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Article: 1595 of talk.origins From: max@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com Newsgroups: talk.origins Subject: ICR whopper sampler Message-ID: <1992Jun23.052333.3735@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com> Date: 23 Jun 92 05:23:33 GMT Sender: max@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com (Max Webb) Organization: Cypress Semiconductor Northwest, Beaverton Oregon Lines: 457 This is a small sampler of creationist whoppers, gleaned from talk.origins in recent months. When I wrote that I had sent an unnamed creationist a small sampler of ICR whoppers, many people wrote and asked for a copy. I have much more distributed throughout my file system, and in books and on paper at home, but have not yet had a chance to gather them together. [plus my @#$!ing mailer seems to be broken. Sorry to those who wrote me and got no reply...] So many liars, so little time! Until then, here is what I had sent to the creationist in question.. If you would like to enter your favorite creationist lie, mendacious misquotation or attack of amnesia, please mail them to me here, and much honor and glory will accrue to your name. Well, maybe a little. >From Rob Zuber: ... QUESTION: According to creationists, there are plenty of places where the fossils are in the wrong order for evolution. This must mean geologists have to assume evolution so as to arrange the geological time scale so as to date the fossils so as to erect an evolutionary sequence so as to prove evolution, thereby reasoning in a vicious circle. When the fossils are in the wrong order, geologists apparently assume the "older" rocks were shoved on top of the younger ones (thrust faulting), or else that the strata were overturned (recumbent folds), even though there is no physical evidence for these processes. In particular, Whitcomb and Morris [2] maintain the physical evidence proves the Lewis Overthrust and Heart Mountain Overthrust never slid an inch. How do you reply? ANSWER: Whitcomb and Morris, again, quote their sources badly out of context. There is plenty of physical evidence having nothing to do with fossils or evolution that show thrust faulting to be very real. Let us consider the Lewis Overthrust and Heart Mountain Overthrust [I've deleted the Heart Mountain bit] in some detail. The Lewis Overthrust of Glacier National Park, Montana, consists of the deformed Precambrian limestones of the Belt Formation that were shoved along a horizontal thrust fault on top of much younger (but viciously crumpled) Cretaceous shales. ...[deletion]... Ross and Rezak [3] wrote in their article about the Lewis Overthrust that the rocks along the thrust fault are badly crumpled, but Whitcomb and Morris (p. 187) lift the following words from this article: "Most visitors, especially those who stay on the roads, get the impression that the Belt strata are undisturbed and lie almost as flat today as they did when deposited in the sea which vanished so many million years ago." But if we read the rest of Ross's and Rezak's paragraph, we find that Whitcomb and Morris quoted it out of context: ".... so many million years ago. Actually, they are folded, and in certain places, they are intensely so. From the points on and near the trails in the park, it is possible to observe places where the Belt series, as revealed in outcrops on ridges, cliffs, and canyon walls, are folded and crumpled almost as intricately as the soft younger strata in the mountains south of the park and in the Great Plains adjoining the park to the east." Ross and Rezak repeatedly show how "crushed and crumpled" the rocks in the thrust fault are: "The intricate crumpling and crushing in the immediate vicinity of the main overthrust, visible in localities like that near Marias Pass, shown in figure 139, must have taken place when the heavy overthrust slab was forced over the soft rocks beneath......" Now it certainly *appears* that Whitcomb and Morris have *completely* misrepresented the Ross and Rezak paper. It seems they quoted to the effect that there was *no* evidence of overthrusting, even though that paper appears to forcefully say the *exact* opposite! Now it's fine if creationists want to disagree with certain conclusions if they can back it up with evidence, but why in hell quote from a paper that completely contradicts your view? ... [2] Whitcomb, John C., and Henry M. Morris. _Genesis Flood_. Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co.: Philadelphia, PA, 1961. [3] Ross, C. P., and Richard Rezak. "The Rocks and Fossils of Glacier National Monument". _U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper_ 294-K (1959). [I have checked these -- Max] From: lippard@rvax.