Junk-Science and Crypto-Cult

Cartoon From: 'Of course, the really big money is in junk science.' - CartoonStock

In a post titled "The Moon Confirms a Young Universe" Ken Ham, arch-supremo of a fundamentalist theme park adamantly informs us: 

On this International Moon Day, I thought I’d highlight how the moon confirms a young universe.....

Every year, it drifts about an inch and a half further away from us due to gravitational forces involved with the tides. Every year, it drifts about an inch and a half further away from us due to gravitational forces involved with the tides.....this rate gives a maximum age for our earth-moon system....... the moon is supposed to be 4.5 billion years old. Over that amount of time, an inch and a half a year adds up! It adds up so much that if we extrapolate this recession rate back into the past, the moon would’ve been touching the earth just 1.5 billion years ago. And that doesn’t match with lunar origin stories or the scientific data 

Of course, rescuing devices have been proposed, but they all fail for one reason or another. The truth is that our moon displays the glory of God and confirms exactly what we’d expect starting with Scripture: It’s not billions of years old. [But does it confirm that it is a mere 6000 years old?]

Ken links to an article that discusses the issues with the lunar orbit more fully.  That article, which is equally as adamant, tells us...

For decades, creationists have cited this phenomenon as powerful evidence in favor of the Bible’s history. 

So, in view of those confident statements does this mean that Young Earthists have at last come up with powerful evidence confirming that the universe is only about 6000 years old? Needless to say neither post derives a 4000 BC creation date from any evidence. Instead, they use an escape tactic we've seen before: They take a complicated system that current science has yet to successfully model and then use this proto-science as confirmation and powerful evidence of a young universe. For example I've seen Young Earthists attempt to exploit the surface appearance of Pluto as evidence of a 6000 year old Solar System. Also, the problem of the origin of comets has been exploited to convince the unscientific of Young Earthism. See here: 

Quantum Non-Linearity: Comets: Deconstructing fundamentalist anti-science.

Quantum Non-Linearity: More Substandard Analysis from "Answers in Genesis"

Quantum Non-Linearity: Of Comet Tails and Cat Tails

The professional science in these areas is prototypical. In fact given that the epistemic distances here entail a relative paucity of observational samples, then it may never become settled science....least of all allowing Ken to say that it's scientific confirmation of a 6000 year old Earth. However, Ken's intellectual sleight of hand  will fool many of his followers, as indeed it fools Ken himself. 

Ken and his sidekick have only succeeded in showing  that simplistic models of the Moon's recession don't sufficiently explain the phenomenon: The recession is likely related to ocean tides transferring energy to the Moon's orbit. That in turn is a function of landmass positioning. So, given that continental drift has a complex history and that the epistemic distance imposed by time means that the observational data samples are sparce, then the issues here may never be finally resolved; least of all allowing YE "science" to settle on a 6000 years old Earth. 

The article Ken refers to is a cliche surfing post which will convince the scientifically uninitiated......

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YOUNG EARTHIST: Evolution is based on a uniformitarian approach, that is, that “the present is the key to the past. Yet in an attempt to solve their lunar recession problem, secular thinkers claim that the earth was much different in the past than it is observed to be today

MY COMMENT: I'm not aware that this Young Earthist's naive caricature of uniformitarianism is valid anymore: "the present is the key to the past" is an age-old heuristic quip that only approximately captures the epistemic of science. Behind this naive YE idea of uniformitarianism is the Young Earthist "observational science vs historical science" philosophy,  a fallacious concept of science which fails to understand that all science is about joining the dots of observation abductively. The science of the past is not a case of using the present as key to the past via a simple back extrapolation of present day processes, but rather that of farming & joining the dots of observation into narratives as best we can in the face of varying epistemic distances. 

But the above YE sales-talk will strike a chord with those scientifically benighted followers of Ken who have heard the same YE fallacies time and again. 

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YOUNG EARTHIST: We can use this limit as a sort of clock. According to this clock, the earth-moon system cannot be more than 1.5 billion years old. 

MY COMMENT: ....no we can't conclude that because as this Young Earthist admits.... 

YOUNG EARTHIST: Lunar recession is not precise enough to give us the actual age of the earth-moon system (which is only thousands of years). 

MY COMMENT: ....the reason why it is not precise enough is because the phenomenon is complex and the observational data samples relatively thin on the ground. Least of all it certainly doesn't  give us an Earth age of only a few thousands of years.. 

