Fact, Fable, and Darwin

I write as neither a creationist nor a Darwinist, but as one who knows what is probably the most disreputable scientific secret of the past century: There is no plausible scientific theory of the origin of species! Darwin himself was not sure he had produced one, and for many decades every competent evolutionary biologist has known that he did not. Although the experts have kept quiet when true believers have sworn in court and before legislative bodies that Darwin's theory is proven beyond any possible doubt, that's not what reputable biologists, including committed Darwinians, have been saying to one another.

Without question, Charles Darwin would be among the most prominent biologists in history even if he hadn't written The Origin of Species in 1859. But he would not have been deified in the campaign to "enlighten" humanity. The battle over evolution is not an example of how heroic scientists have withstood the relentless persecution of religious fanatics. Rather, from the very start it primarily has been an attack on religion by militant atheists who wrap themselves in the mantle of science.

When a thoroughly ideological Darwinist like Richard Dawkins claims, "The theory is about as much in doubt as that the earth goes round the sun," he does not state a fact, but merely aims to discredit a priori anyone who dares to express reservations about evolution. Indeed, Dawkins has written, "It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane...."

That is precisely how "Darwin's Bulldog," Thomas Huxley, hoped intellectuals would react when he first adopted the tactic of claiming that the only choice is between Darwin and Bible literalism. However, just as one can doubt Max Weber's Protestant Ethic thesis without thereby declaring for Marxism, so too one may note the serious shortcomings of neo-Darwinism without opting for any rival theory. Modern physics provides a model of how science benefits from being willing to live with open questions rather than embracing obviously flawed conjectures.

What is most clear to me is that the Darwinian Crusade does not prove some basic incompatibility between religion and science. But the even more immediate reality is that Darwin's theory falls noticeably short of explaining the origin of species. Dawkins knows the many serious problems that beset a purely materialistic evolutionary theory, but asserts that no one except true believers in evolution can be allowed into the discussion, which also must be held in secret. Thus he chastises Niles Eldridge and Stephen Jay Gould, two distinguished fellow Darwinians, for giving "spurious aid and comfort to modern creationists."

Dawkins believes that, regardless of his or her good intentions, "if a reputable scholar breathes so much as a hint of criticism of some detail of Darwinian theory, that fact is seized upon and blown up out of proportion." While acknowledging that "the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record" is a major embarrassment for Darwinism, Stephen Jay Gould confided that this has been held as a "trade secret of paleontology" and acknowledged that the evolutionary diagrams "that adorn our textbooks" are based on "inference...not the evidence of fossils."

According to Steven Stanley, another distinguished evolutionist, doubts raised by the fossil record were "suppressed" for years. Stanley noted that this too was a tactic begun by Huxley, always careful not to reveal his own serious misgivings in public. Paleontologist Niles Eldridge and his colleagues have said that the history of life demonstrates gradual transformations of species, "all the while really knowing that it does not." This is not how science is conducted; it is how ideological crusades are run.

By Darwin's day it had long been recognized that the fossil evidence showed that there had been a progression in the biological complexity of organisms over an immense period of time. In the oldest strata, only simple organisms are observed. In more recent strata, more complex organisms appear. The biological world is now classified into a set of nested categories. Within each genus (mammals, reptiles, etc.) are species (dogs, horses, elephants, etc.) and within each species are many specific varieties, or breeds (Great Dane, Poodle, Beagle, etc.).

It was well-known that selective breeding can create variations within species. But the boundaries between species are distinct and firm--one species does not simply trail off into another by degrees. As Darwin acknowledged, breeding experiments reveal clear limits to selective breeding beyond which no additional changes can be produced. For example, dogs can be bred to be only so big and no bigger, let alone be selectively bred until they are cats. Hence, the question of where species come from was the real challenge and, despite the title of his famous book and more than a century of hoopla and celebration, Darwin essentially left it unanswered.

After many years spent searching for an adequate explanation of the origin of species, in the end Darwin fell back on natural selection, claiming that it could create new creatures too, if given im-mense periods of time. That is, organisms respond to their environmental circumstances by slowly changing (evolving) in the direction of traits beneficial to survival until, eventually, they are sufficiently changed to constitute a new species. Hence, new species originate very slowly, one tiny change after another, and eventually this can result in lemurs changing to humans via many intervening species.

Darwin fully recognized that a major weakness of this account of the origin of species involved what he and others referred to as the principle of "gradualism in nature." The fossil record was utterly inconsistent with gradualism. As Darwin acknowledged: "...why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?"

Darwin offered two solutions. Transitional types are quickly replaced and hence would mainly only be observable in the fossil record. As for the lack of transitional types among the fossils, that was, Darwin admitted, "the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory."

Darwin dealt with this problem by blaming "the extreme imperfection of the geological record." "Only a small portion of the surface of the earth has been geologically explored, and no part with sufficient care." But, just wait, Darwin promised, the missing transitions will be found in the expected proportion when more research has been done. Thus began an intensive search for what the popular press soon called the "missing links."

Today, the fossil record is enormous compared to what it was in Darwin's day, but the facts are unchanged. The links are still missing; species appear suddenly and then remain relatively unchanged. As Steven Stanley reported: "The known fossil record...offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid."

Indeed, the evidence has grown even more contrary since Darwin's day. "Many of the discontinuities [in the fossil record] tend to be more and more emphasized with increased collecting," noted the former curator of historical geology at the American Museum of Natural History. The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism, Stephen Jay Gould has acknowledged. The first problem is stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear. The second problem is sudden appearance. Species do not arise gradually by the steady transformation of ancestors, they appear "fully formed."

