Terry Hurlbut (@Temlakos on Twitter) authors a column for Examiner.com called Creationism Examiner. On December 30th, 2010, Terry published an article entitled Creationism and science: wider implications. The article was brought to my attention in a post by PZ Myers at Pharyngula.
I have, in the past, seen remarks about Biblical literalists attempting to “turn back time” so that we would once again be living in the dark ages. These remarks are usually made by people who wish to disparage the idea that the Bible of Christianity is truly the infallible word of God™. Never before have I encountered a Christian who does his best to make those remarks sound so literally true.
The Things I’ve Read
To begin with: to assert, as Marc Adler does, that “the building blocks of biology” (or indeed any other branch of science) “rely on evolution” is simply false.
Because Marc Adler has lengthy experience in the field of biology, while Terry Hurlbut describes himself as, “A serious student of politics and political philosophy since his Yale (1980) days,”, I think I would trust Marc’s analysis of the biological sciences a bit more than Terry’s.
Most of biology is still an operational science, a study of how living things work. That study has never derived any benefit from a consideration of the origin of life. That’s fortunate, because no one has yet settled the question of where the first cell arose.
Enough! How many fucking times must I go over this?
abiogenesis ≠ evolution
These are two different things. To equate them does nothing more than display your complete ignorance of biological science. Either that or it shows that you’re a fucking liar who happens to be pushing an agenda. You can take your pick.
Terry goes on to relate his vision of how much better things would be if we could just give up all this sciencey stuff and build all our knowledge on his Bible.
Astronomers would stop looking for “dark matter” and “dark energy,” and instead develop a uniform cosmology with insights from the Annals of Creation. It would find this model much simpler than the Big Bang model has now become.
Let me get this straight: We should toss out all of modern cosmology in favor of what Terry imagines he reads between the lines in the Book of Genesis in his Bible™.
That’s right. We should get rid of all of the knowledge that we’ve gained about our Universe over the centuries of actual scientific inquiry and research. We should just go back to a geocentric model that was created by the Christian God™. No more questions need be asked. If it was good enough for Melchior Inchofer, then it’s good enough for Terry.
Terry also thinks that plate tectonics is just a bunch of hooey that some scientists threw together on a drunken binge to see who’d buy it. It doesn’t really explain anything about the earth because it doesn’t agree with what Terry reads in his Bible™.
Terry rails against modern medicine and its search for “designer drugs.” True good health is to be found in the dietary regimen that Terry understands from reading his Bible™.
Terry believes that zoologists would gain new understanding of the wooly mammoth if they would only use his Bible™ as their source of knowledge. Terry also believes that expeditions should be mounted to find dinosaurs that are still alive, because he’s certain that they are out there.
Terry also seems to think that the Hebrew language is most likely the “original root language of all mankind.” Terry also thinks that reverse-engineering [I don’t think Terry understands what that term means.] Noah’s Ark, as mentioned in his Bible™, “might lead to rediscoveries of certain lost shipbuilding arts that would make modern ships safer than they are today.”
Terry ends his article with this:
In short, creationism, far from retarding science, would free it to fulfill its proper role: knowledge and understanding of the true nature of man, and how to live as God intended him to live, rather than a prideful pursuit of “improvements” that turn out to be, quite simply, curses.
Yes, it seems that Terry really, honestly, and truly is that fucking crazy.
What I Want You to Do
Here’s what I would like for you to do. Every time you hear someone mention that they think Intelligent Design or creationism of any other flavor should be taught in our public schools, I want you to remember Terry. I want you to think about the type of world he envisions. I want you to think about human life expectancy and how much shorter it was only a couple centuries ago. I want you to think about telecommunication satellites. I want you to think about water that comes out of a tap at your house ready to drink. I want you to think about turning the clock back to the 1500s. Then I want you to haul off and slap whoever mentioned it upside the head as hard as you can and tell them what a fucking moron they are.
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