Valentine Pontifex

He is also dead.

Valentine Pontifex

Surely you are not puting Michael Behe in the same class as Hovind et al.? He deserves more respect than that.

His level of ridiculousness seems almost rational and sane when compared to those guys.

After all one need to actually know something to debunk Behe.

Nic Tamzek

I voted "other", Dembski is my write-in candidate. A year ago I would have said Wells, but Dembski has really cracked as of late -- ever more grandiose statements supported by ever weaker and more-question-begging arguments.

Wells would get my vote for most devious creationist. But his advantage over Dembski is that Wells at least says things that have empirical content, even if they're wrong or even outright lies. Dembski has the "not even wrong" problem.

Behe is a cut above, I'll admit, although he loses a lot of points for not realizing that Darwin knew perfectly well that the complex multipart systems argument was exactly the one that evolution had to overcome to succeed, as evidenced by Darwin's extended study of barnacles (highly relevant, trust me), orchid "contrivances", etc.

(I mean, Behe realized that Darwin knew about it, Behe just didn't realize Darwin's answer, given with much emphasis and with mnay detailed examples, change-of-function. The eye is actually a somewhat special case as it is a case of massive specialization, most of Darwin's other examples involved change-of-function)

tgamble

At least neither of em is claiming people killed a T-Rex by ripping it's arms off. They aren't accuseing the Smithsonian of mass murder etc.

You're far more familiar with Well's work than I am but surely he can't be more of a quack than Kent Hovind. At least wells accepts an old earth....

hezekiah jones

It is tough to beat Hovind. I would imagine much of the ridiculousness attributed to Dembski stems from the largely irrelevant use to which he has put his prodigious education.

One of my favorite creationists is/was Louisiana Senator Bill Keith, who inspired the Balanced Treatment Act that led to the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards v. Aguillard. Keith's "argument" was memorialized by Justice Scalia in his dissent. Follow the logic, if you dare:

Notice how Keith/Scalia have gone from characterizing evolution as a "scientific explanation" to a "myth" and ultimately a "religion," while "creation science" remains "strictly scientific." One would be hard pressed to find a more concentrated collection of falsehoods, fallacious reasoning, and blatant nonsense on the subject than the above five paragraphs.

Although Scalia claims not to "endorse [the] accuracy" of Keith's assertions, it's astonishing that he would let pass without comment Keith's allegation the Court had "held" that secular humanism is a religion. As practically everyone knows, the reference is to a footnote in Torcaso v. Watkins that barely qualifies as dicta.

Although my vote goes to Hovind, for sheer comic absurdity and ridiculousness honorary mention must go to the tag team of Bill Keith and Antonin Scalia.

wildernesse

I think I would vote for Baugh, if I voted--I don't know enough about them all to choose well.

We watched Baugh on his show a while back, who told us that energized water pre-flood was what made all the difference in the ages of pre-flood people. Or something like that. I really couldn't follow--but I was sure that he would offer magnetized bracelets or something at the end of the episode. I was sadly disappointed.

--tibac

pz

I also saw his show a while back, and he had some guest (another "Dr.", who might have been affiliated with ewater.com) who was shilling energized water, and was going on and on about aligned molecules and how you had to break apart blocks of molecules to get the full benefit of the water -- it was total nonsense. He's also got some babbling crap on his website about this stuff.

tgamble

How about this quack?

"the only creatures who could possess this pendulum style of walking
are birds!

birds are the only ones because there sizes do not excede the weight
to mass to gravity ratio that dinosaurs did.

dinosaurs did not exist!

just look at the corner that science has backed themselves into,first
they said that the dinos walked up-right and dragged there tails on
the ground, then when bio-mechanical education caught up with
everyone they saw that this was impossible, so now they are stuck
with T-rex walking in a pendulum; balancing it's weight on its legs
as it moves.

but that is also impossible, T-rex could not move in this manner
because it is simply too big, and too unstable from front to back for
a bi-pedal animal.

T-rex excedes the ratio of mass x weight x gravity.

don't you see?.......that is why T-REX never had arms in any of the
first fossil specimens they found, they found (made) arms later that
tried to allow for this weight disribution problem; but then they
ended up with arms that are a puzzle because they are totally
useless, too small, and serve no purpose."

A nutcase on a creationist mailing list.

:boohoo: :banghead:

Doubting Didymus

I wanted to vote for Ken Ham.

Whatdowewant?
"millions of dead things buried under different layers of rock!"

Whendowewantit?
"millions of dead things buried under different layers of rock!"

What?
"millions of dead things buried under different layers of rock"

Matter of fact, I haven't heard of half of these people. They are probably minor american creationists?

Atheist121

I voted for "other." Teno Groppi is probably the worst I've seen. He regularly posts articles and totally misreads what they say. He's also a geocentrist. He's admitted to not having looked at the evidence for it yet, but he can make one heck of a biblical argument for it, so it must be true! This is ironic, since he once said that I was lying by saying that there were Creationist flat-Earthers out there, and that Creationsists aren't that out-of-touch with science. Riiiight...

You can read some of his nonsense at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/creationists , btw. I found his most recent one about America to be pretty amusing.