These are precisely the objections raised by many biologists and geologists in Darwin's time--it was not merely that Darwin's claim that species arise through eons of natural selection was offered without supporting evidence, but that the available evidence was overwhelmingly contrary. Unfortunately, rather than concluding that a theory of the origin of species was yet to be accomplished, many scientists urged that Darwin's claims must be embraced, no matter what.

In keeping with Darwin's views, evolutionists have often explained new species as the result of the accumulation of tiny, favorable random mutations over an immense span of time. But this answer is inconsistent with the fossil record wherein creatures appear "full-blown and raring to go." Consequently, for most of the past century, biologists and geneticists have tried to discover how a huge number of favorable mutations can occur at one time so that a new species would appear without intermediate types.

However, as the eminent and committed Darwinist Ernst Mayr explained,The occurrence of genetic monstrosities by mutation...is well substantiated, but they are such evident freaks that these monsters can only be designated as 'hopeless.' They are so utterly unbalanced that they would not have the slightest chance of escaping elimination through selection. Giving a thrush the wings of a falcon does not make it a better flyer....To believe that such a drastic mutation would produce a viable new type, capable of occupying a new adaptive zone, is equivalent to believing in miracles.

The word miracle crops up again and again in mathematical assessments of the possibility that even very simple biochemical chains, let alone living organisms, can mutate into being by a process of random trial and error. For generations, Darwinians have regaled their students with the story of the monkey and the typewriter, noting that given an infinite period of time, the monkey sooner or later is bound to produce Macbeth purely by chance, the moral being that infinite time can perform miracles.

However, the monkey of random evolution does not have infinite time. The progression from simple to complex life forms on earth took place within a quite limited time. Moreover, when competent mathematicians considered the matter, they quickly calculated that even if the monkey's task were reduced to coming up with only a few lines of Macbeth, let alone Shakespeare's entire play, the probability is far, far beyond mathematical possibility. The odds of creating even the simplest organism at random are even more remote--Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, celebrated cosmologists, calculated the odds as one in ten to the 40,000th power. (Consider that all atoms in the known universe are estimated to number no more than ten to the 80th power.) In this sense, then, Darwinian theory does rest on truly miraculous assumptions.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the current situation is that while Darwin is treated as a secular saint in the popular media and the theory of evolution is regarded as the invincible challenge to all religious claims, it is taken for granted among the leading biological scientists that the origin of species has yet to be explained. Writing in Nature in 1999, Eörs Szathmay summarizes that, "The origin of species has long fascinated biologists. Although Darwin's major work bears it as a title, it does not provide a solution to the problem." When Julian Huxley claimed that "Darwin's theory is...no longer a theory but a fact," he surely knew better. But, just like his grandfather, Thomas Huxley, he knew that his lie served the greater good of "enlightenment."

When The Origin of Species was published it aroused immense interest, but initially it did not provoke antagonism on religious grounds. Although many criticized Darwin's lack of evidence, none raised religious objections. Instead, the initial response from theologians was favorable. The distinguished Harvard botanist Asa Gray hailed Darwin for having solved the most difficult problem confronting the Design argument--the many imperfections and failures revealed in the fossil record. Acknowledging that Darwin himself "rejects the idea of design," Gray congratulated him for "bringing out the neatest illustrations of it." Gray interpreted Darwin's work as showing that God has created a few original forms and then let evolution proceed within the framework of divine laws.

When religious antagonism finally came it was in response to aggressive claims, like Huxley's, that Newton and Darwin together had evicted God from the cosmos. For the heirs of the Enlightenment, evolution seemed finally to supply the weapon needed to destroy religion. As Richard Dawkins confided, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

Atheism was central to the agenda of the Darwinians. Darwin himself once wrote that he could not understand how anyone could even wish that Christianity were true, noting that the doctrine of damnation was itself damnable. Huxley expressed his hostility toward religion often and clearly, writing in 1859: "My screed was meant as a protest against Theology & Parsondom...both of which are in my mind the natural & irreconcilable enemies of Science. Few see it but I believe we are on the Eve of a new Reformation and if I have a wish to live 30 years, it is to see the foot of Science on the necks of her Enemies." According to Oxford historian J. R. Lucas, Huxley was "remarkably resistant to the idea that there were clergymen who accepted evolution, even when actually faced with them." Quite simply, there could be no compromises with faith.

Writing at the same time as Huxley, the leading Darwinian in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, drew this picture:

These were not the natterings of radical circles and peripheral publications. The author of the huge review of The Origin in the Times of London was none other than Thomas Huxley. He built his lectures on evolution into a popular touring stage show wherein he challenged various potential religious opponents by name. Is it surprising that religious people, scientists as well as clerics, began to respond in the face of unrelenting challenges like these issued in the name of evolution? It was not as if they merely were asked to accept that life had evolved--many theologians had long taken that for granted. What the Darwinians demanded was that religionists agree to the untrue and unscientific claim that Darwin had proved that God played no role in the process.

Among those drawn to respond was the Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, who is widely said to have made an ass of himself in a debate with Huxley during the 1860 meeting of the British Association at Oxford. The relevant account of this confrontation reported: "I was happy enough to be present on the memorable occasion at Oxford when Mr. Huxley bearded Bishop Wilberforce. The bishop arose and in a light scoffing tone, florid and fluent, he assured us that there was nothing in the idea of evolution. Then turning to his antagonist with a smiling insolence, he begged to know, was it through his grandfather or his grandmother that he claimed descent from a monkey? On this Mr. Huxley...arose...and spoke these tremendous words. He was not ashamed to have a monkey for an ancestor; but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his great gifts to obscure the truth. No one doubted his meaning and the effect was tremendous."

