Ancient cultures have produced amazing works, such as the Moai, Pyramids, and Hanging Gardens. Since we don’t know for sure how they managed this, there are some who use this uncertainty for negative evidence that aliens did it. At the other end of the spectrum are those who interpret seeming anachronisms as evidence of innovation among long-ago peoples.

In 1961 a trio of California rock hounds found a specimen whose innards contained a heavily-encrusted metallic object. The discoverers pronounced it to be a spark plug encased in a geode. The inner object was said to be 500,000 years old, which would drastically alter automotive history’s timeline. This mystery find was dubbed the Coso Artifact.

Investigation showed it to indeed be a spark plug, but the geode portion is where the claim fell apart. The website rocksandminerals4u describes a geode as the Tootsie Roll Pop of the geology world. They are hollowed rocks, in the middle of which awaits a surprise, usually quartz. Geodes have thin shells on the outside and crystals on the inside, distinctions nowhere to be found in the Coso Artifact.

Investigators Pierre Tromberg and Paul Heinrich determined that the object became encased in a concretion  of iron, which was caused by the rusting of the spark plug. Still, Tromberg and Heinrich did verify an outstanding claim, confirming that there is something called the Spark Club Collectors of America. These enthusiasts of electric current delivery systems found the plug to be a 1920s Champion version that was used in Model T engines.

Overexcitement led to this archeological misfire, whereas our next object was more a result of pareidolia. Klerksdorp spheres are small objects who believers think could only have been manufactured by intelligent beings. They are buried deep enough under Earth that their creators would had to have lived millions of years ago.

Indeed, the spheres appear manufactured and symmetrical, and even include nearly-perfect grooves that would seem to suggest coming from a factory.  However, they are the result of the normal sedimentary process. Klerksdorp spheres began as concretions that formed in volcanic sediment or ash, and this formation also caused the grooves to form. This is because the concretion is harder than the material it forms around, so that when softer material erodes, the imprint remains.

From possibly genuine, albeit amateur mistakes, we move to outright fraud. Ica Stones vary in size from a pebble to a boulder, but are usually about the size of an arrowhead. They have been superficially scratched to show images of spaceships, humans walking with dinosaurs, and advanced surgery techniques.

Like most manufactured mysteries, the precise beginnings of the Ica Stones is unknown, but we do know when they became objects of mass curiosity. They had been presented as merely pieces of artwork until Dr. Javier Darquea received one for his birthday. He sought more, and Peruvian street merchants were happy to have a wealthy new customer. He collected as many as he could and created a museum based around them, cataloging the Stones and touting them as a window to an ancient enlightened culture. He made no attempt to verify their origin or the artist’s intent. The Stones were not carved, but only had a surface layer of oxidation scraped off, showing the creations were not ancient. What the images lacked in authenticity, they made up for in suppleness, appealing to believers in ancient astronauts, creationism, and Atlantis.

Long before it became a perpetual war zone, Baghdad was home to a wealth of archeological and cultural artifacts. Many of these were housed in the National Museum of Iraq, where Wilhelm Konig worked. He was a painter, not a scientist, which partly explains how he deduced that a ceramic pot housing a copper tube and an iron bar was a battery, about 2,000 years before these were known to exist. While no one knows for sure, this object was likely a clay jar that stored papyrus scrolls. Even if it was something else, there’s no reason to think it was a Mesopotamian alkaline. For the copper tube is insulated from both the iron bar and the outside, meaning no circuit is being made.

In all these instances, the anomalous nature of a highly-advanced technology coming from an otherwise unknown culture speaks to its improbability. The sudden leap in knowledge is another giveaway. In the first three examples, we aren’t even told who these people were. They made a lone, highly innovative contribution, then disappeared. They left us no burial mounds, archeological evidence, artwork, memorials, monuments, maps, written histories, or other sign of their existence. They managed medical, transportation, or manufacturing abilities that would not otherwise be seen for a thousand or a million years. Yet they were incapable of documenting any of this, save for one culture that managed to archive it by mastering  the art of doodling on a pebble.

Pitching for the 1890 Boston Beaneaters seems a rather excellent thing to do. Still better is starting a flight magazine in 1908. Alas, these two career highlights are but blips in the otherwise vain, ridiculous life of Alfred Lawson.

