Unfortunately, Robert Gentry is best known to me as the man who taught me that creationists will deceive and slander in order to make their point.
In 1995, I was living in Knoxville, Tn, and I was regularly debating thelogical issues on the religion forum on CompuServe (remember them?). Some evolutionists came on that forum, and I thought I was prepared for them.
The reason I thought I was prepared for them is that I had just watched a series of 1-hour programs, produced by a creation museum but hosted and narrated by Robert Gentry. Just the week before Gentry had "exposed" scientific conspiracy and dishonesty by telling the story of the discovery of Lucy, the
Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, 40% complete, discovered in 1974 by Dr. Donald Johansen.
The problem is,
Gentry's story wasn't true! The evolutionists were miffed that "Christians" had been trotting out this piece of slander for 10 years, when a simple reading of Dr. Johanson's book on the discovery of Lucy would have proven it wasn't true.
I was horrified. I am a careful researcher. You may not agree with everything on this site, but it is all well-researched. I acknowledge what I do not know, and I give people the benefit of the doubt—a legal requirement, by the way—before I accuse them of dishonesty. In this case, I violated my own standards out of trust for a "Christian" defending the Bible.
It's a mistake that I shall never repeat. I now examine every creationist accusation and claim that I run across.
For ten years now I have found that well over 90% of the "stunning" quotes and facts that creationists "expose" are the results of poor and incomplete research or purposeful dishonesty.
That's no exaggeration.
Robert Gentry just happened to be the one to introduce me to
the rampant dishonesty in creationism. He's certainly not unique in that respect.
Bookmarks