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard) ... By the way, it is of interest to compare the debate summaries published in _Acts and Facts_ to the debate summaries published elsewhere. What follows are the summaries of the May 10, 1988 debate between Gish and Ken Saladin which took place at Auburn University which were published, respectively, in the August 1988 issue of _Acts and Facts_ and in the November/December 1988 issue of the _Creation/Evolution Newsletter_. (A transcript of the entire debate is available for $10 from the National Center for Science Education, P.O. Box 9477, Berkeley, CA 94709-0477. The transcript clearly shows that Gish was trounced.) _Acts and Facts_, August 1988, pp. 2, 4: AUBURN UNIVERSITY DEBATE Dr. Duane Gish's opponent for the debate on the campus of Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, on the evening of May 10, was Dr. Kenneth Saladin, Professor of Biology at Georgia College, Milledgeville, Georgia. The moderator was Dr. Cathy Hennen, Director of Debate and Assistant Professor of Speech and Communication at Auburn University. The debate was jointly sponsored by the Horizons Committee and the Religious Affairs Committee of the Auburn University Program Council. Each debater had 45 minutes for his initial arguments, followed by 15-minute and 5-minute rebuttals. Almost all of the 800 seats in the auditorium were filled. Saladin, who was the first speaker, listed seven criteria of science, and declared that creation theory failed to meet these criteria. He stated that belief in a deity is unscientific because it is non-falsifiable. He then listed about ten items he claimed were taught in the Bible. He outlined a series of transitions involved in the origin of life, and claimed that much of this has already been demonstrated by evolutionists. He made a caricature of the creationist explanation for the distribution of fossils in sedimentary strata, projecting a slide showing trees walking uphill. He showed a slide which portrayed a series of mammal-like reptiles with no gaps in the series, claiming this proved that reptiles had evolved into mammals. In his initial argument, Gish began by asserting that the subject of the debate was *how* the universe and the living things on earth had come into existence (not *when*). He defined the general theory of evolution, quoting Julian Huxley, and the general theory of creation. Based on these definitions, he then presented the scientific evidence from thermodynamics, probability, and the fossil record. Using a series of slides, he illustrated the metamorphosis of the Monarch butterfly, and challenged Saladin to explain how this process could have evolved by any process of evolution. In his rebuttal, Saladin claimed that the formation of snowflakes and crystals proves that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is no barrier to evolution. He argued that Dr. Charles Oxnard did not deny that australopithecines were intermediate between apes and humans. In his rebuttal, Gish, displaying a photocopy of the article from which Saladin had obtained his illustration of the series of mammal-like reptiles, pointed out that two of the creatures were totally hypothetical, others had hypothetical structures drawn on them, they were not arranged in a true time sequence, and they were not drawn to scale. In refuting Saladin's claim that success had been accomplished in origin-of-life experiments, Gish quoted from an article by John Keosian, an evolutionist who has been working in this field for 30 years, in which he asserted that claims of origin-of-life evolutionists are simply unreal, and that experiments in this field are either irrelevant or lead to a dead end. He pointed out that the formation of snowflakes has no relevance to evolution, since the processes involved go in exactly the opposite direction to that required for the origin of life. _Creation/Evolution Newsletter_, November/December 1988, pp. 11, 14: THE DEBATE CIRCUIT Saladin-Gish Debate July 10, 1988 at Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama Reported by Kenneth S. Saladin Georgia College, Milledgeville, GA 31060 My second debate with Duane Gish took place before an audience of about 800 last spring at Auburn University. It differed only in detail from out 1984 debate (see C/E N 4(4):11-12), and Gish was utterly predictable. In my 45-minute opening, I discussed the philosophy of science and contrasting attributes of creationism, age of the cosmos, origin of life, fossil stratigraphy, transitional fossils, and evidentiary examples from embryology and atavisms. I finished with a stern critique of creationist credibility, with slides and quoted passages on Gish's fire-breathing dinosaurs, Morris' non-living plants, a _Creation Research Society Quarterly_ article on the theology of radioactivity, Gish's misquotation of authority, and creationist "arkeology." My fundamental format and technique were similar to 1984. I change slides about every 40 seconds, but keep my graphics simple. Many were no more than a color photograph of a grizzly bear or a solar flare, for example--something attractive to keep the audience alert and form a visual association with an organism or concept