Creationist Lawyers, Defenders of Evolution?

Posted on October 12, 2025 by Troy Britain

I recently crossed swords on X with whoever (is that you Casey?) runs the Intelligent Design The Future account, a mouthpiece, pun intended, of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, over the spectacle of Lawyers pontificating on scientific subjects.

Here’s how it went:

IDF: In this new interview, an attorney evaluates the evidential strength of the arguments for intelligent design.

Me: Why not ask an electrician or an office manager? Lawyers don’t have any training, as lawyers, in evaluating scientific issues.

IDF: You miss the point of connection. Lawyers don’t need to be trained specifically in scientific matters in order to apply their training in evaluating evidence for scientific claims. In addition, they also have skill in making complex ideas easier to understand.

Me: No, I understand the rhetorical point you’re trying to make, I simply reject it as being merely that, rhetoric. Lawyers are advocates who operate under very different rules than those of scientists. I could go on but I think Genie Scott did a better job than I could in a piece she wrote in 1993 in response to similar arguments made by Phillip Johnson in his book Darwin on Trial (1991) and I would direct those who are interested to read that: Darwin Prosecuted: Review of Johnson’s Darwin on Trial by Eugenie Scott

This little exchange got me thinking.

Creationist lawyers like to style themselves as noble truth-seeking prosecutors working tirelessly to indict the perfidious theory of evolution (or Charles Darwin etc.), for being fraudulent and leading the innocent astray.

But that’s not what they are.

They’re not prosecutors at all. They’re defense attorneys —and not particularly ethical ones— working on behalf of a client who never hired them and would prefer they stop talking: evolution itself (and every other science rejected by creationists).

Now, stay with me here.

Evolution (and I will focus on that since it is my forte) is guilty. Guilty as sin. The evidence against it is overwhelming. There’s the testimony of the rocks (my apologies to Hugh Miller 1802-1856) i.e. the fossil record, genetics, comparative anatomy, comparative embryology, systematics, biogeography. Every witness for the prosecution points the same way and delivers the same verdict:

Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt — of being the best scientific explanation for the change and diversification of life on Earth through time.

Enter the defense: the creationist attorneys.

They’ll argue almost anything —no matter how absurd or misleading— to get evolution off the hook. They endlessly try to poke superficial holes in the insurmountable evidence again their unwilling client.

They argue that we should ignore the smoking gun of reliable forensic evidence against evolution in favor of hearsay testimonials in ancient texts that an “intelligent designer” (wink, wink) did it through some unknown and unknowable process, for reasons, and in a manner, known only to itself.

And they’ll denounce as “unfair” and “unjust” the scientific rules of evidence, such as a reliance on methodological naturalism, for disallowing their preferred theory of the “crime”, “God did it”, due to a lack of testability.

Sorry, creationist lawyers, only two explanations consistent with the evidence:

A) Evolution really did it.

B) Or God has gone to extraordinary lengths to stage a cosmic frame-up so perfect that mere mortals cannot hope to see through it. Is that the story you want to go with?

Of course, none of their machinations have a prayer of working on a jury of scientific peers, but this is not the true target of creationist lawyers, rather their rhetoric is aimed at two other groups. 1) Those unfamiliar with either the workings of science or the particulars of the evidence in question that they hope to sway to their cause and more importantly, 2) those that care not about science or the evidence, who are already convinced of evolutions innocence and wish to have their prejudices reinforced.

But in all seriousness, history has shown repeatedly that lawyers taking up the antievolution cause get things just as wrong as creationists from other backgrounds. If lawyers really had some special insight into this subject, then history should reflect that, it doesn’t.

My thanks to Wesley Elsberry for some comments and suggestions.

Ken Ham posts dishonestly edited and out of context quotation

Posted on August 31, 2025 by Troy Britain

I know, “Dog Bites Man”, but I still feel whenever creationist are caught dishonestly misrepresenting the words of others it should be pointed out and documented.

In this case Ken Ham, founder CEO of the young Earth creationist (YEC) organization Answers in Genesis posted to his X account the following:

Is this high school biology textbook definition of science a scientific one?

“Restrict science to a search for natural causes for natural phenomena. Supernatural explanations of natural events are simply outside the bounds of science.”

