To: Bonaparte
Like Patrick Henry, who at least admits his bias and lack of interest in learning what ID actually says, you are not qualified to render an opinion on what you have no knowledge of. Let's clarify things again. I have no bias (prejudice) against ID or Dembski. My "bias" as you call it is in favor of reason, as it is used in the great endeavour we call science. I absolutely reject any allegedly scientific "teachings" that are not based on verifiable observations and logical reasoning. That's my "bias" as you call it. I'm proud of my bias. I brag about it. I glory in it. You do not insult me by mentioning it.
Now, my bias (i.e., my preference for rationality) having been fully exposed, I declare that I spend no time on Dembski's work because:
(1) he hasn't demonstrated that biological structures cannot evolve naturally, which is essential to his "theory"; and
(2) he hasn't produced any evidence for his [wink wink] non biblical designer.
To: PatrickHenry
Review by Richard Milton
When, a dozen years ago, I first published my view that Darwinism is scientifically flawed, I immediately encountered a kind of opponent who was to become very familiar to me over the next decade. I mean the kind who (quite sincerely) believes that anyone who challenges the conventional Darwinist view must be someone who is simply ignorant of the scientific facts. Such an opponent thus sets out to cure the ignorance he meets by the simple expedient of rehashing over and over again the tenets of the received wisdom, as found in the pages of Nature and Scientific American.
These guardians of Darwinian truth find it literally impossible to believe that anyone could actually have conducted some research and analysis that has led them to conclude rationally that Darwinism is scientifically flawed and think that -- like an Englishman abroad -- if only they shout a little louder, the dimwit foreigner might finally get the Darwinist message.
Michael Brass is such an upholder of the received wisdom on Darwinism, and his book, The Antiquity of Man, is just such a rehashing of that received wisdom. There is nothing new here. No new facts, no new scientific discoveries, not even a new interpretation or new analysis, merely the repetition of all the same old stuff that anyone who has ever spent time in a dentist's waiting room, leafing through old copies of National Geographic, is already thoroughly familiar with.
But in his book, Brass is not merely sounding off about anti-Darwinists in general -- he has some specific targets in his sights. From the outset he attacks scientific creationists for their views and he singles out the book 'Forbidden Archaeology' by Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson.
As I'm not a creationist, and I don't have any religious beliefs, I don't intend to try to speak for Cremo, Thompson or anyone else, and I'm sure they are well able to look after themselves. But I am concerned, as a secular critic of the scientific content of Darwinism, that writers like Brass are getting away with obscuring the real scientific issues under the guise of 'debunking' what they pretend is merely 'creationist propaganda', a pretext that enables them to continue to dodge engaging in real scientific debate.
I've read Cremo and Thomson's book. I didn't find any religious propaganda or creationist messages, but I did find a mountain of carefully compiled scientific observations and reports that uniformly tend to undermine the conventional view that people like Brass hold so tightly and are unwilling even to debate openly and honestly. Certainly there are a few geological and palaeontological observations in Forbidden Archaeology that I found weak or questionable. That is hardly surprising since the book is 1000 pages long and contains thousands of references.
What a book like Forbidden Archaeology shows, in my view, is that if even a half (or even a tenth) of the objections raised by its authors are valid scientific objections, then Darwinism is a theory that is in deep, irremediable trouble. And the best that Brass can do in the way of rebuttal is to question a handful of their cases as unproven or badly chosen. His preferred method of rebuttal in almost all cases is that described earlier: he simply recites again, more loudly, the accepted Darwinist view.
We get an early glimpse of Brass's fundamentalist stance on the evidence claimed to support Darwinism such as dating of fossils. On page 38 he presents a table of two kinds of fossil dating. He labels the first as 'relative dating' and the second, radiometric dating by the potassium-argon method, he calls 'absolute dating'. Now, as his degrees are in history and archaeology, it is perfectly possible that Brass is completely unaware of the important scientific error he is making in describing radiometric dating of fossils as 'absolute' dating, and is merely taking it on trust from his physicist colleagues that his belief is correct -- as most scientists do. But the fact remains that the words 'absolute dating' can never be used in connection with the radiometric dating of fossils of any kind. (For background to dating fossils, see 'Shattering the myths of Darwinism' chapters 3, 4, and 5.)
To be fair, I should add that Brass is far from being the only professional scientist who is confused about this question. Most Darwinists are. Even Gavin de Beer, director of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote in the museum's Guide to Evolution, first published in 1970, that the rocks forming the geological column and the fossils in them had been directly dated by radiometric methods -- a claim which is scientific nonsense and based solely on ignorance of the real facts.
