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The Facts of Life: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. A Review.
New Statesman ^ | 28 August 1992 | Richard Dawkins

Posted on 07/03/2002 9:53:47 AM PDT by Tomalak

Every day I get letters, in capitals and obsessively underlined if not actually in green ink, from flat-earthers, young-earthers, perpetual-motion merchants, astrologers and other harmless fruitcakes. The only difference here is that Richard Milton managed to get his stuff published. The publisher - we don’t know how many decent publishers turned it down first - is called ‘Fourth Estate.’ Not a house that I had heard of, but apparently neither a vanity press nor a fundamentalist front. So, what are ‘Fourth Estate’ playing at? Would they publish - for this book is approximately as silly - a claim that the Romans never existed and the Latin language is a cunning Victorian fabrication to keep schoolmasters employed?

A cynic might note that there is a paying public out there, hungry for simple religious certitude, who will lap up anything with a subtitle like ‘Shattering the Myth of Darwinism.’ If the author pretends not to be religious himself, so much the better, for he can then be exhibited as an unbiased witness. There is - no doubt about it - a fast buck to be made by any publishers unscrupulous enough to print pseudoscience that they know is rubbish but for which there is a market.

But let’s not be so cynical. Mightn’t the publishers have an honourable defence? Perhaps this unqualified hack is a solitary genius, the only soldier in the entire platoon - nay, regiment - who is in step. Perhaps the world really did bounce into existence in 8000 BC. Perhaps the whole vast edifice of orthodox science really is totally and utterly off its trolley. (In the present case, it would have to be not just orthodox biology but physics, geology and cosmology too). How do we poor publishers know until we have printed the book and seen it panned?

If you find that plea persuasive, think again. It could be used to justify publishing literally anything; flat-earth, fairies, astrology, werewolves and all. It is true that an occasional lonely figure, originally written off as loony or at least wrong, has eventually been triumphantly vindicated (though not often a journalist like Richard Milton, it has to be said). But it is also true that a much larger number of people originally regarded as wrong really were wrong. To be worth publishing, a book must do a little more than just be out of step with the rest of the world.

But, the wretched publisher might plead, how are we, in our ignorance, to decide? Well, the first thing you might do - it might even pay you, given the current runaway success of some science books - is employ an editor with a smattering of scientific education. It needn’t be much: A-level Biology would have been ample to see off Richard Milton. At a more serious level, there are lots of smart young science graduates who would love a career in publishing (and their jacket blurbs would avoid egregious howlers like calling Darwinism the "idea that chance is the mechanism of evolution.") As a last resort you could even do what proper publishers do and send the stuff out to referees. After all, if you were offered a manuscript claiming that Tennyson wrote The Iliad, wouldn’t you consult somebody, say with an O-level in History, before rushing into print?

You might also glance for a second at the credentials of the author. If he is an unknown journalist, innocent of qualifications to write his book, you don’t have to reject it out of hand but you might be more than usually anxious to show it to referees who do have some credentials. Acceptance need not, of course, depend on the referees’ endorsing the author’s thesis: a serious dissenting opinion can deserve to be heard. But referees will save you the embarrassment of putting your imprint on twaddle that betrays, on almost every page, complete and total pig-ignorance of the subject at hand.

All qualified physicists, biologists, cosmologists and geologists agree, on the basis of massive, mutually corroborating evidence, that the earth’s age is at least four billion years. Richard Milton thinks it is only a few thousand years old, on the authority of various Creation ‘science’ sources including the notorious Henry Morris (Milton himself claims not to be religious, and he affects not to recognise the company he is keeping). The great Francis Crick (himself not averse to rocking boats) recently remarked that "anyone who believes that the earth is less than 10,000 years old needs psychiatric help." Yes yes, maybe Crick and the rest of us are all wrong and Milton, an untrained amateur with a ‘background’ as an engineer, will one day have the last laugh. Want a bet?

Milton misunderstands the first thing about natural selection. He thinks the phrase refers to selection among species. In fact, modern Darwinians agree with Darwin himself that natural selection chooses among individuals within species. Such a fundamental misunderstanding would be bound to have far-reaching consequences; and they duly make nonsense of several sections of the book.

In genetics, the word ‘recessive’ has a precise meaning, known to every school biologist. It means a gene whose effect is masked by another (dominant) gene at the same locus. Now it also happens that large stretches of chromosomes are inert - untranslated. This kind of inertness has not the smallest connection with the ‘recessive’ kind. Yet Milton manages the feat of confusing the two. Any slightly qualified referee would have picked up this clanger.

