Terry Mortenson’s Creationist Claims! (Updated)

Some local churches from my lovely small college town of Morris, MN held an Answers in Genesis conference this past weekend. By “conference,” I mean they had a single speaker, Terry Mortenson, give 7 lectures over the course of 2 days. The second day has yet to begin, but here is a running list of the claims he has made thus far.

His two talks tonight were “Dinosaurs: Have We Been Brainwashed?” and “Noah`s Flood: Washing Away Millions of Years.” The dinosaur one was more sad and pathetic than anything. It depresses me that this guy was killing the wonder of dinosaurs for dozens of children – dinosaurs are the reason I have lived a life of biological curiosity! I truly fear these children will never benefit from their wonder; it’s downright evil. The flood one was more infuriating, however – by the end he was basically attacking all working scientists and calling them liars and frauds: most fossils are fake, they cherry pick radiometric dates, and they have an anti-Biblical agenda because they don’t assume the Bible is literal truth. He resorted to anti-intellectualism and anti-education propaganda. The guy is a fucker.

Anyway, here is what I compiled as his claims. Each claim with a XX### is from the Index of Creationist Claims. The bracketed sentences are my own comments and additions. The end of the list includes claims that he made that are unfortunately not in the index. I will update this tomorrow night after his last two talks.

Note that you can also check out the Twitter hashtag PZ and I used, #creoass!

CA001. Evolution is the foundation of an immoral worldview.
CA010. Homosexuality receives approval from evolutionists.
CA113. Quote mining
CA114. Many famous scientists were creationists. [He actually flips this – accuses Lyell and other geologists of being “secret atheists.”]
CA120. An evolved mind is fallible, its conclusions untrustworthy.
CA221. Were you there?
CA250. Scientific findings are always changing.
CA310. Scientists find what they expect to find.
CA602.2. Scientists aim to make God unnecessary.
CA620. If man comes from random causes, life has no purpose or meaning.
CB930.3. Dinosaurs may still be alive in the Congo. (insinuated)
CC214.1.1. Archaeopteryx is fully bird
CC310. Fossils are dated from strata; strata are dated from fossils.
CC352. Archaeoraptor was a fake. [Also produced by a Chinese fossil factory!]
CC361. Fossils can form quickly. [His whole spiel regarding fossil formation was meandering and confusing.]
CC362. Large collections of fossils indicate catastrophism.
CC371. Evidence of blood in a Tyrannosaurus bone indicates recent burial.
CD000: Radiometric dating makes false assumptions
CD001. Radiometric dating falsely assumes rocks are closed systems.
CD002. Radiometric dating falsely assumes initial conditions are known.
Radiometric dating assumes constant rates of decay.
CD011.6. Ancient coal and oil are C-14 dated as only 50,000 years old.
CD013. K-Ar dating gives inaccurate results for modern volcanic rocks.
CD020. Consistency of radiometric dating comes from selective reporting.
CD200. Uniformitarian assumption is untenable.
[Catastrophism was restored by Derek Ager after 150 year of uniformitarian “brainwashing.”]
[Evolution and uniformitarianism “not the result of research, but of anti-Biblical assumptions.”]

CH001. Creationism has explanatory power.
CH010. Creationism, being Bible-based, is good.
CH030. God is all-good. (does not lie)
CH050. Genesis is foundational to the Bible.
CH055. Non-creationist Christians are compromisers.
CH100. The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it.
CH100.1. Science must be interpreted in light of scripture.
CH101. The Bible is inerrant.
CH102. The Bible is literal.
CH102.5. God’s promise of no more floods fails if Noah’s flood was local.
CH103. Bible claims inspiration.
CH120. The Bible must be accurate because archeology supports it.
CH200. The universe is 6,000-10,000 years old.
CH210. The earth is 6,000-10,000 years old.
CH301. There was no death or decay before the Fall.
CH501. We can expect to find Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat. [Actually said this is not true, Bible says “mountains” not “mountain.” In same range.]
CH512.1. Juveniles of large animals were taken aboard.
CH512.2. The average land animal is the size of a sheep.
CH542. Plants could have survived the Flood. [Specifically olive trees.]
CH570. High mountains were raised during the Flood.
CH710. Man and dinosaurs coexisted.
CH710.2. Dinosaur figurines from Acambaro show a human-dinosaur association. [Something similar, but with Aborigone drawing and engraving of Stegosaur in Angkor Thom]
CH711. Behemoth, from the book of Job, was a dinosaur.
CH711.1. Leviathan, from the book of Job, was a dinosaur.
[Also flying serpents existed.]
CH712. Dragons were dinosaurs.
CH712.1. Some dinosaurs breathed fire. [Not preposterous, as electric eels, bombardier beetles, and fireflies create “elements” too!]
T-rex was a vegetarian until the Fall. This makes sense – fructivorous bats have canines too!

