Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Holy cow, someone posted a link to this video in a comment and you just have to see it. It's Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort "debunking" evolution in the most hilariously ridiculous thing you may have ever seen. Funniest of all is that they start it out by saying that they're going to be interviewing people about evolution and you're supposed to notice how they use words like "possibly" and "we think" and then finally "I'm not an expert". Why is that funny? Because the people they're interviewing aren't experts, they're just random people they found somewhere, most of whom are as ignorant of evolution as the hosts. But apparently it's suspicious that random people who know nothing about evolution don't speak with the certainty of experts or claim to be experts. Well that proves it, I'm convinced. This is a bit like going to an art school and asking them how the internal combustion engine works, edit it down to all the responses where people say things about it based on ignorance, and then saying, "See, it should be obvious that the internal combustion engine is impossible." 100% pure idiocy.
There are lots of outright lies in the video as well. For instance, they say of Lucy that "nearly all experts agree that Lucy was just the skeleton of a 3 foot tall chimpanzee." Really? I'd love for them to find just one expert - by which I mean an actual paleo-anthropologist - who claims that Lucy was just a 3 foot tall chimpanzee. They say Neanderthal man was a creature "whose famous skeleton found in France over 50 years ago was that of an old man who suffered from arthritis." Yes, these people are in fact clueless enough to believe that there is only one fossil of Homo neanderthalensis; in fact, there are dozens of them. I'll give this video 850 milli-Hovinds on the creationist stupidity scale.
Comments
Well, I have to admit that I've never heard common descent disputed on the grounds that airlines won't sell tickets to orangutans before.
Posted by: Sean Foley
| April 18, 2006 3:11 PM
What I want to know is...what airline provides parachutes in case you have to jump at 25,000 feet?
Posted by: Dave S.
| April 18, 2006 3:15 PM
I saw this video a week or so back on the Atheistjew's blog and had to sit dumbfounded for a while. Then I watched a few Hovind's and I really couldn't decided which was worse. The sheer stupidity of Cameron's video or bleeding from the ears that listening to Hovind causes.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
| April 18, 2006 3:20 PM
preview is a good thing.
excuse the typos
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp
| April 18, 2006 3:21 PM
I was watching Rise of Man on the Science Channel. They interviewed French paleoanthropologist Ives Coppens and he said there were at least 400 neanderthal specimens which sounds about right...
Posted by: afarensis
| April 18, 2006 3:24 PM
I can't get the movie to load...is it the same one that has the argument from banana?
Posted by: Tara
| April 18, 2006 3:25 PM
For instance, they say of Lucy that "nearly all experts agree that Lucy was just the skeleton of a 3 foot tall chimpanzee." Really?
Isn't that straight from the Jack Chick Tract "Big Daddy"?
Posted by: tonyl
| April 18, 2006 3:29 PM
Isn't that straight from the Jack Chick Tract "Big Daddy"?
Yup. As are the statements about "Hesperopithecus" and Piltdown.
Posted by: Sean Foley
| April 18, 2006 3:33 PM
No Tara. It's the same 2 guys and the production style is similar, but this one is even more inane, if that is possible. They basically interview a bunch of people even more clueless than themselves. The hilarious Twilight Zone take-off in the opening is especially risable.
Try THIS LINK.
Posted by: Dave S.
| April 18, 2006 3:35 PM
"When you learn to speak to a person's conscience, and circumnavigate the intellect, the subject of evolution seems to disappear"
Wait...which side are they supposed to be on again?
Posted by: Tiax
| April 18, 2006 4:32 PM
For anyone who hasn't watched this video yet, I strongly advise taking some aspirin before viewing.
Not only does my head hurt now, but I think watching that actually killed off some brain cells.
I think what they have there is quite an achievement; I don't think I've EVER seen anything so stupid.
Posted by: WJD
| April 18, 2006 6:36 PM
haha, I loved the completely irrelevant segment where Kirk and the orangutan do facial expressions.