There are other errors from which any reader capable of thought would have saved this book. Stating correctly that Immanuel Velikovsky was ridiculed in his own time, Milton goes on to say "Today, only forty years later, a concept closely similar to Velikovsky’s is widely accepted by many geologists - that the major extinction at the end of the Cretaceous ... was caused by collison with a giant meteor or even asteroid." But the whole point of Velikovsky (indeed, the whole reason why Milton, with his eccentric views on the age of the earth, champions him) is that his collision was supposed to have happened recently; recently enough to explain Biblical catastrophes like Moses’s parting of the Red Sea. The geologists’ meteorite, on the other hand, is supposed to have impacted 65 million years ago! There is a difference - approximately 65 million years difference. If Velikovsky had placed his collision tens of millions of years ago he would not have been ridiculed. To represent him as a misjudged, wilderness-figure who has finally come into his own is either disingenuous or - more charitably and plausibly - stupid.

In these post-Leakey, post-Johanson days, creationist preachers are having to learn that there is no mileage in ‘missing links.’ Far from being missing, the fossil links between modern humans and our ape ancestors now constitute an elegantly continuous series. Richard Milton, however, still hasn’t got the message. For him, "...the only ‘missing link’ so far discovered remains the bogus Piltdown Man." Australopithecus, correctly described as a human body with an ape’s head, doesn’t qualify because it is ‘really’ an ape. And Homo habilis - ‘handy man’ - which has a brain "perhaps only half the size of the average modern human’s" is ruled out from the other side: "... the fact remains that handy man is a human - not a missing link." One is left wondering what a fossil has to do - what more could a fossil do - to qualify as a ‘missing link’?

No matter how continuous a fossil series may be, the conventions of zoological nomenclature will always impose discontinuous names. At present, there are only two generic names to spread over all the hominids. The more ape-like ones are shoved into the genus Australopithecus; the more human ones into the genus Homo. Intermediates are saddled with one name or the other. This would still be true if the series were as smoothly continuous as you can possibly imagine. So, when Milton says, of Johanson’s ‘Lucy’ and associated fossils, "the finds have been referred to either Australopithecus and hence are apes, or Homo and hence are human," he is saying something (rather dull) about naming conventions, nothing at all about the real world.

But this is a more sophisticated criticism than Milton’s book deserves. The only serious question raised by its publication is why. As for would-be purchasers, if you want this sort of silly-season drivel you’d be better off with a couple of Jehovah’s Witness tracts. They are more amusing to read, they have rather sweet pictures, and they put their religious cards on the table.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: bigotry; charlesdarwin; creationism; crevolist; darwin; darwinism; dawkins; evolution; intelligentdesign; milton; richarddawkins; richardmilton
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To: Khepera
Funny thing... I always thought Dawkins was slim.
221 posted on 07/03/2002 2:02:17 PM PDT by lews
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To: f.Christian
You had better hopw that there really is no God ... cause if there is I would suspect YOU are the one who's going to be doing the explaining ... You and Khephra
222 posted on 07/03/2002 2:03:33 PM PDT by clamper1797
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To: clamper1797
I don't hope...

I've been through the mill a few times---

test runs!

223 posted on 07/03/2002 2:05:50 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: f.Christian
Oh so you have been to heaven ... tell me is the beer cold .. are there any hot babes ... I love women with wings and harps. Are there bleachers to watch the eternal fire. Do heavens residents do the "wave" ????
224 posted on 07/03/2002 2:08:52 PM PDT by clamper1797
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To: clamper1797
Yeah, mom always made the best marshmallows but now that she's gone... Oh wait, she still does ;->
225 posted on 07/03/2002 2:09:24 PM PDT by BMCDA
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To: Dimensio; gdani
Hmm. I guess I'm not explaining it well. If you're an atheist, then you must belive that on the day you die whether it's tomorrow or fifty years from now.......... nothing.......forever.

All of the good things you did, all of the people you love, all the things you care about, everything that matters most to you.....from your point of view will cease to exist. Doesn't that haunt you? I think it would for me if I was an atheist.

