Melvin Mulder

The divine comedy Creationism

Running gags

Biblical literalism Young/Old Earth Intelligent design Creation scientists

Jokes aside

Radiometric dating Recent African Origin hypothesis Evidence against a recent creation Iron

Blooper reel

Scientific creationism Darwin's Predictions Texans for Better Science Education New Eden School of Natural Health

Evolutionism debunkers

Bodie Hodge Benjamin Wiker Paul Broun E. Calvin Beisner v - t - e

Melvin Mulder doesn't understand evolution, and is the author of the book Beyond Intelligent Design.

Mulder has produced a series of fifty 15 minute radio spots which air on conservative talk radio stations, describing his claims and reasoning. Mulder also lectures about his beliefs in religious and creationist venues.

Mulder uses some of the usual Intelligent Design arguments. In particular, Mulder states that the information in DNA implies that there was an intelligent designer who was required to create life. Mulder also finds irreducible complexity a compelling reason to reject unguided evolution and accept an intelligent designer, instead of a Universe which evolved according to natural laws or a "chance assemblage of mindless matter." Mulder makes frequent reference to the petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism produced by the Discovery Institute, and signed by many people with scientific and technical training, supposedly to show how scientific acceptance of evolution is decreasing.

Mulder also maintains that the intellectual prowess of intelligent design proponents Michael Denton, Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson and William Dembski has evolutionary biologists and cosmologists "on the run." Since Denton, Behe, Johnson and Dembski have allegedly made a strong case for a supernatural origin of life, Mulder concludes that it is now reasonable to assume a literal 6-day creation, and a 6-day origin of the cosmos, the Earth and humans. The superiority of creationism is demonstrated to Mulder because it uses evidence from hermeneutics, the Hubble Space Telescope, and DNA; but he then insists that "God made everything supernaturally (from scratch)".

He has also fallen into the trap of thinking that statements doubting the Big Bang theory mean that it has failed.

There's also stuff about the starlight problem, polonium halos and other PRATTs, you get the idea.

But!

However, he is no slavish IDologist. He criticizes intelligent design on the grounds that:

• it does not reveal who was the Designer and what was his purpose.
• it does not discuss the nature of the soul
• it does not talk about the perfection of creation
• it does not talk about good and evil
• it does not insist on a young Earth
• it does not insist that the perfection of the initial creation has decayed with time
• it is appealing to many who are not true believers
• it tries to make God comprehensible
• it does not insist that the Biblical account is the only source of true information about creation.

That is, intelligent design, in trying to make creation scientifically valid, denies its miraculous nature. The fact that he has abandoned ID's attempt at science for the even less valid last Thursdayism of miraculous creation seems not to have occurred to him.

External links

• #969: Melvin Mulder — Encylopedia of American Loons