under discussion. I used one of my students as a projectionist so he could change slides at the appropriate moments without my calling for them. In 1984 some audience members commented that this created a notably smooth and effective presentation (one was "almost mystified" at how appropriate pictures kept coming up without my saying anything). My principal improvement in 1988 was probably in speaking style. I was more experienced and comfortable before a large audience and, I felt, gave a smoother presentation. One new tactic I introduced to this debate was to gig Gish with tape recordings of his statements in previous debates. When the NCSE met in Los Angeles in 1985, Fred Edwords debated Gish on a KABC radio talk show. A caller asked Gish about the quest for Noah's ark, and while Gish denied that any evidence of the ark had been found, he also denied that the ICR sponsors expeditions to look for it. The next evening Karl Fezer and I visited the ICR and were entrusted by a secretary to roam their creationist museum after hours alone. (She asked us to lock up the ICR when we left! See our report of this foray in C/E N 5(3):16-17.) We listened to a sound-slide program on Noah's ark which proudly affirmed that the ICR *does* sponsor these expeditions. In 1986, Gish debated David Schwimmer at the University of Georgia, and in the Q/A period I confronted Gish with this contradiction. He sarcastically accused me of fabricating it and again denied ICR involvement. So I entered our debate this year prepared to repay him for his sarcasm, armed with a microcassette onto which I had dubbed the seminal portions of the Gish-Edwords and Gish-Schwimmer debates. I played Gish's twofold denial over the PA system, then showed slides of several _Acts & Facts_ accounts of these expeditions, culminating with an unequivocal affirmation of sponsorship in the November 1986 issue. In his rebuttal, Gish seemed a bit flustered and claimed he couldn't hear the tape I played, but notwithstanding the slides I had just shown, he stood up and denied sponsorship once again. Auburn is a university with a conspicuous contingent of faculty creationists, but perhaps because of statements like this, Gish seemed to enjoy little credibility or support that evening. I was told several of his supporters got up and walked out during his presentation, and with statements like this it was little wonder why. Another element in my presentation was to reveal, more assiduously than before, Gish's misquotations of the scientific literature. Knowing that Gish rests much of his case on "plausible deniability," I came armed with a veritable library of books and periodicals he commonly cites. Gish cites Romer (_Vertebrate Paleontology_, p. 338) to the effect that bats appear fully developed in the middle Eocene with no trace of ancestry. I held up Romer's book and read from an earlier chapter (p. 212), where he says that, while bats appear fully developed *by* the middle Eocene, in the *early* Eocene and the Paleocene they are virtually impossible to differentiate from their insectivore ancestors. I also attacked Gish's misrepresentation of Gavin de Beer (_Homology: An Unsolved Problem_). I had this paper with me in the original as well, and read passages diametrically opposed from what Gish avows that de Beer wrote. My concluding slide was the cover cartoon from _Creation/Evolution_ No. XI. Gish gave his usual fossilized opening statement, but he and his audience partisans struck me as surprisingly subdued compared to other debates of his that I've attended. He discussed the Big Bang and Cosmic Chicken, the hydrogen-to-humans scenario, thermodynamics, the Hoyle- Wickramasinghe statistical argument, fossil transitions, human origins, and the Oxnard-Zuckerman argument. There were only two new features of his presentation: he dwelt at length on the supposed inexplicability of metamorphosis in the monarch butterfly, and he gave a juvenile gloss on Michael Denton's _Evolution: A Theory in Crisis_. Apaprently he never read any further than the flap of the dust jacket, and he reminded me of a fifth-grade student trying to fake a report on a book he'd never read. In 1984, I worked frantically during the intermission to prepare my first rebuttal. This year, I had prepared a rebuttal in advance from Gish's 1984 statement, and a card file to cover anything new. Gish was so true to form I had no need to prepare during the intermission, so while he prepared his notes I went down and mingled with the audience, distributed NCSE literature, and basked in audience adulation. Rebuttals were quite straightforward, and I especially enjoyed taking apart the Hoyle-Wickramasinghe argument. For this I used a substantive critique of the fallacies in their statistical assumptions, as well as a damaging overview of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's *other* biological beliefs: insects smarter than humans and not letting on, flu epidemics from outer space, and Wickramasinghe's