ICR: It’s All About Death

Today we’ll visit the granddaddy of all creationist outfits, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) — the fountainhead of young-earth creationist wisdom. They have this new post at their website: Doubt Versus Unbelief. It’s by John D. Morris, Ph.D. At the end of the article we’re informed that “Dr. Morris is President of the Institute for Creation Research.”

Before we dig into the article we must pause for a bit of background, because there are so many people named Morris at ICR it can sometimes be challenging to know who’s who. ICR was founded by Henry Morris (1918-2006). The founder’s eldest son, Henry Morris III, is carrying on the family business as ICR’s Chief Executive Officer. His son, Henry IV (the grandson of ICR’s founder), is “Director of Donor Relations at the Institute for Creation Research.” He has a degree in Business from Liberty University. Verily, ICR is a creationist dynasty.

Another son of ICR’s founder, John D. Morris, is now president of ICR and is “best known for leading expeditions to Mt. Ararat in search of Noah’s Ark.” That one is today’s author. All clear? Fine, now we can get going. Here are some excerpts from his post, with bold font added by us and scripture links omitted:

Teachers and Christian leaders often encourage students to question things, for this can be a real impetus to growth. There’s nothing wrong with asking questions or even with having doubts, for they often expose wrong information and encourage further study.

We agree with that, but does ICR really want students to question creationism? That could mean the end of the Morris family business. Oh, no problem — the rest of the paragraph takes care of that:

As it relates to Scripture, there will always be a good answer, even if an initial lack of ready answers requires that we shelve the question for a future time. Our faith in the Word of God should be firm.

It’s permissible for students to ask questions, but only if their faith in ICR’s version of creationism remains firm. Let’s read on:

For a Christian, questions regarding evolution’s claims should lead to greater understanding, or a postponement of answers — not to disbelief. As they relate to evolution and the Flood, we have answers to many difficult questions now, and have reason to believe we’ll soon have more. We’ll never have all the answers this side of eternity, but there’s no need to disbelieve.

Right. Even if the Flood makes no sense at all, you gotta keep the faith. We continue:

Striving to accommodate long ages and evolution to Scripture, ardent Bible-believing Christians proposed various ways to incorporate them, concepts that still plague Christianity today. Those holding a higher view of Scripture gravitated to the gap theory, which places long ages between the first two verses of Genesis 1, followed by global destruction due to Satan’s fall and six days of re-creation. This allowed Christians to embrace both Christianity and long-age evolution.

Those blasphemous old-earth creationists! Here’s more:

Similarly, others succumbed to theistic evolution, for the same reason. Since in their minds science had “proved” evolution, they felt they salvaged Scripture by claiming evolution was God’s method of creation. … These accommodationist views compromised only Scripture — never was the evolution/long age/uniformitarian view altered at all.

Those wretched “accommodationists” made only one-sided accommodations. Moving along:

All such views suffer from the same weaknesses and can be refuted at length, as they have been in other writings. Suffice it to point out that all include a downgrading of the Flood to a local or tranquil flood that is not responsible for the rock and fossil record. They also weaken the doctrine of God’s creative majesty, substituting a trial and error approach for His sovereign, omniscient will.

How horrible! Those accommodationists will surely suffer an eternity in the Lake of Fire. It’s gotta be young-earth creationism, all the way. No compromises! Another excerpt:

According to all compromise views, death of conscious living things long predated man’s appearance, and certainly was present long before man’s sin incurred the Curse. But if physical death was here before sin, then it could not really be the “wages of sin” since it is indeed the key to man’s evolution. In evolution, death produced man by causing less fit types to go extinct over time. Thus, death is regarded as good, and by extension Christ’s death paid no such penalty.

Yes — it’s all about death! Evolutionists actually like death! Now that we see it spelled out so clearly, everything makes sense. Here’s the conclusion:

In this way, all compromise views negate non-negotiable doctrines. While it is not impossible for a Christian to believe in any of the compromises mentioned above, it is impossible for any one of them to be true if Christianity is true. And if any are true, then many of Christianity’s core doctrines are wrong.

