Creationism Vs. Evolution (At Issue Series)

Rating:
Summary: Weird science
Review: An earlier reviewer characterized the five creationist articles in this book as being "atrocious." I think that's a fair judgment.

First, the creationist articles were from major figures in the creationist world, and all of them are fairly recent, so I think they offer a reasonable introduction to modern day creationism. So it's interesting to note that most of the evolutionist articles cited very recent research from professional, peer-reviewed, science journals; while none of the creationist articles did; and for Gish in particular, many of the philosophical musings he cited were decades old.

Second, one of Gish's quotes appears to be a deliberate deception. On page 35, Gish quotes Futuyma: "Is the hypothesis of natural selection falsifiable or is it a tautology? . . . The claim that natural selection is a tautology is periodically made in the scientific literature itself. . . " Gish concludes, "It is evident that the [tautology] challenge to the status of evolution as a scientific theory comes from within the evolutionary establishment itself, not from creation scientists." But the ellipses in the Futuyma quote, Futuyma's emphasis on "periodically," and the fact that Gish quotes Futuyma's question, but not the answer that Futuyma undoubtedly provided, make it appear very likely that Futuyma actually advocated a position exactly the opposite from what Gish indicated. If that is in fact the case, then Gish's use of the quote in such a misleading manner is simply contemptible. Quotes taken out of context can be highly misleading, and Gish has a very shady reputation for doing exactly that. The whole thing looks very suspicious.

In fact, Gish's reputation for dishonesty is so widespread, it's noteworthy that he was included at all in this collection. To give just a few examples, Gish has been caught in a whole string of unsavory incidents, including hoaxes about the alleged similarity of bullfrog and human proteins, the alleged lack of fossil precursors to Triceratops, the "exploding" bombadier beetle fiasco, the fraudulent "man-tracks" in Paluxy, Solly Zuckerman's alleged opinion about the "Lucy" fossil, an incredible string of blatant deceptions about Wadjak Man, and the 1993 Noah's Ark hoax that ABC News got suckered into broadcasting. That a con artist like Gish is still considered to be one of creationism's primary spokesmen says a lot about how thin the ranks of creationists are.

Third, creationism's confusion is illustrated by how the five articles contradicted each other, even on central issues. For example, Gish used thermodynamics to support the position that young-Earth creationism was not religious, but Thompson finished his article on thermodynamics by stating, "[I] am of the opinion that the scriptural evidence somewhat favors the six-day [young-Earth] position." So Scripture is not religious???

And Wells contradicted both Gish and Thompson's young-Earth position by proposing a version of progressive creationism that apparently took billions of years. Can't creationists keep their story straight any better than that???

And one last example of mutally contradictory claims, Gish spent virtually his entire article arguing that evolution is not scientific, because it can't be tested; but Behe and Thompson spent virutally the entirety of their articles arguing that evolution has failed particular tests. Huh? How can a theory that can't be tested fail tests???

Fourth, Wells' article is just weird. Apparently his argument is that bacteria were designed so that multicellular invertebrates could evolve, which were needed so that vertebrate fishes could evolve, which were needed so that reptiles could evolve, which were needed so that primitive mammals could evolve, which were needed so that human females could evolve with the breasts needed to suckle human infants. And I guess the logical extension of that sequence is that humans evolved noses to hold their eyeglasses in place. What an ID-iot. (Wells, by the way, is another con man, but from a different church from Gish. See my review of the dishonesty in his "Icons of Evolution." And again, the fact that a con man like Wells is still considered to be one of creationism's leading spokesmen says a lot about the creationism movement.)

Finally, Overman's contribution was equally ridiculous. A lawyer, he apparently has no clue about what science is all about. He indicated that modern science holds that life on Earth originated as a result of random accidents. That's obviously false. Following the Big Bang, the physical and chemical events that mainstream science believes led to the emergence of life ALL occurred in accordance with physical laws; and law-like behavior obviously cannot be called "random."

Overman also presented a number of statistical arguments. Since his statistics all assumed randomness, and since that assumption is erroneous, his arguments are meaningless. Garbage in, garbage out.

Playing number games, as Overman did, is a favorite trick of creationists and other Bible-thumping con men. In the late 1800's one such Bible-thumper, Samuel Birley Rowbotham, used mathematical calculations to "prove" that the Bible's flat-Earth passages were literally true. Perhaps that's where Mark Twain's famous aphorism about statistics came from.

In short, presenting articles from creationists and evolutionists side by side makes the idiocy of creationist "thinking" pretty apparent. Poor or zero empirical research, ancient quotes taken out of context and probably deliberately distorted, inconsistent arguments, weird theological arguments (from con artists like Gish and Wells, no less!), and bizarre statistics based on distortions of scientific principles. Yeah, I think the book captures the main characteristics of modern creationism very accurately!

Rating:
Summary: Weird science
Review: An earlier reviewer characterized the five creationist articles in this book as being "atrocious." I think that's a fair judgment.

First, the creationist articles were from major figures in the creationist world, and all of them are fairly recent, so I think they offer a reasonable introduction to modern day creationism. So it's interesting to note that most of the evolutionist articles cited very recent research from professional, peer-reviewed, science journals; while none of the creationist articles did; and for Gish in particular, many of the philosophical musings he cited were decades old.