trial testimony that Gish's views on evolution are "claptrap" and could not be supported by any rational scientist. In the question/answer period the audience was surprisingly hostile toward Gish. Questions put to me were no more challenging than "Do you think evolution can be harmonized with belief in God?" and "What if they *did* find Noah's ark?" The only one for which I had no ready answer is why organisms now use only the L-isomer of amino acids. Gish was piqued when the first questioner, Georgia State University biologist Fred Parrish, addressed him as *Reverend* Gish and questioned his integrity as a Christian. Others attacked his statistic "proof" of the impossibility of things which in fact do happen, his abuse of thermodynamics, and his reliance on popularized rather than refereed scientific literature. In contrast to the 1984 audience, who came in yellow buses and thumped bibles on their knees, this audience impressed me as relatively savvy. To anticipate and defuse the secular humanist attack, my closing statement focused on anticreationist opinion of clerics ranging from John Paul II to Baptist and Episcopal leaders in Georgia. I described and displayed the compilation in which the Franciscan physician Ed Friedlander has photocopied statements from Gish's literature alongside photocopies of the sources cited by Gish to demonstrate Gish's habit of distortion. Gish had the last word and retorted, "Sure there's a lot of liberal theologians on the side of evolution. Why wouldn't they be? All these liberal theologians are for ordaining homosexual ministers, for legalized abortion.... Of *course* they're for evolution!" The debate format did not allow me an opportunity to come back and ask if he had meant to include John Paul II among these "liberal theologians." Following the debate I was surrounded by well-wishers and chagrined creationist students. They were especially interested in comparing Gish's writing with the Romer and de Beer literature, and seeing Ed Friedlander's paper, which some people subsequently requested from me by mail. The creationists at my table seemed as disappointed in Gish's performance as Democrats reviewing the last Bush-Dukakis debate. The student organizer seemed almost grudgingly to present me with the check for my expenses and honorarium. He had written to me in advance, "We will do our best to publicize to supporters of both sides. However, it must be realized that Auburn is a small town in the Deep South [and will probably have] a bias toward Dr. Gish's theory." As it turned out, I had no complaints about this audience, but I think Gish and the organizers were a bit chagrined by it. The debate is recorded on a videotape of so-so quality, a pair of good 90-minute cassettes, and a verbatim transcript of 90+ pages. The transcript includes post-debate annotations and research into Gish's literature citations. I will send a four-page, detailed outline of the debate (the table of contents of the transcript) free to anyone who requests it, but I regrettably do not have the time to honor individual requests for copies of the tapes or entire transcript. I expect to have these available for distribution through the NCSE by January, and presumably their availability and price will be announced in this newsletter. I wish to express my appreciation to Auburn University philosophy professor Delos McKown, who was originally invited to confront Gish and recommended me in his stead; and to my students who helped with literature distribution and recording the debate. If I can extend any wishes to Dr. Gish, they are for good health and a long life, so my colleagues and I will have many more opportunities to publicly reveal the mendacity of America's most capable exponent of "scientific" creationism. Here's an example of creationist misquoting, from Henry Morris' book, _Science, Scripture, and the Young Earth_, p. 12: The catfish range in length from 11 to 24 cm., with a mean of 18 cm. Preservation is excellent. In some specimens, even the skin and other soft parts, including the adipose fin, are well preserved ... ... strongly suggests that the catfish could have been transported to their site of fossilization.(19) Note 19 refers to an article in the journal _Geology_ by Buccheim and Surdam, which says: The abundant and widespread occurrence of skeletons of bottom feeders, some with soft fleshy skin intact, strongly suggests that the catfish were a resident population. It is highly improbable that the catfish could have been transported to their site of fossilization. Experiments and observations made on various species of fish have shown that fish decompose and disarticulate after only very short distances of transport (Shafer, 1972). Karl Fezer discovered this, and wrote a critique, which he sent to Morris for comment. This resulted in the following "correction" in _Acts & Facts_ (vol. 12, no. 11, p. 6): CORRECTION Readers who may have purchased the booklet, _Science, Scripture, and the