Brain Food (Amazingthing about Godless is the amount of intellectual meat Ann Coulter has packed...)

The American Prowler ^ | 6/30/2006 | Richard Kirk

[Junior]

I haven't read the book yet. What did she get wrong about Chernobyl?

This is the blog entry I wrote on her Chernobyl errors.

[colorado tanker]

I think you're letting your anger at Ann's attack on Darwinism cloud your judgment. Ann's point that liberals have drastically overstated the consequences of Chernobyl is most certainly true. That's essentially what the IAEA concluded last year. Ann did garble one fact from the IAEA report, there were 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer attributable to Chernobyl, not deaths. 99% of the cases were curable.

The fact that you're quoting Greenpeace ought to indicate taking a step back and looking at this fresh is warranted.

[Bryan24]

This is what we see in all the textbooks, you know, the textbooks that tell us we descended from apes.

This is an ape.

So, how was my "deep, deep misunderstanding of the theory of evolution" so far off?

Yeah, I know your answer. They decended from a common ancestor 3.5 million years ago.

"Lucy" and that ape look just alike, at least comapred to the blonde.

So, I'm waiting on you to tell me how we got from there to here.

[Junior]

I hadn't even gotten to her attack on "Darwinism" (as if that was some sort of actual movement) when I wrote the Chernobyl piece. She played fast and loose with the facts of the after affects of Chernobyl, including her takes on the numbers of resultant cancers and birth defects.

Finally, if you notice, I did not take Greenpeace's numbers with anything other than a grain of salt. I included them for completeness sake only. I also included links to resources at the bottom of the article so that others could check my results (something the inestimable Ms. Coulter failed to do).

[Junior]

Nope, that's what you see at the BBC and MSNBC websites. You are basically taking dramatists as your source?

Lucy looked like an australopithecus, not a gorilla. I'm not sure where you've gotten your comic-book view of human evolution, but it's obvious you've come to rely upon that rather than actually going out and doing a lick of research.

Finally, we got "from there to here" (notwithstanding your complete ignorance of where "there" is) by minor modifications to existing structures over generations.

[colorado tanker]

I hadn't even gotten to her attack on "Darwinism" (as if that was some sort of actual movement)

Actually, it is - it traces back to Spencer. It's Social Darwinism and the deterministic philosophies that have sprung from it that most thoughtful conservatives are reacting to in attacking "Darwinism." I'm guessing that's what Ann's mostly reacting to also, but I'm gonna have to read the book and find out fer shure now!

Hate to say this, but your extreme reaction to Ann's book is reminiscent of someone whose religion has been attacked. C'mon, wouldn't you say a woman that smart and that good looking is . . . highly evolved? :-)

[Junior]

We're not discussing "Social Darwinism." We are discussing evolutionary biology. And, my reaction to Ms. Coulter's book is that of someone who does not want the conservative movement tarred with the anti-science brush. You cannot even cite my "extreme reaction" being because my "religion was attacked" because, first off, I believe in God, and secondly my one foray into critiquing her work has been on Chernobyl.

Nope. I just cannot stand to see so many people buying hackneyed, third-rate writing, invective and execreble research as if it were the next edition of the Bible.

[colorado tanker]

Thanks for reminding me why I avoid the evo/crevo threads.

Would you please confine the battlefield to those threads and lay off the Ann threads? Makes for way too much text between pictures.

[Bryan24]

Minor modifications?

(Let me pick my self up off the floor after I stop laughing)

I've asked twice for you to show me. Now you are disowning any likeness of "Lucy" the holy grail of evolutionists, to today's apes.

I don't know why I expected any more from you.

[Bryan24]

Junior's World:

From Here....

This is courtesy of the Sand Diego Museum of Man, supported by the national Science Foundation

So I get from there, to here.....

Charlize Theron

and it only required "minor modifications". Thanks, Junior. That two word explanation convinced me.

[RadioAstronomer]

Would you please confine the battlefield to those threads and lay off the Ann threads? Makes for way too much text between pictures.

After reading her book, I would have to say any thread about her book must expose the garbage she wrote about evolution.

[RadioAstronomer]

You should start with TO. You have much to learn.