226 posted on 07/03/2002 2:10:12 PM PDT by far sider
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To: clamper1797
People in line...hell---want ice water!
227 posted on 07/03/2002 2:10:17 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: f.Christian
BUT I DO know what you mean by faith .. if it weren't for the leprecauns ... especially the ones riding the pink elephants ... I would have no chance at an Irish heaven ...I would spend an eternity in Irish hell ... no pubs ... no whiskey
228 posted on 07/03/2002 2:13:03 PM PDT by clamper1797
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To: f.Christian
I'd get thrown out for selling ice water ... always did want to meet Dantes though
229 posted on 07/03/2002 2:14:34 PM PDT by clamper1797
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To: clamper1797
You guys always say stuff like that trying to scare us. You should know that, we know the truth because we have an actual relationship with God and you don't because, well, you don't.


230 posted on 07/03/2002 2:15:08 PM PDT by Khepera
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To: Dimensio
I've not seen convincing evidence that Christianity is true, so I don't accept it as true. It's the same reason that I don't accept Hinduism, Wicca or Shintoism as true.

You've not seen evidence macro-evolution is true either, but you don't seem to have any problem accepting that. Is it any harder to believe in miracles than punctuated equalibrium? When did nature stop species from killing off the deviants in any population besides man?

231 posted on 07/03/2002 2:16:37 PM PDT by Woahhs
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To: Khepera
I thing you would scare Charles Manson ... if you celled with him (which IMO is not a far reach) he would probably ask for another cell ... Manson speaking ... "Boy that guys is too nuts for me"
232 posted on 07/03/2002 2:17:06 PM PDT by clamper1797
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To: far sider
Hmm. I guess I'm not explaining it well. If you're an atheist, then you must belive that on the day you die whether it's tomorrow or fifty years from now.......... nothing.......forever.

All of the good things you did, all of the people you love, all the things you care about, everything that matters most to you.....from your point of view will cease to exist. Doesn't that haunt you? I think it would for me if I was an atheist.

It seems to me the three biggest questions/mysteries in life are how did we get here, why are we here, and what happens when we're gone.

I understand that for some people, religion offers great solace in "answering" (or diverting) these questions. For me personally, I don't think anyone has the answers - they are unknown (so I'm not an atheist, but agnostic).

I'm fine with the realization that I don't know. I hope there's an afterlife where I get to see old friends, relatives & pets yet the logical part of me asks why I should believe for a second that such a place exists?

233 posted on 07/03/2002 2:17:30 PM PDT by gdani
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To: Khepera
I'm reformed too...permanently...signed-sealed-delivered!
234 posted on 07/03/2002 2:18:01 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: clamper1797
Jeffrey Dahmer may be in Heaven...will you?
235 posted on 07/03/2002 2:19:55 PM PDT by f.Christian
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To: clamper1797
See your problem is that you cannot see beyond the desires of the flesh. When in heaven, you do not have these desires and therefore, they will not be inportant to you. They may be important to you now but, you will not even think of them in the presence of God.

You will be filled with Joy and have no earthly desires. Your every need will be attended to.

I'm sorry I forgot, you may not be there. Well if you're not there then this will not be the experience you have.
236 posted on 07/03/2002 2:21:09 PM PDT by Khepera
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To: Khepera
You should know that, we know the truth because we have an actual relationship with God (after all HE"S the one who likes to hurt people) and you don't because, well, you don't.

You are right I have no relationship and would not have a relationship with a "God" under your definition. My God (and I do have one complete with his son and MY personal savior Jesus) doesn't hurt people nor does he "cast" a soul into an eternal hell for not believing in him. Ever here of Mythology? Perhaps You should look it up

237 posted on 07/03/2002 2:22:41 PM PDT by clamper1797
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To: Khepera
Your every need will be attended to.

Sounds rather boring. In my version of the afterlife, the Almighty puts your butt to work.

238 posted on 07/03/2002 2:25:12 PM PDT by Junior
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To: Khepera
You will be filled with Joy and have no earthly desires.

Huh? Heaven is starting to sound weirder & weirder....


239 posted on 07/03/2002 2:25:21 PM PDT by gdani
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To: Khepera
Oh darn does that mean I can't watch Mom go up in flames. What kind of heaven is that?

I've really enjoyed you two "religious idiots ... zealots" today (you and khepra) Bin Laden would be proud. One would usually have to go to a circus or an insane asylum to see such rational.

But I will reiterate ... If heaven is populated by the likes of you two ... I'll take my chances elsewhere cause the other place has got to be better ... flames and all.

240 posted on 07/03/2002 2:27:53 PM PDT by clamper1797
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