Others not in ICC:
– “Birds are birds; dinosaurs are dinosaurs.” Essentialism.
– Scales and feathers are not homologous. [Look at this microscopic picture of a scale and a feather! Totally different! *general laughter*]
– How could a two-way lung system (reptile) evolve into a one-way system (bird)? I think this is what he said anyway.
– The theories of flight evolution are untenable. Ground to air would require millions of years of running until feathers frayed. Air to ground is too complex – have to account for aerodynamics, gravity, and wind patterns. “Keep warm” theory doesn’t work for some reason.
– To evolve birds, dinosaurs would need to shrink. (Later says that most dinosaurs were small anyway…)
– Early dinosaur tree is uncertain. If we remove the uncertainties, it looks like all reptile families were independently created.
– “Dinosaur” doesn’t appear in King James Bible because “dinosaur” was not invented yet. Instead, dragons!
– Wollemi Pine – thought it went extinct 65mya, found again. Placard says it is “equivalent of finding a small dinosaur living today.” Why can’t dinosaurs still exist?
– “I’m a mental midget.”
– Scientists are disingenuous liars. We renew textbooks every year because of mistakes so we are wrong about everything.

Update!: Terry Mortenson, Night 2
Tonight was far worse than last night’s. The two talks were “Origin of Species: Was Darwin Right?” and “Ape-men: the Grand Illusion.” His misrepresentations of evolution were absolutely perverse and his attacks on scientists infuriating. The frequent quote-mining of SJ Gould was particularly troubling. I will just post the arguments he made here. Again, those without XX### are ones that did not appear on the Creationist Claims Index and are adapted from PZ’s tweets and my tweets. Bolded ones are my particular favorites. I will try to post an actual reaction sometime tomorrow.

CA001. Evolution is the foundation of an immoral worldview.
CA005. Evolution is racist.
CA005.1. Darwin himself was racist.
CA006.1. Hitler based his views on Darwinism.
CA009. Evolution teaches that we are animals and to behave as such.
CA100. Argument from incredulity
CA112. Many scientists find problems with evolution.
CA113. Quote mining [BLATANT QUOTE MINING. ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE.]
CA120. An evolved mind is fallible, its conclusions untrustworthy.
CA202. Evolution has not been proved.
CA230.1. Evolutionists interpret evidence on the basis of their preconceptions.
CA301. Science is naturalistic. (see also CA601: Methodological naturalism)
CA301.1. Naturalistic science will miss a supernatural explanation.
CA520. The Origin of Species does not address speciation.
CA620. If man comes from random causes, life has no purpose or meaning.
CA630. Animals are not moral, aesthetic, idealistic, or religious.
CB010. The odds of life forming are incredibly small.
CB010.1. Even the simplest life is incredibly complex.
CB010.2. First cells could not come together by chance.
CB025. Not all amino acids needed for life have been formed experimentally.
CB100. Mutations are rare.
CB101. Most mutations are harmful.
CB101.1. Mutations are accidents; things do not get built by accident.
CB101.2. Mutations do not produce new features.
CB102. Mutations do not add information.
CB110. Microevolution selects only existing variation.
CB180. The genetic code is a language.
[He compared DNA to a string of lettered beads – then argument from design.]
CB601.2. Peppered moths occur in uncamouflaged colors in many areas.
CB601.2.1. Dark moths never completely replaced light ones in Manchester.
CB822. Evolution’s tree-like pattern is discredited.
CB901. Macroevolution has never been observed.
CB901.1. Range of variation is limited within kinds.
CB901.2. No new phyla, classes, or orders have appeared.
CB901.3. Darwin’s finches show only microevolution.
CB902. Microevolution is distinct from macroevolution.
CB910.1. Fruit fly experiments produce only fruit flies.
CB910.2. Peppered moths remained the same species.
CB920. No new body parts have evolved.
CB928. Why are beneficial traits not evolved more often?
CB932. Some modern species are apparently degenerate, not higher forms.
CC000-CC049: Questionable fossils
CC000: Specific hominid fossils were hoaxed
CC001. Piltdown man was a hoax.
CC001.1. Piltdown man was the subject of 500 doctoral dissertations.
CC002. Nebraska man was a hoax.
CC040. Anthropologists disagree.
CC041. Homo habilis is an invalid taxon.
CC050. All hominid fossils are fully human or fully ape.
CC080. Australopithecus was fully ape, closer to chimp.
CC202. Transitional fossils do not show direct ancestry.
CC401. Paleontologists reconstruct an entire animal from a single bone.
CF001. The second law of thermodynamics prohibits evolution.
CF001.1. Systems left to themselves invariably tend toward disorder.
CF001.2. The second law of thermodynamics, and the trend to disorder, is universal.
CF001.3. Instructions are necessary to produce order.
CF001.4. The second law is about organized complexity, not entropy.
CF003. How could information, such as in DNA, assemble itself?
CF005. 2nd law of thermodynamics applies to information theory.
CG030. Oldest structures, such as pyramid
CH100. The Bible says it; I believe it; that settles it.
CH100.1. Science must be interpreted in light of scripture.
CH101. The Bible is inerrant.
CH200. The universe is 6,000-10,000 years old.
CH210. The earth is 6,000-10,000 years old.
CH350. Organisms come in discrete kinds.
CI101. Complexity indicates design.

