Exposing Discovery Institute Part 1: Casey Luskin

Hey everyone, it has come to my attention that some people are having trouble with the audio for the PBS Nova doc segments. This is very confusing to me, it works just fine on every single one of my devices. Luckily I later show the transcript for these sections so you can read that, or the subtitles, but I think if you mess around with headphones and/or plug in speakers and/or try other devices everyone should be able to get it to work one way or another. I'm not sure how to fix this, otherwise I would delete and reupload. Sorry for the inconvenience!

I am a recovering evangelical christian. I believed them hook, line, and sinker. To escape, I actually had to get divorced. I am so appreciative of channels like this. Thanks for helping to keep me sane and educating me.

Had a high school biology teacher who said" You enter my class naive. You leave either informed or belligerently stupid " .Love that guy.

Speaking to a Catholic priest many years ago, he cautioned me to beware a new version of creationism. He literally said "You'll hear it as Intelligent Design and they will pretend it's science. It an attempt by evangelicals to repackage creationism. It is neither Intelligent nor God's design...it's bullshit" I was left rather stunned by this most vehement denial of ID by a man of the cloth.

Creationists not agreeing on whether a fossil is a human or ape is the funniest thing in the world. They are basically admitting that the find is transitional.

Thank you, Dave. A friend of mine had become a full creationist again after finding Discovery Institute, and when I showed this video, he immediately apologized for falling for the lies and promised to check sources the next time. I just wanted to type this so you knew that your video does have an affect, even on people formerly part of their fanbase.

I'm an evolutionary biologist and behavioral ecologist - I like to read DI articles just to keep tabs on what these people are saying so I can keep on top of rebutting them when students bring it up. I appreciate the work you've put into this, this will be a great resource to point people towards if they're DI fans.

I appreciate your work. I used to be an evangelical pastor. The road out of the religion was costly and painful in many ways. Towards the end you are trying to encapsulate the motives and goals of these people. That is hard to do as it is so multifaceted. Certainly fear of mortality is a major tool they work with. You are doing something valuable and for some will give a huge gift of joy. Let me explain that with a personal anecdote: Not long after departing the faith, I took my binoculars out one night and for the first time spotted the Andromeda Galaxy. I suppose for any astronomy lover that can be a great moment. For me is was symbolic: I was able to embrace the truth: that the light travelled 2.5 million years to get here, unaided by a deity lying about creating an fakely-old universe 6,000 years ago. It was an emotional high for me, similar to the "come to Jesus moment" the evangelicals promote. The difference being that falling in love with curiosity and truth starts a life full of many such joys. I think you are an enabler of this joy for many. Humans thrive in curiosity and truth: you help bring this to people.

My physical anthropology 101 prof walked into class on day 1 and before introducing himself said "I will not answer any questions regarding creationism, you have 30 seconds to pack up your things and drop this class if you can't accept these terms, I will not repeat myself." He waited 30 seconds, noone left so he introduced himself and started class.

- So, Casey, what's your favorite lie? - I don't lie! - Yeah, that's my favorite as well....

it is utterly disgraceful to admit that this kind of content is actually vitally important to be produced, in this day and era. thank you for stepping up and doing it so brilliantly. no mercy, Dave. go for them!

I'm always amazed that a group of people who hold themselves out to be moral authorities are constantly lying.

As a molecular biologist, I really admire your efforts to debunk all this non-sense that continues to be propagated in our society. These individuals show not only complete misunderstanding of basic evolutionary biology but more importantly, poor understanding of very basic biology. I would be surprised if any of them ever read even introductory textbooks on evolutionary biology, let alone spending some time in the lab doing hands on experiments.

What I love about Professor Dave is that he does not even try to hide his contempt for these absolute charlatans, fraudsters, grifters, and outright criminals. He straight up calls them what they are, and you can hear his seriousness in his vocal inflection. So many debunkers of these liars shy away from outright labeling them as the criminals they are. Fight on, Dave. You're doing amazing work with academic outreach and combating disinformation on this platform.

Hey Professor Dave, you might not see this, but I just wanted to tell you how important your work is. I'm only 16 years old and didn't really believe in any pseudoscience (though my relatives and even my science teachers on facebook would post misinformation about science especially evolutionary biology), but after seeing your videos, I began reflecting about how it's easy for someone unknowledgble to fall for these cults, and how this is much more common than I thought. I even remember watching someone with almost 20 MILLION subs (and most of his fans were young teenagers including myself) who made a video about conspiracy theories and in that video was someone talking about the flat earth "theory". I checked that video now and it currently has 40 MILLION views and all of the comments were supportive; people who didn't even believe in it originally began to believe it after just one relatively short video of nonsense. They were even begging him to start making conspiracy videos about COVID and the vaccines etc (though he didn't probably only because he was taking a break from youtube because he was exposed for being a pedophile, but that's irrelevant here.) I know you probably already know that many people fall for this shit, but I just wanted to say how much more common this is becoming almost everywhere in the world, which is terrifying. Edit: Just some grammar mistakes. I also just realized that the heart gets removed if I edit the comment so there's that lol.

As someone who recently graduated with a BA in Geology, let me just say that Luskin does not represent us as a whole. Considering that he participated in deliberate slander, personally he should have his pHD revoked for participating in slander with religious institution that is known for lying.

As a recovering Christian I can tell you that Professor Dave is 💯% spot on. In that spirit, I offer the words of another professor: "He's not afraid of your judgement He knows of horrors worse than your hell He's a little bit afraid of dying But he's a lot more afraid of your lying" -Neil "The Professor" Peart From the song: "The Weapon (Pt. II of Fear)" by Rush. #RushLyricsForEverything🤘🇨

I've actually had a creationist cite the Lucy pelvis alteration as evidence for pseudoscience. He also portrayed Lucy as the only specimen found to support claims. Thank you for this.

"They don't let just anyone write a book." - Prof. Dave giving an example of what ordinary people would think. As the people who say that don't realize, it was never true because there have always been "vanity presses" that will print anything if you pay them. Now, with Amazon's e-book Kindle and the ability for anyone to upload a book for publication, essentially anyone can be a published author for zero or almost no cost.

As a Christian myself, It’s really interesting to me how many people take the Creation story so literally. All it takes is a few hours worth of study and research on the origin of the Hebrew Bible to know that it was not written as a history book. Numbers have symbolic meaning. Names have symbolic meaning. It was never meant to be a rote description of every step that led to mankind’s existence. Plus, the Hebrew words used in Genesis has been the subject of a LOT of debate among Biblical scholars. Three different words are used, bara (create), asah (make), and yatsar (form). There’s been a lot of debate on were these words used intentionally, to spell out what God created vs what he simply organized, or are they used as synonyms. We don’t really know, but in my opinion it further speaks to the Creation story being a rhetorical device used to communicate a theological idea (what is our relationship with God) and not be a science textbook. It’s intended to communicate that there is a purpose for our being here beyond just simply existing. I’m very proud of the fact that I went to a Christian University that taught evolutionary biology as part of the undergraduate curriculum. It ended up being one of my favorite courses with one of my favorite professors.