Buffoon Award Winner: RenewAmerica

The eighth winner of the Curmudgeon’s coveted Buffoon Award is — [drum roll, flourish of trumpets] — RenewAmerica! More than four years have passed since we had a winner, and the candidates have been piling up. It’s been obvious for some time now that RenewAmerica has been craving recognition by becoming one of our favorite sources of amusement. Today’s award isn’t for any one author or article, but for the cumulative content of that spectacularly strange website.

The first Buffoon Award winner was John West; the second was WorldNetDaily; the third was Mark Souder, Creationist Congressman; the fourth was The Intelligent Designer; the fifth was Ronda Storms; the sixth was Bobby Jindal, and the seventh was Robin Williams.

What we found today at RenewAmerica was written by A.J. Castellitto. He’s described as having B.S. in Counseling and Human Services from the University of Scranton, and he’s a freelance writer. We wrote about one of his earlier essays here: RenewAmerica: Evolution Is a Sledgehammer. His new offering is Using propaganda to hide Darwin’s doubt.

He starts by complaining about some comments his articles have received, which refer to him as ignorant, stupid, irrational, etc., and then he says, with bold font added by us:

This brings me to the major source of such hostile reactions – the ‘science’ and mass acceptance of evolution as the primary explanatory foundation for all things. In my years of personal study and online debate, I’ve learned that if you’re willing to cut through the resistance, intimidation, and mockery exhibited by ‘disciples of evolution,’ it’s not too difficult to uncover the vast amount of unfounded speculation, fantastical thinking, and unproven, inconsistent theory.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Castellitto’s years of study have taught him that evolution is not “the primary explanatory foundation for all things.” What else has he learned? He tells us:

One of the major hurdles evolutionary theorists have never been able to clear is the idea that one species can naturally progress into a higher or more advanced life form. This is a premise that simply has never been observed or demonstrated. It’s an unnatural phenomenon that goes against the observed and testable laws of nature.

That looks like a combination of the micro-macro mambo and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Very creative! Let’s read on:

This reality was not lost on one of the world’s top chemists, Professor James M. Tour, who has been scrutinized for publicly presenting his doubts and insecurities over the assumptions related to macroevolution within the scientific community – [massive quote omitted].

Wikipedia has a writeup on him: James Tour, which describes him as “a synthetic organic chemist, specializing in nanotechnology. Dr. Tour is the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, and Professor of Computer Science at Rice University.” That’s very nice, but then they inform us:

In 2001, Tour signed the Discovery Institute’s “A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism”, a controversial petition which the intelligent design movement uses to promote intelligent design by attempting to cast doubt on evolution. To those who “are disconcerted or even angered that I signed a statement back in 2001” he responded “I have been labeled as an Intelligent Design (ID) proponent. I am not. I do not know how to use science to prove intelligent design although some others might. I am sympathetic to the arguments on the matter and I find some of them intriguing, but the scientific proof is not there, in my opinion. So I prefer to be free of that ID label.”

They also quote him as saying: “The core of the debate for me, therefore, is the extrapolation of microevolution to macroevolution.” Okay. Tour has his doubts — but he’s not a biologist, and his opinions are his own. He’s clearly an outlier. But for Castellitto, Tour’s views are decisive. We continue with his essay:

Tragically, science all too often goes the way of politics and even journalism. Honesty and integrity becomes misplaced (and ultimately lost) as we travel on down the agenda-driven money trail. The more I research and study these matters, the more apparent it becomes how this world is filled with ideological deceptions. We must come to the sad realization that everybody cheats to gain an upper hand. ‘Propaganda’ has replaced reality, and ‘conspiracy’ has become the gateway to truth.

He’s talking about you, dear reader. Castellitto is aware of your base motives and your deceptions. Here’s more:

Repeatedly, the evolutionist exhibits an unapologetic tendency to express scientific claims that are long on (unproven) theoretical assertions and short on actual empirical evidence. The masses are blindly led, ignorant of the deception.

Yes, while those who embrace creationism are not in any sense being “blindly led, ignorant of the deception.” Moving along:

Furthermore, these ‘disciples’ are quick to distort the views held by advocates of intelligent design as merely presenting a ‘God-of-the-Gaps’ mentality to the parts of the puzzle still yet to be revealed. The problem with these dubious claims is this false assertion that evolution has most of the theory covered and that proponents of intelligent design are merely trying to fit God into the mix (to fill the holes where science has yet to provide more conclusive evidence).

But according to Castellitto, there’s no truth to that. One last excerpt:

However, what skeptics of evolution are really trying to convey, during the few occasions they’ve been given fair and ample publicity and opportunity to do so, is that the ‘actual science’ has been unable to advance Darwinian-evolution. Ultimately, what we are left with is more than gaps, but a theory in crisis, one that has never advanced past (or more accurately, actually fulfilled) its own claims.

Yes, evolution is a dismal failure. And so, dear reader, please join with us in celebrating the Curmudgeon’s eighth Buffoon Award. Congratulations RenewAmerica!

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