In other words, “science” (which really means “knowledge”) cannot allow the supernatural. Thus, by this definition, God and his Word are eliminated.

But that’s not a scientific statement—it’s a religious one. Yes, religion is in every single classroom. There’s no avoiding it, and parents must be aware of this and work hard to combat it with truth.

He gives no citation other than a vague reference to a “high school biology textbook”. I was immediately suspicious about the context of this quote, wondering if the original would explain why science was limited to natural explanations for natural phenomena, something that Ham and other creationists avoid like the plague (more on this below).

So I started searching the web for the quote as Ham presented it and initially couldn’t find anything, deepening my suspicions. So I broke the quote down into individual sentences and low and behold a link popped up to the quote coming from an online biology textbook Meridian Technical Charter High School in Meridian, Idaho. And shocker of all shocks my suspicion about the context turned out to be warranted.

So I hopped on to X and replied to Mr. Ham with the following (red text not in original reply):

Oh, look Ken using dishonestly edited and out of context quotations… I am shocked, shocked I tell you.

Here is the full quote, Ken’s quoted parts bracketed ***thusly*** (red text not in original response):

>>The Limitations of Science
Science is powerful, but limited in the kinds of questions it can help answer. Science requires repeatable observations and testable hypotheses. These standards ***restrict science to a search for natural causes for natural phenomena.*** For example, science can neither prove nor disprove that unobservable or supernatural forces cause storms, rainbows, illnesses, or cures of disease. ***Supernatural explanations of natural events are simply outside the bounds of science.*** There is no way to show that such hypotheses are false.<<

Just leave out the parts that tell us why supernatural claims like “God did it” are not scientific, *because they are not testable*. And Ken has the audacity to talk about “truth”.

Source of the quote: bodell.mtchs.org/OnlineBio/BIOC

So he provides no citation, no context, and not even any ellipses (…) indicating that the sentences were not contiguous in the original source. As I indicated in my response to him, he has a lot of gall to speak of “truth” when pulling these sorts of shenanigans.

Here is some more relevant context from the textbook, specifically regarding theories like evolution(Ham’s cherry picked quote again in bold red):

The Limitations of Science
Science is powerful, but limited in the kinds of questions it can help answer. Science requires repeatable observations and testable hypotheses. These standards restrict science to a search for natural causes for natural phenomena. For example, science can neither prove nor disprove that unobservable or supernatural forces cause storms, rainbows, illnesses, or cures of disease. Supernatural explanations of natural events are simply outside the bounds of science. There is no way to show that such hypotheses are false.

Although science is “a way of knowing,” keep in mind that it is not the only way. Not everything you “know” is based on science. For example, you know what kind of music you like and what your favorite color is. These personal tastes are not the results of a careful testing of hypotheses. And you know right from wrong. This concept is an ethical value, not a scientific fact. Each human mind develops a unique database of knowledge of many different kinds. Science-based knowledge is the type built from confirmed observations and testable hypotheses.

Theories in Science
Many people think of science mainly as a collection of facts. But collecting facts is not what really defines science. A telephone book is an impressive catalog of factual information, yet it has little to do with science. It is true that factual data provide the raw material for science. But scientists are mostly interested in finding patterns in the data and explaining these patterns. What really advances science is some new theory that ties together a variety of facts that previously seemed unrelated. People like Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Albert Einstein stand out in the history of science because their theories connected so many observations and experimental results.

How is a theory different from a hypothesis? In science, a theory is a well-tested explanation that makes sense of a great variety of scientific observations. It gives rise to many hypotheses that can be tested. This definition contrasts with the everyday use of theory to mean a speculation, as in “It’s only a theory.” Compared to a hypothesis, a theory is much broader in scope. This is a hypothesis: “Mimicking poisonous snakes is an adaptation that protects nonpoisonous snakes from predators.” But this is a theory: “Adaptations such as mimicry evolve by natural selection.” The theory of natural selection explains the evolution of the many cases of mimicry, as well as a variety of other adaptations of organisms to their environments.

Theories, such as the theory of natural selection, only become widely accepted in science when they are supported by an extensive body of evidence. That evidence also provides a framework for further research and predictions. If new evidence that contradicts a theory is uncovered, scientists first verify the evidence many times. They then modify or discard the theory accordingly.