Young Earth_, announced in the August issue of _Acts & Facts_, should make the following correction: on page 12, delete lines 18 and 19. A section which was inadvertently omitted in this quotation (from an article in _Geology_ by Buccheim and Surdam) inverts the authors' intended meaning. However, the argument being advanced in this section by the booklet's author, Dr. Henry Morris, is not affected by this correction. ICR writers always try diligently to quote accurately and in context, knowing that evolutionists are carefully watching their writings to ferret out any examples of misquoting which may occur, but this one got by. If the authors of the quoted paper were embarrassed in any way by our lapse in this case, we apologize. ... Gish has been caught on numerous occasions spouting lies, yet he never offers retractions and his own religion tells him that he should be honest. One example is Gish's "bullfrog proteins." In 1983, in a PBS show on creationism, Gish claimed that while humans and chimpanzees have many proteins which are identical or differ by only a few amino acids, there are also human proteins which are more similar to a bullfrog or a chicken than to chimpanzees. Gish was repeatedly pressed to produce his evidence. Two years later, Philip Kitcher challenged Gish to produce his evidence or retract his claim in a debate at the University of Minnesota. Gish refused to respond. Kevin Wirth of Students for Origins Research (a pro-creationist organization) begged Gish to respond in the pages of _Origins Research_ regarding the claim. He refused. (See Robert Schadewald, "Scientific Creationism and Error," Creation/Evolution XVII (vol. 6, no. 1, 1986).) Another example involving numerous creationists is the claim that Donald Johanson discovered "Lucy's" knee joint 2 km away from the rest of the skeleton. This claim was first made in the _Bible-Science Newsletter_ by Tom Willis in 1987, and has since been repeated by Walter Brown, John Morris, Paul Taylor, Russell Arndts, and Michael Girouard. But it's false, apparently based on a misunderstanding at a Q&A session at the University of Missouri attended by Willis. Johanson *did* find a knee joint 2 km away from "Lucy," but he never claimed that this knee joint was "Lucy"'s. I gave a copy of a letter from Johanson describing the facts of the matter to Girouard in person at an ICR seminar, and he claimed he would read it carefully and respond to any letters I wrote him. I wrote him in December of 1989 and never received a reply. Brown was also informed of the facts of the matter, in both the pages of _Creation/Evolution_ and of _Origins Research_. In both cases he responded with new claims about "Lucy" which had nothing to do with the knee joint--he just ignored the issue at hand. (_Origins Research_ didn't print my followup.) My letter to Tom Willis received no reply. My letter to the _Bible-Science Newsletter_ (in response to Arndts' more recent repetition of the false claim) went unpublished and I received no reply... ... Recently there has been a claim (by Jim Loucks) that evolution writers misquote creationists much more often than the reverse. Jim of course has so far failed to substantiate that claim with any evidence, while in the mean time there have been several articles posted documenting creationist misquoting of evolutionary authors (for example the Eldredge and Gould case). Below is yet another example of creationist misquoting due to not checking sources. It seems that a common tactic is to scan "friendly" papers for quotes from "hostile" authors which contain quotes that appear to support your position ([sarcasm on] certainly another creationist would never misrepresent another author right? [sarcasm off]). The article in this case is titled _Some_Philosophical_Implications_of_the_ _Theory_of_Evolution_ from the Seventh-Day Adventist publication _Origins_ Vol. 3, 1976, page 39. The author is John D. Clark. Mr. Roy should take notice of this one (I believe that John Clark is the son of an Adventist biologist who has written several books on creationism that are used in Adventist schools). This paper gives an excellent example of how creationists love to quote each other in a round-robin fashion without ever checking their sources. Let me quote from John Clark a section that includes a quote from Charles Darwin's autobiography. Charles Darwin in his autobiography understood evolution's serious implications for man. This understanding took the form of the "horrid doubt". He states: "But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? [The grand conclusion in this context is the evolutionary hypothesis itself]." At the basis of this evolutionary idea was the theory of natural selection... I would like to point out that the editorial comment in the square brackets about the grand conclusion was put there by John Clark but in the same type and density and inside the quote attributed to Darwin. Now I have read Darwin's autobiography, and I didn't