The Facts of Life: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism. A Review.

New Statesman ^ | 28 August 1992 | Richard Dawkins

[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.

[Elsie]

It's a Wednesday night and you are at a grocery store when somebody runs in from the parking lot and says, "Turn on a radio, turn on a radio."  The shoppers listen to a little transistor radio playing over the store's PA system, the announcement is made: "Twelve men & women are lying in a Long Island hospital dying from the mystery flu."

Within hours it seems, this thing just sweeps across the country. People are working around the clock trying to find an antidote. Nothing is working.  California, Oregon, Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts.  It's as though it's just sweeping in from the borders.

And then, suddenly the news comes out. The code has been broken. A cure can be found. A vaccine can be made. It's going to take the blood of somebody who hasn't been infected, and so, sure enough, all through the Midwest, through all those channels of emergency broadcasting, everyone is asked to do one simple thing. Go to your downtown hospital and have your blood type taken. That's all we ask of you. When you hear the sirens go off in your neighborhood, please make your way quickly, quietly, and safely to the hospitals."

Sure enough, when you and your family get down there late on that Friday night, there is a long line, and they've got nurses and doctors coming out and pricking fingers and taking blood and putting labels on it.  Your wife and your kids are out there, and they take your blood type and they say, "Wait here in the parking lot. If we call your name, you can be dismissed and go home." 

 

You stand around, scared, with your neighbors, wondering what in the world is going on and if this is the end of the world.

Suddenly a young man comes running out of the hospital screaming. He's yelling a name and waving a clipboard. What? He yells it again! And your son tugs on your jacket and says, "Daddy, that's me." 

 

Before you know it, they have grabbed your boy.

"Wait a minute. Hold on!", you yell.

 

And they say, "It's okay, his blood is clean. His blood is pure.  We want to make sure he doesn't have the disease. We think he has got the right type."

Five tense minutes later, out come the doctors and nurses, crying and hugging one another -- some are even laughing. It's the first time you have seen anybody laugh in a week, and an old doctor walks up to you and says, "Thank you, sir. Your son's blood type is perfect. It's clean, it is pure, and we can make the vaccine."

As the word begins to spread! All across that parking lot full of folks, people are screaming and praying and laughing and crying. But then the gray-haired doctor pulls you and your wife aside and says, "May we see you for a moment? We didn't realize that the donor would be a minor and we need ... we need you to sign a consent form."  You begin to sign and  then you see that the number of pints of blood to be taken is empty. "How many pints?"

And that is when the old doctor's smile fades and he says, "We had no idea it would be little child. We weren't prepared. We need it all!  But-but...You don't understand. We are talking about the world here. Please sign. We-we need it all!"

"But can't you give him a transfusion?"

"If we had clean blood we would. Can you sign?  Would you sign?"

In numb silence, you do. Then they say, "Would you like to have a moment with him before we begin?"

Can you walk back? Can you walk back to that room where he sits on a table saying, "Daddy? Mommy? What's going on?"

 

Can you take his hands and say, "Son, your mommy and I love you, and we would never ever let anything happen to you that didn't just have to be. Do you understand that?"

And when that old doctor comes back in and says,  "I'm sorry we've got to get started. People all over the world are dying."

 

Can you leave? Can you walk out while he is saying, "Dad? Mom? Dad? Why, why have you forsaken  me?"

And then next week, when they have the ceremony to honor your son, and some folks sleep through it, and some folks don't even come because they went to the lake, and some folks come with a pretentious smile and just pretend to care, would you want to jump up and say, "MY SON DIED FOR YOU! DON'T YOU CARE?"

[Physicist]

Oh, one other thing........ could someone get me the reply number where Khepera actually said he'd(she'd?) enjoy the lost being tormented?

Post 166.

[clamper1797]

Re: post 301 ... that strawman has more holes in it than a
head of swiss cheese.

[chemainus]

Not so. The mythical doctrine of original sin is nowhere to be found in Christ's teachings. This notion is from the middle Ages and is a simplistic doctrine that evangelists ( like the Muslim? Binny Hinn )use to control people they consider incapable of understanding and embracing trhe richness of Christian doctrine and history. If you depend on a house nof cards, any breeze is a threat to you. Try using some granite for a change.

[chemainus]

This whole post is regretfully uninformed claptrap. The unanswerable questions you mention are easily answered, have been answered, are far along the road to being answered. this is an example of the failure of the U.S. education system; ignorance in both science and philosophy. Two little books will put you on the road 1) Immense Journey by loren Eisley and 2) Realms of Knowledge ny Phillip Phenix. Both are easy, delightful to read and factually and philosophically sound.

[chemainus]

Please read Philip Phenix , Realms of Learning ( Knowledge) before you lock yourself in a small dark 6X6 room in a very large, open , bright and delightful house.

[chemainus]

"Junior" what an appropriate name.

[Physicist]

would you want to jump up and say, "MY SON DIED FOR YOU! DON'T YOU CARE?"

I might. But I wouldn't say, "YOUR LIVES BELONG TO ME NOW. DEDICATE YOURSELVES TO WORSHIPING ME AND DOING MY BIDDING OR I WILL TORTURE YOU FOR ETERNITY." Especially not if I could make good on that threat.