This marvelous anecdote has appeared in every distinguished biography of Darwin and of Huxley, as well as in every popular history of the theory of evolution. In his celebrated Apes, Angels and Victorians, William Irvine used this tale to disparage the bishop's snobbery. In his prize-winning study, James Brix went much farther, describing Wilberforce as "naive and pompous," a man whose "faulty opinions" were those of a "fundamentalist creationist" and who provided Huxley with the opportunity to give evolution "its first major victory over dogmatism and duplicity." Every writer tells how the audience gave Huxley an ovation.

Trouble is, it never happened. The quotation above was the only such report of this story and it appeared in an article titled "A Grandmother's Tales" written by a non-scholar in a popular magazine 38 years after the alleged encounter. No other account of these meetings, and there were many written at the time, made any mention of remarks concerning Huxley's monkey ancestors, or claimed that he made a fool of the bishop. To the contrary, many thought the bishop had the better of it, and even many of the committed Darwinians thought it at most a draw.

Moreover, as all of the scholars present at Oxford knew, prior to the meeting, Bishop Wilberforce had penned a review of The Origin in which he fully acknowledged the principle of natural selection as the source of variations within species. He rejected Darwin's claims concerning the origin of species, however, and some of these criticisms were sufficiently compelling that Darwin immediately wrote his friend the botanist J. D. Hooker that the article "is uncommonly clever; it picks out with skill all the most conjectural parts, and brings forward well all the difficulties. It quizzes me quite splendidly." In a subsequent letter to geologist Charles Lyell, Darwin acknowledges that "the bishop makes a very telling case against me." Indeed, several of Wilberforce's comments caused Darwin to make modifications in a later revision of the book.

The tale of the foolish and narrow-minded bishop seems to have thrived as a revealing "truth" about the incompatibility of religion and science simply because many of its tellers wanted to believe that a bishop is wrong by nature. J. R. Lucas, who debunked the bishop myth, has suggested that the "most important reason why the legend grew" is, first, because academics generally "know nothing outside their own special subject" and therefore easily believe that outsiders are necessarily ignorant, and, second, because Huxley encouraged that conclusion. "The quarrel between religion and science was what Huxley wanted; and as Darwin's theory gained supporters, they took over his view of the incident."

Since then the Darwinian Crusade has tried to focus all attention on the most unqualified and most vulnerable opponents, and when no easy targets present themselves it has invented them. Huxley "made straw men of the 'creationists,'" as his biographer Desmond admitted. Even today it is a rare textbook or any popular treatment of evolution and religion that does not reduce "creationism" to the simplest caricatures.

This tradition remains so potent that whenever it is asked that evolution be presented as "only a theory," the requester is ridiculed as a buffoon. Even when the great philosopher of science Karl Popper suggested that the standard version of evolution even falls short of being a scientific theory, being instead an untestable tautology, he was subjected to public condemnations and much personal abuse.

Popper's tribulations illustrate an important basis for the victory of Darwinism: A successful appeal for a united front on the part of scientists to oppose religious opposition has had the consequence of silencing dissent within the scientific community. The eminent observer Everett Olson notes that there is "a generally silent group" of biological scientists "who tend to disagree with much of the current thought" about evolution, but who remain silent for fear of censure.

I believe that one day there will be a plausible theory of the origin of species. But, if and when that occurs, there will be nothing in any such theory that makes it impossible to propose that the principles involved were not part of God's great design any more than such a theory will demonstrate the existence of God. But, while we wait, why not lift the requirement that high school texts enshrine Darwin's failed attempt as an eternal truth?

Rodney Stark was professor of sociology at the University of Washington for many years and is now university professor of the social sciences at Baylor University. He is author of For the Glory of God (Princeton University Press) and other acclaimed books on science and religion.

I have not read all the comments yet but I can say read Ann Coulters new book.

Been there, done that, working on a megapost which details all of her gross misrepresentations and incredibly boneheaded errors on the topic. Want me to ping you to it when I finish it and post it?

She covers all this very well.

No, sorry. She even lies about her own sources, which tells you pretty much what you need to know right there.

Certainly more than the media gives her credit for.

Actually, the media has barely touched the incredible number of outright falsehoods and misrepresentations in her chapters on evolution.

In fact, Ann destroyes the Darwin myth, IMHO.

That's because she was correct when she counted on most of her readers taking her word for it when she told lies about biology, and not double-checking her claims about it. Here are a few of my short pieces on several of her bizarre claims as a teaser before I wrap up the full treatment:

