No.
This is in reference to Marcus Ross, a young-Earth creationist who just got his PhD from Rhode Island University (a place I will tell The Little Astronomer she cannot attend when she is of college age). I could go into detail, but Larry Moran has done a fine job already.
The basic point is: if you think the Earth is 6000 years old, yet do a PhD project where you state repeatedly that mososaurs died out 65 million years ago, then you are a liar. Period. There is no way around this, despite any ridiculous claims in some of Larry’s comments.
Of course, apologists from the Discovery Institute have oozed out of the woodwork to defend someone who purposely and chronically lied to get his PhD in science. They try to spin it:
Ross was never deceptive about his beliefs, yet demonstrated he could accept Old Earth Darwinism as a working but falsifiable hypothesis.
That is a load of bovine excrement. He didn’t “accept it as a falsifiable hypothesis”, he used it as his framework for his entire research project! If he had said “In the context of the old Earth hypothesis, this means…” then he might have been less of a liar, but in that case he never would have received his degree. To get his PhD he had to lie, he knew he had to lie, so he did. It really is that simple.
Gah, the Discovery Institute is loaded with hypocrites. Don’t they have rules about bearing false witness? They may spin and spin until the Earth rotates backwards (assuming they think the Earth does spin) but in the end they don’t understand the issue. Larry says it perfectly in his post:
If Ross rejects evolution and an old Earth then there’s something seriously wrong with his science. He doesn’t deserve to get the highest degree that a university has to offer. Why is that so hard for people to understand? If science isn’t about scientific truth then what is science?
Science is about truth. The Discovery Institute is against it. Again, it’s that simple.
And as far as Rhode Island University goes… feh to them too. I want to find out more, try to understand why they would damage science like this. I’d love to hear their side of this, but it’s hard to imagine a way that they can defend what has happened.
