Chapter I: In The Beginning

• 1.1 At the Starting Gate

  How I got onto this project of investigating the methods and worldview of creationism by applying college-level scholarly analysis. It all started with my fascination with dinosaurs.

• 1.2 Getting a Grip: Dinosaurs and Mass Extinction

  The details not only shows how the scientific process works (cue magma plumes more than asteroid splats), it contrasts with the pile of nothing offered by antievolutionists (and surveys show there are lots of those) whether its Young Earth Creationist Flood Geology or the wispier Intelligent Design opinion.

• 1.3 Quote Mining and the Case of Punctuated Equilibrium

  Applied #TIP: let’s see what has been claimed by antievolutionists on a specific topic (what speciation events would show up in fossil record). My survey of them all shows not even one gets their facts straight. 100% failure rate.

• 1.4 The Big Theory: Natural Common Descent

  How Darwin and Wallace came up with natural selection-based evolution, outdistancing rival ideas like Lamarck’s (though the more recent wrinkle of “epigenetics” has broadened our understanding of how “inheritance” works), and how antievolutionists contort the history and science facts here to suit their agendas.

• 1.5 Dissing Darwin

  Antievolutionists can’t let Darwin’s reputation as a scientist go without some tar and feathers, from groundless accusations of plagiarism and support of slavery, to the biggie: his lack of religiosity. The Intelligent Design movement wades further by trying to hijack Alfred Wallace as proto-ID believer (and what historical facts they have to chip off to make the statute seem to fit).

• 1.6 A Brief History of Creationism

  From the Scopes Trial (where historical issues like eugenics are spun in the antievolution literature) through 1920s Adventist Flood Geology mutated by Henry Morris into politically conservative “Kulturkampf” Scientific Creationism in the 1960s, then filtering on to players from Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court to current figures like Ken Ham and Kent Hovind.

• 1.7 Teach the Kulturkampf

  The Intelligent Design movement (Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, Bill Dembski, Jonathan Wells, Steve Meyer) and their Discovery Institute glee club, whose persistent symbiosis with the Young Earth creationist subculture (which they neither criticize nor oppose) fans the fire of Kulturkampf antievolutionism. Though losing big time in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case in 2005, antievolutionists have by no means given up.