Today’s letter-to-the-editor brings us back to the Medicine Hat News of Medicine Hat in Alberta, Canada. According to Wikipedia, the city name is from the eagle tail feather headdress worn by Blackfoot medicine men. The letter is titled Complex world demands an intelligent creator, and the newspaper has a comments feature.
Unless the letter-writer is a politician, preacher, or other public figure, we won’t embarrass or promote him by using his full name — but today we’ve got a preacher. It’s Canon Ivor Ottrey, presumably of the St. Barnabas Anglican Church. We recently wrote about one of his letters in that same newspaper — see Creationist Wisdom #818: Scientific Proof. We’ll give you a few excerpts from the rev’s new letter, enhanced with our Curmudgeonly commentary, and some bold font for emphasis. Here we go!
Does the fossil record support evolution?
An intriguing question! Then the rev presents six facts. Here they are:
Fact 1. All life in the fossil record appears abruptly and fully formed, showing no intermediate fossils revealing change.
Right. Tiktaalik doesn’t exist, nor do any of the others in Wikipedia’s growing List of transitional fossils. This is the rev’s next fact:
Fact 2. Fossils of dinosaurs with soft tissue prove they are not millions of years old but fit into the Biblical young Earth.
Right again! But see this in the TalkOrigins Index to Creationist Claims: Soft dinosaur tissue. The rev continues:
Fact 3. Darwin himself was puzzled by the lack of fossil evidence to support evolution.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA! Let’s read on:
Fact 4. Are mutations the result of evolution? No mutations are always a loss of information and never an increase.
[*Groan*] See New ‘Information’ from Gene Duplication. Another fact from the rev:
Fact 5. Dr. Stephen Gould, a famous paleontologist, stated “The absence of fossil evidence … has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.
TalkOrigins has a rebuttal for that. It’s #50 here: The Quote Mine Project. Okay, this is the last of the rev’s facts:
Fact 6. It[‘]s universally accepted that “life only comes from life.” That rules out the possibility of life beginning by random chance.
Universally accepted! But the rev isn’t done yet. He tells us:
Further to that the amazing complexity of our human bodies, and indeed all forms of life down to the simplest cell, surely demands a highly intelligent designer as well as a creator which is precisely what God claims to be. This creator has revealed Himself through his word the Holy Bible and through the Lord Jesus Christ. This God has revealed Himself as Love whereas in evolution there is no love but only survival of the fittest.
Yes, evolution is loveless. Let’s read on:
Consider these mind-boggling facts scientists have discovered: In a single human cell of DNA there are three billion letters of information. In our bodies we have 75 trillion to 100 trillion cells. Such complexity demands an intelligent creator who has revealed himself both in his word and in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Only a fool would deny that complexity demands an intelligent creator. And now we come to the end:
Remember, life only comes from life and Jesus in John 14:6 declared “I am the way and the truth and the life.”
No one can argue with that. Great letter, rev!
Copyright © 2017. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
No true Anglican would advance such shop-worn and discredited Creationist ‘arguments’…
Fact 6. It[‘]s universally accepted that “life only comes from life.” That rules out the possibility of life beginning by random chance.
It also rules out the possibility of creationism. Our only evidence of “life only comes from life” is through reproduction.
It also doesn’t rule out evolution; biologists conclude that life shares common ancestry and therefore life comes from life all the way to the very beginning.
The rev’s creationism is a worse fit to the evidence.
For reusing all those creationist clunkers once more, you should from now on call him Canon Clunker.
Also, the “sudden” appearance that lasted 20-40 million years.
The canon has a colleague in the Bahamas diocese called The Reverend Shazzasbazzar Turnquest. Even Trollope couldn’t have come up with that one.
Trollope couldn’t, but I expect J.K.Rowling could….
A complex world demands intelligent humans. Unfortunately, creos don`t make the cut.
It`s strange that if you study the provenance of the bible, you can`t find the missing bits between the autographs and the scattered manuscripts from centuries later. So, Rev, where are YOUR transitional fossils?
None of this disproves evolution.
They don’t do any research whatsoever.
Humans did not live we dinosaurs these guys are beyond retarded.