8 Things I Learned from Reading an Article about the Institute for Creation Research

The Dallas Morning News just ran a feature on the Institute for Creation Research, where Texas Creationists go to do… um… whatever it is they do.

Let me share with you everything I learned from the piece:

They have a budget that dwarfs actual research labs (yet absolutely nothing of value to show for it).

“Our attempt is to demonstrate that the Bible is accurate, not just religiously authoritative,” said Henry Morris III, CEO of the nonprofit with a 49-person payroll and an annual budget in the $7 million range.

God is lying to them. And they’ve got problems.

“The rationale behind [ICR] is this: If God really does exist, he shouldn’t be lying to us,” [Morris] said. “And if he’s lying to us right off the bat in the book of Genesis, we’ve got some real problems.”

Even Pat Robertson thinks they’re idiots.

This spring, televangelist Pat Robertson said on the Christian-themed television show The 700 Club that people would “have to be deaf, dumb and blind to think that this earth that we live on only has 6,000 years of existence. I think to deny the clear [geologic] record that’s there before us makes us look silly.”

Credit where it’s due: They’re actually a decently managed non-profit.

ICR earned a three-out-of-four star rating from watchdog group Charity Navigator in 2013, which means it meets or exceeds industry standards for efficiency. ICR’s administration costs are low; about $1 out of every $10 donated dollars is spent on administration.

Astrophysicist Jason Lisle thinks the reason he’s never going to win a Nobel Prize is because he’s a Creationist, not because his research would earn failing grades in introductory science courses.

Jason Lisle, an astrophysicist and the research director at ICR, said he has no chance of winning a Nobel Prize, even if he makes a groundbreaking discovery. Secular scientists, he said, would never bestow the field’s highest honor on a creationist.

Lisle, who thinks he should at least have a shot at winning the Nobel Prize, believes in scientific “mysteries” that have already been solved .

Lisle says his team analyzes the same data as secular scientists — but they interpret it differently, and often find flaws in accepted assumptions.

…

[Like] dinosaur bones — if they’re millions of years old, scientists should not be recovering soft, protein-based tissue in them.

It should be the goal of every real scientist to be cited as the voice of reason in an article about Creationists.

“The problem is, they’re not scientists,” said Ron Wetherington, who teaches human evolution and forensic anthropology at SMU. “They cherry-pick data in order to use it to justify the Genesis account of creation.”

You can let the reporter know that there is indeed “something wrong in this story.” He referred to Creationists as “scientists.”