Ann certainly isn't being dishonest.
She certainly is in the science chapters. I've lost count of the number of blatant falsehoods and gross fallacies and half-truths she employs. Let's check just one small passage, shall we? From page 225:
Instead of gradual change occurring by random mutation and natural selection choosing the most "fit" to survive and reproduce--in other words, "Darwin's theory of evolution"--Gould and Eldredge hypothesized that evolution could also happen really fast and then stop happening at all for 150 million years. Basically, what happens is this: Your parents are slugs and then suddenly--but totally at random--you evolve into a gecko and your brother evolves into a shark and your sister evolves into a polar bear and the guy down the street evolves into a porpoise and so on--and then everybody relaxes by the pool for 150 million years, virtually unchanged.
I count at least seven serious misrepresentations in these two sentences -- the kind that give a grossly incorrect impression to the reader about the actual science.
Okay, maybe she's not dishonest, maybe she's just parroting someone else's dishonest propaganda but is too ignorant of the topic to realize it. But neither option inspires confidence.
One way or the other, however, she's doing a remarkable Michael Moore impression when she attempts to discuss biology and other fields of science. The reader will actually know *less* about biology after reading her book than he did before, because the book contains very little accurate information about biology, while filling the reader's head with large volumes of misinformation. The reader will end up *farther* from an understanding of the issue than when they started, in the same sense that a liberal who knows very little about the Iraq war will be closer to an understanding of it than someone who "knows" nothing but giant loads of anti-war anti-Bush propaganda about it.
As an old saying goes, "it's not the things you don't know that get you into trouble, as much as the things you 'know' that ain't so". And there's a great deal of "ain't so" in Ann's chapters on science. In fact, I'm not exagerrating at all when I say that it's far harder to find things that she got *right* in those chapters.

And:

and accepted without discussion.
Horse manure. Go right ahead and discuss it. No one's stopping you. And no, the result of the Kitzmiller and other court cases is not to bar "discussion". Anyone who claims that it is is grossly misrepresenting the actual cases -- like, say, Ann is doing on pages 223-224... Not only does she grossly misrepresent what can and can't be presented in classrooms, she misrepresents a number of cases such as that of Roger DeHart -- she pretends that he was removed from teaching biology simply because he wanted to present his students some fossils from China. The degree of this misrepresentation is shocking. For a more complete account of Dehart's problems with his school, see this, and then ask yourself whether Ann's description of this incident in her book is even remotely honest: "Meanwhile, when a high school biology teacher in America tries to tell his students about the Chinese fossils, he is banned from teaching biology".
Ann sort of "forgot" to mention that it wasn't his mentioning of some fossils that got him into hot water, it was his constant fighting with the school administration, frequent complaints from parents, his habit of using creationist materials which contained major falsehoods about biology after repeatedly being told not to use them, his hiding of his curriculum from the school by distributing materials to students for use during class then gathering them back again at the end of the class so that there would not be a "paper trail" of his material, etc. etc. etc. over a five year period. Gosh, that's just a *little* different from Ann's version, isn't it? Whether or not DeHart's behavior justified his removal from the biology class (he wasn't fired, just reassigned to teaching a different subject) can be debated, but the point is that Ann's description of it is GROSSLY misleading and false, and leaves out the most relevant issues involved in DeHart's reassignment, while "pretending" that it was just done over his "daring" to present some fossils that Ann tries to describe as some kind of major problem for evolutionary biology, when they aren't even that. The degree of distortion involved in her presentation is just jaw-dropping. If a liberal distorted some event that badly in order to misdescribe it in a way that slandered conservatives, we'd be justifiably up in arms, *and* take it as direct evidence of their gross dishonesty and/or their total incompetence.

And:

I don't get it. P. J. O'Rourke has been saying way more controversial things for way longer, and hasn't received a fraction of the condemnation of Ann.
I get it just fine. P.J. manages to be hard-hitting without being completely obnoxious about it, and the things he says adhere closely to the truth, unlike Ann's willingness to spew blatantly false accusations.
If the many examples at the link aren't enough for you, here's another: On page 206, she wrote, in regards to an article by biologist Jerry Coyne, "But, curiously, Coyne never got around to addressing Behe's argument for intelligent design —the centerpiece of the subject Coyne claimed to be discussing." This is a blatant and transparent lie. Coulter claims that "Coyne never got around to addressing Behe's argument for intelligent design", but Coyne actually spent FIFTEEN PARAGRAPHS of that article doing exactly that, starting at the sentence which begins, "IDers make one claim that they tout as truly novel..." Ann even quoted from Coyne's discussion of Behe's argument later in her book, so she can't claim not to have seen it. So why does she tell a blatant falsehood to her readers? Apparently because it's easier to pretend (no matter how false it is) that no one has been willing/able to mount a rebuttal to Behe's argument (in reality, scores of biologists have), than to actually deal with the points raised by such rebuttals. Ann would rather just lie to her readers in order to give them an entirely false impression. It's easier to "win" the issue that way -- just say what you *wish* the truth was, instead of dealing with the actual reality. Of course, that's exactly how Michael Moore and his ilk do it also. Ann Coulter has become the sort of propagandist she used to denounce.
I've documented many dozens of examples of this kind of flat-out dishonesty from Ann in her book's chapters on science and biology. If anyone wants to be pinged to my eventual post listing them all (warning, it's going to be LONG), just FreepMail me and ask to be put on the ping list.

And:

