Monday, October 13, 2014

Fred Clark on Croco-Ducks, Kirk Cameron, Creationism and Spinosaurus

Fred Clark, over at Patheos has an interesting post in which he notes the discovery of Spinosaurus, a dinosaur from Hell that was 50 feet long with six-foot spines, and has been called a "half duck, half crocodile."  This has produced a good deal of amusement on the part of a number of commentators who remember the idiotic statement on Fox News made by Kirk Cameron (under the tutelage of Banana Ray) that evolution could not possibly be true because he had never seen a Crocoduck.  Now we actually have one and the world is waiting for his response. We might be waiting a long time.  Clark has this to say:
What’s really amazing about this video isn’t Cameron’s unintentional Nostradamus-like evolution prediction skills, it’s what’s going to happen next.

Nothing.

Despite the damning evidence, we won’t see any creationist anywhere budge for their deeply entrenched position of denial.

You see, to any logical person not bound blindly to ideology it is clear that this is yet one more nail in the coffin of creationism. Probably, the most ironic nail of all.

But I’m betting we won’t hear a peep out of Cameron’s camp.

Why?

Because arrogance and denial are the foundation of fundamentalism.

You see, they had no problem arrogantly denouncing evolution in their ridiculous video because that’s what fundamentalism is built upon – the arrogance of ignorance.
The reason for this is something that I have danced around for some time but never come right out and accused the leaders of modern day creationism of: straight-up dishonesty. He continues:
Poor Kirk Cameron is a willing, but not an able, spokesman for “scientific creationism.” What he’s shooting for here is the young-Earth creationists’ claim that the fossil record is full of missing links — that transitional fossils have never been found.

The professional scientific creationists — the folks who are well-versed in this stuff and make their living promoting it — know that’s a lie. And because they know it to be a lie, they understand how the lie is meant to work, and thus they’re able to tell that lie much better than Cameron. He believes it, but he clearly has no idea what it is he believes. So he goes for the “croco-duck,” which demonstrates about the same level of understanding as the ever-popular, “Oh yeah? Then why are there still monkeys? Hah!” argument.
If you repeat a lie long enough, more people will believe it. But that does not make it any less of a lie.

2 comments:

  1. The argument that the scientists have found a "crocoduck" so Cameron and Comfort should take back their claim that there are no transitional fossils strikes me as counterproductive and self-defeating. No scientist is claiming that the Spinosaurus was transitional between the duck and crocodile, and as far as I can tell no one is pointing to Spinosaurus as a transitional fossil between any two taxa. It just happens to look kind of like a crocodile and kind of like a duck. And at the same time it looks very little like either of them.

    Cameron and Comfort are a joke. They are wrong that there are no transitional fossils, and maybe they are even aware of this. They demand a crocoduck because that's what their sock-puppet version of evolutionary theory predicts. But the Spinosaurus doesn't satisfy that sock-puppet version of evolutionary theory, and it is not (currently) a good example of a transitional fossil by the standards of actual evolutionary theory. So all of this seems like little more than a pissing contest to me.

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  2. Anonymous7:33 PM

    Any interest in Randy Guliuzza's work with ICR? Compelling stuff.

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