So there you are. It’s all right to ask questions, but don’t question or doubt ICR’s core doctrines — especially about the role of death in the grand scheme of things. We’re so grateful to ICR for helping us understand.

Copyright © 2011. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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WorldNetDaily: A Voice of Sanity?

We spotted this one a couple of days ago at the website of WorldNetDaily (WND), the creationist outfit we already described this morning, so we won’t repeat ourselves. The article is titled Is evolution a crazy idea?

Because it’s published by WND, it won’t spoil things for you if we disclose that the conclusion is “yes.” But we find it especially amusing that the article appears beneath a banner that proclaims its author, Robert Ringer, to be “A Voice of Sanity.”

Who is Robert Ringer? At the end of the WND piece there’s a paragraph about him. It says:

Robert Ringer is a New York Times No. 1 best-selling author and host of the highly acclaimed “Liberty Education Interview Series,” which features interviews with top political, economic and social leaders. … To sign up for his one-of-a-kind, pro-liberty e-letter, A Voice of Sanity, click here [link omitted].

That “Voice of Sanity” banner seems to be for Ringer alone, because that’s the name of his email letter. There’s also an entry about the guy in Wikipedia, Robert J. Ringer, which informs us:

A devoted admirer of Ayn Rand, Ringer wrote his most politically-oriented work, Restoring the American Dream (1979), which dealt with various problems in the United States, and offering solutions through a laissez-faire free market libertarian perspective.

That sounds like he ought to be an intelligent fellow. Perhaps he was. But after we dig into his WND article you can reach your own judgment. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us:

I don’t have a religious dog in the evolution fight, so from a very young age I came at the theory of evolution from an intellectual, common-sense point of view. Even though I was predisposed to believing in evolution, what I found when I began reading up on the subject was that virtually every book began with the premise that evolution was a fact.

How much “reading up on the subject” did he do if he doubted the fact of evolution? Our guess is “not much,” because look what he says next:

To my surprise, however, the more I read, the more evolution sounded like something out of “Aesop’s Fables.” Inanimate matter “evolving” into an animal, and an animal evolving into a human being? It seemed to me to be an idea that required a size extra-large imagination.

His reading must have been limited to Jack Chick comics. Next he gives one of the standard creationist arguments — using a monkey at a keyboard — to show how “the odds” are against evolution, after which he concludes:

It doesn’t matter how many chimpanzees or how much time you allow, not even one line of one great work could come into existence through pure chance. Given that you are infinitely more complex than a single line in a book, what are the odds that you, with all of your billions of precise, specialized cells, accidentally evolved from “primordial soup” over a period of a few billion years?

We can understand that Ringer never read our post, The Inevitability of Evolution (Part III), but that contains no original arguments. It also appears that he never heard of Richard Dawkins’ Weasel program. In other words, Ringer doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Building upon that flimsy foundation, he goes on to claim:

Thus, evolution in a random universe – i.e., a universe without a Supreme Power Source – would appear to be a mathematical impossibility. As with such phenomena as wind and gravity, it would seem that the only way evolution could have come into existence is through the work of a Higher Power that is beyond human understanding. Not an old man in the sky, as atheists like to mockingly portray this Power, but an invisible, conscious source of power that man can never hope to comprehend.

To summarize so far, having proclaimed the impossibility of something we know to be perfectly possible by understandable and natural means, Ringer takes a wild leap into the uncharted beyond and declares that Oogity Boogity! is the only sensible answer.

Then he quote-mines Stephen Jay Gould, as creationists often do. We’ll skip that. Next — now convinced that his logic is undeniable — he states his “conclusion” yet again:

[A] religionist has no reason to fear evidence that supports evolution, for it is almost certain that evolution, if there really is such a thing, is not powered by randomness, but by a Supreme Power Source that we can never hope to understand.

