We were once again awakened by the blaring sirens and lights flashing on the wall display of our Retard-o-tron™. 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.
The Retard-o-tron™ directed us to WND’s online bookstore — a vast collection of mindless lore –where we found a classic example of creationist trash: Tornado in a Junkyard: The Relentless Myth of Darwinism, By James Perloff. He wrote another creationism book too, titled The Case Against Darwin. Both are available through WND.
Who is James Perloff? We wrote about him once before — see James Perloff’s Creationism Revival in New Jersey. He was babbling about creationism and peddling his books at an event sponsored by the John Birch Society.
Hey — Perloff even wrote a book titled The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the American Decline. It’s published by Western Islands, described by Wikipedia as “the publishing arm of the John Birch Society.” It’s nice to be aware of these little connections.
But let’s not get sidetracked. We just want to talk about Tornado in a Junkyard — the book with the title borrowed from Fred Hoyle — see Hoyle’s fallacy. There’s a video at the WND listing of a very long interview with Perloff. We stopped watching after a couple of minutes, and we recommend avoiding it altogether.
We’re always curious to know who publishes this stuff, so we went to the book’s Amazon’s listing, where we learn that the publisher is something called Refuge Books. Their website is very strange and we can’t tell what’s going on there, but we assume they’re a vanity press outfit.
The book’s description at the WND site is a wondrous example of the purest creationist nonsense available anywhere. Behold:
In an easy-to-read text, this book examines growing scientific evidence that is challenging Darwin’s theory of evolution: lack of transitional forms in the fossil record, the impossibility of mutations (almost universally destructive) serving as evolutionary building blocks, the bad logic of natural selection theory, the stunning lack of evidence for “ape-men,” the mathematic [sic] impossibility of life beginning by itself, more.
Isn’t that great? Compressed into one brief paragraph are a half-dozen long-debunked creationist clunkers. But wait, there’s more:
Also explores how Darwinism helped foster Hitler’s racial policies and examines how Inherit the Wind grossly misled Americans about the Scopes trial. Addresses the ever-vital question: Are we here by chance or are we created by God? Indexed, over 80 illustrations, hundreds of quotes from scientists.
Fantastic! And besides all those illustrations, the book has hundreds of quotes. No doubt they’re all like those in Henry Morris’ most infamous and contemptible work, That Their Words May Be Used Against Them (Amazon listing). It’s a cover-to-cover Ark-load of quote-mining.
What else can we say about Perloff’s book? Well, it neatly connects a few dots — WND, creationism, and the Birch Society. Aside from that, this book would make an ideal birthday gift for that creationist relative you never know how to shop for. He’s sure to appreciate your thoughtfulness. Don’t tell him it was selected by the Retard-o-tron™.
Copyright © 2012. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
As for “Inherit the Wind”, I agree it was historically inaccurate. It made the fundamentalists look far too intelligent and reasonable.
Having read “Summer of the Gods” and creationist books from the era, I conclude that creationists of that time were batstuff crazy, far more ignorant, fanatical and dangerous than the movie makes them look. The fictional characters in “Inherit the Wind” were like the crew of the Starship Enterprise compared to real fundamentalists of that era.
You should read “Hell and the HIgh Schools” by T. T. Martin of 1923– it’s available online. J. Frank Norris even shot a guy, Catholic.
Of course William Bell Riley, Gerald Burton Winrod and other 1920’s creationist crusaders would become supporters of Hitler and Nazism in the 1930’s.
Ah yes, the creationism business is still brisk in some areas of the country but, how many of its intended audience can log onto a computer(or have one), Google these books and actually have a credit card to order one.
Only the more advanced right? So, they’ll have to pick ’em up at their local
Bible study group. Actually , we have an older petroleum engioneer in my group, who is a “tornado in a junkyard” quoter.
Very religious guy too. Oh well, they are not all uneducated, just badly educated. But, hes a happy guy as the coping mechanism is working well at
shielding him from some realities which are a little tough to accept if you’re “special”.
Time to examine a first class creationist BS-er, David Berlinski.
Spot the crap spewing out of this guy
The hallmark of a first class BS-er, and I know because I’m one myself, is to sound confident, say nothing and move on. Note at one point he talks about dogs and says “no matter how far we go back it’s only dogs.” He also talks about computer simulations using genetic algorithms but he obviously has no idea what he’s talking about because what he says bears no resemblance to a real algorithm and that he says that he has tried to write them himself is an obvious LIE. Shame on you, Berlinski. Also note how Berlinsky casually drops jargon at every turn, but if one is actually familiar with the jargon and the science behind it, Berlinski is clearly adrift; he has no idea what he’s talking about, he’s just sounding sciency. It’s just a veneer and if you asked him a single question not even a micron deep he’d be screwed, blued and tattooed.
(Oh, and he was in a debate with Hitchens. Hitch totally destroys Berlinski and when the moderator asks if Berlinski has a reply, which he should have since he pontificated for many paragraphs prior, said, awkwardly, “No.” Pure admission of defeat and unmasking as a BS’er. Beautiful!)
Now, on dogs, here is AronRa to clean your brain:
Not exactly dogs all the way down.
One of the principles of successfully selling a lie is to tell it over and over again, so that it becomes one of those things that people have known all their lives and have no idea where they learned it. The creationists have figured this out.
That’s why we laugh at creationists. That’s why we don’t give Behe (failed scientist), Dembski (failed academic), Axe (failed scientist), Gauger (failed scientist), Luskin (failed gerbil) any respect. They deserve, have earned no respect and their continued lies need to be continually rebutted.
Behe, who was reamed out by graduate student Abbie Smith, was silent for more than TWO YEARS before he started offering up the same manure he self-published. By the way, graduate students are AWESOME! I was one myself and we PG’s are at the top of our game. We know everything because we are required to know everything as part of our PhD work. So, it was very surprising that academic professor Behe referred to Smith as a “little girl” when in fact Smith was more current with research and the literature than Behe! It was a big mistake and Smith took down Behe publicly and thoroughly such that Behe had to retract his work and recant in public. It was highly embarrassing for Behe, and it should have been. Smith questioned how Behe could have ever attained tenure considering his shoddy, sloppy and incomplete research methods. It was vicious, but Behe deserved every body slam he got.
Now, Luskin and Klinkletinkle have gotten the same treatment from Zimmer but they have retreated behind their firewall and have decided to simply fling poo over the walls. So be it.
‘we PG’s are at the top of our game’
So true!
There was a pathology prof who was a terror at small conferences. His favourite gambit was to refer to some minor paper of which he was an author and claim that all the work presented by the speaker had already been done. One day an obviously nervous PG presented some interesting work at which point up got the prof with his usual take down. The reply was devastatingly memorable.
‘If prof xxx had read the paper he had authored he would realise ….’
Ah, memorable seminars! I remember my friend, Ken, giving a presentation. During the Q&A this obnoxious professor decided to toy with Ken and asked him to derive an equation he had discussed. Ken was a little annoyed by this but proceeded to show how the equation was derived. Nearing the end Ken turned around to find the professor snoozing. The old git had fallen asleep! Ken took his pointer walked over to the guy, jabbed him in the ribs and shouted, “Wake up you miserable old bugger and pay attention!” At first we were all shocked, then laughter ensued and seminar was over.