The Chardin Collective

“Just as all peoples have shadows, every society and nation, too, has shadows. If there are bright, shining aspects, there will definitely be a counterbalancing dark side…At times, we tend to avert our eyes from the shadow, those negative parts, or else, try to forcibly eliminate those aspects. No matter how high a wall we build to keep intruders out…no matter how much we rewrite history to suit us, we just end up damaging ourselves and hurting others.” – Haruki Murakami

Anyone familiar with the creation-evolution scene will most likely be familiar with a number of popular sour characters that have helped to paint Young-Earth Creationism into a worse light than it might deserve – people like Kent Hovind, Carl Baugh, Ray Comfort, Don Patton, etc. People are also probably familiar with well-known examples of academic misconduct in YECism, like when David Menton made up fossil evidence that didn’t exist or the many examples of quote mining by creation scientists and advocates. Seraphim Hamilton, an East-Orthodox Young-Earth Creationist, has observed that “There are many bad creationists, and unfortunately, these tend to be the most prominent.”

However, painting all YECs with the same brush doesn’t seem fair, and several respectable YECs like Marcus Ross, Kurt Wise, Todd Wood, Leonard Brand, Art Chadwick, etc. end up getting held accountable for things they didn’t do purely by association. The Chardin Collective believes that misconduct by creationists needs to be called out, but that such cases shouldn’t be used to try to represent every member of the movement. Instead, they can be said to represent the shadow side of the ideology. So, we decided to publish these examples for people to be aware of them but to keep them separate from our other projects so as not to confuse them with YECs who haven’t done anything wrong. At the time of writing (Summer 2024), The Shadow is expected to launch in late 2024. Entries are presented in alphabetical order.