Dismantling Evolution (Examine the Evidence)

Rating:
Summary: Blind watchmakers leading the blind
Review: Muncaster sadly self-dismantles (self-destructs at the end). He insults his own intellect and that of any rational readers in the last 2 chapters. Little prima faciae evidence is given for the grand "designer" (God) except for alluding to various gaps in Darwinist theory. A deficiency in one theory does not bolster its nemesis theory! Antithesis does not prove Thesis. Go back to logic lessons Mr.M!
Muncaster says Darwinists are doing God's work by illustrating the complexity of his "works". They are merely misguided according to M. This would have gone down splendidly in the 17th Century. He even semi-promotes some aspects of evolutionism for most of his book although he insultingly calls it a "soft science". What gives Muncaster the right to elevate zero-evidence theism to the status of a "hard" science?. He does of course select weaknesses in evolutionary research which fits his arguments. Aha! Unnatural selection! But then in the final chapters, without hard evidence, he decides to propose God as an "intelligent designer" of the Big Bang; a designer who bizarrely has the sole purpose of staging a 15 billion year choreography of chaos just to arrive at the "creation" of humans on a tiny blue planet amid a violent and gigantic cosmos. On Page 83 he seems to assert that God became active in spurts (ie: sudden interest during the Cambrian explosion after some eons of apathetic cruise-control?). The first outbreaks of irrationality are on Page 202 (anthropic fallacy) and on Page 223: "There is no randomness". Says who? Of course there is randomness; indeed utter chaos....and still is. Would a God be crazy enough to unleash such random cosmic catastrophe, gamma rays, x-rays etc...etc..mass-extinctions, cruel predatory chaos on earth etc...just in order to allow a species of conscious Homo Erectus to arise (probably for a brief few 100,000 years)? Presumably all the billions of terrestrial fossils were "custom-deposited" as a kind of puzzle for Man to get his teeth into, just in order for Man to exclaim "Yes, God is Great". What about the dozens of species of Australopithecine, Neanderthal-based & myriad other humanoids who died out? Did God care about any of them?. Many of them were semi or wholly conscious. The Muncaster diagnosis is a self-serving Anthropic fallacy. It is dishonest sophistry, achieved by distorsion ie: taking only the weaknesses in Darwinism and using them to prove the opposite. Perverse for an otherwise empirical mind. In his summation, he defies logic by resorting to a fairy tale. Why? Because Man is conditioned to believe in meaning and pattern. But just because rarities and exotic pattern-recognition-enabled creatures or life-friendly planets occur does not prove that God created any of them. It is specious to draw upon hosts of probability arguments, since they prove nothing except that man-made statistics on paper are damn lies. Also spare us the dubious bridge-building analogies...the weak bridge and the strong bridge....we are not in kindergarten! Muncaster seizes upon unresolved puzzles (entropy v. increasing complexity, the Permian explosion, amino acid chirality etc..) with the prosecutor's zeal of "Aha! - so you can't remember where you were on February 29th 2004!" -The fact that Evolutionary Theory still has gaps does not mean it is generally "wrong". It is still in development; and will always be.
At the end, he pratt-falls into the oldest of Theist traps - ie: what can't (yet) be explained must be explained by inventing a God.....the God of the Gaps....Oh dear!.
When you read a real scientific "warts and all" evolutionary study such as "Almost Like a Whale", you find honest empiricism from cover to cover; the real McCoy power of physics and nature, with no need for sophistic trickery. No attempts there to invent a fanciful super-being to explain the Big Bang. The truth is complex. If we don't like that, we should refrain from "gilding the lily" by superimposing some risible fictitious interpretation!
Dismantling theism can be done in a couple of lines. Evolution can't be dismantled, only attacked on its weakness. Anyway, why should modern empirical man now want to take a retrograde step into the ignorant Dark Ages to dredge up a half-baked stitch-up? This is just as fanciful as bringing back the Norse god Ygdrasil & his cow goddess! It's a pointless detour.

