The Bigger They're Told, The Harder They Fail

I'm upset and I'm going to vent this round. Sometimes I try to use humor to vent my frustrations regarding all the “Lying for Jesus” that happens in the YEC (Young Earth Creation) presentation crowd, but screw the humor this time – I'm just plain POd. I'm upset at the laziness (intellectual and other) and dishonesty (intellectual and other) that pervades this genre of “Christian Ministry”.

Ok, so you don't believe in the old earth or evolution – no worries. Does that give you the right to be lazy and dishonest in your “education” of others?




I realize that Christians are raised to simply trust the source (I was):

God said...
Jesus said...
Paul said...
Pastor said...
Brother said...
Father said...
Batchelor said...

But no matter what your programming tells you, source does not rule over content. If your trusted source tells you something is true and it's not, truth doesn't care what your source was - it's still not true.

As always, for context here is the link to the video I will be discussing in this installment.

Click for original video direct from Batchelor's website

Last installment I played a short clip of Batchelor referring to a “Dr. Hovind” as a source for some scientific claims. I didn't get into the claims at that time because the focus was on bogus credentials, but now I'm going to devote an installment or two to those claims and demonstrate just how lazy Doug (and the overwhelming rest of the YEC crowd) actually is.

For immediate context, here is the clip (just over 35 seconds long) containing the claim that I will be addressing in this installment. I want you to hear Doug tell you where it comes from (Hovind), because that becomes important to finding their ultimate source.

Script from the above video clip:

“I was ahh talking with ahh Ron Ritterskamp who teaches at our schools, specialized in this area, and ahh listening to some Doctor's tapes, Kent Hovind and others. 

They pulled a wolly mammoth out of the hole up in Siberia. They decided to send – to get an accurate dating method, they sent one end of the mammoth to one laboratory and another end to another laboratory. One end dated at 10,000 years, the other one 20,000 years. Different ends of the same mammoth. 100% error – you realize that? That's what that represents.”

So here's one of the difficulties dealing with some of Batchelor's claims – he can't even get the 'wrong' right. What do I mean by that? Well, as we saw with the previous example involving the moon (installment #2), Doug can't really remember the details of the claims he is making – but he wings it and makes them anyway. I'm not sure if this is just to be slippery and make it hard to refute his claims (I doubt it) or just a complete “Who gives a rip if it's exactly right? - It's the point I want to make that matters and I'll say what I want to make that point.” (I suspect this).

To make my point short, there simply is NO published claim out there in the YEC world regarding a Siberian Mammoth dating two dates of 10,000 and 20,000 years and there is certainly no actual test results showing such. Now there are several claims about Mammoths being dated and returning two different dates for the same animal - and we will address those, but none of them match Doug's claim about 10,000 vs 20,000 years. 

The lack of existing claims or tests that match Doug's assertions is why I posted the clip where he says he picked these claims up from – “Dr” Kent Hovind. Batchelor is clearly trying to remember what he heard on the Hovind's tapes and just isn't getting the 'wrong' right. What I'm going to do then is address Hovind's claims directly and this will cover Batchelor's sloppy recollections. I'm actually going to use the slides that Hovind uses on his tapes so you can see for yourself the same Hovind claims that Doug saw.

There are 4 different Mammoth claims and we'll address them one at a time.

Dima Mammoth Claim:

Dima is the name given to a baby mammoth discovered in 1977 in northeastern Siberia. It was the first a complete baby mammoth ever recovered and was radiocarbon dated to have died around 40,000 years ago. 

Dima information link.

Here is the Hovind slide regarding Dima and as you can see, other than the dating years being different, it's very close to the Batchelor claim.

Notice the yellow circle that Hovind has placed around the “U.S. Gov” at the bottom. He emphasizes this to his audience to show how credible and reliable the source is (which is strange since he also claims the US Government are lying scoundrels - but rarely is Hovind accused of consistency).

At the bottom of that slide, he references a USGS Paper #862 from 1975 and even gives us the page number.

Straight from the government website here is a link to the paper itself for those who want to perform the exercise I'm about to describe:

USGS Paper #862

Got the paper pulled up? Now I encourage you to read the entire thing, but at least do a text search of this document for the key words from this slide – words like “Dima” and “40,000” and “26,000” and you might want to throw in an important word like “Siberia” just for good measure, but since most of you don't want to sit through a long dissection of this document I'll get straight to the punch line(s):

1: This is a paper totally and completely about Alaska, not Siberia where Dima was found. (full disclosure: It says ALASKA right in the title for crying out loud)

2: This paper mentions nothing about Dima or any other Siberian mammoth.

3: In the paper there is not a single mammoth (or part of a mammoth) dated to either 40,000 years or 26,000 years.

And you want the kicker?  Hold on to your hat!

4: This paper was published in 1975 and Dima wasn't discovered until 1977.

The Dima claim by Hovind/Batchelor is simply fabricated. Made up. False. A lie straight up.

Now before I get too worked up about this first faked claim, let's go straight to the second (keep that USGS paper open):

Vollosovitch Mammoth Claim: 

Konstantine Vollosovich (note correct spelling) was a Russion Geologist who was in 1907 alerted to the thawing remains of a Mammoth located on an island off the coast of Siberia. Vollosovich (note correct spelling) went to great lengths to get large portions of the animal back to the mainland. This specimen that Vollosovich (note correct spelling) recovered eventually ended up on display in Paris.

Here is the link the actual real story.

Here is the Hovind slide related to the Vollosovich (note correct spelling) find:

Notice that the reference at the bottom of the slide is that same USGS paper #862 referenced in the Dima claim. I encourage you once again to search that document for any Siberian mammoths or related key words – try “44,000” and “29,500” for instance. Yeah, nothing.

