Submitted by Daniel R. Hummer as a candidate submission for the TalkOrigins Archive: The following is a correspondence that took place between myself and creationist Josh Greenberger between Nov. 4 and Nov. 7, 2007. Mr. Greenberger has written books and articles on evolution, creation and other topics, including an anti-evolution book, “Who Let the Apes Out?”. He maintains a website, http://wholettheapesout.com/mainline.php, that promotes his book and makes a copy of it available for free (I would imagine this is the only way he is able to get people to read the ramblings he comes up with). I stumbled across this site one day while browsing the web, and for unknown reasons decided to take a closer look. Within the long page of drivel, I found this gem of a paragraph:

“But archaeologists have worn out many shovels trying to uncover evidence supporting evolution. At last count, they had enough bones to make friends with every dog in Chicago and enough fossils to open a mail-order fossil business. But no evidence. No series of fossils or sets of bones show unmistakable intermediate species. If one species evolved into another, "linking" species would have to have existed in profuse quantities at various points in earth's history. But profuse quantities of missing links which could be termed "indisputable evidence" have never been found.”

Jonathan Witt has an article up at "ID the Future". Darwinism: From Strength to Strength purports to find a contradiction in pro-science activism, between what was argued in Pennsylvania and then in Ohio. Following that, Witt proceeds with an uninformed screed about what "Darwinists", whoever they are, might be up to in the future. Since PZ Myers has dissected the latter part of Witt's offering quite nicely, I'll just make a few points about alleged contradictions.

The Darwinist reversal worked like this:

In Dover, they insisted that physical evidence presented against their theory wasn't an argument for intelligent design. Darwinist Kenneth Miller made this argument on the stand and the judge concurred. But in Ohio they wanted to scare people into thinking that simply teaching students the scientific evidence for and against Darwinism was somehow legally dangerous. Since it isn’t, the Darwinists had to get creative, had to change their story. So now they asserted that simply exposing students to the evidence against Darwinism constitutes the teaching of intelligent design. Thus, their Ohio position flatly contradicts their Dover position.

To sell both required a propaganda machine of extraordinary skill and nerve. Bravo!

Contradiction has a very specific meaning in logic. What Witt has uncovered is not contradiction, but rather consistency. In making the statement quoted above, Witt is lying. I use the word advisedly. I don't know with certainty whether Witt is lying to us about his ability to utilize logic and his familiarity with the relevant data, or whether he is lying in claiming that a contradiction exists where none does. One of those two alternatives, though, does apply.