Rating:
Summary: Blind watchmakers leading the blind
Review: Muncaster sadly self-dismantles (self-destructs at the end). He insults his own intellect and that of any rational readers in the last 2 chapters. Little prima faciae evidence is given for the grand "designer" (God) except for alluding to various gaps in Darwinist theory. A deficiency in one theory does not bolster its nemesis theory! Antithesis does not prove Thesis. Go back to logic lessons Mr.M!
Muncaster says Darwinists are doing God's work by illustrating the complexity of his "works". They are merely misguided according to M. This would have gone down splendidly in the 17th Century. He even semi-promotes some aspects of evolutionism for most of his book although he insultingly calls it a "soft science". What gives Muncaster the right to elevate zero-evidence theism to the status of a "hard" science?. He does of course select weaknesses in evolutionary research which fits his arguments. Aha! Unnatural selection! But then in the final chapters, without hard evidence, he decides to propose God as an "intelligent designer" of the Big Bang; a designer who bizarrely has the sole purpose of staging a 15 billion year choreography of chaos just to arrive at the "creation" of humans on a tiny blue planet amid a violent and gigantic cosmos. On Page 83 he seems to assert that God became active in spurts (ie: sudden interest during the Cambrian explosion after some eons of apathetic cruise-control?). The first outbreaks of irrationality are on Page 202 (anthropic fallacy) and on Page 223: "There is no randomness". Says who? Of course there is randomness; indeed utter chaos....and still is. Would a God be crazy enough to unleash such random cosmic catastrophe, gamma rays, x-rays etc...etc..mass-extinctions, cruel predatory chaos on earth etc...just in order to allow a species of conscious Homo Erectus to arise (probably for a brief few 100,000 years)? Presumably all the billions of terrestrial fossils were "custom-deposited" as a kind of puzzle for Man to get his teeth into, just in order for Man to exclaim "Yes, God is Great". What about the dozens of species of Australopithecine, Neanderthal-based & myriad other humanoids who died out? Did God care about any of them?. Many of them were semi or wholly conscious. The Muncaster diagnosis is a self-serving Anthropic fallacy. It is dishonest sophistry, achieved by distorsion ie: taking only the weaknesses in Darwinism and using them to prove the opposite. Perverse for an otherwise empirical mind. In his summation, he defies logic by resorting to a fairy tale. Why? Because Man is conditioned to believe in meaning and pattern. But just because rarities and exotic pattern-recognition-enabled creatures or life-friendly planets occur does not prove that God created any of them. It is specious to draw upon hosts of probability arguments, since they prove nothing except that man-made statistics on paper are damn lies. Also spare us the dubious bridge-building analogies...the weak bridge and the strong bridge....we are not in kindergarten! Muncaster seizes upon unresolved puzzles (entropy v. increasing complexity, the Permian explosion, amino acid chirality etc..) with the prosecutor's zeal of "Aha! - so you can't remember where you were on February 29th 2004!" -The fact that Evolutionary Theory still has gaps does not mean it is generally "wrong". It is still in development; and will always be.
At the end, he pratt-falls into the oldest of Theist traps - ie: what can't (yet) be explained must be explained by inventing a God.....the God of the Gaps....Oh dear!.
When you read a real scientific "warts and all" evolutionary study such as "Almost Like a Whale", you find honest empiricism from cover to cover; the real McCoy power of physics and nature, with no need for sophistic trickery. No attempts there to invent a fanciful super-being to explain the Big Bang. The truth is complex. If we don't like that, we should refrain from "gilding the lily" by superimposing some risible fictitious interpretation!
Dismantling theism can be done in a couple of lines. Evolution can't be dismantled, only attacked on its weakness. Anyway, why should modern empirical man now want to take a retrograde step into the ignorant Dark Ages to dredge up a half-baked stitch-up? This is just as fanciful as bringing back the Norse god Ygdrasil & his cow goddess! It's a pointless detour.

Rating:
Summary: Making the case for intelligent design...
Review: This book is authored by a former skeptic and evolutionist. This is not the most in-depth book on the subject of the creation vs. evolution debate, but it documents the evidences for special creation and the flaws in evolutionary theory quite well. The author makes a compelling case for intelligent design in the universe and life itself. One chapter entitled Hard Evidence versus Soft Evidence gives a background on epistemological methodology in proving intelligent design. The fossil record and geological evidence that supposedly gives credence to macroevolution is analyzed with remarkable clarity. Muncaster also expounds upon the theory of irreducible complexity, which Michael Behe deals with thoroughly in Darwin's Black Box. The existence of DNA-the building blocks which program organic life-gives ample evidence for intelligent design, particularly when one begins to grasp its' utter complexity. In challenging the evolutionist's worldview, Muncaster goes beyond the life sciences in order to to point out the laws of physics, which fundamentally undermine evolutionary theory. The laws of thermodynamics-the field of physics that deals with the physical properties of macroscopic systems of matter and energy-cast serious doubts on the claims of evolutionists. Evolutionists posit that the life is advancing to higher order, which is contradicted by the fact that observation has never revealed new information being added to DNA and that everything in the universe is in a state of entropy or decay. Nonetheless, while this book covers many bases, a skeptic or creation apologist may want to explore a book that probes one facet of creationism at a time (i.e. the irreducible complexity theory or the information theory.) The chief reason I docked a star is that the book is broad in scope and not the definitive book on the subject, though it certainly is an informative reference. For the scientific laymen this book maybe preferable to Michael Behe's book.

Rating:
Summary: Making the case for intelligent design...
Review: ~Dismantling Evolution (Examine the Evidence)~ is authored by a former skeptic and evolutionist. This is not the most in-depth book on the subject of the creation vs. evolution debate, but it documents the evidences for special creation and the flaws in evolutionary theory quite well. The author makes a compelling case for intelligent design in the universe and life itself. One chapter entitled Hard Evidence versus Soft Evidence gives a background on epistemological methodology in proving intelligent design. The fossil record and geological evidence that supposedly gives credence to macroevolution is analyzed with remarkable clarity. Muncaster also expounds upon the theory of irreducible complexity, which Michael Behe deals with thoroughly in Darwin's Black Box. The existence of DNA, the building blocks that program organic life, gives ample evidence for intelligent design, particularly when one begins to grasp its' utter complexity. In challenging the evolutionist's worldview, Muncaster goes beyond the life sciences in order to to point out the laws of physics, which fundamentally undermine evolutionary theory. The laws of thermodynamics cast serious doubts on the claims of evolutionists. Evolutionists posit that the life is advancing to higher order, which is contradicted by the fact that observation has never revealed new information being added to DNA and that everything in the universe is in a state of entropy or decay. Nonetheless, while this book covers many bases, a skeptic or creation apologist may want to explore a book that probes one facet of creationism at a time (i.e. the irreducible complexity theory or the information theory.) This is not the definitive book on the subject, though it certainly is an informative reference. For the scientific laymen this book maybe preferable to Michael Behe's book.