Responding to Critics: Dr. Casey Luskin Misunderstood My Whole Deal
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- Dr. Casey Luskin appeared on the July 13, 2024 epside of the Christ Jesus Ministries Current Topics in Science Podcast. You can watch the full episode here: • New Research DEBUNKS E...
I'm going to respond to a few important parts, especially about seven minutes at the end where he specifically talks about our recent debate on Junk DNA (from May of 2024).
In that section, he severely mischaracterizes my position (I think accidentally, not intentionally), so I'll explain what he gets wrong and what my actual argument is.
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Okay okay, y'all who said I was being too generous...you were right. In light of a more recent article by Dr. Luskin on EvolutionNews, I now agree that he's just lying about stuff on purpose.
He is not ALLOWED to understand, because of the consequences. Therefore he CANNOT understand.
I never forget how Luskin was into the scam of misrepresenting Lucy by ignoring knee and feet anatomy fully on purpose (knucklewalk nonsense) also making up a conspiracy theory of the pelvic (bearing false witness against Lovejoy pelvic reconstruction) and ignoring all independently found intact pelvic bones and flat feet etc. of the other australophiticine specimen. Where the DI also did cut out the many skulls of the transitional forms from a photo to mislead the audience where showing them would be counterproductive for their agenda. Misrepresentation not because of good faith, but of a mean spirited agenda throwing decency out the window.
I noticed that too in his video Human Evolution: The Monkey Bias - Science Uprising, Episode 8. This woke me to the fraudulent nature of the DI.
I think you're extending far too much grace to a professional liar, but I appreciate the instinct.
After he lied about "lucy" surprised they trusted him with DNA
Silly me "they" wanted him to lie for his paycheck
I honestly think you're giving Dr. Luskin too much credit. I don't think he is honestly misunderstanding you. Either he understood you and is lying or he intentionally misunderstood you.
A level of charity which, if implemented worldwide, would push the entirety of our species into a post-scarcity society so thoroughly devoid of poverty that wealth would travel backwards in time.
Casey's job is to lie and dissemble. He's _paid_ to misinform. Time and time again we'll say the equivalent of "No, creationists, 2+2 equals 4, not 5" and they'll turn around and lie to their audience "non-creationists believe 2+2=5 they said so right there don't look it up though just trust me bro it's legit!". And it keeps working because their side doesn't *_care._*
I came looking for this comment. Dr. Dan is so generous with this cretin, but based not just on this interview but everything else I have seen of Luskin - he is lying. He is lying or intentionally, consciously refusing to understand. I'll let those more skilled than I in epistemology unravel the difference between the two, but in other instances Luskin has been caught flat out lying. I'm done giving him or any of his deplorable ilk (shoutout to Gunter) the benefit of the doubt.
For what it's worth, I appreciate you consistently extending the benefit of the doubt to these folks while clearly, calmly and in accessible detail explaining how they're wrong. I think many of them are willfully ignorant and/or straight up lying, but I agree it makes for a better exchange to assume otherwise, and in the long run will result in more people encountering and accidentally understanding the actual state of scientific knowledge.
Upfront: Misunderstood? More like willfully misunderstood for sure
As a seasoned apologist he knows how they all contort facts and straight lie. He does this regarding geology.
Dr. Dan is being incredibly generous to grant Luskin misunderstanding instead of purposeful dodging, misrepresentating, and lying.
I wish Luskin didn't feel he had to spend the entire interview shouting.
Maybe he has a hearing disorder that God forgot to heal and doesn't know how loud he is? My tiny cat Panda is deaf and meows like a fire truck siren.
Hell. I'm no scientist of any kind, and I know better. I don't think this is just a misunderstanding. I think this is either dishonesty or willful ignorance.
Then there is the question of Why is a geologist debating genetics anyway?
Good show 😊👍
None of their...several...biologists were interested.
Every time you post another video on this "discussion", it makes me chuckle. It really is fun and the more you repeat yourself and talk about this subject, the more I understand it. So, it's not all for nothing. I also really like how you laid everything out this video. For example: Masterfully done pointing out the question and having us think about it and keep it in our heads ahead of showing the answer.
