Creationism on the Square
Summer 2010
This page describes conversations with a couple of creationistswho frequent the Dane County Farmers Market... for some reason.
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The Market also attracts more than vendors and shoppers. Advocacy groups are allowed to obtain permits which allow them to table for their causes, collect signatures on petitions and inform the public of their positions.
On occasion you'll hear the steady drumbeat of bible thumpers who come to Madison to save our souls. They venture from their wholesome, family oriented small towns in the hinterlands to come to the Sodom and Gomorrah of Wisconsin, that unholy bastion of decadence, vice and liberalism to preach the gospel. But more importantly they come to feel superior by telling us we're all going to hell for accepting vegetarianism, liberal politics, and the mortal sin of evolution.
If you observe them for any length of time – they stick around until about early afternoon – you'll see their conversion rate is even lower than the average return rate for a postal mail marketing campaign, but that's not important. The important thing is to strike faux-inquisitive poses by asking people curious enough to stop and view their bizarre and hilarious display questions like, "Where did the first cell come from?" and "If you were to die right now and find yourself in front of Judge Judy, what would you say?"
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| To incredibly loosely paraphrase Winston Churchill, "A load of stupid crap, held together by styrofoam, wrapped in a piece of rope sitting on top of a card table." |
This year Larry has joined Kevin to enlighten the heathens and explain to the infidels why accepting the conclusions of actual experts in fields like biology and geology will cast their souls into eternal damnation, while swallowing hook, line and sinker the distortions and falsehoods in books published by shlock outfits like Films for Christ will bring salvation and bliss. And "boy howdy", as they shout out there in the Holy Hinterlands, can Larry pile on the creo crapola! Like a typical creationist, he arrogantly postures and pontificates on subjects about which he has actually no understanding at all, and in fact the only knowledge he has comes from rehashed, second hand sources of the kind found on the truly bottom feeder creationist web sites.
And while that became instantly obvious, Larry was about to astound me with one of the most brazenly stupid things I've ever heard a creationist say. After making absurd claims about the australopithecines, and how they were "just apes" and not human ancestors, I asked Larry how many anthropologists hold that position today. "All of them," he shot back. I couldn't believe it. Was he joking? He stood there looking straight at me, and I think for maybe the briefest moment he realized what he had just said was total bullshit, but there was no turning back. Larry would no sooner admit he was wrong than put on a dress and lipstick and admit he's a woman trapped in a man's body.
He agreed to meet the following Saturday with documentation to back up his claim, but I added a qualifier he also agreed to, but with his back turned so I should have known he'd totally cop out on this one: he had to produce primary sources from the anthropologists themselves. Fat chance.
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| "Medicinal purposes?" — If you're like me the letters W-T-F sprang to mind. |
I took the pages home and looked up a couple of the references Larry had highlighted. The first was from Henry M. McHenry, professor of anthropology at UC Davis. This reference caught my attention because I'd come across McHenry just reading about human evolution on the web and was curious why he'd be cited here by someone claiming to be providing references by anthropologists who do not accept australopithecines as human ancestors. Do the good people at Films for Christ know something about McHenry's views that I missed reading him?
The quote is from a paper titled "The Capitate of Australopithecus Afarensis and A. Africanus," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Vol 62, No 2 (1983), pp. 187 – 198, and discusses the post cranium of the two species and how they are "strikingly similar." What? How the hell does this in any way suggest McHenry doesn't believe the creatures are human ancestors? Did this clown even read what he was highlighting?
To shortcut this nonsense I just looked up a few of McHenry's publications and came across "Australopithecus to Homo: Transformations in Body and Mind" (Annual Review of Anthropology. 2000. 29: 125 – 46). If the title alone doesn't tell you where McHenry stands and put to rest Larry's absurd claim that "all" anthropologists don't believe australos are human ancestors, the second paragraph of the introduction bitch-slaps his argument like Mel Gibson slaps around his women.
Most paleoanthropologists (e.g. Groves 1989; Tobias 1991; Wood 1991, 1992; Skelton & McHenry 1992; Walker & Leakey 1993a; McHenry 1994c; Strait et al 1997; Asfaw et al 1999a; Klein 1999; Wolpoff 1999; Wood & Collard 1999), but not all (e.g. Oxnard 1975), agree that Homo evolved from Australopithecus, but there is less consensus on which species of Australopithecus is the most likely ancestor and which fossils are the earliest members of Homo.So clearly the debate among "most paleoanthropologists" is over "which species of Australopithecus is the most likely ancestor", demolishing Larry's position completely. Case closed, right? Not when you're dealing with someone who believes human hunting was responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs. No sir, this is a mind with some serious industrial strength denial firmly entrenched deep inside a delusional psyche.
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| Larry the Creationist in all his impervious glory with a pair of UW students, prior to their condemnation to hell. If only he could have saved them in time. |
I went and had some lunch at Gotham Bagels over on Mifflin Street just off the square. If you ever find yourself downtown Madison and want a good sandwich, I highly recommend Gotham. Very good stuff! When I sat down to eat I opened my back pack and found – Jumpin' Jesus on a pogo stick! – the McHenry paper. I had never taken it out. When I finished lunch and just thirty minutes after Larry and changed his claim and showed him the paper again, did he finally actually admit he was wrong? I won't insult your intelligence by believing I have to say it. He started blathering something about Richard Leakey. If the guy ever stays on a single subject for more than a minute I'll ask who he is and what he did with the real Larry the Creationist.