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A more thorough analysis of this Young Earthist junk-science is possible but as I have already thoroughly aired YE "science" in many posts, I nowadays consider it to be time ill-spent. In any case Kultic-Ken can only spiritually abuse those who contradict him rather than provide a rational response.

Christian-Right self send up

The self proclaimed  prophet who calls himself Third Eagle of the Apocalypse clarifies the situation

See also:

Quantum Non-Linearity: Right Wing Campaigner

As one commentator said: "The Third Eagle of the Apocalypse gives batshit crazy a bad name"

The Super Unwoke vs the Unwoke: A right wing split.

Tucker Carlson, Putin admirer, continues his slide to the far right

Although I've criticized the North American Intelligent Design (NAID) tribe for their subliminally pagan category of so-called blind natural forces and also their slant toward the political right (*1), they are by no means the most extreme community to be found in the US. We only have to compare them with Ken Ham's "Young Earth" theme park and Ken's frequent pseudo-scientific patter. Also, politically speaking the Trump supporting NAID community isn't as extreme as it gets. This came to light at the end of last year in the following post on the NAID website Science & Culture....

At a Wrenching Time, My Gratitude for Discovery’s Leadership | Science and Culture Today  

The writer of this post, David Klinghoffer, gives the NAID leadership a good slap on the back for helping to encourage him during what he refers to as a civil war among conservatives....

In my lifetime, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s been called a civil war among conservatives.

He goes on to say (My emphases)....

KLINGHOFFER: An Institutional Catastrophe: It was last month that another prominent think tank — with a lot of great people there, including friends of mine — split down the middle over the organization’s partnership with that tireless insinuator Tucker Carlson. The leadership of that organization, in my view, failed spectacularly. It hurt many on the staff, not least Jewish staff, with a number of resignations resulting from this including from the Board of Trustees. It was an institutional catastrophe, and recovery, if it comes, will take years.

Immediately after that, at a routine, planned staff meeting, Discovery Institute leadership spoke to us about all this. They could have ignored it. After all, another think tank’s self-immolation is not an obvious action item for us. CSC Managing Director John West addressed the situation directly, including about the related rise of some proponents of so-called “Christian Nationalism,” who use the mask of faith toward dark ends. Discovery President Steve Buri also spoke. Their frank views, which I share entirely, did not surprise me. But I was very moved to hear them articulated so promptly, forcefully, and publicly. After the meeting, John West proactively encouraged me to write about Tucker in relationship to the Alt Right and what’s often called the Woke Right, which I did here. He did not need to do that either.

MY COMMENT: I'm very pleased to see that Christian Nationalism, the Alt-Right and Tucker Carlson are being disowned here. Interestingly this disowning goes as far as referring to the Alt-Right bad boys as the "Woke Right" - remember that for the loose coalition of US right-wing tribes the term "Woke" is used to label all that is unspeakably evil! (which may well include even myself, a soft-left conservative!). So it is only natural that the NAID tribe label the Alt-Right baddies under the same classification heading of "Woke", in an attempt to identify them as all part of those "evil others"; a convenient over-simplification of political realities, typical of tribal life. For myself I think the term Super-Unwoke is far more appropriate as the Alt-Right clearly have social & ideological connections with the Unwoke community of which NAID is part; in fact those social & ideological connections  are clearly evidenced given the stormy "institutional catastrophe" that Klinghoffer describes; an institutional catastrophe only makes sense if there were initial social & ideological sympathies between the waring antagonists. 

Tucker Carlson appears to be a Putin apologist and in fact an apologist for authoritarian leaders more generally. Perhaps then the following quote from the same Science & Culture article is not so surprising (My emphases)...

KLINGHOFFER: For a Colleagues Own protection: To say that I felt supported by Discovery leadership would be an understatement. It’s too bad I can’t tell you about other pertinent details, but I’ll just mention that we have someone else in our Discovery circle, a Christian, whose courage extends to frequently putting himself at physical risk in order to do the right thing in this context. Sorry I have to be vague about that, for his own protection. But again, as a Jew, I’m grateful for it, as I am for the friendship of CSC Director Stephen Meyer, Discovery Founder Bruce Chapman, and others.