Now we’ll go to Ringer’s final paragraph. He anticipates criticism, but it won’t bother him:

Now, you’ll have to excuse me while I put on my flack jacket and prepare for the backlash that is sure to come from angry readers who either view belief in a Higher Being as a sign of an irrational mind or believe that I’m an apostate for not sticking more closely to scripture. Or, to borrow from Jon Huntsman, just call me crazy.

As we said at the beginning, the amusing thing about this is that Ringer writes under a banner proclaiming him to be “A Voice of Sanity.” We report, you decide.

Copyright © 2011. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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WND: Martin Luther King, Obama, & Darwin

We were once again awakened by blaring sirens and lights flashing on the wall display of our Retard-o-tron™. “No,” we muttered. “Not again!” But there it was. The blinking letters on the wall said WorldNetDaily.

WorldNetDaily (WND) is the flamingly creationist, absolutely execrable, moronic, and incurably crazed journalistic organ that believes in and enthusiastically promotes every conspiracy theory that ever existed. WND was an early winner of the Curmudgeon’s Buffoon Award, thus that jolly logo displayed above this post.

As we feared, we were directed to a rant by Ellis Washington. The best example of his cosmic-level thinking can be found here, Scripture Trumps Darwin, when he informed us of “the syllogism that was a foundation of Western civilization”:

If A = B, then A + B = C

Today’s essay from Ellis is Darwin’s legal legacy: Justice O.W. Holmes. That’s one of the strangest anti-Darwin titles we’ve ever seen. We’ve become accustomed to creationists’ tactics. They routinely (and insanely) blame Darwin for the depravities of Hitler, Stalin, and the like. But … Oliver Wendell Holmes?

This is typical of Ellis’ work at WND — a rapid romp through history, promiscuously dropping names and concepts that have no connection to each other or to the subject at hand (see, e.g., Darwin & the Gold Standard). That’s why we’re going to skip Ellis’ paragraphs about American jurisprudence; it’s not a subject we blog about, and we doubt that Ellis knows much about it anyway. Instead we’ll focus on his creationism. Here we go, with bold font added by us:

By 1900, after 40 years of society being utterly beguiled and infected with the pseudo-scientific lies and sophistic propaganda of Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche, the few dissenting voices of reason were ignored or, like today’s tea-party movement, ridiculed as anti-scientific, hatemongers or right-wing, conservative extremists.

Huh? “Darwin, Marx and Nietzsche”? Yes, that’s a bizarre combination, but we’re finally getting the hang of this game. Would you like to see another excerpt of propaganda by and about people like the Unabomber, the Octomom, and Ellis Washington? Okay, let’s read on:

Between 1870-1935 Holmes was the key figure who helped transform American culture away from reliance on the founders who believed in transcendent principles based on God, the Bible and natural law, to the vague world of randomness, meaninglessness and evolving standards of Darwinian evolution as the basis of all American laws. The entire progressive movement, beginning in the 1870s and 1880s, was predicated on Darwinism, humanism and relativism.

Ellis links Darwin to those things? Well, why not? It was Ellis who taught us that A + B = C. Okay then, in the same intellectual spirit — herewith designated as Ellisonianism — we link creationism, Dominionism, and theocracy with practitioners of incest, bestiality, pedophilia, necrophilia, coprophilia, satanism, despotism, sadism, cannibalism, terrorism, and treason. After all, A + B = C. Isn’t this fun?

Now Ellis drags Martin Luther King into his rant:

MLK’s words will live on for the ages and give me comfort that Darwin’s theory of evolution, as well as all of the legislation of Congress, academic disciplines and atheistic, relativistic philosophies based upon evolution, including the legal philosophy of Justice O.W. Holmes, will one day be exposed as one of the biggest frauds in the history of humanity.

Aaaargh!! That’s gotta be one of the best ever. King’s words comfort us while we toil in the bondage of evolution!