remember any references to "horrid doubts" (which Clark refers to in quotes at least 4 times in his paper) or even significant doubts about the "evolutionary hypothesis" as Clark calls it. Since I have his autobiography, I decided to look up the quote, so I turned to the reference provided by Clark to help me find it faster. Much to my surprise, the footnote did not refer to Darwin's autobiography, rather the quote was taken from the Frontispiece to David Lack, 1961 _Evolutionary_Theory_and_Christian_Belief:_the_unresolved_Conflict_. Since I did not have this book it appeared that I would have to search my copy of Darwin's autobiography to find the quote, which I did. Within about 1/2 hour I was able to find it (there were no references for "doubts" or "horrid doubts" in the index). The quote is contained in a chapter entitled "Religious Belief" and had no mention of "horrid doubts" of any kind. Furthermore, this quote is found at the end of a long discussion where he states his inability to believe in the Bible or even the God of the Bible; however he did find reason to believe in some sort of a diety. Let me quote with some real context: When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of a man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of Species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually with many fluctuations become weaker. But then arises the doubt--can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience? Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake. Nowhere is there a reference to a "horrid doubt", but more importantly, the doubt he is referring to is not about the evolutionary hypothesis, rather he is affirming his belief in evolution while expressing doubt regarding the reliability of humanity's tendency to believe in a god. His doubt is that our tendency to believe in God is suspect, and even a vague belief in a deity may be too much. On the next page he says "...and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic." (I don't want to start a thread on Agnosticism and Atheism, that's not the point. The point is the use of Darwin's words in a creationist paper.) If you want to look it up, be sure to get a recent edition (i.e. > 1960). Cheers, Dan Ford ############################################################################# Article: 90 of talk.origins Newsgroups: talk.origins From: zuber_rg@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu (Robert G Zuber) Subject: Hey, Gish, God is looking! :) Message-ID: <1992May24.135625.9049@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu> Organization: HAC - Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore References: <18033@plains.NoDak.edu> <18037@plains.NoDak.edu> Date: Sun, 24 May 1992 13:56:25 GMT Lines: 194 In article <18037@plains.NoDak.edu> ortmann@plains.NoDak.edu (Daniel Ortmann) writes: >"do it right" be sure you have evidence. We are talking of high caliber >scientists, who happen to be Christians and creationists. These people >(also myself) have great moral accountability to be honest and >*guileless*. Any Christian who tries to falsify evidence has to face >God. Even when no one else is looking, God is. Perhpaps Daniel Ortmann can comment on the folowing. It's a bit dated (1986), so maybe Mr. Ortmann can call Gish himself. The following is from the _Creation/Evolution_ journal, Issue XVII (Vol. 6, No. 1) pp. 1-5 ================ "Scientific Creationism and Error" by Robert Schadewald (1986) [deletions] Ironically, creationists make much of scientific errors. The "Nebraska Man" fiasco, where the tooth of an extinct peccary was misidentified as belonging to a primitive human, is ubiquitous in creationist literature and debate presentations. So is the "Piltdown Man" hoax. Indeed, creationist propagandists often present these two scientific errors as characteristic of paleoanthropology. It is significant that these errors were uncovered and corrected from within the scientific community. In contrast, creationists rarely expose their own errors, and they sometimes fail to correct them when others expose them. GISH'S PROTEINS Duane Gish, a protein biochemist with a Ph.D. from Berkeley, is vice-president of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) and creationism's most well-known spokesperson. A veteran of perhaps 150 public debates and thousands of lectures and sermons on creationism, Gish is revered among creationists as a great scientist and a tireless fighter for the truth. Among noncreationists, however, Gish has a reputation for making erroneous statements and then pugnaciously refusing to acknowledge them. One example is an unfinished epic which might be called the tale of two proteins. In July 1983, the Public Broadcasting System televised an hour-long program on creationism. One of the scientists interviewed, biochemist Russell Doolittle, discussed the similarities between human proteins and chimpanzee proteins. In many cases, corresponding human and chimpanzee