Reader wombat found a fascinating site in response to the creationist debate in Kentucky, led by Dr. Ben Scripture. It’s an utterly bizarre page about a petrified human brain, and it is typical creationist tripe. They have gathered a collection of “authorities”, where they make much of their pedigrees (don’t blame me, the “Dr. X, Ph.D.” is the redundant formula they use on the site.)

• Dr. Suzanne Vincent, Ph.D., a neuroanatomist(!) at Oral Roberts University
• Dr. Ross Anderson, Ph.D. of The Masters College
• Dr. Bedros Daghlian, M.D., a retired doctor
• Dr. Ben Scripture, Ph.D. in biology
• Dr. Travis Shipley, Ph.D. in theology (snort!)
• Dr. Frederick Trexler, Ph.D. in geology and Physics

The photos show these people and others gushing over this lump of rock, with testimonials like:

• “It is scientifically impossible for this to not be a brain”
• “Clearly, this is the brain stem and spinal cord, see it wrapped around there? Everything right where it is supposed to be.”
• “Dr. Daghlian checked microscopically, and confirmed residue to appear cellular.”
• “…I spent several years in medicine before obtaining my Doctorate in Theology. When I reviewed the x-rays of the rock and different brains, I chose incorrectly which was which!”

After all that, you’d expect to find some remarkable degree of similarity, wouldn’t you? It convinced a neuroanatomist, after all, and surely all those people with their fancy degrees couldn’t be fooled. But then they show us a close-up photo of this “brain”.

They’ve got to be kidding. That’s a lumpy rock. It’s no brain; I’ve seen a lot of brains in my time, from fish to frogs to lizards to birds to all kinds of mammals, and that looks nothing like any of them. Here, in case you haven’t seen one, is a photo of a human brain:

This is the Ed Conrad effect. Hand some ignorant people a random lump of rock, tell them it’s a fossil, and their imaginations will do the rest. There is no excuse for these “experts”, though — the author of the page claims that “It has been examined and determined to be a petrified human brain by many people with high degrees in several different fields of study and occupation.” That just goes to show that even the most qualified people in creation ‘science’ have to be flaming idiots.