Here comes Ellis’ final paragraph. Although we share his dislike of socialist legislation, we don’t associate our thinking with his because it’s impossible to understand him. Check this out:

Pick any grand liberal, humanist, progressive or socialist policy over the past 100 years – Theodore Roosevelt’s “Square Deal,” Woodrow Wilson’s “Statolatry” (state worship), FDR “New Deal” policies of the 1930s and ’40s, Truman’s “Fair Deal,” LBJ’s “Great Society of the 1960s or President Obama’s neo-socialist, Keynesian policies of today; despite all of them being disastrous and ruining the lives of tens of millions of American citizens, they completely enshrine Holmes’ Darwinian thinking, his evolutionary jurisprudence and his virulently irrational, anti-Christian bias on society, culture and law.

See there? If you disagree with the policies of LBJ and Obama, Ellis says what you really oppose is “Holmes’ Darwinian thinking.” You didn’t know that before, did you?

And now, dear reader, as we’ve done before with Ellis’ essays, we give you your assignment. Tell us, please, what Darwin’s name is doing in the middle of an essay on American jurisprudence. We await your input.

Copyright © 2011. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Discovery Institute’s Advice to Republicans

This is really strange. An outfit that is devoted to: (1) promoting creationism; and (2) denying that they’re creationists, is now giving political advice to Republican presidential candidates.

We’re speaking, of course, about the neo-theocrats at the Discovery Institute‘s creationist public relations and lobbying operation, the Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids, a/k/a the cdesign proponentsists).

Their advice is in a very brief blog entry: Among GOP Contenders, Evolution is an Issue. They refer to matters that have been in the news all week, and right at the end you can discern their keen political analysis. You already know the news so we’ve omitted their links:

This is getting…interesting. Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman hit back at Rick Perry of Texas following Perry’s comment about evolutionary theory having “some gaps in it.” Mr. Huntsman tweeted, “To be clear I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”

Clearly he is strategically positioning himself to capture the entire constituency of liberal Republican Mormons. We’ve never met any, but there must be a few.

That’s the whole thing. Their message is clear: Huntsman is currently a marginal candidate, whose chances to be nominated appear slim. The Discoveroids attribute that mostly to his pro-science stance (which they refer to as “liberal”), and they imply that a Republican who wants to avoid Huntsman’s low ranking must be a flaming, full-blown science-denier — like Rick Perry. That’s really great advice!

As long as the Discoveroids are advising candidates, your humble Curmudgeon will do the same. Here’s our recommended evolution talking-point for GOP candidates when they face this issue — assuming some of them aren’t creationists, which may be a foolish assumption:

Thank you for your question. I am neither a biologist nor a preacher, so I have no expertise in evolution or creationism. I assume you want to know how I would handle a problem I might face that required me to make a decision in that area. I doubt that I would ever have to make presidential decisions about evolution — but if I did, the answer is simple.

I would consult experts — science experts. For military matters I would consult military experts. The same goes for foreign policy issues — I’d discuss those with experts in foreign affairs. I wouldn’t ask a military officer, a diplomat, a preacher, or a scientist to advise me on matters outside of their specialties. As for matters of faith, it is not the role of the President to make decisions in that area for anyone but himself, so I intend to keep my opinions private. Next question?

Yes, that ducks the issue, but so what? A hard-core creationist (like Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann) wouldn’t handle it that way, so the message is clear. And we think it’s the right message. For each political party, the ideological base will fall into line if they’re not offended. We don’t approve of pandering to idiots, but there’s nothing wrong with a candidate’s refusal to call them idiots; he doesn’t want them to stay home on election day.

As we’ve pointed out before, the race is decided in the middle, by winning the support of the uncommitted voters. They usually reject what they perceive as extremism, and unless the country is totally doomed, they’ll think that science-denial is extreme. The trick is to keep the base happy (without shamelessly pandering to them), and at the same time avoid giving the media what they will declare to be evidence of extremism.

Will anyone take your Curmudgeon’s advice? No, no one ever does. The most we can hope for is that they don’t take advice from the Discoveroids.

[See also: Discoveroids’ Advice to Presidential Candidates.]

Copyright © 2011. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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