Of course Ken left out all of this which explains why scientific explanations exclude supernatural explanations (their lack of testability) and how scientific theories, like evolution are “well-tested”. This isn’t dogmatic atheistic limitation on science, as Ken would have his readers believe, rather testability is a practical limitation of science because it is the only way to demark fanciful speculations and religious myths from potentially valid explanations.

But Ken and other creationists can’t have this because their particular theology demands a particular interpretation of their scripture that is incomputable with not only evolutionary biology but with the findings of much of the rest of science (which they falsely label as “evolutionist science” or similar). For YEC, whose beliefs require the Earth and universe to be young (6000 to 10,000 years old), whenever they posit a testable hypothesis, such as the fossil record being explainable as the actions of a single event, in this case the Noachian Flood described in the book of Genesis, these hypotheses have been falsified. In the case of Flood geology in innumerable ways, something known to late 18th and early 19th century creationist geologists long before evolutionary theory was accepted.

This, by the way, is what led to the development of so called “Intelligent Design theory” (ID). ID creationists wanted to rid themselves of having to defend already falsified hypotheses, and of making direct references to Genesis, so as to avoid both scientific and First Amendment objections to their ideas being taught in public school science classrooms.

Once Flood geology and a few other potentially testable creationist hypotheses have been ruled out by science (or deliberately left out by ID proponents) all they have is “God did it” (or the “Intelligent Designer did it”) which is not testable against the empirical evidence. An omnipotent creator could create anything, in any way, making any possible observation of the facts potentially compatible with God having done it.

So, anyway, more evidence (as if it were needed) that Ken Ham is not an honest interlocutor.

That time I found a poop beetle

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Troy Britain

And now for a little “sh*t posting”…

I found this little beetle in a Japanese beetle (Popillia japonica) trap several years ago in the vicinity of Ontario, California. I was able to identify it as a male (you can tell by the horns) Onthophagus taurus, a type of dung beetle native to areas around the Mediterranean (southern Europe, North Africa and the middle East). Apparently they were introduced in the U.S. in the late 1960’s to early 1970’s to help control cow dung, and have now spread to most of North America.

Image via Wikipedia.

Anyway, something a little different from the usual June bugs (Phyllophaga) and green fruit beetles (Cotinis) that I usually find in the traps.

Mendacious creationists won’t fess up

Posted on March 17, 2024 by Troy Britain

First some context. Back in 2012 I wrote an article on yet another benighted creationist attack on 19th century zoologist Ernst Haeckel, written by The Institute for Creation Research’s (hereafter ICR) Dr. Brian Thomas, (Thomas 2012) implying that Haeckel—and some comparative embryology plates from the 3rd edition of his book The Evolution of Man (1874)—are responsible for the idea that the embryos of tetrapods (terrestrial vertebrates) at one point in their development posses structures often commonly referred to as “gill slits”, more properly pharyngeal clefts and pouches.

This is of course utter nonsense, as I have written on this extensively in other posts (see related links below); however embryological pharyngeal structures are not the real point here. Rather it is a quote, or I should say misquote, cited by Thomas, from a textbook, Biology (2007), authored by Sylvia Mader and a “correction” ICR has made in an editor’s note since added to his article.

In his article Thomas uses the “quote” in question—and Mader’s use of comparative embryo illustrations based, at least in part, on Haeckel’s—to imply that Mader is A) unjustifiably interpreting embryological evidence as being supportive of evolutionary theory, and B) That she isn’t up to date on the true state of comparative vertebrate embryology and Haeckel’s “discredited” illustrations.

