re: #42 nyc redneck

wow, he has the patience of a saint. […]
i could tell he was stunned by what she was saying.

I very much doubt he was “stunned” — Shermer is a veteran skeptic and has heard similar levels of kookiness many times before. Not just from YECists like her, but from New Age crystal healers, UFO abductees, Holocaust deniers, 9/11 Troofers, etc. And some of these people (certainly not all of them) are in fact very intelligent and well-educated in certain fields.

But they also have an amazing knack for “compartmentalized thinking” that allows them to block off their pet theory from the ordinary common-sense filters that they apply to other ideas.

As to how she managed to obtain a PhD from a respectable public university, my guess is that she did it by carefully hiding her creationist views — in other words, she stayed In The Closet for as long as was necessary to earn her degree.