Absolute, 100% hogwash. You wrote:
"people who abandon a belief in evolution do so not because of evidence, but because of evangelical conversionsYes, and I supported this assertion by pointing out that some of these men avoid talking about the evidence, and the rest make entirely clear that they aren't familiar with the actual evidence and misunderstand/misrepresent the few paltry pieces of evidence they claim as their "reason" for being anti-evolutionists. You however LIE ABOUT MY POST by misrepresenting it thusly:
[...] You completely avoided confronting this [...] This is no way invalidates the evidence he has examined. [...] instead of confronting this [...etc.]
Horse manure. I directly dealt with it in the passage you failed to understand and want to pretend I didn't write:
You have failed to grasp the significance of that, which is typical of you, and worse you try to pretend I didn't deal with the claim that they based their positions on the scientific evidence instead of their religious convictions, when I most certainly *did* deal with that claim, directly. Disagree if you wish, BUT STOP LYING ABOUT WHAT I DID AND DIDN'T ADDRESS.It WAS based "on an actual examination of the facts" as was the case for the others cited, directly contradicting your post.
No, it wasn't, if you pay attention while reading their excuses. Galbraith for example *claims* a long examination of the evidence, but when asked for his best example, he says:
‘I think it has to be the total geologic record of all those sedimentary, waterborne layers. Fossils, as we now know, generally have to be formed by fast catastrophic burial to preserve the details we see. And within the layers, there is much other evidence that they were laid down rapidly. Also, the stratigraphic column, the “stack” of all these layers, is essentially continuous throughout the world; there is no worldwide discontinuity or “time break”. So it shows to me that there was indeed a worldwide Flood, and not just localized floods as many believe.’This, quite frankly, shows an amazing ignorance of the actual geologic record. If Galbraith had actually spent the "years" examining the evidence he claims, it's hard to understand how he could get the most basic details of geology so mind-numbingly wrong. Either he *didn't* spend a long time poring over the evidence, or he did so in the most myopic "blind man and the elephant" way possible. Either way, he's clearly not basing his conclusions on the actual evidence, he's basing them on a fantasy version.I've read a few chapters of a couple of Wilder-Smith's books, and I don't see any reference to the "evidence" either -- he engages in a lot of ivory-tower argument based on his (incorrect) notions of information theory, with barely a reference in sight, much less any analysis or citation of any evidence. He hand-waves with a lot of his speculations labeled with words like "obviously", as if he didn't need to sully his brain by checking his presumptions against reality.
Gentry, meanwhile, bases his entire case on *one* thing only, Polonium Haloes, which have been debunked repeatedly. Furthermore, even if they *were* the mystery Gentry claims they are, colored rings in minerals would hardly be the kind of evidence that would single-handedly disprove evolutionary biology or "prove" the Bible and all it contains, as Gentry bizarrely maintains.
So I say again -- these guys don't base their anti-evolution positions on the totality of the evidence, they base it on their faith, because they sure as heck can't even describe the evidence properly, much less argue their case on it.
If you're still unclear on the point, let's turn it around and see if the little light bulb in your head finally goes on. What would you say if someone had written:
"...embark on what turned out to be a three or four year intensive study of all the available material on Christianity. At the end of that time, I was convinced that the atheist point of view, from a scientific standpoint, was the only credible position that a thinking person could accept.’"What then would you say if someone had held this guy up as an example and then said, "It WAS based 'on an actual examination of the Bible' as was the case for the others cited, directly contradicting your post."...and then when asked for his favorite example, went on to say:
"‘I think it has to be the totality of the Bible. King David couldn't possibly have fit all those fleeing Israelites onto the Ark to sail them across the Red Sea while they were escaping Herod. So it shows to me that the Bible is indeed a work of fiction, and not divine revelation as many believe.’
Would you buy that? Or would you rightly point out that it can hardly be said to be "based on an actual examination fo the Bible" when the guy very clearly either didn't even *read* the Bible, or due to his incredibly poor grasp of it he wasn't basing his conclusion *on* the Bible itself, he was basing it on his own fantasies and misunderstandings?