He left his sport and aviation pursuits behind to dream up an idea that tied everything together. And I’m not talking some piffling, particle physics-only version, but a theory of EVERYTHING that would solve all problems of governance, economics, morality, and science. His self-importance extended to his naming this panacea Lawsonomy.

He claimed his ideas could lead to a lifespan of 200 years. He seems to have taken this secret to his grave, which was dug well short of his two-century mark. He primarily promoted a form of alternative physics, whose main tenet was “penetrability,” which held that objects can only penetrate other objects if their densities were different. From there, he segued into “suction and pressure,” which he meant to supplant the Law of Gravity. He wrote, “No electron, atom, molecule, Earthly formation, or cosmic formation, however large or small, could move at all except by, or through the agency of currents caused by Suction and Pressure.”

He delved into this and other principles in dozens of books, which he had ample time to write, since he never executed his ideas, tested them in the lab, or applied them to scientific pursuits. He invented his own terminology, which made readers even more confused, and he never attempted to provide evidence for his claims. In fact, his 50-plus volumes of work may constitute the most exhaustive case of Begging the Question in logical fallacy history. Rather than explaining his ideas or relating an experiment, he meanders off into something different, then comes halfway back, then abandons it entirely for another tangent. This goes on page after page, chapter after chapter, book after book.

Some other dandy tidbits: He dunked his head in ice water to stimulate brain cells; He espoused an extreme form of reincarnation if which all entities, even nonliving inanimate objects, come back as something else. He claimed that planets eat, with the North Pole being Earth’s mouth, and the South Pole being its other end.

Lawsonomy features one of the lesser-seen pseudoscience signs, the idea that we are almost there on the all-time breakthrough, if only others would do their part to promote it. To get this going, Lawson started the University of Lawsonomy, which never consisted of more than a rural home, and today exists solely as an extremely threadbare website, lawsonomy.org.

When the didactic route didn’t work, he tried making Lawsonomoy a religion, figuring the faithful would more readily swallow the unproven and unprovable. He had the right idea, but blew it by stipulating a 30-year course of study. People want cheap, easy answers, but they want them now. To do this successfully, you have to sell an elementary idea up front, then keep coming up with new reasons for followers to come back. That’s how Scientology and Transcendental Meditation operate.

Whether at his university or church, followers were subjected to this type of unfounded assertion: “Earth is not a solid ball but a network of constructive cells with power of expansion and contraction which hold together and brace it so that pressure from without cannot crush it nor pressure from within explode it.”

He didn’t limit his unsubstantiated ideas to large bodies. He believed in mental microscopic organisms, themselves made up of other mental microscopic organisms, that “supervise the building up and tearing down of material things by the power of suction and pressure.” He gave these organisms names that would have been at home in a 1950s sci fi movie: Menorgs. These Menorgs are responsible for the existence of heavenly bodies and the species which inhabit them. It was sort of a precursor to today’s Intelligent Design movement, except that he wrote his creation tale.

In this Menorg-created universe, there are no light waves or sound waves. Rather, light, heat, sound, all substances, and even our thoughts are drawn to matter by suction, or pushed away from it by pressure.

Atoms are said to eat, have bodily functions, and operate on Lawsonian principles, which means among other things that they have no energy. While Lawson never tested any of his notions, this particular theory was forcefully falsified at Hiroshima.

When Lyall Watson and fellow researchers introduced sweet potatoes to macaque monkeys in the 1950s, one of the younger primates took to washing the vegetables in the ocean. This habit eventually caught on with most of the troop, either through observation or teaching.

There were a couple of distinguishing features about this. First, it was a rare case of the young teaching the old, sort of like when middle schoolers explain the latest computer innovation to their grandparents. Secondly, the oldest members of the troop tended to never pick up the practice. These distinctions could have been the starting point for legitimate study on how groups learn new techniques. Instead, Watson went with the hypothesis that once a certain number of monkeys began washing the sweet potatoes, their kin on nearby Japanese islands began tater-dipping in a cosmic transference of food sanitation protocol. But the only group consciousness demonstrated was by the credulous listeners who lapped up this notion of a spontaneous leap of collective ability once critical mass was reached.