– “It’s progress when you admit the things you knew were false.”
– Evolution is inherently racist, while the Bible is not. It says god made everyone from one pair.
Scientists admit the human evolutionary tree has gotten more complex in recent years. Therefore, humans didn’t evolve.
– Argument from Bad Reconstructions. Showing ugly drawings & quoting newspapers. Therefore, humans didn’t evolve.
– How artists drew Neanderthals in magazines has changed! Evolution is false.
– Evolutionists think Aborigines & Neanderthals were “subhuman”.
– Richard Leakey admitted he was wrong about something. Therefore evolution is false.
– Some evolutionists say Lucy was a knuckle walker.
– Neanderthal & Homo erectus are human beings! All those other hominins? Those are apes.
Larry Krauss: forget Jesus, stars died to create you. [Mortenson proceeded to make fun of this idea and the audience chuckled at the idea that we are stardust. It was a disgusting and depressing moment.]
– Mutations are caused by sin. They’re god’s curse.
– H. pylori lost information to become resistant to antibiotic. What about Lenski’s citrate experiment?
– Mutations NEVER increase genetic information. Who knew?
– “Natural selection is the god-designed method of preserving kinds”
– Now he’s reciting fish to frogs to man evolution.
– Same crap as last night! Biblical glasses vs. Naturalistic glasses. [This was a major argument of his. Scientists and Creationists start from different assumptions. We know Bible is right so that is the only proper assumption one can make, not philosophical naturalism.]
– Evolution says time+chance+laws of nature created everything. He ‘rebuts’ this by quoting the bible.
– “Evolution says your great-great-great grandpa was pond scum.”
– Evolution says we are only beholden to the law of the jungle.
– No one is black. “if you look closely, they are actually dark brown.” [Just a stupid comment of his]
– Evolution is racist. Scientists say the Anglo-Saxons are the most evolved.
– Neanderthals were 100% human. They had culture and hunted seals.
– Lazarus was buried in a cave. Lot lived in one in a while. Hence the Bible does talk about cavemen!
– Lucy exhibit has the wrong toe length. No one knows how to reconstruct human ancestors.
– If humans have no rights and it’s okay to experiment on mice, then we can experiment on humans, right? Hitler thought so.
– Selection is fact, mutation is fact, evolution is not.
– The dogs from the ark would have had enormous genetic diversity.
– Chihuahuas have less information than a Great Dane.
– Only two mechanisms of evolution: natural selection and random mutation.
– “How did stupid atoms spontaneously write their own software?”
“Deoxyribonucleic acid” is too hard to remember. “Definitely No Accident” is easier.
– He is conflating DNA with lettered beads on a thread.
– Sandcastle analogy instead of watchmaker. Focus here is the amount of information being conveyed by the sandcastle, not intricate mechanics.
– It isn’t the tree of life, it’s the forest of creation.
– Scientists lead you to believe that evolution = natural selection.
– The Grants didn’t detect any directional change or evolution on the finches.
– Dogs don’t evolve. They just beget other dogs.
– Evolution is the microbe to microbiologist theory of life.

Two really stupid things below:
A friend was checking out the creationist books and asked for the most scientifically rigorous book offered. The seller offered some lame book (of course) but he had some questions for her to ask professors.

1) Chemical signals are too slow to transmit information through the body. So cells must have “cellular e-mail.” How could that evolve?
2) If I shoot you with a bullet, why do you suddenly die?

I will leave you to ponder those questions! :)