And so it is when I point out that your examples are *not* people actually basing their anti-evolution position on the evidence, they're basing it on their misunderstandings and delusions, which bear little or no resemblance to the actual evidence. Actually, from their other numerous statements, it's clear that they're basing their position on their religious faith, while merely *rationalizing* having used the evidence, because they very clearly *didn't* base anything on the real-world evidence which they are unable to even describe correctly.
Read that again until it finally sinks in instead of bouncing off your forehead with a sharp "ping".
Exactly what part of that didn't you understand?
I understood it just fine, which is why I've made the points I've made about it.
Your incredible blanket claim that "people who abandon a belief in evolution do so not because of evidence" is laughable on its face.
No, it's based on their actual statements and arguments. And your giggling like a child does nothing to change that.
As if you know the mind and decision-making process of everyone who's decided that evolution is not the answer.
Look, when you *own* hand-picked examples fall flat, it's a pretty good sign that you're unable to make any case to the contrary.
I base my conclusion on over thirty years experience with such folks, after talking with them extensively and reading their own words. I stand by my assessment.
["you haven't even established that all four of these men were even "evolutionists" to start with as you assert"]
LOL. That's it? That's your final fall-back position?
No, it's my pointing out that you can't even support your own claims.
I guess quoting them and/or sources well-acquainted with them isn't good enough for you?
Not when they fail to support your assertion, no, it's not good enough.
Now, you may not like his [Gentry's] science or agree with his conclusions or the scientific conclusions of the others cited. Once again, SO WHAT?
So you have utterly failed to deal with the following passage from my discussion of Gentry:
Furthermore, even if they *were* the mystery Gentry claims they are, colored rings in minerals would hardly be the kind of evidence that would single-handedly disprove evolutionary biology or "prove" the Bible and all it contains, as Gentry bizarrely maintains.Clearly, he hasn't reached his conclusions about evolution and/or God from the physical evidence, because no one in their right mind could justify basing *either* conclusion on the mere existence of one kind of mineral inclusion. He has, as I correctly pointed out, based his conclusion on *other* considerations and only *rationalized* them based on his mineral "halos".
And what about Parker? He taught evo in for years in college. Oh, right, he's the one you wanted to ignore. How convenient.
Don't be a twit. I skipped Parker because I missed it in your rambling and poorly formatted list. But if you want to put him forth as an example of someone who actually changed his mind based on the *real* evidence, you're really putting your foot in your mouth. Parker is yet another anti-evolutionist who bases his views on FALSE CREATIONIST PROPAGANDA about the evidence, instead of the *actual* evidence itself. We need only look at one of the books he authored for overwhelming and abundant examples.
The following is a review of "Skeletons in Your Closet", Parker's moronic book aimed at "educating" children: Review: Skeletons in Your Closet.
And don't just take the rewiewer's word for it, I can vouch that his criticisms are accurate ones. Here are some excerpts (each "paragraph" is a separately excerpted passage):
Skeletons in Your Closet, by Gary Parker (1998), is a creationist book for children which tackles the subject of human evolution and argues that there is no valid evidence for it.This is just a small sampling -- read the full review to see what a horror story of scientific inaccuracy Parker's book really is.Parker's book consists of an enormous amount of misdirection, and evasion of most of the best evidence for human evolution. All the old creationist favorites such as Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man, Ramapithecus and Nutcracker Man are discussed. Of course, these have little or no relevance to the modern study of human evolution, and some of them never did.
Parker mentions three other "huge mistakes": an alligator bone, a horse's toe bone, and a dolphin rib, all supposedly misidentified as hominids. The first two of these are so obscure that I have never been able to find out the details about these fossils or who misidentified them. Whatever they were, they are irrelevant - they were never accepted or even named as hominid species, and sank without a trace.
