What is the deal with Creationism?

Recently in a post on Reason Being's blog, a creationist popped up in the comments. My first instinct was to say to him that creationism is simply "God did it", but then I realized, I actually don't really know what creationists say. I know what my parents told me as a kid, and I know what my church told me as a kid, they basically said "God did it, evolution is wrong". I also know that the ID people (who are the same people as the creationist people if I am understanding correctly) claim things like irreducible complexity, which is just nonsense. But apart from that, I'm not really sure what the creationist people say.

So today when I stumbled across the institute for creation research, of course I subscribed to their "daily science updates". I figured it would be a fun post to go through a few of their recent articles and see what I see.

What Does It Take to Make a Jellyfish?

This article manages to say something ridiculous right from the start, it begins with

Many jellyfish are transparent, and they have seemingly simple movements and few visible interacting parts. They should, therefore, be easy to synthesize with man-made parts...

Why would "transparent" and "seemingly simple movements" imply easy to synthesize? The article then goes on describe what the scientists tried to do to mimic a jellyfish and how it was not very well done. For the record, it sounds to me like what the scientists were able to accomplish is very cool. Anyway, the article concludes with the following

The implication is clear. Whoever designed real jellyfish was much smarter than ordinary people.

So to sum up, the author of this article makes the rash assumption that since jellyfish are transparent and have seemingly simple movements, they should be easy for people to synthesize. Then when this assumption proves false, he concludes that the only explanation is that jellyfish were designed, and they were designed by someone smarter than the people who tried and "failed" this time. It seems to me that there are a host of other possible conclusions one could draw from this, but why not just stick to the one that he wants to be true?

New African Fossil Confirms Early Human Variations

This article talks about a recent paper from the journal Nature. Apparently, the paper found some new fossils and the scientists talked about trying to fit the fossils into our currently understood evolutionary lineage. This is a topic I am not particularly well versed in, so I'm not sure how much I can contribute, but the author of this article complains that the nature paper is trying to challenge early concepts of the lineage and might change earlier ideas. He uses this to try to argue that evolution is junk because it changes, I guess he doesn't understand that he is pointing out one of the huge advantages of science, it can always challenge earlier ideas and things can always change. He finishes this article with

On the other hand, the Bible's origins account is compatible with discontinuous fossils like these, since it says that God created people to reproduce after their own kind, not between kinds.

So my instinct was correct, the creationist view is simply "God did it"

 It follows from this that no undisputed ape-to-human transition will ever be discovered. 

I agree, these people are basically pledging to dispute everything of this type that shows up, so it is true, there will never be an undisputed ape-to-human transition found.

If these new human-looking fossils really do represent human varieties, then they only reinforce the biblical and scientific observation that humans can and did rapidly express widely differing variations in form and features. 

Is there biblical evidence for humans variation like he is describing? I'd love to see a verse citation.

Useless Search for Evolution of the Human Brain

This article talks about a review article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It apparently talks about a gene FOXP2 which is seems to be important to human speech as there are some people who have a mutation in that gene and have speech defects. Obviously there is the potential that this gene was important in the evolution of speech.

No. The high hope once held for FOXP2 as a key to explain the evolution of speech in the brain was dashed on the rocks of real research.

Oh, I stand corrected. Apparently this guy thinks he has proof that this gene can not be part of the evolution of speech. Care to elaborate?

Analyses of FOXP2 gene activity showed that it was not only used in brain tissues that facilitate speech, but also in various tissues throughout the body with a variety of uses. 

No problem there. Many features of animals have multiple uses, evolution can happen when a population of animals shifts from one use to another.

This represents an overlooked flaw in the evolutionary research approach. Because FOXP2 turned out to be involved in many traits, its evolution by natural selection is highly improbable.

This is just completely wrong. The fact that FOXP2 is involved in many traits makes it all the more likely it was important for the evolution of speech. Suppose for the moment, that FOXP2 is important for speech. The fact that it is useful for other tasks makes it all the more likely that it was present when all of the other things important for speech were there and it was ready to be co-opted for the purpose of speech. [disclaimer: I don't actually know anything about FOXP2, but I have a general idea of how evolution works and this guy's analysis just seems completely wrong to me]

He then complains that the survey article assumes that evolution is true and it didn't consider ID as an alternative. He states:

Preuss and others did not mention—let alone test—the possibility that FOXP2 was purposely placed to serve multiple functions throughout many body tissues in many creatures.

How would you even test such a thing?

Salmon Use Sophisticated Compass Cells

This article talks about how salmon know how to get back to their spawning ground. Apparently some scientists have found some cells that have magnetic properties. Pretty cool. Also, there are many cells that don't have that magnetic property, if there were too many they would interfere with one another. Again, very neat. So then he says this

Would anybody argue that a fully functional compass, complete with a spinning needle, could ever be arranged by accident? Apparently so. [emphasis mine]

 No god dammit! It is not random and it is not by accident. Randomness is part of the process, but natural selection is not random. In fact, in a very real sense it is the opposite of random as traits that are superior win out and spread like crazy.

So, to the author of these articles, I think it is now time for me to ask the question. Are you stupid or are you a liar? Given that you are writing about how evolution is bullshit, I'm assuming you have studied at least the basics of it. If you think evolution is things simply being arranged by accident, you are stupid. If you just say "by accident" because it fits your narrative better and you think it will play better in your target audience, then you are a liar.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
These are articles I found largely at random. I also looked around the rest of the website a bit and as far as I can tell, they seem typical. If anyone thinks I have missed some obvious good resources or that I'm being unfair, please point me toward something of higher quality.