Here's a little tactical tip for dealing with creationists. In their presentations, they lie and distort at a frantic pace, babbling out unsupported claims so quickly that you can't possibly keep up—it's far easier to puke up another lie than to carefully and accurately correct one. So what can you do? Focus on one. You can't correct an entire dictionary of dishonesty, but you can thoroughly discuss one entry.

Case in point: Timothy Birdnow. He wrote that appallingly bad essay on evolution at the American Thinker to which I gave an omnibus answer. However, I also zeroed in on one representative paragraph of his essay and challenged him to deal with the answers specifically.

I'm a right wicked bastard. Birdnow discussed revisiting this subject in another article, so I hit him with a challenge. Creationists typically dance from error to error, keeping the balls juggling so fast that you can't keep up, and definitely can never pin them down. So I picked one point in his article and told him to explain it. Here's my challenge:

By the way, if you do revisit this subject, please address this one point from your article.

Consider the Permian Triassic Extinction, the so called "Great Dying", 250 million years ago,in which 9 out of 10 marine creatures and 7 out of 10 land creatures died. Before the Great Dying five phylla walked the Earth; insects, mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles. After the Great Dying we had the same 5.

You should be aware that in those 3 sentences, you made 4 immense errors.

1. There are many more than 5 phyla; about 30.
2. Mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and insects are not separate phyla. The first four all belong to one phylum (Chordata) and the last belongs to another (Arthropoda).
3. There were no mammals or birds in the Permian.
4. There were no mammals or birds in the Triassic.

In other words, your entire point was wrong in multiple ways. Those are simple errors of fact that show you have no knowledge at all of the subject about which you were babbling.

Consider this a challenge. If you can't address those gross errors when you revisit the subject, I'm going to point out the fact with great amusement.

I wonder what will happen? Dodge, weasel, stonewall, or do some kind of spastic flibbertigibbet dance?

He has replied (oh, wait—he's created a whole new blogspot weblog to deal with it^*). And the winning answer is…spastic flibbertigibbet dance!

Professor Myers goes on to insult me in every way imaginable, showing himself to be not just closed-minded but also quite intolerant and nasty. He devoted an enormous amount of time to what he views as extraordinarily stupid-which proves that I touched a nerve. To paraphrase Shakespeare "Me thinks he doth protest too much!" He even used my name as the title of his post! Does anyone devote so much time and effort to something they think has no validity? Dr. Myers clearly fears what I had to say.

I can imagine quite a few other ways to insult Birdnow, I assure you. And I don't think that a guy who sets up a new weblog to address the criticisms of one of his articles can claim that others protest too much. The point of my original post, though, was to demonstrate the numerous errors of fact—basic, fundamental, gross mistakes—in his essay. His attempt to address the specific issues I brought up in my challenge is pathetic.

You are correct in that there are 30 total animal phyla; I was writing a piece to explain this concept to a general audience, and I included the chordates plus insects. You, as a revered Professor of Biology, may find my pique with my carelessness. Fine(after all, I`m not a biologist). Nonetheless, it does not matter to the argument wether there are 2, 8, 15, 30, or 2000 phila (ouch! my knuckles!); the point is that we there was no real crossovers between creatures. I suspect you understood my point, but quibble over it because you think you`ve got me. If it salves your ego to gloat, go right ahead! The fact is, the great point you think you scored was wide of the argument.

Remarkable.

It is not more difficult to use the number "30" instead of "5" for a general audience, unless perhaps he thought the readership of the American Thinker was so benightedly stupid that they were unable to count above 5.

He still doesn't seem to have grasped what a phylum is. None of the examples he listed are phyla; they are classes. As written, he was saying that there were mammals in the Permian, and there were mammals in the Triassic after the Permian extinction. That claim is false.

It does matter how many phyla he claims existed and now exist. It's a matter of credibility. It's extremely easy to look up the number of phyla, and definitions of phyla, and examples of phyla—he did not, and still hasn't, and doesn't know the meaning of the word. He lacks the basic concepts (not to speak of any integrity), and is not a competent or reliable source.

The point I made was central to his argument. He's trying to claim that there were no changes in the kinds of fauna present in the fossil record over time, and has misrepresented the record to support his assertion. Try as you might, you will find no evidence of birds or mammals before, during, or shortly after the Permian extinction. Fish, reptiles, and insects straddled the event, but there are differences in each; the oldest known fly, for instance, is from the upper Triassic.

I could go on to tackle his new lies, but as you can see, all he will do in response is trot out more, a process that could go on forever. Let's leave it with one incontrovertible fact which Birdnow wishes would go away: his argument about the Permian extinction was completely wrong and based entirely on obtuse arrogance and an utter lack of actual information. He's a pretentious liar and fraud.

We can also be content now with the results of a Google search for Timothy Birdnow.

^*His excuse for setting up the new weblog is a wonderful recognition of my puissance: "PZ Myers' desperate attack on my American Thinker article The Case Against Darwin has destabilized my blog's formatting." My blog fu is most effective. Fear me.