017): est. 800,000 (50% of projected attendance)
• Year 2 (JY 2017-JE 2018): 865,761 (52% of projected attendance)
• Year 3 (JY 2018-JE 2019): 875,882 (51% of projected attendance)
• Year 4 (JY 2019-JE 2021): 841,772 (44% of projected attendance)
  Given the impact of COVID on Ark attendance, I left out March 2020-February 2021
• Year 5 (JY 2021-JE 2022): 775,731 (39% of projected attendance)
• Year 6 (JY 2022-JE 2023): 782,660 (36% of projected attendance)
• Year 7 (JY 2023-JE 2024): 764,258 (34% of projected attendance)
• Year 8 (JY 2024-JE 2025): 682,101 (27% of projected attendance)
• Year 9 (JY 2025-JE 2026): 664, 813 (26% of projected attendance)

For May-June 2026 I used the attendance numbers from May-June 2025. If history is any guide, this may serve to overestimate Year 9 attendance.

They made the invalid assumption that, after the novelty had worn off in the first year, they would get sustained growth for some reason. I’ve been there. I feel no desire to repeat my visit, especially after the ridiculous parking and admission fees. There is nothing there in the big wooden box! Once you’ve read the numerous silly and static infographics pasted on the walls, what would be the point?

I am amused that they only got about half their projected numbers in the first year, and it’s been declining ever since. They’re probably not suffering much, though, since the costs to maintain a big empty wooden box are probably relatively low.