Sometimes Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Originally published at Pharyngula by P.Z. Myers

I actually watched the entire appalling 10 minutes of this ghastly creationist video by Dr Ron Carlson, Learn How Evolution is Largely Based on the Silly Assumption of a Dead Lawyer. The whole thing is built around a completely false claim, that fossils are dated only from the geological strata, and that the strata are dated by the fossils found in them. He repeats his lie many times in this short video, and each time wanted to stand up and shout at him. Anyone with even a casual knowledge of dating techniques knows that while index fossils give you a quick and fairly reliable estimate of age, other techniques, such as radiometric dating, are used to verify ages.

That's typical for creationists. Even worse to me is the ahistorical lie in the title. Guess who the "Dead Lawyer" is?

Charles Lyell.

That's right, this clown has simply misrepresented the most eminent geologist of the 19th century, and derogated his life's work to a mere "silly assumption". Lyell initially trained as a lawyer, but began his career as a geologist in his early 20s, and by the time he was 30 he was a full-time geologist at a time when there was little institutional support for the discipline. Since Dr Ron Carlson, before he was 2, wore diapers, by the same reasoning we can now address him as "Diaper Wearer Ron Carlson". As for the claim that Lyell was an atheist who invented uniformitarianism to prop up the theory of evolution is absolute nonsense. Lyell was not an atheist at all, came up with his ideas long before Darwin, and at first equivocated and then offered only tentative support to the idea of the modification of species.

As for Dr Ron Carlson, to whose name the title "Dr" seems surgically grafted, I haven't been able to find out what his degree might be in, or where he got it from. Somehow, I don't think it was in geology.