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

New Statesman ^ | 28 August 1992 | Richard Dawkins

[Tomalak]

Every day I get letters, in capitals and obsessively underlined if not actually in green ink, from flat-earthers, young-earthers, perpetual-motion merchants, astrologers and other harmless fruitcakes. The only difference here is that Richard Milton managed to get his stuff published. The publisher - we don’t know how many decent publishers turned it down first - is called ‘Fourth Estate.’ Not a house that I had heard of, but apparently neither a vanity press nor a fundamentalist front. So, what are ‘Fourth Estate’ playing at? Would they publish - for this book is approximately as silly - a claim that the Romans never existed and the Latin language is a cunning Victorian fabrication to keep schoolmasters employed?

A cynic might note that there is a paying public out there, hungry for simple religious certitude, who will lap up anything with a subtitle like ‘Shattering the Myth of Darwinism.’ If the author pretends not to be religious himself, so much the better, for he can then be exhibited as an unbiased witness. There is - no doubt about it - a fast buck to be made by any publishers unscrupulous enough to print pseudoscience that they know is rubbish but for which there is a market.

But let’s not be so cynical. Mightn’t the publishers have an honourable defence? Perhaps this unqualified hack is a solitary genius, the only soldier in the entire platoon - nay, regiment - who is in step. Perhaps the world really did bounce into existence in 8000 BC. Perhaps the whole vast edifice of orthodox science really is totally and utterly off its trolley. (In the present case, it would have to be not just orthodox biology but physics, geology and cosmology too). How do we poor publishers know until we have printed the book and seen it panned?

If you find that plea persuasive, think again. It could be used to justify publishing literally anything; flat-earth, fairies, astrology, werewolves and all. It is true that an occasional lonely figure, originally written off as loony or at least wrong, has eventually been triumphantly vindicated (though not often a journalist like Richard Milton, it has to be said). But it is also true that a much larger number of people originally regarded as wrong really were wrong. To be worth publishing, a book must do a little more than just be out of step with the rest of the world.

But, the wretched publisher might plead, how are we, in our ignorance, to decide? Well, the first thing you might do - it might even pay you, given the current runaway success of some science books - is employ an editor with a smattering of scientific education. It needn’t be much: A-level Biology would have been ample to see off Richard Milton. At a more serious level, there are lots of smart young science graduates who would love a career in publishing (and their jacket blurbs would avoid egregious howlers like calling Darwinism the "idea that chance is the mechanism of evolution.") As a last resort you could even do what proper publishers do and send the stuff out to referees. After all, if you were offered a manuscript claiming that Tennyson wrote The Iliad, wouldn’t you consult somebody, say with an O-level in History, before rushing into print?

You might also glance for a second at the credentials of the author. If he is an unknown journalist, innocent of qualifications to write his book, you don’t have to reject it out of hand but you might be more than usually anxious to show it to referees who do have some credentials. Acceptance need not, of course, depend on the referees’ endorsing the author’s thesis: a serious dissenting opinion can deserve to be heard. But referees will save you the embarrassment of putting your imprint on twaddle that betrays, on almost every page, complete and total pig-ignorance of the subject at hand.

All qualified physicists, biologists, cosmologists and geologists agree, on the basis of massive, mutually corroborating evidence, that the earth’s age is at least four billion years. Richard Milton thinks it is only a few thousand years old, on the authority of various Creation ‘science’ sources including the notorious Henry Morris (Milton himself claims not to be religious, and he affects not to recognise the company he is keeping). The great Francis Crick (himself not averse to rocking boats) recently remarked that "anyone who believes that the earth is less than 10,000 years old needs psychiatric help." Yes yes, maybe Crick and the rest of us are all wrong and Milton, an untrained amateur with a ‘background’ as an engineer, will one day have the last laugh. Want a bet?

Milton misunderstands the first thing about natural selection. He thinks the phrase refers to selection among species. In fact, modern Darwinians agree with Darwin himself that natural selection chooses among individuals within species. Such a fundamental misunderstanding would be bound to have far-reaching consequences; and they duly make nonsense of several sections of the book.

In genetics, the word ‘recessive’ has a precise meaning, known to every school biologist. It means a gene whose effect is masked by another (dominant) gene at the same locus. Now it also happens that large stretches of chromosomes are inert - untranslated. This kind of inertness has not the smallest connection with the ‘recessive’ kind. Yet Milton manages the feat of confusing the two. Any slightly qualified referee would have picked up this clanger.