proteins are identical, and, in others, they differ by only a few amino acids. This strongly suggests a common ancestry for humans and apes. Gish was asked to comment. He replied: "If we look at certain proteins, yes, man then -- it can be assumed that man is more closely related to a chimpanzee than other things. But on the other hand, if you look at certain other proteins, you'll find that man is more closely related to a bullforg than he is to a chimapanzee. If you focus your attention on other proteins, you'll find that man is more closely related to a chicken than he is to a chimpanzee." I had never heard of such proteins, so I asked a few biochemists. They hadn't either. I wrote to Gish for supporting documentation. He ignored my first letter. In reply to my second, he referred me to Berkeley geochronologist Garniss Curtis. I wrote to Curtis, who replied immediately. Some years ago, Curtis attended a conference in Austria where he heard that someone had found bullfrog blood proteins very similar to human blood proteins. Curtis offered an explanatory hypothesis: the "frog" which yielded the proteins was, he suggested, an enchanted prince. He then predicted that the research would never be confirmed. He was apparently correct, for nothing has been heard of the proteins since. But Duane Gish once heard Curtis tell his little story. This bullfrog "documentation" (as Gish now calls it) struck me as a joke, even by creationist standards, and Gish simply ignored his alleged chicken proteins. In contrast, Doolittle backed his televised claims with published protein sequence data. I wrote to Gish again suggesting that he should be able to do the same. He didn't reply. Indeed, he has never since replied to any of my letters. John W. Patterson and I attended the 1983 National Creation Conference in Roseville, Minnesota. We had several conversations there with Kevin Wirth, research director of Students for Origins Research (SOR). At some point, we told him the protein story and suggested that Gish might have lied on national television. Wirth was confident that Gish could document his claims. He told us that, if we put our charges in the form of a letter, he would do his best to get it published in _Origins Research_, the SOR tabloid. Gish also attended the conference, and I asked him about the proteins in the presence of several creationists. Gish tried mightily to evade and to obfuscate, but I was firm. Doolittle provided sequence data for human and chimpanzee proteins; Gish could do the same - *if* his alleged chicken and bullfrog proteins really exist. Gish insisted that they exist and promised to send me the sequences. Skeptically, I asked him pointblank: "Will that be before hell freezes over?" He assured me that it would. After two-and- one-half years, I still have neither sequence data nor a report of frost in Hades. Shortly after the conference, Patterson and I submitted a joint letter to _Origins Research_, briefly recounting the protein story and concluding, "We think Gish lied on national television." We sent Gish a copy of the letter in the same mail. During the next few months, Wirth (and probably others at SOR) practically begged Gish to submit a reply for publication. According to Wirth, someone at ICR, perhaps Gish himself, responded by pressuring SOR not to publish our letter. Unlike Gish, however, Kevin Wirth was as good as his word. The letter appeared in the spring 1984 issue of _Origins Research_ -- with no reply from Gish. The 1984 National Bible-Science Conference was held in Cleveland, and again Patterson and I attended. Again, I asked Gish for sequence data for his chicken and bullfrog proteins. This time, Gish told me that any further documentation for his proteins is up to Garniss Curtis and me. I next saw Gish on February, 18, 1985, when he debated philosopher of science Philip Kitcher at the University of Minnesota. Several days earlier, I had heralded Gish's coming (and his mythical proteins) in a guest editorial in the student newspaper, _The Minnesota Daily_. Kitcher alluded to the proteins early in the debate, and, in his final remarks, he demanded that Gish either produce references or admit that they do not exist. Gish, of course, did neither. His closing remarks were punctuated with sporadic cries of "Bullfrog!" from the audience. That evening, Duane Gish addressed about two hundred people assembled in a hall at the student union. During the question period, Stan Weinberg, a founder of the Committees of Correspondence on Evolution, stood up. Scientists sometimes make mistakes, said Weinberg, and, when they do, they own up to them. Had Gish ever made a mistake in his writings and presentations? If so, could his chicken and bullfrog proteins have been a mistake? Gish made a remarkable reply. He has, indeed, made mistakes..... [example deleted] Regarding the bullfrog proteins, Gish said that he relied on Garniss Curtis for them. Perhaps Curtis was wrong. As for the chicken proteins, Gish made