Posted by: Matthew
| April 18, 2006 6:40 PM
Wow. I'm absolutely floored. I feel almost responsible for this, all those childhood years of watching Growing Pains. I mean, do you know how uninformed the average man on the street is about anything? I bet if I picked the first ten people I saw, none of them could derive modus tollens for me, but I'm sure they all use it every day.
The original poster was right about breaking your computer watching this one...
Posted by: nicole
| April 18, 2006 7:17 PM
If this is the one that I think it is, it is really stupid. I remember them talking about bananas, asserting that because of the shape, peel-ability, and seedlessness of bananas, that they had to have been designed by an intelligent designer. WELL DUH! Humans bred bananas from their gross, seedy, tiny ancestors into something that it easy for us to eat. Creationism isn't just about to deny the facts we've learned through anthropology, neurology, and zoology, they're out to deny facts about botany and humanity's legacy of directed evolution during crop domestication!
I guess Kirk is growing up to be a pain.
"Milli-Hovinds!" Brilliant!
Posted by: Inoculated Mind
| April 18, 2006 7:25 PM
Wow.
I'm half-tempted to send an email to Kirk's publicist begging him to get the idiot some real work.
Posted by: Leni
| April 18, 2006 7:28 PM
I'm deeply offended that Kirk Cameron thinks archaeologists dig up dinosaurs.
Posted by: Pablo
| April 18, 2006 7:56 PM
haha, I loved the completely irrelevant segment where Kirk and the orangutan do facial expressions.
Which did the better job? Or to put it a different way, could the orangutan have done Kirk's job?
Posted by: wheatdogg
| April 18, 2006 8:57 PM
Ye-fucking-gods that was bad.
They said they have a book with quotes from Charles Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould and William Huxley? Huh, who the hell is William Huxley? I know of a Thomas Huxley, I know of Julian, and even Aldous Huxley, but I've never heard of this William guy.
Then there was the Arthur Keith quote they gave which is bogus (see Quote #81 in the Talk.Origins Archive Quote Mine Project).
But when it comes down to it, how can we possibly argue with the "orangutans lack table manners" evidence against humans and apes being related?
Lost! All is lost!
Damn that was bad...
Posted by: Troy Britain
| April 18, 2006 9:04 PM
Wow, I couldn't even get through it. I wish I could say I'm surprised, but this is the guy who starred in Left Behind....
Posted by: Ken Brown
| April 18, 2006 9:08 PM
"They interviewed French paleoanthropologist Ives Coppens and he said there were at least 400 neanderthal specimens"
No, no, no. That was 400 men with arthritis.
Posted by: blogista
| April 18, 2006 11:56 PM
Oh, and the video... I tried, I promise, I tried. Got maybe halfway through it. I skipped to near the end, and still couldn't finish it. What a colossal waste of time.
Posted by: blogista
| April 18, 2006 11:59 PM
I had to give up after just 5 minutes. I couldn't bear the idea of losing 25 more minutes of my life to that drek.
At the very beginning they kick off with the ridiculous assertion that true believers (i.e., people who accept evolution) use phrases like "I don't know," "I'm not an expert" and "maybe." No. no, no. True believers (i.e., creationists) insist that they -- and they alone -- know the truth. Only true believers have the confidence of ignorance.
Posted by: Gerry L
| April 19, 2006 12:37 AM
Jimmy Kimmel showed the banana part on his show a while back, calling it the most homoerotic thing he'd ever seen.
Posted by: Ben
| April 19, 2006 9:23 AM
That was one of the dumbest things I think I've ever seen on the 'net. Their comparisons and logical leaps were painful to observe. I noticed two key elements. First, when Kirk and the orangutan lined up against the wall about 8:45 into the "video," I'm pretty sure they got the evolutionary sequence backward, the orang' has to be the higher species on THAT wall. Second, when they take the "monkey" out to dinner, I firmly believe, that the orang' proved that he was the smartest one at that table.
Also, the biplane/747 comparison was moronic. If they were living things, and produced offspring, you could argue that over time they did evolve. The creation argument only works if, in 1903, GOD suddenly created all aircraft great and small. LET THERE BY FLIGHT! Hey, that sounds familiar ...
Posted by: dogmeatIB
| April 19, 2006 8:29 PM
Kirk Cameron is a really really good actor on Growing Pains, & on those Left Behind movies okay.
Posted by: Patsy Theroff | August 25, 2006 9:58 AM
IF there are over 400 neanderthals then how come only one is used? I won't say biased things about atheists if you don't say biased things about Christians. I am tired of Atheists saying that christians are the only ones that are closed-minded. I don't care if you agree with me or not, I just ask that you give christians a small measure of respect.
Posted by: Somebody | January 20, 2007 3:36 PM
Somebody wrote:
I give individuals respect, not groups. And individuals who ask stupid questions like the one you just asked don't deserve respect. Only one neanderthal used? Used for what, for crying out loud? Every specimen in existence is "used" in the only sense that any specimen is used, for research.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | January 20, 2007 4:18 PM
"Somebody" brought up a good point. If there are all these missing links that had to have happened and all these trial and errors in life, where are all the fossils? There should be a vast number of them. How come there's only a few found?
Now say it took evolution 10 trys (vastly more of course, but for sake of argument...) to get each limb in the right place on a lizard. That's AT LEAST 40 skeletons. Now say it took 10 trys for each one of those types to get two eyes in the right spot (assuming already they are pretty much human). That's 400. Now weather or not the lizards got eaten because they had no eyes is besides the point right now. Now say those 400 lizards were then all going to evolve out of having tails. Well if they went from tail to no tail (the fastest method) we would then have over 800 examples of evolutionary proof right? The fact is that there isn't really any proof.
The best argument I've heard for evolutionary proof is about the finches in the Galapagos Islands. Darwin said that because during periods of less resources, the birds with the less adaptable beaks died off while the ones with larger beaks lived on because they could eat other things. They in turn bred with the only other birds alive, the large beaked. Now while this is a GREAT example of microevolution, it is NOT macroevolution. Yes they did change, but no new DNA was added. The birds had bigger beaks but after the recourses became plentiful again, the birds devolved back into what they looked like from the beginning. They didn't evolve into having a strand of hair or even keep the large beaks. They exhibited adaptation, not macroevolution.
The fact is that (macro)evolution is not scientific. It cannot be reproduced or even provable. There should be an overwhelmingly amounts of fossils and other signs that crush creationism. Where is the missing link? Where are all these transition fossils? There should be millions. How come all we have found are fully formed fossils yet not a dog/cat or fish/ lizard, or even a fish/frog? We haven't seen any new DNA come out that advanced a species. A wolf is still a dog. A poodle is a dog. A pug is still a dog. While a rat shares a lot of DNA with a dog, no one will tell that you a rat is a dog. How come though, humans can share DNA with chimps but we call them almost the same?
Posted by: Ben | February 29, 2008 4:02 PM
The court sentences Ben to a thorough perusal of the Index to Creationist Claims, until such time as he no longer parrots transparently debunkable misconceptions of evolutionary theory. BAM
Posted by: Squiddhartha | February 29, 2008 4:31 PM
Ben go to this thread:
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2008/03/fisking_a_creationist_comment.php
to see Ed's response.
Posted by: FutureMD | March 2, 2008 12:40 PM
OK i have two questions,
First, If we evolved from monkeys as you believe, why didn't all the monkeys evolve?
and second, If creation is constantly evolving, why haven't we evolved into something new? Did evolution just stop?
Posted by: kendra | May 6, 2009 3:40 PM
This Cameroon video is an insult to all thinking people, including most people of faith, he gives a lot of fuel-ammon to the atheists with his inane nonsence.
Posted by: Len Kloth | June 25, 2009 10:42 AM