Most people in this thread disagree, but I actually agree with you that Luskin is likely just very confused and in way over his head rather than deliberately lying. If nothing else, I appreciate that you give him the benefit of the doubt.
Thank you for your good work
A YEC didn’t understand your pretty straightforward argument?
Snape: Obviously
“Misunderstood”
Good response video addressing this (intentional or not) strawman portrayal of your argument that Luskin and Discovery Institute keep building up.
On his point about pseudogenes specifically, I think you could also point out the fact that since many pseudogenes are not transcribed at all (or lack promoters entirely, so they're transcribed spuriously at best), they cannot all be performing these purported regulatory functions. If you're not producing RNA transcripts to begin with, you can't be regulating the RNA products of other protein-coding genes.
Good stuff
I’m kind of living for this little back and forth. 😊
Legit cannot believe it’s been going on this long.
The only way I can agree that Luskin is good faith is if he doesn’t know what “sequence constrained” means. And maybe during the debate he didn’t… but he could/should have looked it up latter
This whole video is giving "Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;. And Brutus is an honourable man."
"I′m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood"
(Nina Simone)
It can be extremely difficult to understand a concept if understanding it puts your ardently-held beliefs in jeopardy.
Also, besides irreducible complexity being covered on this channel, on Tony Reed’s channel, on Jackson Wheat’s channel, all over TH-cam, all over the internet, all over papers written in response to the claim, and the public debunking of it in the court room the same argument has a couple additional problems. Irreducible complexity was already established as a consequence of ordinary evolution by Hermann Joseph Muller (not to be confused with Heinrich Ludwig Hermann Müller) in like 1916 and before he died it was elaborated on in 1967.
It’s also just the Watchmaker Argument. When Herbert Spencer made the argument it was responded to by Charles Darwin. William Paley’s version from 1802 was also used by Georges Cuvier and it was also mentioned by Charles Darwin in the sense of “if something was found that could not have evolved it would falsify this theory but no such thing is known” (paraphrased/reworded) and Paley’s main argument was also responded to by Richard Dawkins in a different way when he showed that the evidence indicates a universe without [intentional] design back in 1986.
Even worse yet, the whole point of “creation science” or whatever “research” the intelligent design people are claiming they are doing was found to be pointless and/or self defeating back in 1740 by David Hume because it’s one of these two things that would have to be concluded:
1. The supernatural is undetectable and that’s why we see no evidence of God.
2. The supernatural is detectable but it is not detected because it does not exist (or if it does exist, it doesn’t interact with our reality).
The argument Hume put forth is based mostly on that first assumption but if creationists wish to lean in on physical evidence for the supernatural they’ll have to contend with the lack of physical evidence for the supernatural even being possible. If the supernatural was part of nature (and described by physics) it would not be supernatural. If it’s not involved in the natural world it also may as well not exist at all. The only hope they have is if they agree with Hume here and assume that God’s actions are completely undetectable by mere humans and then we’d be left with a few possibilities:
1. God does not exist
2. God does exist but doesn’t interact
3. God does interact but we can’t detect it
3a. God made it the way we see it through scientific investigation (making the existence or non-existence of God mostly irrelevant for science)
3b. God lied and all of this around us is just an illusion so science might seem reliable but it was only designed to appear that way. Maybe the universe really did come into existence about 6 hours ago, I mean 6000 years ago.
And if it’s 3b it is still pretty pointless to try to use evidence to prove that God did something because everything is just an illusion anyway and the truth can’t be learned through investigation because the truth is kept from us by design.
_"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."_
-- Upton Sinclair, _I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked,_ 1935.
Although I do feel like you're being a little generous with him I also wouldn't be at all surprised if Luskin didn't really understand why exactly he's wrong both about your arguments and the evidence against his position.
Lol, with young earthers it can be hard to tell sometimes whether it's ignorance or idiocy or dishonesty, I'm not too sure about this guy yet but he doesn't seem as blatantly dishonest as kent hovind
@@steventhompson399 in fairness, “doesn’t seem as blatantly dishonest as Kent hovind” is a exceptionally low bar. That bar is on the floor.