a convoluted and (to a nonbiochemist) confusing argument about chicken lysozyme. It was essentially the same answer he had given me immediately after his debate with Kitcher, when I went onstage and asked him once again for references. It was also the same answer he gave two nights later...... [bombardier beetle stuff deleted] About the chicken lysozyme: three times in three days Gish was challenged to produce references for chicken proteins closer to human proteins than the corresponding chimpanzee proteins. Three times he responded with an argument which essentially reduces to this: if human lysozyme and lactalbumin evolved from the same precursor, as scientists claim, then human lysozyme should be closer to human lactalbumin than to chicken lysozyme, but it is not. Well, although it is true that human lysozyme is *not* closer to human lactalbumin than to chicken lysozyme, this comes as no shock and does not make a case for creationism. Furthermore, it doesn't at all address the issue that we raised. We were talking about Gish's earlier comparison of human, chimp, and chicken proteins, and Gish changed the subject and started comparing human lysozyme to human lactalbulmin! Few of his creationist listeners know what lysozyme is, and perhaps none of them knew that human and chimpanzee lysozyme are identical and that chicken lysozyme differs from both by fifty-one out of the 130 amino acids [1]. To one unfamiliar with biochemistry and, especially, Gish's apologetic method's, it *sounded* like he responded to the question. Whether by design or by some random process, Gish's chicken lysozyme apologetic was admirably suited to deceive listeners. One who was taken in by it was Crockett Grabbe, a physicist with the University of Iowa. As a result, Grabbe wrongly accused Gish of claiming that chicken lysozyme is closer to human lysozyme than is chimpanzee lysozyme. Gish then counterattacked, playing "blame the victim" and pretending it was Grabbe's own fault that he was deceived [2]. But if the chicken lysozyme apologetic fooled a professional scientist, it is unlikely that many of the creationist listeners saw through it. Gish's refusal to acknowledge the nonexistence of his chicken protein is characteristic of ICR. Gish's boss, Henry Morris, gave Gish's handling of the matter his tacit approval by what he said (and didn't say) about it in his _History of Modern Creationism_. Morris refferred to the protein incident and took a swipe at Russell Doolittle (whom he identified as "Richard Doolittle"), but he offered no criticism of Gish's conduct. Instead, he accused PBS of misrepresenting Gish [3]! Meanwhile, Gish had been obfuscating behind the scenes. The only creationist publication to directly address the protein affair has been _Origins Research_, which first covered the matter in its spring 1984 issue. Then, in the fall 1985 issue, editor Dennis Wagner revisited the controversy. However, in his article, he (1) wrongly identified Glyn Isaac as the source of Gish's bullfrog and (2) wrongly stated that Gish had sent me a tape of the lecture in which Isaac supposedly made the satement. Wagner's source, it turns out, is a February 27, 1984, letter Gish wrote to Kevin Wirth, in which Gish apparently confused the late Glyn Isaac (an archaeologist and authority on early stone tools) with Garniss Curtis. He also claimed to have a tape and a transcript of the 'Isaac' (presumably Curtis) lecture, and he claimed that he had reviewed them. In the same paragraph, Gish claimed that he had sent me his 'documentation,' and Wagner quite naturally assumed that that meant at least the tape. But Gish sent me neither, nor has he sent copies of said tape or transcript to others who have requested them. As with his chicken proteins, we have only Gish's word for their existence. For the record, it is no longer important whether Gish's original statements about chicken and bullfrog proteins were deceptions or incredible blunders. It is now going on four years since the PBS broadcast, and Gish has neither retracted his chicken statement nor attempted to justify it. (Obviously, the lysozyme apologetic doesn't count, but it took Gish two-and- one-half years to come up with that!) And if the Curtis story is all he knows about his chimpanzee protein, on what basis did he promise to send me its sequence at the 1983 National Bible-Science Conference? Gish has woven himself into an incredible web of contradictions, and even some creationists now suspect that he has been less than candid. [rest of article deleted] ================================= [1] Awbrey, Frank T., and Thwaites, William M. Winter 1982. "A Closer Look at Some Biochemical Data That 'Support' Creation," _Creation/Evolution_, issue VII, p. 15. [2] Gish, Duane T. August 14, 1985. "Creationism Misassailed." _Cedar Rapids Gazette_. [3] Morris, Henry M. 1984. _History of Modern Creationism_ (San Diego: Master Book Publishers), p. 316.

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