John Freshwater, the Ohio science teacher who uses his classroom to proselytize and promote creationism, is following a familiar tactic: LIE.

Supporters of a middle school science teacher facing firing for burning crosses into students’ arms were in the majority at a central Ohio school board meeting.

They gave John Freshwater a standing ovation when he rose to speak Monday night during the two-hour Mount Vernon school board meeting. He attended the meeting to say he has never branded or burned anyone.

This reminded me of chapter 5, “Never said it”, in Lauri Lebo’s excellent book on the Dover trial, The Devil in Dover^{(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll)}. This is the part of the book where the lawyers for the prosecution are trying to get an injunction to prevent the school board from going through with their attempts to promote ID in the classroom, and they bring in the defendants, Buckingham, Bonsell, and others, to corroborate the arguments documented in the press that they were looking for textbooks that blended evolution and creationism. And to the obvious consternation of the lawyers, they all simply lied and claimed that they’d never said it and the reporters had all made everything up. It was patently dishonest, but it essentially blocked the injunction and let them go ahead with their scheme.

Don’t worry, the chapter ends on a good note: Lebo gets footage from a local television that shows they lied, which will later come to good use in the actual trial.

It’s always disturbing to see how readily these creationists will lie for their own ends, and how happily their supporters will cheer for the lie.

The ever-hilarious Ray Comfort will be on radio station WDAY shortly, at 10am Central — tune in and leave your rebuttals, humorous sneers, brutal put-downs, and random comments here. I’ll be on the same station, same time tomorrow.

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Question: Explain what intelligent design is?

Answer: Everything is intelligently designed, it didn’t happen by accident. Explosions don’t produce order, they produce chaos. When he became a Christian, he claims he couldn’t find evidence to back up evolution. No species-to-species transitions in the fossil record.

He actually says this: Dogs do not have chickens. Chickens don’t lay eggs with puppies in them. This is apparently evidence against evolution.

Karen calls in with the Galileo issue: equates Comfort to an inquisitor. Comfort uses this to disavow Catholicism, and says “don’t blame Christians” for the Catholics. Weird.

Alex calls to ask what motivation scientists have for promoting evolution. Two answers: Morality. It lets them lust and sin at will. Money. You can get rich for just finding a bone.

Caller whose name I missed: animals have morality, and since there is no evidence for ID it shouldn’t be taught, but could be debated.

Answer: Dogs feel guilt. Claims there is proof for ID, which is, for every creation, there must be a creator. Paintings have a painter, etc.

Evolutionists claim there was nothing that created something, which is scientifically ludicrous.

John rambles on about how most people believe in god, so he doesn’t understand why there is a debate. No answer.

Another caller (Poe?) suggests that maybe astrology should be taught in astronomy, Atlantis in geology. Comfort replies by claiming that evolutionists are advocating censorship. Announcer brings up Expelled — complains that there was no evidence presented in the movie. Comfort claims that just showing the complexities of the cell is proof. The fact that people don’t fall off the earth is evidence for intelligent design?

Jason brings up the uncaused cause argument: if you’ve got one (god), why can’t there be more than one? Usual avoidance: god is eternal. Bleh. Agrees that other people invent gods, but his god is real.

Derek argues that the fairy-tale perfection of christian religious belief is unbelievable. Morality comes from events on earth.

Announcer asks about the banana argument. Comfort disavows it, claims that it was evolutionists taking it out of context to make him look bad.

A caller asks about Satan…we get biblical babble in reply.

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Announcer is skeptical about both sides. Comfort uses this as an excuse to trot out his tired “everyone is a sinner” argument and that you need to read the ten commandments. He’s just preaching at this point.

Cal calls in to promote Answers in Genesis. Phbbththbht. YEC idiot.

Carol is a paleontology student. She points out that they do not do it for the money, and that it’s because they love the work.

Sign out at 10:40am.

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That was truly awful. Comfort is a real ignoramus. However, I can see now why they decided not to do a debate: they really gave a lot of air time to callers, which is good, I think. If I’d been on at the same time, they wouldn’t have been heard over my snarling and bone-cracking and horrible slurping noises, and Comfort’s screams.

Ray flat out lied when he claimed that atheists misrepresented his banana argument by removing it from the context of his coke can analogy. Not true. Here’s the whole thing, both the coke can and the banana story, and it doesn’t help him: both parts are incredibly stupid.

I know many of you had your hearts set on a debate between me and Ray Comfort, but there has been a slight change of plans, for the better, I think. Instead of a debate, Comfort will be on tomorrow morning, Tuesday, at 10am Central time, and will express himself without fear of snorts of derision from me. I will then be on Wednesday, same time of day, to address the same topics. It’s a better plan, since we all know Comfort is going to gallop through a scattershot collection of nonsense, and I’ll be able to say something coherent in contrast the next day.

You can listen to WDAY radio live. I’ll open a thread Tuesday morning for anyone to state their opinions here as it plays out on the radio.