The next quote I checked was from a book by Joseph S. Weiner, The Natural History of Man. (Weiner, incidentally, was involved in unmasking the Piltdown Man fraud). Illustrated Origins quotes his book: "The first impression given by all the skulls from different populations of Australopithecus is that of a distinctly ape-like creature... The ape-like profile of Australopithecus is so pronounced that its outline can be superimposed on that of a female chimpanzee with a remarkable close fit. In this respect, and also in the lack of chin and in the possession of strong supra-orbital ridges, Australopithecus stands in strong contrast to modern (man) Homo sapiens."
I looked this one up because whenever you spot a creationist using ellipses to quote a scientist it's always best to check the original source. I obtained in an email from an acquaintance PDFs of the relevant chapter and indeed it's titled The First Hominids, already indicating where Weiner is going to stand.
Further, and unsurprising if you know anything about how creationists operate, the quote was modified. The quote concludes on page 46, "...Australopithecus stands in strong contrast to modern Homo sapiens but less to archaic varieties." (emphasis added).
Why did Paul Taylor truncate the quote? Because creationists don't want to admit that "archaic varieties" of Homo sapiens ever existed. That would mean humans have changed over time; they have evolved. Even more specifically in this case, Weiner is clearly demonstrating that by being more similar to archaic Homo sapiens than to moderns, the australos fit into a pattern of transformation from the more primitive to extant species.
In fact, the entire chapter The First Hominids describes extensive supporting evidence of the shared characteristics australos had with not only Homo sapiens, but also modern species of apes, documenting their transitional nature. Position of the skull on the spine, horizontal position of the zygomatic arches as in humans, attachment of neck muscles, all point to the human ancestry of the Australopithecines.
I recommend pages 43 through 51 of The Natural History of Man to anyone who honestly wants to know why experts are convinced these creatures were on a path to becoming human. The evidence cited here is overwhelming, as is the work of McHenry and the other true experts who have dedicated careers to discovering where we came from and who we are. To have their work mangled by a hack like Taylor and then spit out breathlessly and with total ignorance by Larry the Creationist is just plain pathetic. And the fact he has to resort to rubbish like Illustrated Origins and refuses to even look up the original sources to find out what these scientists truly think and what they are actually studying betrays the real motive here. Larry's not interested in learning science. He wants to browbeat people coming to the market to shop into thinking there's actual evidence for his Jesus-Riding-a-Triceratops-into-Bethlehem fantasy.
Additionally, I was surprised by the incredible laziness and lack of anything remotely like diligence in Larry the Creationist's citations. After all, I've been dealing with creationists almost a couple of decades now, and I even sat through nine hour of Kent Hovind speaking over a twenty nine hour period! (A record I believe.) I've seen Gish, Ross and Ham in person, and watched hours of the second and third string wannabees on videotape during lunch breaks when I was at NCSE. I'm used to them exclusively using second hand sources and knowing less than a zit on a rat's ass about the topics they expound upon. But when I approached Larry with the primary sources and told him I had copies of the pages of the book by Weiner he cited, he said without even looking at me, "That's nice. I don't even know who that is." I think it's possible he was caught off balance by someone that would actually look up the stuff he was mangling and didn't want to admit it. Or, and this is quite likely, the guy just sits there at his kitchen table with a yellow highlighter in hand and smears yellow ink all over pages without even reading them. I believe I have empirical data to support this claim.
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| After dealing with the Creationists on the Square, a little good music played by talented performers restores a little sanity. |
But Kevin said something interesting the last time I spoke with him. I asked him a question about something on his display and he couldn't answer. That's not surprising because the one thing Kevin is as masterful at as Larry is at highlighting text without reading it is pasting crap up on Styrofoam without understanding it. (I see now why they get along so well.)
Kevin actually confessed that all this evolution and creationism stuff doesn't matter too much to him. "What's important to me," he said, "is the Bible." Well, Jesus H Christ, Kevin. If the Bible is what is really important to you why not just tell people what you think about the Bible in your own words and get rid of all this nonsense that's making you look like a cross-eyed, drooling fool in public! I mean, if you stand by their display for ten minutes you'll see half a dozen people walk by and laugh, or tilt their head and squint, or even say, as one gentleman did this past Saturday, "Fucking idiots."
It's almost a shame that an apparently sincere and pretty decent guy like Kevin has fallen into the Answers in Genesis trap. He's been gullible enough to hitch his theological wagon to the complete and utter stupidity that is young earth creationism. He's been duped into believing, along with denying a staggering amount of legitimate science, that if all the animals alive today didn't descend from a handful floating around on a boat for a year and being brushed, fed and shit-shoveled by an old man and his family then there's no god, no heaven, no salvation and probably no good cheese steak left in Philly.
Of course, even if he does leave his Box O' Bullshit at home and just shows up with his Bible, he's going to try to tell people that women who aren't virgins on their wedding night should have rocks thrown at their heads until they're dead, or that a guy lived in a whale for a few days, or that snakes can talk, or...
...God help us...
...just kidding.
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