Entry #067: Bruce Chapman

I know you are tired of these tired, old YECs, but this series is supposed to something of a reference work, so we will cover them. Chapman is one of the most over-the-top lunatic anti-evolutionists (blithering idiots) at the Discovery Institute. In fact, Chapman is the president of the Discovery Institute, and seems to believe that this position confers on him the power to pass judgment on science in a manner slightly reminiscent on the infallibility conferred on the pope when he’s helped up on the pope-throne the first time.

This one, an attack on Expelled Exposed (a project committed to exposing the dishonesty and stupidity of the Expelled movie) is a good example of his idiocy. It must be read to be believed (no, I am not going to generate traffic to DI, so I’m linking to a level-headed discussion of the article in question). Like most ID’ers, Chapman knows virtually nothing about evolutionary biology, and even less about the scientific method (not understanding, for instance, that science is done by experiment and evidence, not arguments, and that truth is discovered through careful, controlled research, not through attempts to sway public opinion; the article discussed here is astoundingly ironic).

Has among other things, argued at length that the Pope himself is the true victim in the recent, well, scandals involving the Catholic Church, and has argued (“ranted delusionally” is more appropriate) at length that the health care reform is unconstitutional. Apparently, his talents range wide; here is some financial advice, and here is his discovery that the earth is cooling rather than warming - yes, global warming is a leftist conspiracy carried aloft by the promise of … an endless flow of grant money, apparently. All of it is written with the sharp wit and overwhelming flashes of genius we’ve come to expect from Chapman. And here is some plain old dishonesty and stupidity.



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Diagnosis: Blathering idiot whose misapprehensions of what science is and how it works are simply to deep to be reversible in a lifetime. Has some power, and must be considered dangerous, despite the clownish appearance with respect to intellect.

Entry #057: Russell Carlson

 

Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology University of Georgia, signer of the Discovery Institute's A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism. Member of DI research fellow William Dembski's The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID).

I don’t really have anything in particular on this guy. He testified at the Kansas evolution hearings and doubts evolution, predictably enough, for religious reasons. His main claim to deserving inclusion in the lexicon is as a representative of a relatively long row of fundamentalist religious scientists and compartmentalizers who are able to do science in one field but submerge themselves fully in confirmation bias with respects to others they know less about. In other words, he’s here because science and sanity are fed up with these kinds of destructive cranks.

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Diagnosis: Crackpot with non-negligible influence.

Entry #051: John Angus Campbell

Campbell is a retired American Professor of Rhetoric and is a Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture (a branch of the Discovery Institute) and of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, a professional society dedicated to – you guessed it – the promotion of intelligent design (yes, its the Dembski rubbish, discussed here, here, here and in general here).

Together with Stephen C. Meyer (who is also a Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture) he edited “Darwinism, Design and Public Education”, a collection of articles from the journal Rhetoric and Public Affair (not science; click here to download Barbara Forrest’s criticism).

Campbell is also on the school board in North Mason County, Washington. How he got there splendidly illustrates the tactics of contemporary creationists (as laid down in the Wedge document, for that matter). He ran as ”John Campbell”, and during his campaign did not disclose his links to intelligent design. In an interview he stated that he would not be dealing with curricula, and that he is a "Darwinist" who considers that debating Darwin can engage the interest of students and improve their skills in critical thinking. He was quoted as saying "Rather than demonizing people that believe in ID, I think there are ways people could use their ideas to study Darwinism more closely.” He was subsequently elected. The story is discussed here, and here.

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Diagnosis: Wormtongued weasel and crackpot. Dangerous.

Entry #043: William (Bill) Buckingham

Buckingham is the creationist strategist behind the Dover Area School District Board of Education’s decision to “teach the controversy” (i.e. try to wedge in religion in schools), the process that lead to the famous Dover Trial. This bizarre series of events got rolling when the Board voted 6-3 to "challenge" evolution. Under the leadership of Buckingham they added a one paragraph disclaimer to the local high school biology curriculum, garbling the regular curriculum with "teach the controversy" and promoting the "scientific alternative" of intelligent design and using the "textbook" Of Pandas and People as a reference. Buckingham mentioned creationism and raised objections to proposed use of the textbook Biology written by Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine, describing it as "laced with Darwinism" and saying it was "inexcusable to have a book that says man descended from apes with nothing to counterbalance it." The dissenting members of the school board resigned in protest and the measure carried. Buckingham had previously wanted to use Of Pandas and People in the classroom to teach both sides of the creation-evolution "debate”.

Buckingham’s testimony during the trials (proudly displaying his almost complete ignorance and lack of intelligence) is discussed here. Even the defense during the trial attempted to distance itself from Buckingham. The creationists attempted to claim that ID is science, not religion; Buckingham was less concerned about that distinction, trying instead to argue (unsuccessfully) that "nowhere in the Constitution does it call for a separation of church and state” (a claim the Discovery Institute has later defended). He summed up the trial, the main issue of which was whether ID is science or thinly disguised religion, by famously declaring "Two thousand years ago someone died on a cross. Can't someone take a stand for him?"

See also the entry for Alan Bonsell.

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Diagnosis: Taliban fundamentalist, madman and crackpot; exasperatingly ignorant, blathering idiot. Fotunately he is stupid enough to harm the ID movement more than help it.

