I came across a video of Kirk Cameron (yes, that Kirk Cameron) and Ray Comfort. Together, they produce videos and run a distasteful evangelical website called The Way of the Master, which sounds suspicously like a bad Kung Fu movie.
Now I’m not trying to succumb to hyperbole, but the video just might be the worst video on evolution I’ve ever seen. It is both humerously bad, but more than that, it’s deceitful, filled with outright lies.
Their idea of showing evolution to be a weak and unfounded theory is to go out and interview people on the street who support the theory, but aren’t educated in it. They splice up the clips to make people look their dumbest and with a straight face present these people as representative of anyone who would accept evolution. As Ed Brayton puts it,
This is a bit like going to an art school and asking them how the internal combustion engine works, edit it down to all the responses where people say things about it based on ignorance, and then saying, “See, it should be obvious that the internal combustion engine is impossible.”
The video only gets worse when they attempt to prove that humans couldn’t have evolved from apes by taking an orangutang to a restaurant and showing that he can’t order off a menu or behave logically. Then they call airlines to see if they can buy a ticket for the ape, and triumphantly declare evolution as impossible when the airlines refuse to sell them a ticket.
But my blood boils when they start telling 100%, verifiable, absolute lies.
Lucy? They tell us that all experts agree she was a 3 foot chimpanzee. An absolute lie. If by expert they mean anthropoligists who study these things, then they can’t find a single person who believes this, much less the entire field of anthropology.
Neanderthals? A old man with arthritis. A complete fallacy.
They quoted Sir Arthur Keith, a British anthropologist as saying in a forward to the 100th anniversary of On the Origin of Species:
Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation which is unthinkable.
The whole thing’s a lie, a quote the man never said. He died four years prior to the 100 year anniversary of The Origin.
Perhaps I am dangerously naive and idealistic. I could have sworn that Christians were supposed to be people who actually cared about the truth. If these people need to make a video that advocates for a literal reading of Genesis, a young earth, etc, then they should do it honestly. They should honestly say that they believe in a literal reading of Genesis as a matter of faith.
The logical consequence of that of course is saying that our evidence for an old universe, old earth, and evolution are not trustworthy — that the evidence itself is something built into the fabric of life giving the appearance as something it’s not. I would clearly disagree with that position and speak out against it, but at the very least it is an honest proclamation of their faith.
As is it now, these people are contemptible. There’s no dancing around what they’ve done. When 30 seconds of googling can demonstrate that they’re lying, they have not put forth even the most basic of efforts to care about the truth.
In the video, they ask people if they’ve ever broken any of the 10 commandments. It’s their beautiful way of telling people they deserve death and should burn in hell, unless of course they renounce evolution and come to know Jesus Christ as Kirk and Ray assuredly sell him.
For people who like using the Bible as their code of ethics, they should know precisely what the Christian position on lying is.
Don’t do it.
(and a hattip is due Ed Brayton, from whom I found the video)