As for the dolphin's rib, it's almost as irrelevant. Parker says that "... the evolutionist who found it thought he could prove it was an ape-man who walked upright!" but the truth is somewhat different.
It too was never named as a hominid, and its discoverer never claimed he could prove it walked upright - that detail was just invented by Parker.
In contrast to the space devoted to these irrelevancies, legitimate fossils are either ignored or misrepresented.
p. 11: As an example of the arbitrariness of reconstructions, Parker claims that a camel skull could be reconstructed to look like a vicious meat-eater. It turns out that this is true only if you're incompetent; in real life, a class of students had no difficulty working out from a camel skull that it had to be herbivorous rather than carnivorous (see Anj Petto's article Over the Hump - Taking the AIG Camel Challenge!, based on this creationist article)
p. 12: Parker repeats the tired claim that Neandertals were just normal people with bone disease. Naturally, like us, Neandertals suffered from bone disease, though I don't believe any Neandertal has ever been discovered with rickets, which Parker implies when he claims that they suffered from a shortage of vitamin D. But the idea that bone diseases caused Neandertal anatomy is discredited (and has been for well over a century), and few if any scientists believe it now.
p. 23: "Even science traces all human beings back to just two people. The Bible calls them Adam and Eve, and all of us came from just those two and no others." This is almost certainly referring to the concepts of mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam. Parker's statement is an astonishing howler; anyone with even a basic familiarity with these concepts should know that they do not mean what Parker says (see What, if anything, is a Mitochondrial Eve?). The mitochondrial Eve and the Y-chromosome Adam are only the respective common ancestors of our mtDNA (inherited from mothers) and Y-chromosomes (inherited from fathers). No scientists claim that they are the only two ancestors of all humans, and many popular articles explicitly point this out. Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam are not our exclusive ancestors, they probably lived at different times and in different places, and they almost certainly never knew each other.
p. 35: Parker says that Eugene Dubois, the discoverer of Java Man, "also found regular human skulls in the same gravel", strongly implying that they were found in the same deposits. This is totally false. These skulls are known as the Wadjak skulls, which should be a pretty good tip off that they were found somewhere else. They were; Wadjak is about 65 miles (104 kms) away from Trinil, where Java Man was discovered. (Many other creationists make the weaker claim that the Wadjak skulls were discovered "at the same level". This is also false; Java Man was discovered in river deposits in a flood plain with a non-modern fauna, while the Wadjak skulls were discovered in a mountain cave with a modern fauna.)
Parker says that Dubois "didn't tell anyone for over thirty years about the human [Wadjak] skulls he discovered". This is also false; in fact Dubois published three articles mentioning the Wadjak skulls soon after their discovery.
p. 49: "[Donald] Johanson even said that Lucy was the ancestor of all the apes as well as human beings." Almost certainly nonsense; Parker is probably misremembering a claim by Johanson that Lucy was the ancestor of all later hominids.
p. 51 contains the following dialogue:
"Mom: ...But other scientists didn't just look [at Lucy]; they took measurements.As far as I can tell, this is complete fiction. I have never heard of any scientific papers claiming that Lucy did not walk upright. I can only imagine that Parker has some muddled memory of a well known paper by Charles Oxnard (1975), in which Oxnard claimed some functional similarities between some australopithecine bones and orang-utans. However, Oxnard was examining South African specimens of A. africanus, not Lucy (which is in A. afarensis).
Dana: What did the measurements show?
Mom: They showed that Lucy did not walk upright. In fact, another ape, an orangutan, would have walked more like a person than Lucy could."p. 52: "Two scientists put pictures of Lucy's skeleton on top of a chimp's just to show you could scarcely tell the difference." This almost certainly refers to a paper by Zihlman et al. (1984), which contains a drawing comparing a chimp with Lucy. (As a minor point, Zihlman's drawing doesn't show Lucy's skeleton on top of a chimp's. Did Parker even bother to look at the drawing before writing about it?) Parker even gives a cartoon representation of this drawing. However the real drawing shows considerably greater differences than Parker does:
In reality, the Zihlman drawing was done not "to show you could scarcely tell the difference", but to point out both the similarities and differences between Lucy and a chimp.