Of course, merely ridiculing this idea is not a valid strike against it; that needs to come from a scientific angle. This was most thoroughly achieved by Ron Amundson in an article for Skeptical Inquirer. He perused five papers Watson and his associates had written on their experiences, and found Watson failed to even attempt the first step in the scientific process, defining the question. He also learned that the papers were in conflict with each other and were inconsistent with claims Watson had made in public. His own sources were contradicting him. In speeches and before reporters, Watson declared that in one spectacular instant, any monkey in the troop who hadn’t washed potatoes suddenly acquired the ability. Even more amazing, monkeys on nearby islands also gained the skill. But the reports written at the time revealed a slower, gradual increase.

This makes for one of the stranger tales in pseudoscience history. Usually the perpetrator will coin some silly term or act evasively when defending his work. Instead, Watson readily admitted to patching his hypotheses together with third-hand reports, constructed memories, and folklore. He conceded Amundson was right when he accused Watson of basing his conclusions on undocumented conversations, improvisations, and intuition. And while most pseudoscientists are hostile to criticism Watson wrote, “I accept Amundson’s analysis of the origin and evolution of the Hundredth Monkey without reservation. It is a metaphor of my own making, based as he rightly suggests, on very slim evidence and a great deal of hearsay.”

The next logical words from Watson’s mouth should have been the ones fully rejecting his original hypothesis. Instead, he said, “I still think it’s a good idea.” Well, he can think it without it being true. And a critical mass of people can think it without it being true, which contradicts the whole idea.

After poring over the documentation, Amundson pieced together what really happened. Relatively young monkeys saw the benefit of washing the sweet potatoes and this method was passed onto still younger members of the troop through observation or tutoring. Older monkeys mostly did not gain the skill. As the older monkeys died and more monkeys were born, the percentage of the troop that washed the potatoes grew. After nine years, all monkeys in the troop were doing it. No sudden increase in the ability occurred and there was certainly no indication of knowledge transference through psychic means.

Since the proposed Hundredth Monkey Effect bypassed the Scientific Method, it was a nonstarter among zoologists. But it was happily embraced by those in the New Age movement who were unburdened by the need for an explanation of how things work.

Ken Keyes Jr. pushed the idea that we should think peacefully in order to avoid nuclear war, a notion whose nobleness is outweighed by its implausibility. And as psychologist Maureen O’Hara observed, what would be the point of activism regarding nuclear disarmament or any other issue when it’s more efficient to silently dwell on it?

Meanwhile, Rupert Sheldrake cited the Hundredth Monkey Effect as evidence of morphic fields. He never quite explains what these fields are, but they seem to be a railway network of memories and animal telepathy that people can draw from, be it to gain strength, to have clearer insight, or to bolster a pseudoscientific notion of psychic primates. Others considered the Effect to be validation of Carl Jung’s theory of collective unconscious.

The website mindopenerz.com goes a little further and asserts it is evidence of a collective consciousness: “The monkeys across the other islands started washing their potatoes in the ocean as well as if it was understood on a higher level of consciousness. This brings to light the idea of a Collective Consciousness, where as if only a few individuals know a new idea, it remains the conscious property of all.”

Meanwhile, spiritualdynamics.net informs us that, “When enough people’s primary attention becomes focused through their heart chakras, the hundredth monkey effect will occur.”

If you still haven’t met your daily quota of begging the question examples, here’s another: “The mechanism for this transference of ideas works the same way for monkeys as it does for all sentient beings. We exist within a global atmosphere of consciousness.”

The website references what it considers an example of the Effect. In 1941, Les Paul and Leo Fender independently invented a solid-body electric guitar, a form of the six-string which had never been produced. According to the site, this is the Hundredth Monkey Effect in action.

However, per the Effect, there should have been many more than two people perfecting this instrument innovation simultaneously. In truth, this occurrence requires only a mundane explanation. By 1941, guitars had evolved to the point where what Paul and Fender did would have been a next logical step, especially when being conceived by musical geniuses whose careers were dedicated to the very idea improving this instrument.

Because potato washing was observed on different islands, Watson inferred that it had traveled in some paranormal way from one location to another. But independent innovation is not unusual among a species whose members are spread out. It’s similar to backyard basketballers deciding to play PIG without realizing that many others have previously come up with this shortened version of HORSE.