[clamper1797]

It seems so obvious that a lot of what is written in the Bible is nothing but attempts to control people through fearmongering with threats of an eternal hell. To me those threats are the words of men and NOT of God. People say that the Bible is God's words but forget all the revisions and translations of the Bible and that several chapters were left out of the King James that were in previous revisions. These chapters were left out due to the politics of the time. Does THAT sound like Gods work ??? The perfect answer to some religious idiots fanatics ok ... zealots query ... "do you believe the Bible" is to ask ... which version and which translation. To me ... it is obvious that it is so filled with middle ages threads of "eternal hell" if you don't do exactly what I say and believe in me without question claptrap that most of it loses any credibility. If someone asks ... do you believe in God ... I don't want to have to say ... "Yes I do ... because I HAVE to". To me ... A God that has to use force and threats to secure followers (like Allah) is not the true God but the great deceiver in disquise.

[clamper1797]

I like to refer to people like Khepra and "{C)INOS" Christian in name only. He believes he's Christian cause he thinks he has "accepted" Christ ... but ignores and/or distorts his teachings

[Junior]

Oooh, nice reply. Can't come up with any arguments, so you go straight for the name calling. BTW, "Junior" is a knickname I picked up in the Navy; I just passed my 37th birthday.

[clamper1797]

I like to refer to people like Khepra and "{C)INOS" =
I like to refer to people like Khepra as "{C)INOS"

[chemainus]

Well said. Actually, many of the things " because it's written in the Bible" are not in the Bible at all but come from Dante's Inferno, as you know an epic poem about the whole Heaven/Hell God/Devil thing. I am not anti-Christian, quite the contrary, but Christianity loses by teaching superficial dogma rather than exploring the immense richness and beauty that is UNIQUE to Christianity. In exploring this richness that leads to a satisfying and unshakeable faith, one must be conversant in philosophy, 'evolution' , ancient history, the fact that Christianity would not even exist ( nor would Judaism be anything but a rare and obscure Arab cult) without that Rome that is cited by both as the arch enemy, and of course the Irish connection and the Middle Ages. Actually the Imperial Roman Christians morphed into the Roman Catholic Church, the Irish Christians actually morphed into Protestants and the Byzantine Christians morphed into the Greek and Yugoslavian Orthodox Church, which is probably the most pious and gentle of the three groups ( and we bombed them). Mohammedism came half a millenniun later as marching orders for the slaughtering Arab armies and copied what was convenient from these two and took it's own particular brutality and tribalism as the core message. Christianity is so very very deep and rich and fulfilling if one pushes aside the dogma from the Benny Hin soapbox and looks at the religion for the unique and fulfilling religion that it is. By the way, why isn't Benny Hin in jail by now for fraud ? I think he is a Muslim who saw a way to make hundreds of millions of dollars. That's what I have been told. All replies appreciated.

[RaceBannon]

Sin entered the world through Adam, and it wasn't Benny Hinn that said that.

Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
...14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.
15 But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.
16 And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offences unto justification.
17 For if by one man's offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.)
18 Therefore as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life.
19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

That is clear. What is your point?

[chemainus]

Plenty of very facile 'arguments't don't want to waste them. 'Cast not your pearls....'

[chemainus]

So your theology is based on a letter from a Greek,Paul, who admitted to a certain (unmentionable) impediment, to emerging ( physically and philosophically) church organizations in Rome long after Christ, citing Old Testament writings that were not part of the precursor religion, Judaism, as anything more than historical emergence of Jewish philosophy? This is exactly what I am talking about. Control through misunderstanding , out of context communications, and both comingling and obfuscation of issues , plastered over by lengthy King James dictated, politically revised, language and translation.

[Junior]

The post to which you resorted to name calling simply was an overview of radiometric dating. You can't reply cogently because you cannot formulate an argument to refute anything said. Therefore you are reduced to name-calling. What next? Are you going to equate Darwinism with Naziism and Communism? That's usually the last resort of any creationist when his or her arguments come up dry.

[edsheppa]

Beckett: If being enlightened means I have to cast my lot with a nasty, snotty, cynical, know-it-all, ad hominem attack artist par excellence like Dawkins,...

Beckett: In fact Dawkins is on the far leftwing in Britain. He recently (April 6) signed a declaration, along with several dozen other leftwing academics and "luminaries" (including rabid leftwing fanatic Harold Pinter), calling for a moratorium by the British and other European governments of awarding "grants and contracts" to Israel unless serious peace negotiations were opened along the lines of the "Saudi peace plan."

You do know your ad hominem.

[Physicist]

That is clear.

Not very. The standard Moravian interpretation, IIRC, is that Adam introduced sin into the world, and that is why we sin, NOT that we are held responsible for Adam's transgression (or anyone else's but our own).

I do realize that many Christian churches do teach the doctrine of original sin, and also the interpretation that Adam's sin was what made man mortal, even though that contradicts the notion that eating of the Tree of Life would confer immortality.

[beckett]

Anyone who has read Dawkins for a few decades, as I have, knows that he is the nastiest ad hominem attack artist writing today. The stuff I said about him (and my remarks about the document he signed don't qualify as ad hominem at all), are chocolate kisses compared to the stuff he says about his enemies every time he sits down in front of a keyboard.