Second, one of Gish's quotes appears to be a deliberate deception. On page 35, Gish quotes Futuyma: "Is the hypothesis of natural selection falsifiable or is it a tautology? . . . The claim that natural selection is a tautology is periodically made in the scientific literature itself. . . " Gish concludes, "It is evident that the [tautology] challenge to the status of evolution as a scientific theory comes from within the evolutionary establishment itself, not from creation scientists." But the ellipses in the Futuyma quote, Futuyma's emphasis on "periodically," and the fact that Gish quotes Futuyma's question, but not the answer that Futuyma undoubtedly provided, make it appear very likely that Futuyma actually advocated a position exactly the opposite from what Gish indicated. If that is in fact the case, then Gish's use of the quote in such a misleading manner is simply contemptible. Quotes taken out of context can be highly misleading, and Gish has a very shady reputation for doing exactly that. The whole thing looks very suspicious.

In fact, Gish's reputation for dishonesty is so widespread, it's noteworthy that he was included at all in this collection. To give just a few examples, Gish has been caught in a whole string of unsavory incidents, including hoaxes about the alleged similarity of bullfrog and human proteins, the alleged lack of fossil precursors to Triceratops, the "exploding" bombadier beetle fiasco, the fraudulent "man-tracks" in Paluxy, Solly Zuckerman's alleged opinion about the "Lucy" fossil, an incredible string of blatant deceptions about Wadjak Man, and the 1993 Noah's Ark hoax that ABC News got suckered into broadcasting. That a con artist like Gish is still considered to be one of creationism's primary spokesmen says a lot about how thin the ranks of creationists are.

Third, creationism's confusion is illustrated by how the five articles contradicted each other, even on central issues. For example, Gish used thermodynamics to support the position that young-Earth creationism was not religious, but Thompson finished his article on thermodynamics by stating, "[I] am of the opinion that the scriptural evidence somewhat favors the six-day [young-Earth] position." So Scripture is not religious???

And Wells contradicted both Gish and Thompson's young-Earth position by proposing a version of progressive creationism that apparently took billions of years. Can't creationists keep their story straight any better than that???

And one last example of mutally contradictory claims, Gish spent virtually his entire article arguing that evolution is not scientific, because it can't be tested; but Behe and Thompson spent virutally the entirety of their articles arguing that evolution has failed particular tests. Huh? How can a theory that can't be tested fail tests???

Fourth, Wells' article is just weird. Apparently his argument is that bacteria were designed so that multicellular invertebrates could evolve, which were needed so that vertebrate fishes could evolve, which were needed so that reptiles could evolve, which were needed so that primitive mammals could evolve, which were needed so that human females could evolve with the breasts needed to suckle human infants. And I guess the logical extension of that sequence is that humans evolved noses to hold their eyeglasses in place. What an ID-iot. (Wells, by the way, is another con man, but from a different church from Gish. See my review of the dishonesty in his "Icons of Evolution." And again, the fact that a con man like Wells is still considered to be one of creationism's leading spokesmen says a lot about the creationism movement.)

Finally, Overman's contribution was equally ridiculous. A lawyer, he apparently has no clue about what science is all about. He indicated that modern science holds that life on Earth originated as a result of random accidents. That's obviously false. Following the Big Bang, the physical and chemical events that mainstream science believes led to the emergence of life ALL occurred in accordance with physical laws; and law-like behavior obviously cannot be called "random."

Overman also presented a number of statistical arguments. Since his statistics all assumed randomness, and since that assumption is erroneous, his arguments are meaningless. Garbage in, garbage out.

Playing number games, as Overman did, is a favorite trick of creationists and other Bible-thumping con men. In the late 1800's one such Bible-thumper, Samuel Birley Rowbotham, used mathematical calculations to "prove" that the Bible's flat-Earth passages were literally true. Perhaps that's where Mark Twain's famous aphorism about statistics came from.

In short, presenting articles from creationists and evolutionists side by side makes the idiocy of creationist "thinking" pretty apparent. Poor or zero empirical research, ancient quotes taken out of context and probably deliberately distorted, inconsistent arguments, weird theological arguments (from con artists like Gish and Wells, no less!), and bizarre statistics based on distortions of scientific principles. Yeah, I think the book captures the main characteristics of modern creationism very accurately!

Rating:
Summary: A decent introduction to the issue.
Review: This slim volume contains 11 articles, six by evolutionists, five by creationists.

The creationist articles are atrocious, but they nevertheless represent the best creationism has to offer: (i) an exposition of the idea of "irreducible complexity" by Michael Behe; (ii) an argument by Duane Gish that creationism should be taught in science classrooms because it is just as scientific as evolution; (iii) the argument, here set forth by Ker C. Thomson, that evolution violates the second law of thermodyanmics; (iv) the argument by Dean L. Overman that life could not have originated without supernatural activity; and (v) a bizarre article by Jonathan Wells arguing that evolutionists believe in evolution only because of pure bias in favor of metaphysical naturalism, and that a designer could not, in fact, have created a world much different than the one we see.

The evolutionist articles are generally good: (i) Richard Dawkins discusses the evolution of the eye; (ii) the National Academy of Sciences offers its statement about evolution and the relationship between science and religion; (iii) Robert T. Pennock explains why evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics; (iv) Michael Ruse takes a scattershot approach against all sorts of creationist arguments and assertions; (v) David A. Thomas argues that the fossil record supports evolution; and (vi) Kenneth R. Miller explains why he thinks evolution is perfectly consistent with belief in God.

This book does not by any means cover all of the ground there is to cover in the debate (for instance, there are no selections concerning the age of the earth), and not all of the selections are exactly matched against one another in a point-counterpoint fashion (that is, half of a creationist article may be refuted in one evolutionist article, and the other half in a different one), but all in all, this is a decent starting point for new students of the creationism vs. evolution debate.