Watson’s ideas are more akin to those embraced by believers in ancient aliens, Zermatism, and similar notions, where alleged patterns are said to indicate a common mysterious teacher. Macaque monkeys didn’t even have potatoes to wash before 1952, when provisioning began. Within 10 years, monkeys on at least five islands had learned to wash them. This indicates a similar level of ingenuity one would expect among members of the same species, as opposed to being proof of a magic monkey mind meld.

There’s no doubting the creativity on someone who can come up with the phrase “Orbitally Rearranged Monoatomic Element.” And that creativity has allowed modern-day alchemists to attach all manner of miraculous properties to these elements, including the ability to cure fatal disease and attain superconductivity at room temperature. It has also allowed them, for 40 years, to convince some people that the elements exist without producing them or offering any other evidence.

These proponents insist the ORME are precious metals existing as lone atoms and forming no bonds in a not-quite-explained state of matter. Besides curative and superconductive properties, they are said to repair DNA, emit gamma rays, pass through solid objects, disappear and reappear, levitate, rejuvenate cells, read minds, make dreaming more lucid, regrow missing appendages, and increase psychic awareness.

The first prominent modern-day alchemist was David Hudson. He claimed he had discovered this alternate state of matter and resultant magic, but that the ideas were dismissed when he introduced them to Cornell University chemistry professors. That’s the one claim of his I find believable. I’m less charitable to his insistence he can cure late-stage cancer with dirt and some abracadabra. He also claims his coming was prophesied in the Bible, as part of the Davidic bloodline. Hey, his name is David, what more proof do you want?

To fund his research, he found some investors, although he has yet to repay them in transformed powdered gold or any other currency. If Hudson did any genuine research, he has not explained his methods or detailed any attempt to test, falsify, or replicate it. He has vaguely insinuated that the power is too great to risk falling into the wrong hands, but has otherwise said little about his lack of verifiable results.

Hudson argues that volcanoes millions of years ago saturated soil in the Southwest with precious metals. What’s more, they have concentrations of hundreds-of-ounces-per ton, exponentially more than the traditional yield from platinum group metals. As to why Arizona farmers are wasting their time harvesting corn instead of palladium, Hudson explains that the metals are in a mysterious form undetectable by normal science. Only he has the ability to recognize and derive them. That explanation leaves unanswered why Hudson is not the world’s first trillionaire.

Hudson has tapped into a knowledge known by ancient cultures, according to a blogger identifying herself as Lucy S6. She tells us, “The ancient Egyptians knew about it, but today’s knowledge is suppressed by dark and powerful sources that are trying to prevent our true evolution to a higher consciousness.”

It was also known to the ancient Babylonians, which Lucy S6 says is why George W. Bush invaded Iraq. Once there, U.S. agents went straight to the Museum of Antiquities and stole Nebuchadnezzar’s treasures, which are bursting with ORME goodness.

And here’s what Bush is getting, according to Lucy S6: “These elements resonate with the primal energy, the zero point from which all life originates and which is a quantum potential of possibilities.” I have no idea what that means, but it means the same if you rearrange the words thusly: “The potential of quantum possibilities resonate from the zero point from which these primal life energies originate.”

For the rest of us who never served as a head of state, the dark lords keep us sick and ignorant by controlling our food supply. Insects instinctively know to eat these foods in order to protect mankind, so the overlords created pesticides, which they learned to manufacture while making nerve gas in World War I. All this leads to an ORME deficiency (I’m all the way down to zero), which makes us ever sicker. This in turn drives us back to the corroborating doctors and Big Pharma. Eventually we are told we have cancer, with the disease actually being delivered to us in the form of chemotherapy, which is a form of mustard gas.

If you’re like me, you have a headache after reading all this. Must be the ORME deficiency.

As a youth sports coach, Jon Niednagel says he observed that children with similar personalities tended to have similar motor skills. Rather than applying the Scientific Method to see if this was true and what it might mean, he just figured he had the ability to look at someone and tell what kind of brain they had and how skilled an athlete they would be.