Ann Coulter states in her book on page 201 -
Darwin’s theory of evolution says life on Earth began with single-celled life forms,
Wrong. The earliest life wouldn't even have qualified as "single-celled", and furthermore "Darwin's theory" doesn't even make any statement about the earliest form(s) of life or their origin. For that you have to look to other fields of biology.
which evolved into multicelled life forms,
Some did, some didn't.
which over countless aeons evolved into higher life forms, including man, all as the result of the chance process of random mutation followed by natural selection,
Wrong, there are more processes at work than just natural selection.
without guidance or assistance from any intelligent entity like God of the Department of Agriculture.
Darwin's theory makes no statement whatsoever about whether there was or was not any "guidance or assistance".
Which is to say, evolution I the eminently plausible theory that the human eye, the complete works of Shakespeare, and Ronal Reagan (among other things) all came into existence purely be accident.
Wrong again. First, see above, Darwin's theory makes no statement on whether the evolution of life proceeded "purely" by natural processes. Second, "purely by accident" is a really inaccurate and misleading way to describe evolutionary processes. Third, even if biological evolution was solely responsible for the rise of intelligent life, things like "the works of Shakespeare" came about via a different kind of process, as do most other works of man.
Coulter really needs to try to educate herself on this subject before she attempts to "teach" anyone else about it.
On page 202, she states The “theory” of evolution is:
1. Random mutation of desirable attributes (highly implausible)
Not *just* the random mutation of desirable attributes, that's extremely misleading as written. Furthermore, "desirable" is a misleading word in this context, especially since the fitness of traits is highly dependent upon conditions. And the fact that Coulter finds herself amazed by the notion doesn't change the fact that there is vast and overwhelming evidence that such mutations have occurred and do occur.
2. Natural selection weeding out the “less fit” animals (pointless tautology)
Natural selection is hardly the only process shaping the genepool, although people who don't know a damned thing about evolutionary biology (like Coulter) often presume it is. And it's in no way a "tautology", pointless or otherwise. That's a common creationist canard, but it's nonsense.
3. Leading to the creation of new species (no evidence after 150 years of looking)
Yes, #1 and #2, together with other processes, can produce new species (but are also responsible for changes *within* a species). As for "no evidence after 150 years of looking", that's quite simply a bald-faced lie.
My question – is she correct in her statements?
No, she isn't. She grossly misrepresents evolutionary biology throughout her chapters on evolution, and tells an astounding number of outright falsehoods. I'm working up a (LONG) post documenting all the ways she outright misleads her readers in those chapters -- anyone who wants to be pinged to it when I finish it can FreepMail me to be added to the ping list.
Is that Darwin’s theory?
No, it isn't. It's a cartoonish distortion of it.

And:

That is something else she discusses in her evolution chapter. She is not talking about gradual evolutions, such as when introducing more protein in the diet, a race of people become bigger and stronger.
She can't even get *that* right -- that is not "simple evolution" at all. Eating more protein isn't evolution. Genetic change is evolution.
She is talking about whole new species.
...and she talks about it in the same way that Michael Moore talks about conservatism and capitalism and America.
And she continually brings up the human eye.
...while misrepresenting almost everything about that topic. Let's take her screech on page 208, for example. I'll wait a moment while you go look it up....
Got it? Okay. Now read from the top of the page down to the sentence which ends, "...the Darwiniacs' version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."
(Background: In case you didn't know, the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" was an infamous forgery -- it was created by Jew-haters in order to make it look as if Jewish leaders were plotting world domination. It's one of the most disgusting and vicious hoaxes of all time, was made up out of thin air, and yet after being repeatedly debunked is still believed authentic by some conspiracy-minded kooks among the skinhead and neo-Nazi movement, because it "supports" their prejudices and paranoia about Jews.)
So when Coulter accuses the "Darwiniacs" (charming -- no one will ever mistake her for a lady) of something akin to the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", she's making one of the most extreme possible insults, insinuating that the "Darwiniacs" believe something that is a complete fabrication, and something that no sane person would want to associate with.
And her tale on page 208 sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? She's doing everything she can to try to imply that Dawkins et al just made something up out of thin air, and tried to attribute it to a researcher who, when asked, had no idea what Dawkins was talking about -- Coulter wants you to believe that a fraud had been committed, and that in fact no researcher has successfully modeled the evolution of the eye.
Do you agree that this is the impression she's trying to give? With me so far? Good.
It's a lie. But the person lying is Coulter. The ONLY grain of truth in her rant is that Dawkins had misspoken when he described the research as a "computer simulation" -- it was actually a combination of mathematical models, physical models, and computer analysis, but not a "computer simulation" in the strictest sense of the word. But the research WAS actually performed, it WAS actually done by the researcher Coulter tries to imply had denied its existence, Dawkins's description of the results of the research WERE ACCURATE.
If Coulter had wanted to take issue with the research methodology, she's free to do so. But to DISHONESTLY try to blow up an extremely insignificant slip of the tongue (calling something a "computer model" when it was analyzed in a different manner) into a false tale that the research was never done and that "Darwiniacs" just made it all up is an INCREDIBLY dishonest sleight-of-hand that would make Michael Moore green with envy.
If Coulter allegedly has a good case, why does she have to lie about it?
Here, read the research on the evolution of the eye yourself -- it really exists, and was really done by the researcher that Dawkins said it was done by, and which Coulter tries to give the impression had denied its existence:
"A Pessimistic Estimate of the Time Required for an Eye to Evolve", Dan-E. Nilsson; Susanne Pelger, Proceedings: Biological Sciences / Vol. 256, No. 1345 (Apr., 1994), pp. 53-58
Here you can watch a short video of the researcher discussing his findings: (Click on your choice of video format at the top of the page at this link).
Gosh, how honest was it of Coulter to mislead her readers into thinking that this research didn't even exist at all, and that the "Darwiniacs" were just lying and making it all up?
Worse, she can't even claim not to be aware of these things. In her endnotes for this chapter (second part of reference 10 for chapter 8 on pg. 297), she specifically cites the article in "Commentary" magazine which contains multiple rebuttals by Nilsson (the author of the eye evolution paper) and other researchers, who dismantle David Berlinski (the "authority" Coulter cites for her "it didn't exist" accusation) on his errors, his false accusations, and his making a mountain out of a molehill over the "computer simulation" label. Read that again until it sinks in -- COULTER ADMITS TO READING the letters in which the researchers themselves (and others) discuss the research itself (so Coulter KNOWS the research actually exists) and taking Berlinski to task for nitpicking about the "computer simulation" description (so Coulter KNOWS this is a trivial issue). And yet after KNOWING this, Coulter went ahead and MADE THE FALSE ACCUSATION of "it didn't exist" concerning Nilsson's research, *AND* spun that lie around the already discredited nitpicking about whether or not the research was best described as a "computer simulation" or some other descriptive term...
Out of curiosity, 7thson, do you approve of being knowingly misled in this manner by an author you trusted?
Here are some of the relevant excerpts from the "Commentary" rebuttal which COULTER ADMITS TO HAVING READ (since she includes a citation to it in her endnotes), but decided to lie about when she wrote about it on page 208...
By Dan-E Nilsson (author of the evolution-of-the-eye research):
He further claims that we fail to explain how morphological change relates to improvements in visual acuity, though pages 54 through 56 (together with the graphs and legends in figures 1 and 3) deal with exactly that, and in great detail.
[...] Contrary to Mr. Berlinski’s claim, we calculate the spatial resolution (visual acuity) for all parts of our eye-evolution sequence, and the results are displayed in figure 1 of our paper. The underlying theory is explained in the main text, including the important equation 1 and a reference to Warrant & McIntyre (1993), where this theory is derived. Yet Mr. Berlinski insists that “Nilsson and Pelger do not calculate the visual acuity of any structure.” It would be much simpler for Mr. Berlinski if he went just a tiny step farther and denied the existence of our paper altogether. [Funny, Ann Coulter seems to have taken him up on that sarcastic remark. -- Ich.]
[...]
Mr. Berlinski is right on one point only: the paper I wrote with Pelger has been incorrectly cited as containing a computer simulation of eye evolution. I have not considered this to be a very serious problem, because a simulation would be a mere automation of the logic in our paper. A complete simulation is thus of moderate scientific interest, although it would be useful from an educational point of view.
Our paper remains scientifically sound, and has not been challenged in any peer-reviewed scientific journal. I do not intend to take any further part in a meaningless debate with David Berlinski.
From Paul R. Gross:
Mr. Berlinski misunderstands or misinterprets critical elements of the paper. Then he quibbles ponderously about terms and assumptions — and about a popular gloss of the paper by Richard Dawkins. He accuses some of his critics of fraud for having failed to denounce Dawkins’s use in a trade book of certain of those terms. Mr. Berlinski’s arguments are quibbles.
From Matt Young:
I will not respond to Mr. Berlinski’s disdainful tone, nor to the cheap shots directed at me personally. Nor will I continue the pointless distraction of whether Nilsson and Pelger performed a simulation or a calculation.
From Mark Perakh:
But contrary to Mr. Berlinski’s rhetoric, any scandal related to Nilsson and Pelger’s paper occurred only in Mr. Berlinski’s imagination. Nilsson and Pelger estimate the time necessary for the development of an eye, a calculation that entails certain assumptions but which is viewed by many scientists as sufficiently sound. (According to the Science Citation Index, Nilsson and Pelger’s article has been positively referenced in at least 25 peer-reviewed scientific publications.)
But Mr. Berlinski, unlike all these scientists, does not like Nilsson and Pelger’s conclusion, and obfuscates the issue by discussing the distinctions among computer simulations, models, and calculations. These semantic exercises are inconsequential to the real question: whether an eye could have developed in a geologically short time via a Darwinian mechanism, as Nilsson and Pelger and scores of biologists familiar with their work think.
From Jason Rosenhouse:
Once we have swept the field of Mr. Berlinski’s distortions we are left with a few simple facts. (1) Several decades of research on the evolution of eyes has not only made it plain that eyes have evolved, but has also revealed the major steps through which they did so. (2) Nilsson and Pelger’s paper provides an elegant capstone for this research, by providing a convincing calculation for an upper limit on the time required for an eye to evolve. (3) Minor errors in popular treatments of Nilsson and Pelger’s paper do nothing to change facts (1) and (2). (4) Finally, David Berlinski is not a reliable source for scientific information.
Coulter KNEW the research existed, she KNEW that Berlinski was nitpicking about descriptions of the research, and yet she chose to tell her readers that "it didn't exist", and to "support" her false claim about its non-existence on something as trivial as Berlinski's bitching about whether a popular book was justified in calling it a "simulation" or not... The mind boggles. Is this Christian behavior? To bear false witness in so cynical a manner?
Coulter repeats this kind of Michael-Moore dishonesty all throughout her chapters on evolutionary biology. When she doesn't want to do the hard work of dealing with the real evidence or research supporting evolution, she just misinforms her readers and denies it exists at all. How many more examples would you like?
I'm writing up a list of all of the lies in Coulter's chapters 8-10 (it's going to be HUGE) -- if you or anyone else would like to be pinged to it when I post it, please FreepMail me.