MY COMMENT: Gasp! Has the civil war got that bad? And again: The above is strong evidence of the hitherto close social & ideological links of the Unwoke and the Super-Unwoke. Civil wars between neighbors can be the source of the worst kind of acrimony and cruelty. I'm sure Klinghoffer is feeling that a slap on the back is much better than a knife in the back. 

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The following post on Science & Culture is from the same author David Klinghoffer and gives us more detail on the Super-Unwoke,,,

Tucker Carlson and the Second Coming of the Alt-Right | Science and Culture Today 

According to Klinghoffer the Alt-Right were at one time atheists (Was Hitler an atheist? - I know he was anti-Christian) but for the "second coming" of the Alt-Right this is what Klinghoffer tells us...

KLINGHOFFER: Well, there is one surface-level difference: while the Alt-Right was frankly atheist, Tucker, Fuentes, the poisonous, delusional Candace Owens, and others on their team mostly wrap themselves in pseudo-Christian trappings. I liked the atheists better. At least you couldn’t say about them that they took the Lord’s name in vain.

MY COMMENT: Yes I agree that Candace Owens is poisonous and delusional and also I agree that the Alt-Right's Christian gloss is alarming. Klinghoffer goes on the list some of the sins of the Alt-Right such as their rabid antisemitism and yet underneath it Klinghoffer wants to stay loyal to the Trumpite right wing if possible; after all Trump has been spoon-feeding the Christian right-wing....

KLINGHOFFER: The Alt-Right did more plundering of pseudo-science, while the Woke Right plunders Christianity while pretending to revere it. Despite cries from the left and the media that Trump was a crypto-Nazi, the Alt-Right had no effect on the 2016 election outcome. Now the Woke Right is complaining that the President isn’t a Nazi. Speaking only for myself, I fear that the divisions they are sowing among conservatives will, over the coming two elections, hand the country back to the left. It’s a price that the All American “patriot” Tucker, surrounded on his set by all the iconography that can be purchased from L. L. Bean, is willing to pay.

MY COMMENT: To me the above is white-washing MAGArism by comparing it with the very dark black of the Alt-Right. But I suggest that it is Trumpite extremism which has let the evil genie out of the bottle. The Super-Unwoke represented by Carlson and Fuentes has gained confidence in the face of Trump's narcissistic extremes and his lying portrayal of those who oppose him as the "evil other", accusing them of being "Woke" or Radical Communists. These misrepresentations and his lies about vote rigging & conspiracies have help drain confidence in US democracy and indeed Western civilization itself. I repeat: MAGArism has let the evil genie out of the political bottle. Unintentional no doubt but the extremely polarised language of Trumpite MAGArism in its demonization of critics has fueled the Super-Unwoke phenomenon and given it a perverse legitimacy. 

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Is any of this a surprise? All human beings are both morally and epistemically challenged. The tribal thinking of both the left & right extremes, thinking which persists in sourcing the human predicament in "outsiders" and the "evil other" is simply false (See the Book of Romans). Sourcing the blame for society's ills in outsiders is exactly how Trump, Ken Ham and the Super-Unwoke work. They then unleash the emotional fires of alienation, tribal hate & anger, stoked up with the fuel of conspiracy theorism. The far-left harness similar methods & emotions in order to achieve ultimate control. The end-game involves installing a dictatorship in place of democracy's controlled row; this row is an accountable and constitionalised agreement to disagree; mutual criticism is enshrined in democracy. In short neither the Woke nor the Unwoke make provision for the very human disease of sin and the consequent unbridled ego enhancement which is at the heart of social & political problems. Let us be conscious of our infirmities and weaknesses, both moral and epistemic. 

Interesting Links

1. Laura Loomer is a malign crank

Laura Loomer calls IDF to 'target' Iran's mass public funeral for Ali Khamenei with over 20 million attendees expected

2. Tucker Carlson: "It's all them others"

Tucker Carlson says America is a 'one-party state': Why his third party push lands four months before midterms

3. Back to the middle ages with public executions (Islamic state had the same idea). See this link...

If we’re going to hang any member of the “loser generation,” start with…

This suggestion by a billionaire masquerades as "masculine" style leadership! What next? Back to the public torturings of Rome and the Middle Ages?

4. Loomer vs Carlson

Laura Loomer: Tucker is turning the 'GOP into modern-day Hitler Youth'

Footnote:

*1 See also a certain John West, who writes for Science & Culture and also for the The Trump supporting Townhall Magazine. He has come to my notice before as a right-wing commentator.