Once again, a total fabrication. The article is not even about the Vollosovich (note correct spelling) mammoth or any other Siberian mammoth. Neither does the article contain any information about any Alaska mammoth remains dated to 44,000 or 29,500 years. Total deceit and total lie.

Now, you may be wondering why I made such a repeated big deal about the correct spelling of Konstantine Vollosovich's last name … it's because I want to use it to make a point – a fundamental point about the dishonesty and laziness of Christian YEC sources.

Just for fun, go into Google and type in “Vollosovich mammoth” (note correct spelling). You will immediately get stories about the discovery (that's how I got the link for you above). Now type in “Vollosovitch mammoth” (note incorrect Hovind spelling from slide). Now what you get are literally hundreds of links to creationists sites that simply regurgitate the false claim completed perfectly with the same exact misspelling and fake attributions to the unrelated article. For those of you that don't want to spend your time doing this search, I did a screen grab of about the first 30 that came up and used a red arrow to highlight the exact usage of this misinformation on each link.

I particularly like that last one on the lower left - it's from a Facebook page called “Evidence based Faith”. How totally ironic.

So let's separate the deceit from the laziness for a moment – whoever started this lie, knows it's a lie. I don't know if Hovind started it, but Hovind for sure knows it's a lie - because he's been told and shown over and over. I doubt Batchelor knows it's a lie and that takes us to laziness. Hundreds of Christian websites and discussions and not one of them thinks to themselves: “Hey, that's weird – that's an article about Alaska ... says so right there in the title.  I wonder what Siberian mammoths are doing in a US government publication about Alaska?” Or curiosity: “Hey, I want to read that article – I want to know why they would publish something like that which disparages their dating method.”. Or even just interest:  "Hey, I'd like to learn more about frozen mammoths and right there's a big paper on the subject.  COOL!"  Nope – zero interest in learning or truth.  They just copy and paste the exact same “proof” and it thus gets repeated from the pulpit and the audience laughs as Doug's audience does and thinks “How freakin' stupid those evolutionists are.”.

Well make no mistake, the joke's on you guys.

How am I supposed to intellectually or morally respect people who care so little for the truth? How am I supposed to think of them as anything besides thoughtless gullible robots?

On to the next mammoth lie

Fairbanks Creek Mammoth claim:

I'll try to make this short since you must already have an idea how it works out.

At left is the slide.

Short version: I have the original article from the slide: Harold E Anthony, “Natures Deep Freeze”, Natural History, Sep. 1949. 

Anyone can download the original article online. There is no information contained anywhere in the article regarding radiocarbon dating of any mammoths. None. You can search for “radio” or “carbon” or “radiocarbon” or “dating” or C14” or “radiometric” – take your pick. Simply not there.

And do you know why there's nothing in that Sep 1949 article about carbon dating mammoths? (I'm going to try not to scream here.) BECAUSE RADIOCARBON DATING HADN'T BEEN INVENTED YET!!! (I tried - really, but I'm justifiably way over my YEC incompetence threshold).

Now I'm going to clarify that scream: In 1949, carbon dating had certainly been thought of, but not yet developed as a successful method. Remember our story of Willard Libby and the development of the method (see Installment #6 in this series)?  It wasn't until Dec. 1949, three months after the above article was published that Libby sorted out his method enough to release the results of his first attempts at radiocarbon dating. That's right, when that article was published, Libby still hadn't worked out his crude methods enough to even tell the world about his ongoing testing.  The author of this article in all likelihood hadn't even heard of such a method - so much for that reference.  And yet, Christian website after Christian website trump the amazing stupidity of science and how sometime previous to Sep. 1949, scientists radiocarbon dated two parts of a mammoth to different ages. 

Yes, following are two images again showing what happens when you do a search on this and come up with widespread nonsense. Link after link using a this unrelated article published too early as “proof” that radiocarbon dating doesn't work.

Let's get this mammoth disaster over with and cover the last related Hovind/Batchelor claim.

At left is the slide.

This one is easy and weird at the same time. The slide states that two different mammoths returned two different ages. Well, um … yes they did. Why shouldn't they? They were found at different levels and in distinctly different layers of sedimentary strata.  Of course they could return different ages - they died at different times.  Where's the "radiocarbon dating doesn't work" smoking gun with that “Dr” Batchelor?

Again the referenced article can be found online and the article contains a drawing showing where the individual mammoths were found. I posted it below, but not before I added the red arrows to highlight from the article where the remains were found – in completely different layers of strata and with the oldest remains down lower where one would expect them to be. This claim seems to be a combination of ignorance and “I don't give a darn how it works I just want to make fun of it.”, and I'm sure gullible audiences lap it up.  How parents can bring their kids to sit through this dishonest, patently false nonsense mystifies me.

Here's the funny part - remember "experimental error" from Installment #6?  Remember the range of errors that exist in even the best scientific tests?  Of course its possible to get two different radiocarbon dates off the same carcass - in fact it would be quite surprising to ever get two 'exactly the same' dates off of any one mammoth or any other single object.  In fact, it's possible to get a darn BIG range from the same mammoth - I'll show you one in an upcoming installment and we'll talk about how it happens.  The point here Doug is to do your homework and find a true one to whine about and stop just making stuff up and passing off falsehoods.

Oh, and Ron Ritterskamp -- sorry to drag you into this, but Doug says in the video that you teach kids this trash.  He even says you specialize in this area.   Dude - what are you thinking?  Learn the basic skill of separating truth from lies yourself and then teach that to the kids.  Teach them not to trust sources until they have verified them themselves from the original. It will be one of the most important skills they ever learn.

Once again I'll go back to Batchelor's only appropriate statement from his video (20 second clip)