And:

Hitler didn't invent Darwinism, he just used it as an excuse to "clense" the races.
Gee, really? Then why do his private notes show that he based his idea of inferior races on the Bible? Hitler's own handwritten notes, drawing an outline of his philosophy:
Hitler divided his study into five sections:
1. The Bible
2. The Aryan
3. His Works
4. The Jew
5. His Work
Under the first section, "The Bible -- Monumental History of Mankind", he lists these topics (among others): "2 human types-- Workers and drones-- Builders and destroyers", "Race Law", "First people's history (based on) the race law-- Eternal course of History".
Hitler was actually privately basing his racial view of mankind on *Biblical* foundations.
Here's a Nazi propaganda paper -- no mention of evolution or Darwin, but references to Christ in regards to "driving the devil from the lands":
The headline reads, "Declaration of the Higher Clergy/So spoke Jesus Christ". The caption under the cartoon of the marching Hitler Youth reads, "We youth step happily forward facing the sun... With our faith we drive the devil from the land."
He just thought that "natural selection" thing needed a little boost I guess.
No, Hitler thought God needed a little boost:
"I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.."
-- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf"
While we're on the subject, did the Ku Klux Klan subscribe to Darwin when they were trying to keep the "mongrel races" in "their place" and preventing them from "polluting" the white race through intermarriage, or were they a bunch of God-fearing Christians? Let's check, shall we?
In 1916, the oath for joining the KKK included the following questions: "Each of the following questions must be answered by (each of) you with an emphatic "yes": [...] Fourth. Do you believe in the tenets of the Christian religion? [...] Eighth. Do you believe in and will you faithfully strive for the eternal maintenance of white supremacy?" Source: FBI internal document, "The Ku Klux Klan, Section 1, 1865-1944 .
And the Christian foundation of the KKK is hardly limited to 1916, in 1953 they declared that the only membership requirement was to "believe in God and the United States" (source), and even today they're still a proudly bible-thumping group (see also here).
Here's another goody from that same FBI document:
In 1922, Evans gave Stephenson the job of organizing the Klan in Indiana. Stephenson hired full-time organizers and found Indiana a fertile field for the Klan's traditional program directed against Catholics, Jews, Negroes, and foreigners, which he extended to include communists, bootleggers, pacifists, evolutionists, and all persons the Klan considered immoral.
Let's see... The KKK versus the "evolutionists"... Okay, I know which side the angels are on in *that* face-off...
Hey, mc5cents, if evolution is the root of all evil, how do you explain the Christians in the KKK despising the evolutionists instead of being inspired by them?
Meanwhile: The KKK is against the evolutionists, Ann Coulter is against the evolutionists -- so which side does that put her on?
Oh, and speaking of Coulter -- she cluelessly claims that "the first genocide in recorded history" occurred after "Darwinism gained currency" (hey, it also happened after "the New testament became popular, is she asserting cause-and-effect *there* too?), but clearly the woman's an idiot. She laughably tries to say that "the first genocide in recorded history" occurred sometime after 1859 (when Darwin published his book on evolution), but anyone with even a smidgen of knowledge (which leaves out Coulter, apparently) knows that there have been genocides for thousands of years, including several detailed in the Bible, countless throughout Asia and Africa, and notably the genocide of the aborigines in Tasmania, committed against the "savages" by good Christians quoting scriptural "justification", which ironically a number of anti-evolutionists have tried to blame on "Darwinism", despite the fact that it happened in *1847*, more than a decade BEFORE Darwin had published his first work on evolution...
So just how stupid *is* Ann Coulter, that she can say the "first genocide in recorded history" happened after 1859? The word "moron" seems woefully inadequate. And she's not very honest either.

And:

Please acknowledge that you have not read the book in order that I can ignore you with a certain peace of mind!
Unfortunately for your peace of mind, I have read it, and am in the process of writing a very long critique of her chapters on evolutionary biology. Literally, almost everything she says about it is wrong. If you or anyone else wants to be pinged to it, FreepMail me.
I'm not the only one to notice that, either. It's so bad that over at Pharyngula (a biology-related blog, although it veers off into politics and other topics as well) they've put up a "Coulter challenge" -- at the end of this blog entry addressing Coulter's ludicrous claim that there's no evidence for evolution, there's the following challenge:
Like I said, I'm not going to take this tripe apart sentence by sentence, even though I could, given enough time and interest. I will suggest instead that if anyone reading this thinks some particular paragraph anywhere in chapters 8-11 is at all competent or accurate in its description of science, send it to me. I couldn't find one. That's where the obligation lies: show me one supportable claim in Coulter's farrago of lies and misleading statements and out-of-context quotes, and we'll discuss it.
So far no one's taken him up on it. He did a clarification the next day stating that, among other things, "Promising to pray for me, or assuring me that I will burn in hell" does not adequately meet the challenge.
There was another followup 8 days later to mention that no one has managed to find an error-free paragraph yet.
I concur -- it's harder to find anything *right* in those chapters than it is finding ten things just mind-blowingly wrong. She even lies about her own references.

And:

In chapter 8, Coulter airly blows off the notion of evolution by accumulation of beneficial mutations by snidely saying:
A process that is supposed to have transformed an amoeba into Jerry Garcia by "random mutation" must have produced some spectacular fail-ures. Why can't we find any of the amusing ones?
I swear, I'm tempted to rebut that with photographs of some of the more "amusing" human and animal birth defects...