Entry #033: Alan Bonsell

Young earth creationist and former Dover School Board President. Bonsell was, together with the more famous Bill Buckingham, the strategist behind the Dover curriculum - which was later judged to violate the Establishment clause in the famous Dover trial. Bonsell was apparently the one who had read up on the subject before the curriculum was passed and wished evolution and creation to be taught “fifty-fifty” (initiating campaigns to convince concerned teachers). Bonsell is also a known fan of the reconstructivist work of David Barton (see the entry for David Barton in the Encyclopedia), having distributed Barton’s book “The Myth of Separation” to several board members.

One of the notable events during the Dover trial was when Bonsell initially testified that he did not know where the money had been raised to donate sixty copies of “Of Pandas and People” to the school's library. He admitted later that the money had been raised in William Buckingham's church, and directed through Bonsell's father so that it might be donated anonymously.

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Diagnosis: Liar for Jesus; crackpot who is unable to recognize the difference between fact and opinion; despite his previous anti-scientific campaigns, he seems to be relatively neutralized by now.

Entry #024: David Berlinski

Berlinski is one of the movers and shakers of the contemporary creationist movement, associated with the Discovery Institute and one of their most frequent and famous debaters. A delusional, pompous narcissist with an ego to fit a medieval pope. Also a name-dropper (most of his talks concern important people he has talked to). A comment on one of his lunatic self-aggrandizing rants can be found here (sums up this guy pretty well).

He is apparently really angry at evolution (it is unclear why), and famous for his purely enumerative “cows cannot evolve into whales” argument.

Berlinski was once a moderately respected author of popular-science books on mathematics. He can still add numbers together, but has forgotten the GIGO rule (“garbage in, garbage out") of applied mathematics. Some of his rantings are discussed here.

Likes to play ‘the skeptic’ (which means denialism in this case, and that is not the same thing). (For a nice description of the difference between skepticism and paranoid denialism, I recommend these three articles: here, here, and here.)

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Diagnosis: Boneheaded, pompous and arrogant nitwit; has a lot of influence, and a frequent participator in debates, since apparently the Discovery Institute thinks that’s the way scientific disputes are settled (although he often takes a surprisingly moderate view in debates, leading some to suspect that he is really a cynical fraud rather than a loon).

Entry #020: Michael Behe

Our next loon, Michael Behe, is a prime example of what can happen when loonery disguises itself as real science. Behe is one of the most ardent and influential creationist out there; covered in more detail here and here.

Behe himself claims to accept (for instance) common descent and an old (13+ Billion years) universe. However evidence shows that he is a straightforward creationist. He consistently argues that his purported evidence that evolutionary theory does not work is automatically evidence for ID. The shifting of goalposts is obvious when he tries to argue that his opponents are inconsistent in arguing that ID is unfalisifiable (e.g. Coyne) and empirically refuted (e.g. Doolittle). In refusing to admit that Doolittle’s experiments - which falsified his specific predictions concerning blood clotting - were a falsification of the testable claims he forwarded with respect to irreducible complexity, Behe spectacularly demonstrates that Coyne is right to deem ID unfalsifiable (insofar as its supporters continuously change the goalposts).

Behe is also a religious apologist in general, serving as an “expert witness” for several religion related court cases.

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Diagnosis: Strongly under the spell of confirmation bias, dishonest and a crackpot. As perhaps the leading creationist today, Behe is very influential and dangerous.

Entry #008: Douglas Axe

Axe is a zealous creationist associated with the Discovery Institute (he is the director at their “Biologic Institute"). Axe is a molecular biologist, and thus actually knows some science. He uses this knowledge to write mundane papers, at least two of which have been published in low-tier, although genuine, journals - despite being uninteresting and mundane. Axe’s work is hailed by the Discovery Institute as evidence for their views. Of course, there is no actual support of intelligent design in these published papers, and Axe himself admits as much.



Insofar as Axe is a creationist with real scientific publications to his name, Axe’s work is one of the main contributions to a sheen of legitimacy for the ID movement. But given that his publications do not at all support or even touch on their views (but are willfully interpreted as such by other ID-proponents without Axe complaining) he is an important contributor to erecting the framework of dishonesty that is the ID movement.

And he shows himself to be extremely fond of the standard Creationist false dichotomy: If just evolution were shown to be false then creationism would be correct. He seems nevertheless to be dimly aware of the problem with this assumption, and he makes some rather feeble attempts at goalpost-moving his way around them.

And no; despite being touted as the scientist of the DiscoTute, he doesn't have the most tenuous grasp of biology, as evidenced by this feeble and profound misunderstanding of basic notions.

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Diagnosis: Dishonest wingnut who might pose a genuine if minor threat to science and rationality as a creationist with actually published (though unrelated) material.

Entry #002: Howard Ahmanson

Our second loon is Howard Ahmanson.



Ahmanson is a financier of the Discovery Institute and several other fundamentalist causes, such as Proposition 8 in California. He is an extremely wealthy (multi-billionaire!) magnate whose political agenda is nicely captured in the following quotation: "My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives”.

Here's a link to some real information on this guy. A shadowy figure indeed.

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Diagnosis: Complete loon, extremely influential and very, very dangerous.