Luskin is a lawyer by trade or a professional deciever
Tomorrow's Evolution Hour continues the journey through Luskin's 800+ papers ... more dry wells for him
If anyone watching my stuff with DI isn't following RJ's series, fix that right quick. He's going through ALL those papers.
What channel is that?
@@NinjaMonkeyPrime www.youtube.com/@jamesdownard1510
@@NinjaMonkeyPrime here's the most recent installment of the Luskin dive (#6) th-cam.com/video/kmgfV54Suqc/w-d-xo.html this Sunday's show will be #7. Links to the papers as always in the video description.
@@jamesdownard1510 LOL! I didn't realize you were referring to your channel! My bad. I will check out the series.
He is a Creationist, he opened his mouth, = lied. Fairly certain Creationist are allergic to the truth.
I think you give him too much trust thinking it's not deliberate, his paycheck depends on him getting it wrong
Dr Dan, sadly there was no “wires being crossed “. What you have in Luskin is a cross liar in full damage control mode. I think the comments have nailed it. You are being far to gracious to Luskin.
"Christ Jesus Ministries" is the second most generic ministry name I can imagine
Those kinds of organized scam names are so openly and shamelessly manipulative that they're basically the intellectual equivalent of unsollicited dick pics. They're brazen like that in the hopes of immediately bagging interest with minimal effort. Like a twisted kind of "virtue" signaling.
_Welcome to We're The Good Guys We Love Jesus And Hate Bad People Doing Bad Things Club, here's our pamphlet, take special note of the page on Replacement Theory and make sure you hate the gays!_
I think it is correct to assume Luskin is making good-faith misunderstandings.
He has an undergrad and master's degree in GEOLOGY, and is a lawyer. I wouldn't expect him to understand anything about virology, or cellular biology. Or evolution.
No he is a creationist liar.
Good faith,?
No
He is a lying git.
Dr Dan made his case clear enough for an idiot like myself to understand it, there's absolutety no way Luskin is honestly mistaken.
Yes I'm sure he misunderstood it lol.... I appreciate the 1080p btw!
Nah, Luskin is a liar like all of them. I appreciate your willingness to acknowledge his isn't a biologist and that it could be an honest mistake, but he has lied to many other times for this to be an honest mistake. He lied about Lucy multiple times, etc. He is just another CI Liar.
I've been really enjoying this series, and also I'm really grateful to you and the Science Friends for doing this sort of thing. As an engineer I got basically no education in biology so your (and the others) videos have broadened my horizons greatly.
That's awesome to hear, thank you. The Science Friends rock.
Great video Dan
Thank you.
"Misunderstood"...riiiight.
Do you have Group B rally cars on the top shelf behind you? I love that era of rally, awesome cars!
Haha that’s a GREAT catch. The Audi is an official Lego set, the Lancia, Peugeot, Metro, and Porsche (yeah I know it never actually raced Group B) are my own designs or adapted from pictures I found online.
@CreationMyths awesomeness
I heard the 959 was developed with group b in mind, but of course the group was canceled around 86 for being so dangerous especially after the corsica crash with the delta s4, what a shame, it would have been neat to see the 959 compete in group b
I think ferrari also developed something for group b that didn't come in time, it might have been related to the f40 or 288 I forget
You have to believe one of two things is going on from his perspective. Either he is just actively strawmanning you to make your argument out to be something weaker than it is, or he didn’t understand your points at all and his attempts to respond to you thus take the form of mischaracterizing your points to transform them into something he can understand and address. If I’m granting him the latter, it’s still baffling that he’s ignoring vast swaths of your specific points because he’s getting very specific framing for them over and over. It’s apparent that he’s at least struggling with understanding your points because there’s no response here.
Salvador Cordova lost my respect when he claimed that he went from being a secular atheist to being a YEC by doing scientific research. He’s either incredibly dense or incredibly dishonest. Either way I barely care what he has to say since he either doesn’t know what’s true or he does know but he’d rather lie instead.