While the 16 types are different, one similarity they all share is being able to benefit by buying Niednagel’s products. And that will lead to this: “By determining Brain Type, one can know what one is best cut out to do in life, and how best to get there.” And I can tell you that a person following this advice will succeed, through self-fulfilling prophecy, subjective validation, and post hoc reasoning.

During the March Against Monsanto, a deranged man in a Guy Fawkes mask composed of synthetic chemicals railed against the use of synthetic chemicals. GMO proponents were called Nazis, ISIS members, criminals, and Monsanto employees, which may have been the worst slur of them all considering what the speakers think of them.

Not all were that looney, however. Some preferred to calmly say that we don’t know enough about GMOs yet, or that more research needs to be done before it goes to the market, or at least that they should be labeled. However, there are 1,783 studies that collectively represent data that shows GMOs present no harm.

This is different, however, from proving that they will always be 100 percent safe under every conceivable situation. Proving the safety of a banana, be it GMO, traditional, or organic, is beyond the scope of science. No study, article, or research could ever prove this. They can only add to data strongly suggesting it.

The tested product is being measured against other items, not against the yardstick of being entirely safe under every condition for eternity. The relative risk or lack thereof is scientifically determined by using sound research methods and peer review, followed by examination of the metadata.

Claiming we need more information is not a testable idea and is not proof of danger, but instead a means of instilling worry and animosity. The anti-GMO crowd tries to take advantage of the impossibility of proving a negative. That’s why a null hypothesis is a faulty approach. A researcher could never prove that playing poker does not cause ALS. If he or she found no connection, this would merely contribute to a body of evidence that points toward this conclusion.

Until someone comes up with a study showing that poker causes ALS, the null hypothesis is what we return to: Poker does not seem to cause ALS. Bertrand Russell and Carl Sagan stated in one form or another that the onus is on the person making a claim. Those who want GMOs banned or labeled need to provide evidence they are dangerous, not just speculate that they might be. That is only slightly better than falsely asserting they have been proven dangerous, such as is being done by the Corn Nut in the top photo. I used it because I believe in getting out of the way when an opponent is making himself look ridiculous.

Do we know that getting a green belt in karate doesn’t cause anxiety? Do we know that a surge in B’s in English class doesn’t increase pollution? No and no. Yet no one expresses fear of the hypothetical breakdowns of mental stability or air quality, even though there are no studies showing otherwise. By contrast, nearly 1,800 studies make a collection of data that strongly suggests GMOs are safe. And we know that its products include golden rice, which could provide Third World children with regular doses of Vitamin A if fear-based beaureacracy could be overcome. GMOs also saved the Hawaiian papaya and can make crops more drought- and pest-resistant.

Still, the anti-GMO side remains standing, albeit on shaky ground. One company gloats that its strawberries are non-GMO, a redundancy since there are no GMO strawberries. They paste a non-GMO label on the packaging that also mentions their fruit is natural. In truth, however, the strawberries are a hybrid that has been substantially modified. It was unnatural human acts that rendered them delicious and nutritious.

The four unnatural methods of potentially improving seeds are selective breeding, interspecies breeding, mutagenesis, and genetic modification. GMOs involve one to three genes and are tested for safety before they are allowed to be sold. The other three methods affect 10,000 to 300,000 genes, are not tested, and are unchallenged by the self-appointed food safety czars.

How does an Ivy League biology major become a creationist? By moving to Louisiana.

In 2008, Gov. Bobby Jindal signed the horribly misnamed Louisiana Science Education Act. While it employs meandering and nonspecific language, the law essentially allows public school biology teachers to discount evolution and potentially offers them legal cover if they violate a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling and teach creationism. In 2013, Jindal said he would be OK with a public school biology teacher doing so.

I have never spoken to Jindal, and that’s probably best for both parties. But if we had an honest conversation, I really doubt that a man with a biology degree from Brown would own up to believing that the geologic column, transitional fossils, and radiometric dating are hoaxes or demonic trickery. Nor do I think he believes humans were created in their present form 5,000 years ago. He’s saying what it takes to thrive in a state that ranks 49^th in education and where 90 percent of residents are Christian. But this political expediency no more lets him off the hook than it did Orval Faubus for having the same incentive when trying to keep black students of Little Rock Central High School.