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-index.html

[tortoise]

Conservative bomb-thrower or not, Ann Coulter's grasp of science and technical topics is about as good as Rush Limbaugh's. Which is to say embarrassingly bad enough that it makes me want to change the channel. Their opinions are sufficiently poorly informed on those matters that they should not be prognosticating in public for the sake of their credibility.

That said, Ann Coulter says whatever she thinks will sell books to the hard right, whether it makes really sense or not. She drives the liberals crazy, but she is not above saying really stupid things if she thinks it will score points.

[Texas Eagle]

I hope Ann pointed out that it was Algore, who first brought up Willie Horton against Dukakis during the Democratic primaries.

She does, indeed. But she also takes it one step further. She points out that in the 2000 RAT primaries Bill Bradley also brought up the fact that Algore created the Willie Horton ad but for some strange reason the press was no longer interested in the racist component of the Willie Horton ad.

As a some wise guy once said, "If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all."

[tortoise]

My significance comes from a source higher than killjoy. I don't derive significance from who I am, where I live, what I wear, where I work, who I marry, what I post on FreeRepublic, whoever posts to me on FreeRepublic.

Why are you so fixated on and transparently obsessed with "significance"? That is just begging for a bad outcome and reeks of classic status-seeking behavior.

Whatever happened to being a decent person and making the most of one's talents?

[tortoise]

If we are an accident, the concept of an immoral act simply does not exist. Only fear would keep any INTELLIGENT atheist in line.

What keeps a theist in line? By your argument, the same fear of consequences.

I would also point out that most people are moral in the broad Golden Rule sense because it is beneficial, provably so mathematically. So-called "enlightened self-interest" provides plenty of carrot for the theist and atheist alike -- it isn't all stick.

(As a really high-level argument, our existence NOT being an accident does not imply that any kind of morality exists either. That is a grossly defective inference that is just kind of assumed by many people. We can't convince intelligent atheists to be theists with bad reasoning and poor logic.)

[maica]

(An aside: the pastor's son, when very young, asked his dad, "If we evolved from monkeys and apes, why are there still monkeys and apes?")

When my sister was asked by one of her seven year old students if she believed that we came from apes, she asked the child if she had ever been to the Zoo. Then she said "did you see the monkeys there?" "Yes" "I guess they haven't turned into humans." The child was satisfied.

[torchthemummy]

"You might as well invalidate chemistry too, it's lead to nerve gas and other nasty things."

Now that is a pathetic statement. You can be the most religious of people in this world and still would accept that adding this chemical to this one makes this potion. Anyone can get a kid's chemistry set and see for themselves.

For Mao, Stalin , Marx etc. evolution theory (scripture) is necessary for the ultimate goal - elimination of all religions minus one - cradle-to-grave-we-know-what-is-best-for-you-nanny-statism.

You can support evolution all you want but if it is to be taught as the only revelation as to the source of life then no thanks. Darwin's Evolutional Theory is just that - theory. As an all-encompassing theory it has so many holes that it leaks like a sieve.

It is irrelevant to me whether Darwin is taught as a theory - it is completely relevant to me if his theory is taught as fact with no alternatives.

[torchthemummy]

"What really scares me" is that you are acting like the most rabid "abortion on demand" lib type.

So you disagree with her view on evolution - fine. But then you do the standard throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater bitchin. Touch my sacred cow and I'll assault your entire flock. Please. That's the kind of thing a kid would do - don't like my rule then I'll take the ball and go home.

Her current work is nothing more than invective...

And your post is not. Ann doesn't always play nice but she always tends to prove her argument.

My belief is you didn't read her book. Why would you buy (or borrow) a book that is authored by a woman that "appears to have simply thrown this book together after a weekend of intensely reading FR"? Wow talk about biting the hand that "hosts" you.

You've been a member of FR long enough to be well versed in Ann's opinions which happen to find alot of sounding boards here. Why would you waste your time reading a book that apparently disagrees with you chapter after chapter? Was it just to read the evolution part so you could bitch about your atheistic world view that allows no questioning?

In the final analysis, just like Andrew Sullivan jumped the shark when he did a 180 after a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage was suggested, ditto to your rant against the whole book because she stepped on your proverbial baby, Darwin.

[RadioAstronomer]

As an all-encompassing theory it has so many holes that it leaks like a sieve.

Care to cite some examples? (Only peer reviewed examples - not some screed from a creationist web site please)