First Thomas’s mangled quote of Mader:

Thomas: Mader wrote:

At some time during development all vertebrates have a postanal tail [spinal cord-like scaffold] and exhibit paired pharyngeal pouches… In humans, the first pair of pouches becomes the tonsils, while the third and fourth pairs become the thymus and parathyroid glands. Why should terrestrial vertebrates develop and then modify such structures like pharyngeal pouches that have lost their original function? The most likely explanation is that fishes are ancestral to other vertebrate groups.³

But how does Mader know that the pouches “lost original function?” She doesn’t—she makes the statement on the basis of evolutionary belief, not on scientific observation. She even lists the pouches’ critical functions for human development. Since the pouches are tissues organized into folds and have known functions, then there is no scientific reason to even suspect that they reflect any evolutionary past.³

Now Mader’s quote with some context and significant parts mysteriously missing or altered from Thomas’s version (the parts of significance missing/altered in Thomas’ version in boldface):

The homology shared by vertebrates extends to their embryological development (Fig. 17.16). At some time during development, all vertebrates have a postanal tail and exhibit paired pharyngeal pouches. In fishes and amphibian larvae, these pouches develop into functioning gills. In humans, the first pair of pouches becomes the cavity of the middle ear and the auditory tube. The second pair becomes the tonsils, while the third and fourth pairs become the thymus and parathyroid glands. Why should terrestrial vertebrates develop and then modify structures like pharyngeal pouches that have lost their original function? The most likely explanation is that fishes are ancestral to other vertebrate groups. (Mader 2007, p. 296)

As I noted in my previous post on Thomas’s article, he replaces Mader’s reference to the fact that the pharyngeal apparatus of vertebrate embryos develop into functioning gills in not only fish but also the larva of amphibians as well, with three little dots (beware creationists bearing ellipses…!). I think it is fair to speculate that Thomas does this due to the fact that these functioning gills in amphibians inconveniently bridges a gap between gilled fish and fully terrestrial, air breathing, vertebrates; something he would rather not have his readers contemplate.

This omission, as we will see, is not mentioned in the more recently added editor’s note.

In the second boldfaced part of the correct Mader quote we see that Thomas somehow altered the quote to make Mader wrongly say that the first pair of pharyngeal pouches are modified during development to become tonsils, rather than the middle ear and auditory tube (eustachian tube). On the other hand it is in fact the second pharyngeal pouches that gets modified into the tonsils.

All this has been merely the backdrop for the quote from Mader’s Biology (2007), Thomas’s mangling of said quote and ICR’s “correction” of Thomas’s mangle. Somehow in the intervening year since I pointed out the problems with Thomas quote or Mader—and I don’t know if it was my pointing it out that caused it—an editor of the ICR’s website became aware of Dr. Thomas’s little oopsie on which pharyngeal pouch becomes what, and decided to add a face saving note correcting the error, however the devil is in the details of this “correction”:

Editor’s note: Updated embryology specifies that the first pair of embryo pouches develops into the middle ear, not the tonsils as the above Mader quote states. “The first pair of pharyngeal pouches become the auditory cavities of the middle ear and the associated eustachian tubes. The second pair of pouches gives rise to the walls of the tonsils.” (Gilbert, S. 2014. Developmental Biology, 10th ed. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc., 478.)⁵

Here we learn that “Updated embryology” has created a need to correct misinformation stated in the “Mader quote” on the developmental destiny of the first pharyngeal pouches. That would be the quote where Mader provided accurate information in her textbook which was then mangled by Thomas while conveying it to his audience.

It’s not Thomas’s fault you see, it is because Mader needed to be “updated”.

How contemptible do you have to be to first butcher a quote from a scholar and then when your malfeasance is pointed out to imply that it is the scholar’s information that is at issue rather than your honesty and/or competency?

Update: Having gone back and looked at Thomas’s article I realized that despite the editor’s note correcting the misinformation about the first pharyngeal pouch (arch?), the misquote of Mader has not been corrected. This leads me to speculate that they (whomever at ICR added the note) haven’t actually figured out that Thomas screwed up the quote.

Top notch stuff.

Related Links

“Creationist foists “fraudulent” embryo picture on his readers” (2012) by Troy Britain

“Gill slits” by any other name…” (2012) by Troy Britain

“Responding to a comment on my article: “Gill slits” by any other name…” (2016) by Troy Britain

“Haeckel’s ABC of evolution and development” (2002) by Michael Richardson & Gerhard Keuck

“Ernst haeckel’s ontogenetic recapitulation: irritation and incentive from 1866 to our time” (2002) by Klaus Sander

“Pictures of Evolution and Charges of Fraud Ernst Haeckel’s Embryological Illustrations” (2006) by Nick Hopwood

“Accuracy in embryo illustrations” (2008) by the National Center for Science Education

