How can you tell a creationist is lying?

Phillip E. Johnson says, "his intent never was to use public school education as the forum for his ideas [Intelligent Design creationism]." Wesley Elsberry has a flock of quotes direct from Johnson that refute that.

If it were someone other than Johnson, I'd say he was just lying…but he's old, he's had a serious stroke, so it's entirely possible he's merely senile or brain-damaged. No matter what, though, it means you can't trust Phillip E. Johnson to speak the truth.

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I had a couple people email me this article from the Sacramento Bee about Phillip Johnson, the founder of the ID movement. One thing that jumped out at me about it was this statement: Johnson said his intent never was to use public school education as the forum for his ideas. In fact, he said he…
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Orson Scott Card has written a long essay defending Intelligent Design. Oy, but it is depressing. It's a graceless hash, a cluttered and confusing mish-mash of poorly organized complaints about those darned wicked "Darwinists". He lists 7 arguments. Then he repeats his list, expanding on them.…

Why should that be odd? Flew has--in the most charitable interpretation--simply lost his grasp of the issues. The guy is 83 after all.

Flew is not getting the award for his intellectual honesty; he's getting it because the lying cretinists are desperate for the tiniest appearance of intellectual respectability they can gain by having an atheist, any atheist, even one who's well past his intellectual prime, switch to a position that even marginally resembles the moronic propaganda they spew.

Johnson says he regrets not being taken more seriously in the scientific community. He really doesn't understand why he isn't. Johnson expected that ID would take off at some point and scientists would repent of their materialist ways and hurry to "catch up" (as Johnson put it). Poor sod. It's really kind of pathetic.

It was unreasonable and/or optimistic of him as a professional liar (ie lawyer) to expect to be taken seriously (whether personally or in terms of his dishonest fantasies) by the reality-based community (ie scientists).

How can you tell a creationist is lying?

Their lips are moving...

His main disappointment is that the issue hasn't made more headway in the mainstream scientific community.

What, scientists didn't accept an appeal to ignorance as science. That's shocking

Why should that be odd? Flew has--in the most charitable interpretation--simply lost his grasp of the issues. The guy is 83 after all.

Agrred, Flew is obvious losing it. The odd part is that there is a Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth. It's sort of like a Karl Rove Award for Sprotsmanship and Integrity in Politics.

If you have no intention of welcoming someone, 'hello' most certainly is a lie.

By Caledonian (not verified) on 15 May 2006 #permalink