He writes about abiogenesis issues but doesn't read about them? I'm a frustrated SF writer. Why do I know what Berlinski doesn't?
I'll tell you. What I know is inconvenient to his thesis. A thread or two back, I noticed Meyer, another DI Fellow, citing that Antony Flew had been moved by ID arguments to reject atheism for Deism. Thing is, Meyer had forgotten to mention that Flew, while still a Deist, had since announced that he is no longer impressed with ID and biological complexity arguments. (He still likes the anthropic principle stuff, however.)
Selective citation is a very creationist behavior. Real scholarship standards do not permit it. However, Berlinski goes beyond selective citation. He actively denies that there has been any shift in the evidence away from what he wants to say. There has.
My only point in the earlier post was that someone mentioned that Berlinski could have clicked on one of Ichneumon's posts.
He couldn't do that, unless he actually read Free Republic.
Whether or not he knows, or should be expected to know, the information contained within Ichneumon's earlier post is another matter. And if RWP is correct, Berlinski doesn't know what on Earth he's talking about, concerning recent developments in the chemistry of abiogenesis.
He doesn't know, he doesn't point out that he doesn't know, and commits the additional error of assuming his threshold of ignorance is the same as everyone else's--and we have a number of posters pointing out exactly at which point he drives into a ditch.
That's good for the intellectual state of readers of this thread. (I have been given to understand that other famous personages, such as "The Great One" Mark Levin, and possibly Ann Coulter, read Free Republic.)
But is Berlinski himself gonna read it on this thread?
Cheers!