In the same way that Faubus would deny black teenagers access to an equal school, Jindal is willing to sacrifice the science education of Louisiana students for his political ambitions. On Monster.com, there are 416 jobs for biologists and zero for creationists.

While points for evolution may be interspersed throughout this writing, arguing this position is not the purpose of this post. Rather, I want to highlight that Jindal, Ben Stein, and Pat Robertson complain about creationism being shut out of science class without citing one piece of scientific evidence for it.

If I ever met Jindal, my first challenge would be the same as I give all creationists: “Describe the Scientific Method and use it to explain how creationism works.” Only two creationists have ever responded to this, and neither answered the question. The president of the Quad Cities Creation Science Association conceded he could not do this, while the Facebook page “Atheism is Impossible” cut-and-pasted a lengthy portion of its “about” section, none of which addressed the Scientific Method or evidence for creationism. As we will see, it was instead one run-on logical fallacy. In fact, I have looked into a dozen creationist sites and Facebook pages and found only the logical fallacies of circular reasoning, the appeal to ignorance, the appeal to personal incredulity, and most frequently, negative evidence.

Let’s define the terms:

Circular reasoning, AKA begging the question. This is where one assumes what one is claiming to prove, or where one’s premise and conclusion are the same.

Appeal to ignorance. Where lack of evidence for an alternate position is touted as proof your position is true.

Appeal to personal incredulity. Where an inability to conceive of something is presented as evidence it never happened.

Negative evidence. Pointing out a supposed flaw in an opposing argument without bolstering your position.

Now we’ll look at how these are sprinkled liberally throughout creationist writings. Tiktaalik was a major evolutionary find because it had features of both fish and tetrapods. Committed creationists, while allowing that an animal can adapt over time, are fond of insisting that it is always the same animal. They will borrow from the Mr. Ed theme and declare “a horse is still a horse,” or perhaps, “a spider is still a spider.” They tried this with Tiktaalik, declaring it to be just a fish. Well, it was not just a fish because it had a neck, a horizontally flat head with a skull akin to an amphibian’s, and it lacked a dorsal fin.

Creation.com attempted to counter this by saying that four-legged animals existed 18 million years before the Tiktaalik fossil did. It also argued that Tiktaalik’s pelvis could not bear its weight on land. These could be legitimate points as to what they mean to one portion of one animal’s evolutionary history. But here, they are in the form of negative evidence. Despite its URL, creation.com presents no evidence of Tiktaalik having been created. By the way, its point about 18 million years is an argument of extreme convenience, as a portion of its website is dedicated to proving the universe is only a few thousand years old.

As to the points raised, the fact that four-legged animals may gave predated Tiktaalik does not mean the latter was not a transitional creature. The tree of life has many side branches and twigs, 99 percent of which have died out. Fossils are seldom descendants of other fossils, they are just related to them. They are probably not a 1,000-greats grandson, but rather a 300^th cousin, 50 times removed. So a similar, earlier four-legged creature would not lessen the significance of Tiktaalik.

Its pelvis, meanwhile, is consistent with a species in transition from a fish to a land dweller. Not good enough, declared creation.com: “The larger pelvic girdle in Tiktaalik is a sideshow to the main event that evolutionists need to demonstrate what happened between Tiktaalik and Acanthostega.” This is a common creationist ploy, where when a transitional fossil is found, they insist it is no such discovery, but rather another gap to fill in. And again, it is presenting no evidence for its side.

When Atheism is Impossible responded to my query, they did not delve into this type of thinking, but rather chose to affirm the consequent: “A stronger argument for a transcendent and intelligent designer exists than for the instantiation of life as the result of random unknown stimuli affecting a random unknown set of chemicals to create life.”

The page also leans heavily on the appeal to ignorance, as it points out the lack of evidence for abiogenesis. The author considers this to be validation of creationism. Later, he points out the staggering odds humans beat to get here, so it could not have happened by chance, which is the appeal to personal incredulity. It is also more appeal to ignorance because he again offers no scientific evidence for creation.