And:

Page 231:
Except the genome argument proves too much. The human genome is 35 percent identical to that of a daffodil. I think even a Darwiniac would admit humans are not 35 percent identical to a daffodil. Again, the cult's smoking gun of evolutionary proof turns out to be an imaginary water pistol.
Oooookay... Where to start? This was at the end of a section admitting that "the human genome is 98.7 percent identical to the chimpanzee's". Rather than deal head-on with the implications of that in any honest fashion, Coulter just quoted a psychology professor (!) arguing that humans "are simply odd-looking apes". She didn't even state that he was even basing his statement on the 98.7% observation, but that was the implication she wanted to give, and trigger the reader's "I ain't no ape!" reflex, or at least their "how silly/stupid/naive to say we're 'just' apes" notion and then sit back and bask in her "discrediting" of the 98.7% observation.
But in case that wasn't enough, she played the "daffodil" card, and then called it a day -- that was the *entirety* of her "dealing with" the 98.7% genome similarity: Quote a guy saying something she thought her audience would find silly, then fire off a flip remark about daffodils. Genome comparison demolished, time to move on!
The key problem with the daffodil claim, however, is that it just isn't true. Nor does she even attempt to footnote or otherwise source it, she just asserts it.
But she obviously got this (directly or indirectly) from the paper, "98% Chimpanzee and 35% Daffodil: The Human Genome in Evolutionary and Cultural Context". But if she had *read* the paper, she'd have seen that a) the author pulled the "35% daffodil" figure out of thin air, just for discussion's sake, it wasn't based on any actual comparison of DNA, and b) the point he makes in the paper is that the chimp comparison is *highly* significant, even more than the 98% figure might appear at first glance, whereas even a "35%" difference with some other species would be *less* meaningful than it might appear at first glance (partly because two TOTALLY RANDOM genomes would still have a 25% match by chance, so that's the "baseline", the "zero point".
In other words, his paper demonstrates why Coulter's little rhetorical trick is a dishonest and inappropriate one. So ironically, her source for her figure is one that *torpedoes* the argument she's trying to make from it.
And again, the author just *made up* the 35% daffodil figure for discussion purposes, but Coulter cluelessly states it as established fact.
Furthermore, even if the 35% figure *had* been the correct one, only a naive reader (her favorite kind) would find any reason to conclude that it's "ridiculous", because a) as the author points out, 35% is only a little over the 25% "random match" rate, and b) all multicellular organisms do share a whole crapload of common biochemistry and foundational mechanisms regarding metabolism, cellular activity, replication, etc. Coulter is playing off the fact that the naive reader will ponder the *apparent* lack of similarity between humans and daffodils (e.g. "I ain't green!") without realizing how very much we have in common "under the hood" as multicellular eukaryotes.
The "35%" paper can be read here, although it's scanned sideways, very annoying: http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/pubs/natureculture.pdf
Another paper by the same author makes his "out of thin air" source for the daffodil figure even more obvious: http://personal.uncc.edu/jmarks/interests/aaa/marksaaa99.htm
Once again, the DNA comparison requires context to be meaningful. Granted that a human and ape are over 98% genetically identical, a human and any earthly DNA-based life form must be at least 25% identical. A human and a daffodil share common ancestry and their DNA is thus obliged to match more than 25% of the time. For the sake of argument let’s say 33%.
The point is that to say we are one-third daffodils because our DNA matches that of a daffodil 33% of the time, is not profound, it’s ridiculous. There is hardly any biological comparison you can make which will find us to be one-third daffodil, except perhaps the DNA.
In other words, just as Simpson argued in the 1960s, the genetic comparison is exceptional, not at all transcendent. DNA comparisons overestimate biological similarity at the low end and underestimate it at the high end – in context, humans are biologically less than 25% daffodils and more than 98% chimpanzees.
Underlining was in the original, red-fonting is mine.
This "35% daffodil" meme, however, is making the rounds. For example it appears here in a Guardian review of a biology book: http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/scienceandnature/0,,1773515,00.html
The new starting point came from the recognition of the surprising continuities in genes between one species and another. We not only have nearly 99% of our genes in common with chimps, but some 35% in common with daffodils.
From the way the review states it, you'd think he got it *from* the book. But fortunately the book itself is fully text searchable at amazon.com, and the word "daffodil" doesn't even appear anywhere in the book, nor its scientific name, nor is any occurrence of the number "35" in the book relevant.
Getting back to Coulter's inanity, what in the hell does it mean to say that the genome comparison "proves too much"? It's word hash.
And I'm afraid that her "hey, someone said we're apes", and "we share DNA with daffodils" remarks in no way demolishes the DNA evidence or demonstrates that the DNA similarities are "an imaginary water pistol", although she's apparently stupid enough to think it does.

And if that's not enough, other writers have written very good deconstructions of many of her gross misrepresentations:

Ann Coulter: Clueless
Ann Coulter: No evidence for evolution?
Secondary Addiction: Ann Coulter on Evolution (part 1) -- On Ann Coulter's habit of trusting biased secondary sources while remaining ignorant of primary sources, plus the evolution of the eye.

Secondary Addiction: Ann Coulter on Evolution (part 2) -- Ann Coulter and the fossil record.

The Dembski Alert -- (interlude) Downard attempts to get Dembski to answer a few questions about his assertion that he would "take all responsibility for any errors" in Coulter's chapters on evolution. Unsurprisingly, in standard "ID advocate" fashion Dembski refuses to actually address the questions.

Secondary Addiction: Ann Coulter on Evolution (part 3) -- Ann Coulter on Archaeopteryx and bird evolution.
Ann Coulter's "Flatulent Raccoon Theory"
Coulter's Godless: as bad as you knew it would be
Ann Coulter on Evolution
InANNities, Part I
InANNities, Part II
Witless: a review of Ann Coulter's Godless

(The three "Secondary Addiction" pages are all superb -- if you don't read anything else, read those.)

Your turn -- tell us the paragraph in Coulter's chapters on evolution that you consider her very best and most devastating bodyblow against evolution -- then I'll take it apart and show you just how badly she's propagandizing like Michael Moore covering, well, anything.

Now, would you like me to ping you to my eventual point-by-point deconstruction of all of Ann Coulter's gross misrepresentations of evolutionary biology, or would you prefer to remain deceived by her?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.