Sure, Luskin's not a biologist, but an experienced lawyer *should* be capable of accurately reporting an opponent's argument. Sadly, an experienced lawyer would also be capable of presenting a friendlier version of it to a home audience, to the point of presenting its opposite, knowing that said audience would likely not spot even extreme differences.
I think you give Luskin too much credit. His job isn't science, it's rhetoric. Rhetoric on behalf of an organisation dedicated to denying scientific realities. He has and will continue to zealously deny these realities.
casey luskin is payed to not understand
This is also very interesting. For me what’s most interesting is that you two can have an intelligent discussion of the issue, that’s important to each of you and still be relative respectful of each other.
The other thing I find interesting is that the purpose for this entire discussion is whether or not it supports intelligent design.
First of all, intelligent design is not equal or related to creationism. If both if you think so, you are both relatively ignorant on the issue. Intelligent design says, basically, that there is a universal consciousness. That the universe and life are part of an infinite (from our point of view) plan and that the creator and implementor of the plan is still active in its creation.
Curious human beings are trying to discover how the plan works and how it is being implemented. Or, as Einstein said it, “I want to understand how the mind of God works.” If the quote isn’t exactly right the meaning is extremely close.
The other major issue is that too many scientists don’t know about what else might be going on that directly impacts their hypotheses. Or, as my dad said it, “PhDs know more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing at all.”
If the goal is to “prove” or “disprove” that there is a conscious force in the universe, what other research is going on that supports that hypothesis?
However, I did enjoy the discussion.
"intelligent design is not equal or related to creationism."
cdesign proponentsists have entered the chat. It's literally exactly the same thing.
Actually, that’s the problem with these “scientists” who know nothing beyond their own little world. I’ve already defined intelligent design. Creationists add one interesting little factoid, “God” created Earth, Solar System, in fact, the entire universe, approximately 8 Thousand years ago. I’m sure, these “scientists” don’t believe that. The fact that they seem to be confused on this issue is part of the problem.
However, if we add in that we are living in a simulation, then it’s possible the creationists are right.
You are definitely being too generous, ( to me it) seems he is purposefully lying to misrepresent your stance and misdirect the interviewer.
It's arguments like this one that made me very dubious about the coining of the phrase "junk DNA" and its popularisation around 1972. It's always possible to argue that, well, we just haven't discovered what function this apparently useless piece of DNA might have. It would have been far better to have simply referred to it as DNA with no known functionality, and point out instead that some eukaryotic species have far more DNA than they would appear to need from their complexity, because the size of genomes varies over a couple of orders of magnitude. Humans have neither the largest nor the smallest genome, and there's no real correlation between animal complexity or size with genome size. In some it's stuffed with DNA with no apparent function, others are stripped down without any negative effects on their functionality. Humans range somewhere in the niddle.
This wouldn't have given creationist quacks a handle to beat real scientists over the head with their bibles.
Never forget this liar is responsible for the "wedge" paper.
I've struggled through some other Dr Cardinale videos (I _REALLY_ don't understand very well since I am a mere lay person). But I never heard of Dr Luskin before this. What is the "wedge" paper?
It describes the strategy the Discovery Institute has for turning the US into a theocracy. It was leaked in the late 90s and the DI first denied it was theirs, then later admitted it but is now pretending it's no big deal.
Arguing with stupid or ideologically blind people is like playing chess with a pigeon. Luskin notoriously never will fit the pivotal point here. Therefore, this debate devolves into a never-ending dialogue. On the other hand, I want to ask you, Dan, once more: Do spacer sequences not fulfill a sequence INDEPENDENT kind of function?
Spacer sequence absolutely are functional regions that are sequence-independent. Instead, they are size-dependent. A *really* good test for non-function is a region that is neither sequence-constrained nor size-constrained.
My useless comment for the algorithm: I know what "the rocks were there" covers, but what is "white sands" about?
That’s a graphic novel in Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere universe (which is also all the vertical books on that shelf).
Apparently it doesn't count if you mention the alg.
Jimmy Wichard out here tryin to disprove evolution.
their will come a point where you will just have to give up arguing with him over his dishonesty...
I needed more warning before that Dr. Casey "Eyebrows" Luskin jumpscare. 😅