“Haeckel’s embryos: fraud not proven” (2009) by Robert J. Richards

References

Haeckel, Ernst (1874) The Evolution of Man

Mader, Sylvia S. (2007) Biology (9th ed.), McGraw-Hill

Thomas, Brian (2012) Do People Have ‘Gill Slits’ in the Womb?, ICR website accessed on 3-17-2024

Discussing Natural Selection

Posted on April 25, 2022 by Troy Britain

I was invited to participate in a livestream discussion about natural selection. In this case it was for The Crucible livestream on the Promethean Secular Frontier Network on YouTube. This episode of The Crucible was hosted by Sunny Shell and my fellow panelists were Aron Ra, the prolific YouTube defender of evolution, and Brit Garner, science educator and host of the Nature League YouTube channel. I had a lot of fun doing it, hopefully I will get a chance to do more of this new fangled moving pictures technology. My thanks to Sunny and Wes (the producer) for having me on and to Phil Calderone for suggesting me to them (Phil invited me a few years ago to join him in a debate against a couple of creationists).

Give it a watch:

Answers in Genesis apparently didn’t like MY answers

Posted on February 22, 2022 by Troy Britain

So I’ve been blocked by the Answers in Genesis Facebook page. They’ve deleted my comments and those of the people who had responded to my comments (their fans), without warning or explanation. Not that I don’t know why they did it; censorship is the go-to tool of those who don’t have an argument, so they use what power they have to try and make the inconvenient questions—or answers—go away.

In this case they had posted a link to an article on their website with the tagline:

Atheists believe that religion should be kept out of public places. But what if atheistic humanism is a religion, too?

Now I generally don’t get involved in theist vs. atheist debates online and I had no intent in doing so in my response to this tagline. All I did was state that I thought most atheists did not believe “that religion should be kept out of public places”, just out of governmental institutions like public schools and courtrooms etc.

There was a little back and forth with some of the faithful, however I participated in no name calling or insult slinging. My harshest comment was probably when I suggested—after essentially being told that if I didn’t like their interpretation of church/state separation that I should move to a communist country, which is funny given that I am an anticommunist—that if they didn’t like living in a pluralistic liberal (small L) constitutional democratic republic where the rights of everyone were protected, they were free to leave.

There was that and I believe I referred to one of my interlocutors caricature of evolution as “ludicrous” or something similar. That was about it, that is all it took for the ban hammer to come down.

Pathetic really.

Ah well another feather in the cap to go along with my banning from the Institute for Creation Research’s Facebook page.

Just say NO kids…

Posted on June 27, 2021 by Troy Britain

Some bugs from my mother’s garden

Posted on April 27, 2019 by Troy Britain

Mom found some caterpillars munching on flowers in her back yard today. At first I thought they might be larvae of the moth Manduca quinquemaculata, AKA the “five-spotted hawkmoth” the AKA the “Tomato Hornworm”:

Photo by Amanda Hill

However my mother said she had looked those up and that these caterpillars were different. After looking them up myself I agree they do look a little different, but not much. I’ll be tagging my friend Don—a lepidopterist—to see what he thinks they might be (perhaps a closely related species?).

There were a number of individuals ranging in size and coloration. There were these two individuals that were about 1.5 to 2 inches long (fingers for scale):

20190427_183456-1

Here is a close up of one of the smaller larva. Note the shed skin on the stem below and to the rear of the caterpillar.

catter_crop

Then there were these two larger larvae (2.5 inches or so). Note the slight difference in coloration between the two:

20190427_183412-1

Then there was the beefiest cater-critter of them all. About 3 inches in length and rather radically different in coloration. Different species or do they change coloration as they molt? Again I’ll be deferring to my freind Don on this one.

20190427_183332-1

My mother is going to attempt to rear them to adulthood, so perhaps I will have an update with some pictures of the adults in future.

Update: My friend Don got back to me and said the following (with a caution that these are not the group of moths in which he specializes:

“Looks like a white-lined sphinx moth larva. Hyles lineata. They feed on a variety of plants, and with this year’s rain should be all over. I’ve seen the larvae by the thousands at places like Anza Borrego State Park. The adults come to blacklights in most places around here.”

Looking at pictures of H. lineata this appears to my non-person eyes to be correct;