The similarity as depicted in Zihlman (1984) with chimp on left, Lucy on right
The similarity as depicted by Parkerp. 62: "The skeleton [of Turkana Boy] was like that of a modern human, Homo sapiens, in every way..." A comparison of a photo of the Turkana Boy skull with a drawing of a modern human skull shows that they look considerably more different than one would expect from Parker's statement.
p. 76: "According to evolution, Diane, there is no God who made us". This is just ridiculous; the theory of evolution, like any other scientific theory, takes no stance on whether God exists or not. Despite Parker's repeated attempts to smear evolution by equating it with atheism, many evolutionist scientists are Christians, and most major Christian denominations have no problem with evolution.
An unpleasant aspect of the book is Parker's continual denigration of scientists, in both word and picture. A few cartoons depict scientists as either overweight or scrawny (but always unattractive), and foolish or dishonest. This is pretty rich, coming from someone with Parker's carelessness with the truth. Here are a couple of examples:
The discoverer of 'Nebraska Man', daydreaming about his find.
This scientist has a bubble saying "These bones obviously belong to a female 'ape-woman' with an I.Q. of 47 who was carrying one of her 3 children as she walked upright."Accompanying Parker's claims about the Wadjak skulls is an illustration showing a masked man under cover of night putting a human skull into a box labelled "Evidence to hide - Man before Ape-man".
Later he claims that Donald Johanson deliberately and fraudulently altered the pelvis of Lucy to make it look as though she was bipedal.
Elsewhere, one of the Parker children asks rhetorically whether museum displays aren't being dishonest in displaying fossils such as Java Man and Nutcracker Man. Indeed they would be if the fossils were being misrepresented, but there's no evidence that that is the case. Java Man is correctly classified as Homo erectus in museums, and Nutcracker Man as a robust australopithecine not ancestral to humans. If Parker has any reasons to claim these aren't correct identifications, he should state them rather than casting slurs on the honesty of museums.
Referring to the Tasmanian genocide, Parker says "The settlers believed so strongly that the Tasmanian natives were part animal that they formed a human chain across parts of the island to hunt down and kill all the native peoples." [3] Although he is obviously trying to pin the blame for this on evolution, it occurred in 1830 - some thirty years before Darwin published his theory. The settlers were not evolutionists, but were mostly Christians - maybe Parker should reconsider his belief that evolution is responsible for racism.
As far as I could tell, all of the material in Parker's book could have been recycled from other creationist sources, and probably was; it is hard to see how someone familiar with the scientific literature could get so much wrong.
I'll admit that I did not come to this book expecting to be impressed by it. Still, I was surprised at how appallingly bad it was. Parker is, after all, an important figure in the world of creationism (see his bio here). He was prominent in the Institute for Creation Research for many years, and then founded Answers in Genesis along with Ken Ham.
Parker's book is an example of the worst of creationist literature, a shoddy collection of recycled misinformation.
This book not only contains no reliable scientific information, but is dishonest to the core. Any kid who relies on Skeletons in your Closet won't have a hope of being able to participate in a discussion of human evolution - and wouldn't even be able to understand the discussion. Even creationists should be embarrassed by this book.
Parker wouldn't recognize the real-world evidence if it bit him on the ass. His head is full of creationist lies about the evidence, not the real-world evidence itself. He has based his "conversion" on lies, not on the evidence. Your own excerpt acknowleges this: "After a three year analysis of creation science, he converted." He didn't study *science*, he didn't study the *evidence*, he studied "creation science", which is the propaganda of anti-evolution creationists. Your excerpt goes on to say, "He showed that he was truly in search of the truth first." No, he wasn't. If he were, he'd have studied science itself, not the lies of the creationists, and then gone on to parrot those lies to defenseless children.