A creationist riddle
John Stear, May 2006

Answers in Genesis-USA's Mike Riddle, described by AiG-USA as a "veteran creation speaker", was recently invited to address students and teachers at a public high school and middle school in Potosi, Missouri.  Riddle claims that his talk was titled "Fascinating Facts About Origins" although, in his AiG article, he claimed his presentation was called "The Origin of Life: A Scientific Approach".   He also claimed he never discussed religion or creation and that his talk:

...was strictly scientific and relevant to what the students were learning in their science classes.

However, on Riddle's biography page Ken Ham, CEO of AiG-USA, was effusive in his praise for Riddle, saying:

Mike Riddle is a dynamic and passionate speaker, with a wealth of experience in creation ministry. He already has a phenomenal reputation, and brings another exciting dimension to the AiG outreach—including his ability to produce curriculum for many levels. Mike's a great speaker and curriculum developer. [my emphasis]

Considering that Riddle's qualifications are "a degree in mathematics and a graduate degree in education" it would appear unlikely that his scientific knowledge is sufficient to "produce curriculum for many levels" unless that curriculum was in the simplistic creationist mould.

The question is, why does a committed creationist, skilful at producing "curriculum for many levels", bother to spend time addressing students and teachers on a scientific approach to "The Origin of Life" in the context of a bona fide scientific curriculum, without once mentioning that he doesn't, indeed cannot, believe in a proper "scientific approach"? See Answers in Genesis' Statement of Faith.

Riddle claims he was invited:

...more than six months ago to speak about science topics and show students how science works.

On Riddle's biography it says:

...he can give powerful, well-illustrated talks on:

...dinosaurs and the Bible
the six days of creation
astronomy and the Bible
the origin of life

So I repeat, why would a committed creationist speaker accept an invitation to give a talk on science and not mention religion or creationism?  Perhaps Riddle is being a little disingenuous here as he's reported by the  St. Louis Post-Dispatch as saying that :

...his presentation, entitled "Fascinating Facts About Origins" [or whatever he actually called it] will focus on such things as "'the laws of thermodynamics' and ask such questions as, "How could a protein originate by itself? Is that possible?"

As both subjects positively reek of creationism, I'll bet London to a brick on that Riddle pursued his creationist agenda in the hope that the students, or some of them, would conclude that the second Law of Thermodynamics and the origin of proteins somehow poses a problem for evolution.  He's also quoted as saying:

I'm not here to say anything negative about evolution, but there are assumptions often used in the scientific field. I want to point that out.

These "assumptions" of course cover almost the whole gamut of creationist lies and misrepresentations about evolutionary science.

Unfortunately, I can find no record of the address Riddle actually gave at the schools and he certainly gives nothing away in his AiG-USA article.  Does the absence of such a record indicate that Riddle's address wasn't as creationist free as he has claimed?  Can it be that Riddle cooked up the controversy in order to go public (via AiG-USA's web site) on how the naughty evolutionists in AU and the media tried to prevent him from speaking about what really is anathema to him, real science?