Scientific vs Creationist Frauds and Hoaxes

It may amuse you to know that Charles Dawson reported having seen a sea serpent from a ship in the English Channel on Good Friday 1906 (J.E. Walsh, 'Unravelling Piltdown', The Softback Preview, (1997), p. 195-6). Nobody believed him at the time, and even creationists who believe in living plesiosaurs have been curiously unwilling to use this supposed sighting as evidence. Still, it may shed some light on Dawson's character, and on the origins of the Piltdown hoax.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Do quote box code.

Piltdown man was exposed as a fake thirteen months after I started school. In those 13 months, so far as I can remember, I wasn't taught anything about Piltdown man, or about evolution. In fact, religious education took up more of my primary school time than any other single subject. By the time I was old enough to choose science books from the local library, in the late 1950s, Piltdown was being described as an undoubted fake, and being laid at Charles Dawson's door. Since 1953, I have never seen anybody attempt to make out that Piltdown was genuine.Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Fix quote box (no "/" at end).

Welcome, and thank you for joining us.

Let's give Answers In Genesis a bit of credit for their list of "Arguments to Avoid" which warns against using a relatively large number of particularly stupid answers, and more to the point, for recognizing the harm that such answers do to their own cause.CMI maintains a list, "Arguments we think creationists should NOT use" which tends overall to be older and even more stupid arguments. CMI is also a bit less emphatic about the arguments not being used.Both list contain lies and misstatements about evolution and those who accept it, but that's what creationists do.

When AiG published that list, they immediately got an angry response from Kent Hovind, since that list included claims that he liked to use. As I recall (that was circa 2002), Sarfati responded with the position I have consistently held on-line since the late 1980's, that the false claims used by creationists do real damage, most of all to the faith of their followers as they discover that they've been basing their faith on falsehoods. Of course, the irony was lost on Sarfati that his own site also contributes to circulating those false claims that he was warning against.I can no longer find that response on their site, but I save parts of it, which I'll post here later.Edited by dwise1, : Corrected misspelled name

Hovind's dishonesty is a matter of public record.

Exerpts from Sarfati's response (AiG Negative Feedback, 02 December 2002), which I also post on my quotes page at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/quotes.html#AiG:

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As said in the original Don’t Use page, the harm is in using something which is not true, because the cause of the one who is ‘the truth’ cannot be helped thereby. And your own recent experience reinforces something else we saidthat using discredited arguments can backfire on the user. So our aim was to help Christians to avoid arguments that are likely to backfire, and return their focus to the Word of God not ‘evidence’.

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But more and more over the last few years, we have noticed tens of thousands of Christians excitedly using arguments over the Web, for instance, that are a plain embarrassment to those with scientific training. It was like watching your brother enter the ring thinking he had a killer punch, and watching him get cut to ribbons. Further, and most importantly, it had escalated to the point where it was a hindrance to soul winning, since it gave the hearers a ‘legitimate’ excuse to reject Christ. And all we did at that point was to publish an ‘advice’ article. The only time it became relevant to a specific creationist was when Kent [Hovind] himself decided to align himself publicly with a justification of false arguments. If it had been one or two minor points of disagreement, OK, but when it reinforces some of the most blatant fallacies, and even defends fraud, at what point does one NOT face one's responsibilities to the innocents being ‘slaughtered’ in the belief that they are getting sound ammunition?

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... , we actually do know people who say they almost gave the faith away when they found out that a particular argument was fallacious, and who say that finding Christians with the integrity to avoid falsehood, no matter what the cost, helped restore it. Also, in the last day or so, a leading atheistic anti-creationist organization said that while they disagreed with almost everything we stand for, they said we were ‘admirable’ and ‘showed integrity’ in trying to persuade other creationists not to use bad arguments. Who knows what sort of witness this could be? We know of many people, outside and inside of the church, who will no longer even look at or consider the authority of the Bible in Genesis, in its history, cosmology, etc. because of bad experiences with blatant pseudo-arguments applied by enthusiasts who had been fed creationist non-arguments.

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Of course, when I try to tell creationists the exact same thing, I am reviled for it with extreme visciousness and accused of hating God, attacking Christianity, and damned to Hell, etc, etc, etc. All for trying to warn them that they're shooting themselves in the foot.Though in re-reading that, I noticed this: "So our aim was to help Christians to avoid arguments that are likely to backfire ... " Uh, what about seeking the truth? What about defending the truth? Apparently to them, the truth takes a back seat to effective proselytizing, or is given absolutely no consideration. So what else is new?

The irony of all this is not lost on me. Sarfati's book "Refuting Evolution" was the final straw for me in my break from YEC. His book is chocked full of misrepresentations, falsehoods, half-truths, etc. Obviously the truth is not the primary motivation. What they mean by "avoid arguments that are likely to backfire" is that the arguments need to be ambiguous enough and have enough truth in them that they can't be easily refuted.Your quote above misses the critical portion of his statement. "... and return their focus to the Word of God not ‘evidence’." No matter what they do, they cannot submit to evidence for its own sake, but must make it conform to preconceived ideas. That is the essence of dishonesty.HBD

This is an old one, but I've seen it touted quite a bit recently. It's really pretty egregious, as the TITLE of the scientific paper that is cited defeats the argument:Fresh Lava Dated As 22 Million Years Old

Yeah, Slimy Sal Cordoba raised that one just a few weeks ago at The Skeptical Zone.