Answers in Genesis 'hires' Snelling
Well, actually Snelling's been underemployed by Answers in Genesis for a while, but today there was much fanfare about his new position as Research Director. AIG heralds Snelling as a 'renowned rock doctor', but the truth is something less than that. Snelling is known only amongst young earth creationists and perhaps a few mining geologists in Australia. AIG wants us to believe that Snelling:
“Dr. Snelling’s stature among the scientific community should be an unequivocal sign to the academic world and the media that serious research is being conducted at AiG and its museum,” Ham said.Sad to say, but if anyone had any doubts about Ham's knowledge of science, his reference to Snelling as being a serious researcher should tell you all you need to know about Ham's ability to discern quality science from quackery. Snelling has done very little professionally as a geologist. GEOREF lists two publications since 1988. One is a response to Ian Plimer about creationism in Australia and the second is an abstract. It's quite safe to say that Snelling has no stature and if Ham's assessment is accurate, then AIG is not conducting any serious research either.
They should have hired John Baumgardner. At least he has a few professional publications even if they are old earth.
Cheers
Joe Meert
posted by Unknown @ 7:44 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
But see, that's the kicker: they won't hire anyone with any sort of OEC philosophy, and so they get stuck with the very bottom of the barrel.
Hope all is well with you.
Best,
Daniel Morgan
Let's face it. AiG spent $28 million on a "musuem," when they should have spent the money on a research facility, where AiG could actually find some "science" to back their "claims."
After looking a photographs of the "hall of graffiti" and the cheesy models depicting the "flood" (it seemed they spent the $28 million on developing some fancy look dinosaurs, but that is about it), it pretty much told me that AiG is not really serious about science to begin with.
So it seems to me that hiring a quack like Snelling is a perfect fit for a quack organization. Too bad that the sheep will not be able to distinguish the difference between actual geologists and fake ones like Snelling.
Actually Baumgardner is not OEC. By day, he publishes normal-looking stuff in the standard geo press. By night he's a YEC churning out Flood geophysics including models of hyper-speed tectonics, and misidentifying rocks for helium retention testing. IIRC Snelling leads a similar double life (or used to -- sounds like he's doing the creationist thing full-time, now).
A search of talkorigins.org turns up multiple hits on both these characters. Enjoy.
Sorry I did not mean to imply that Baumgardner is an OEC, simply that he has a scientific reputation (even if he is two-faced). You have described his dual-persona quite well. It's also useful to know that it is a good 'talking point' whenever we run into him.
Cheers
Joe Meert
At the Bozeman RATE conference (here) Snelling piped in after Baumgardner, complaining that he was disgusted by references to his double life here and here. He claims he was forced to use old earth terminology by his coauthors and the mining company he consulted for and there was never any doubt about his firm YEC convictions by either. In other words, he was willing to put aside his unwavering faith for the $. So much for AIG’s claim that by hiring Snelling they are meeting “the highest standards in its research.” Sounds more like a snake-oil salesman to me.
I also laughed at AIG’s statement that one of Snelling’s “main areas of research has been the study of methods used in dating rocks.” Larry Varidman made a similar claim at the conference. However, when pressed on the statement, he conceded that Snelling had little to no experience in this area, which his publication record supports.
I left out the following links in the previous comment:
http://scienceantiscience.blogspot.com/2007/04/evening-with-rate.html
http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/realsnelling.htm
http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/snelling_doublethink_henke.htm
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