He’s still not done, getting in a fifth logical fallacy, equivocation. This is using two meanings of the same word in the same sequence, although this is probably more an instance of misusing a word. “It is a leap of faith to declare abiogenesis a plausible explanation for life origins. To go from there to evolutionary speciation is another leap of faith.” First, faith is a necessarily religious principle. Second, even if the more secular term “assumption” is used, that’s not where these ideas stem from. They are based on fossil records, common biological traits, and certain animals evolving only on separated landmasses. It is based on introducing a poison to a Petri dish, which kills most organisms, with the few survivors passing their traits onto their offspring. Tiktaalik was found after a predictive analysis was made that the rocks of Ellesmere Island might contain such a creature.

As to how life got started, Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “We don’t know. It’s one of the universe’s great mysteries.” This is not blind faith, this is admitting we don’t know. When we have this ignorance, searching for the answer is preferable to invoking supernatural explanations, which is appealing to that ignorance.

Atheism is Impossible drones on with still more affirming of the consequent and personal incredulity: “There is clear and convincing evidence of intelligent design. I personally say that any doubt is unreasonable given the observed facts.” Citing order or beauty in the universe as proof of God, while citing God as the cause of this order is circular reasoning. This also assumes a god is the only possible cause of this beauty and nature. It also ignores that organisms which seemed designed are the result of millions of years of incremental increases, which occurred so they could adapt. Today’s animals are winners of the genetic lottery, with the losers being the 99 percent of Earth species that have vanished.

Enough with Atheism is Impossible, we’ll move onto the Discovery Institute. In an anomalous lapse into accuracy, it declared, “Intelligent Design…seeks evidence of design in nature.” It admits to arriving at its conclusion first, then seeking evidence that supports it. This is not science. Science continually tests its ideas in an attempt to disprove them. A person wanting to do a scientific examination of creationism would need to follow the Scientific Method of defining the question, developing an hypothesis, making a prediction, testing that prediction, analyzing the results with sound statistics, and replication.

He or she should then outline the methods, explain the research, and tell how it is falsifiable, observable, and measurable. Finally, they should share data sets, explain the statistical method used, and submit the results for peer review.

Instead, the Discovery Institute gives us this: “Certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not by an undirected process such as natural selection.” I hope by now you recognize as affirming the consequent.

Also trotted out is the hackneyed argument of irreducible complexity, which demonstrates a failure to understand that evolution can work by adding a part and making it necessary. An eye without a retina would be useless, yes, but organisms change over succeeding generations, adapting in accord with their changing environments.

Onto the Institute for Creation Research, which describes its mission as “unique.” Unique means the only one, so I hope they are the only research organization with this in its mission statement: “All things were created and made in six literal days. Life exists because it was created on Earth by a living Creator.” It also lets us know that “A naturalistic explanation for a supernatural event will never be found.” This is reminiscent of the key moment in the Bill Nye-Ken Ham debate, when both sides were asked what could get them to change their mind. Nye said “evidence,” while Ham said “nothing.” Biologists always adapt to the evidence and adjust positions when mandated by the science. Creationists declare they will accept no evidence, no matter how scientifically valid, if it contradicts their interpretation of a specific revision of a specific Bible version.

At creation.com, they use the watchmaker analogy, though they change it to arrowheads. This falls flat because if doesn’t account for what created the creator, and thus relies on the logical fallacy of special pleading. This is when one must carve out an exception to one’s main plank in order to make the primary point work. Creation.com does this a second time when it points out how complex even simple molecules are and insist this proves creation. Of course, whatever created the molecule would have to be more complex than it, meaning per this criteria, the creator would need to have a creator, as would that creator, ad infinitum.

Trying to use the complexity of molecules as evidence for creation is also more circular reasoning since it attributes this complexity to a god, then says the complexity proves god. It also throws in some appeal to ignorance and personal incredulity, declaring, “The chemical hurdles that non-living matter must overcome to form life are insurmountable,” and “If it’s unreasonable to believe that an encyclopedia could have originated without intelligence, then it’s just as unreasonable to believe that life could have originated without intelligence.”

These types of arguments go on for pages, the authors never offer anything but logical fallacies, such as “The complex compound eyes of some types of trilobites were amazingly designed. They comprised tubes that each pointed to a different spot on the horizon, and had special lenses that focused light from any distance.”

This is because they evolved that way, having adapted to their environment. Random mutations that were beneficial were kept, those that weren’t vanished. That’s how evolution works, whether Louisiana schoolchildren get to hear it or not.