In the same passage, Brass tries to make his claims for the potassium-argon method seem credible by pointing out that '0.01% of all natural potassium is radiopotassium.' To the uninitiated, this rarity must make the method seem special. But Brass forgets to mention that the substance this radioactive potassium turns into, the end product that is measured, is argon-40. Argon is the twelfth most abundant element on earth, and more than 99 per cent of it is argon-40. And there is no physical or chemical way to tell whether a given sample of argon-40 is the residue of radioactive potassium or was present in the rocks when they formed.
There are many other places where Brass shows he has swallowed Darwinist urban scientific myths hook, line and sinker. On the very first page of his introduction he repeats the commonly-made claim that Darwinian evolution is supported by observed speciation, when the true scientific facts are that there is not a single real case of observed Darwinian speciation (the cases listed in the talk-origin "FAQ" being entirely bogus [more information available here]).
Whenever he encounters scientific evidence that he is unable to rebut, Brass appeals to authorities who, in his mind, are so grand as to be unimpeachable. Yet these 'authorities' and their words often turn out on closer inspection to have no more substance than Brass himself.
For example, the work of zoologist Solly Zuckermann, has long been a thorn in the side of Darwinists because Zuckermann conducted a study which concluded that Australopithecines (like 'Lucy') were predominantly ape-like and not human-like creatures and thus not ancestral to humans. Brass dismisses the work of Zuckermann, one of Britain's most distinguished zoologists, by reference to a quote from Jim Foley. Who is Jim Foley? He is the author of the talk-origins "FAQ" on human origins, which is as badly-researched and bogus as the rest of the talk-origins "FAQs" [more information available here].
In writing this book, Michael Brass has put on his arms and armour, chosen a cause about which he feels passionately, selected a battleground and engaged those he perceives as the enemies of science. Unfortunately, his armour doesn't fit him, his weapons are blunt, his passionate cause is already lost and, worst of all, he has chosen the wrong battle. For instead of attacking the real enemies of science -- the brain-dead pedlars of urban scientific myths -- he is attacking the few people who are making an honest attempt to question a theory that is long past its sell-by date.
This book is designed to bring aid and comfort to the excrement-hurling howler monkeys that infest Internet groups such as talk-origins, by reaffirming once more the oft-told Darwinist tale of human origins. It does not advance the cause of scientific investigation nor, despite its title, does it shed any light on the antiquity of mankind.
Richard Milton is the author of Shattering the Myths of Darwinism and 'Alternative Science'.
To: PatrickHenry
Granted, it's not the same as watching it happen. But given this vast accumulation of evidence, which is also consistent with geology, continental drift, climatology, astronomy, and molecular biology, what are we to make of it? The theory of evolution says that the newer species gradually developed, by mutation and natural selection, from earlier ones. I didn't see it happening. No one did. But we have a ton of clues and a theory which explains them. What is your explanation?
350 posted on 9/29/02 2:00 PM Pacific by PatrickHenry
To: PatrickHenry
But Patrick, it's not Dembski doing the winking, so we can at least credit him with honesty. The full title of his book, "Intelligent Design" is actually, "Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology". See
here, for instance.
153 posted on
10/17/2002 8:03:26 AM PDT by
Gumlegs
To: PatrickHenry; All
To: f.Christian
fC...
Anarchy is a prelude to THE POLICE STATE...liberalism/EVOLUTION perpetuates it!
AP...
If Liberalism be evolution Then its a backwards track in time we take when freedom and liberty a spike in the eye of a king and a sting to aristocrats and monarchs once again we must beat back those red diaper doper babies who would bind us in chains and call it Evolution when its actually Tyranny
79 posted on 10/16/02 6:03 PM Pacific by ATOMIC_PUNK
To: PatrickHenry
You state that you do not bother looking at what Dembski actually says (rather than what his adversaries
claim he says) because --
(1)he hasn't demonstrated that biological structures cannot evolve naturally, which is essential to his "theory"
Two points here.
First, you saddle Dembski with a demand that he prove a negative, an insurmountable obstacle for any scientist.
Second, you once gain demonstrate your ignorance of what ID actually says. Dembski nowhere makes the claim you assign to him, ie. that undirected evolution is impossible. What he disputes is how far it can go, propelled only by mutation/selection, ie. algorithms, natural laws and chance.
and because
(2)he hasn't produced any evidence for his [wink wink] non biblical designer.
But he has produced very powerful evidence. Simply denying categorically that he has done this, without specifically addressing that evidence, is no argument at all.
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson