Dispatches from the Creation Wars

Another Faked Creationist Credential?

Posted by Ed Brayton on June 18, 2006
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Following up on the latest Noah’s Ark story, I notice that Howse refers to Bob Cornuke as “Dr”. But his bio at the BASE Institute webpage mentions nothing about a doctorate, only his background as a police officer. Is this yet another example of a creationist faking a credential, or perhaps using an honorary degree from some two-bit bible college to call himself Dr? Does anyone know?

Update: Question answered at Wikipedia. His PhD is from Louisiana Baptist University, an unaccredited Christian diploma mill that offers credit for “life experience” and even just for reading a Chuck Missler book on apologetics. Other alumni include fellow credential faker Carl Baugh. This probably explains why only the Worldview Weekend folks refer to him as “Dr” Bob Cornuke, while the more legitimate sites, like Powell’s Books author page for him, mention nothing of it. It should also be noted that LBU does not offer any degrees in any field relevant to, say, archaeology or geology or any other science. They offer degrees in five fields: biblical studies, communications, Christian education, counseling and seminary. So even if his degree was legit, it would be totally irrelevant to the issue.

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Comments

  1. #1 cfeagans
    June 18, 2006

    Silkworm over at Defending Science has a post on a similar topic. Dr. Bill Lucas of Common Sense Science, a creationist organization that appears to have targeted college campuses, made some claims that Silkworm has called him on.

    At a campus meeting at Wichita State, Lucas stated that he’d presented a paper to the AAAS, to which Silkworm produced correspondence from the executive director of AAAS to the contrary. Not surprisingly, Lucas retreated to “the AAAS is lying” defense. But he did back down when questioned about the fictitious professorship listed on his resume (still!) to Catholic University. Backing down for this guy means saying its not his fault… “they” were supposed to fix that according to the transcript of the meeting at Defending Science.

  2. #2 sdanielmorgan
    June 18, 2006

    Ah, how could we forget Mr. Shady-credentials himself (Carl Baugh)? I did that humble little detail write-up on Carl’s credentials and the methods that he and Don Patton tried to take to cover up the fact that neither of them had a degree after being exposed to his pseudoscientific nonsense at a church function (via videos). Glen Kuban’s excellent prior documentation of Baugh (also check out TO’s excellent exposé of general creationist misrepresentation) was updated about four months after I contacted him with the new information and had posted it.

    These guys are unbelievable. The baldfaced dishonesty they display is so ironic, in that they are attempting to validate themselves under false pretenses! When they are cornered into admitting they have degree mill papers, rather than ‘fessing up, they take inordinate steps to get new ones or retro-accredit the old ones (as Baugh and Patton did). No one would care if they would just admit, “yeah we aren’t REAL scientists/doctors/etc…but please evaluate our arguments based on their own merits.”

    Of course, they don’t do this because only the gullible, in bowing to their presumed authority, would do anything BUT evaluate pseudoscience for what it is. It’s only the crowd who is “wowed” by credentials who these guys pander to and own the wallets of. But that crowd is, sadly, plenty big enough (and naïve enough) to happily finance their garbage.

  3. #3 joel h
    June 18, 2006

    I’m a programmer for powells.com … as far as I know we don’t keep “author pages.” I’m not sure what you were looking at. We do have author interviews but I certainly doubt there are any with him. We also occasionally have some promotional “author information” associated with a book but this will have been provided by the publisher and probably the same copy that’s on the back of that book.

  4. #4 BigDumbChimp
    June 18, 2006

    Is there a list somewhere with the Bible College dimploma mills? I could really use a PhD and I would like to start calling myself Doctor. I think it would be really useful at this bar I frequent.

    I think maybe we should all hit the online ordination mills so we can all be called Reverend.

    And thanks cfeagans for that link. That is a great post over at defending science.

  5. #5 joel h
    June 18, 2006

    It’s just occurred to me that I may have been taking this too literally just now. Bad habit! Bad! Of course Powells is the most authoritative source possible, for *anything*.

  6. #6 Ed Brayton
    June 18, 2006

    joel-

    I was looking at this page. It contains biographical info on Cornuke, but no mention of a doctorate.

  7. #7 kozulich
    June 20, 2006

    Obviously then, he can’t have found the ark. Everyone knows that only legit doctors can find arks. Everybody knows that all the important discoveries of archaeology were made by real doctors with real Phds from real universities.