There are other errors from which any reader capable of thought would have saved this book. Stating correctly that Immanuel Velikovsky was ridiculed in his own time, Milton goes on to say "Today, only forty years later, a concept closely similar to Velikovsky’s is widely accepted by many geologists - that the major extinction at the end of the Cretaceous ... was caused by collison with a giant meteor or even asteroid." But the whole point of Velikovsky (indeed, the whole reason why Milton, with his eccentric views on the age of the earth, champions him) is that his collision was supposed to have happened recently; recently enough to explain Biblical catastrophes like Moses’s parting of the Red Sea. The geologists’ meteorite, on the other hand, is supposed to have impacted 65 million years ago! There is a difference - approximately 65 million years difference. If Velikovsky had placed his collision tens of millions of years ago he would not have been ridiculed. To represent him as a misjudged, wilderness-figure who has finally come into his own is either disingenuous or - more charitably and plausibly - stupid.

In these post-Leakey, post-Johanson days, creationist preachers are having to learn that there is no mileage in ‘missing links.’ Far from being missing, the fossil links between modern humans and our ape ancestors now constitute an elegantly continuous series. Richard Milton, however, still hasn’t got the message. For him, "...the only ‘missing link’ so far discovered remains the bogus Piltdown Man." Australopithecus, correctly described as a human body with an ape’s head, doesn’t qualify because it is ‘really’ an ape. And Homo habilis - ‘handy man’ - which has a brain "perhaps only half the size of the average modern human’s" is ruled out from the other side: "... the fact remains that handy man is a human - not a missing link." One is left wondering what a fossil has to do - what more could a fossil do - to qualify as a ‘missing link’?

No matter how continuous a fossil series may be, the conventions of zoological nomenclature will always impose discontinuous names. At present, there are only two generic names to spread over all the hominids. The more ape-like ones are shoved into the genus Australopithecus; the more human ones into the genus Homo. Intermediates are saddled with one name or the other. This would still be true if the series were as smoothly continuous as you can possibly imagine. So, when Milton says, of Johanson’s ‘Lucy’ and associated fossils, "the finds have been referred to either Australopithecus and hence are apes, or Homo and hence are human," he is saying something (rather dull) about naming conventions, nothing at all about the real world.

But this is a more sophisticated criticism than Milton’s book deserves. The only serious question raised by its publication is why. As for would-be purchasers, if you want this sort of silly-season drivel you’d be better off with a couple of Jehovah’s Witness tracts. They are more amusing to read, they have rather sweet pictures, and they put their religious cards on the table.

[edsheppa]

Is it ad hominem to point out a man's deliberate actions?

In this thread? Yes, of course it is ad hominem to refer to his political views to slight his comments about this book which is about evolution, not politics. Do you deny that was your intention?

[beckett]

In this thread? Yes, of course it is ad hominem to refer to his political views to slight his comments about this book which is about evolution, not politics. Do you deny that was your intention?

My post about his politics was written to correct the mistaken impression of another poster that Dawkins is a "liberal."

He is an anti-American leftwinger, willing to put his name to a viciously anti-American document which was also signed by playwright Harold Pinter, one of the most extreme America hating leftwingers on the planet.

Dawkins' religion --- the "blind pitiless indifference" of evolution --- very much informs his politics, which in turn very much informs the hate that runs through the so-called "review" at the top of this thread.

[RaceBannon]

Remember, God said that when they eat of the fruit, thatis the day they die.

(Gen 2:17 KJV) But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

That is not an interpretation, that is a quote. I do agree that we are judged for our own sins, but mortality came because of Adam's sin, and the penalty for sin came upon all men because of Adam's sin and that is the reason for a Saviour.

[derek]

I know that there are plenty of DemocRats who worship the ground Bill Clinton walks on, but this is the first time I've ever seen it seriously suggested that God is, in fact, Bill Clinton.



ha! that is fantastic.
I am seeing in here, though, that because there are atheists in the conservative movement, that it is a shame/pox on conservatism. Frankly, being conservative should not have anything to do with religion. I feel that I'm a conservative because I would like to see a return to traditional moral values, including the morals taught in the Bible. I think that the Bible is more a guide to life, rather than and end all be all concerning the creation of the earth.
Someone brought up a great point that why would God create so much evidence pointing otherwise to the age of the Earth? To test faith? I don't understand why a loving God would need to test the faith of his followers. The entire book of Job is dedicated to testing the faith of one man. To what ends, though? God never answers Job about why he has such a horrible existence on Earth, I thought a God that loves his children would never do such a thing. In the end, Job gets eternal bliss in Heaven, and not another time in the Bible does God test the faith of his children. It makes it seem like a singular experience, inserted into the Bible to propogate Christian dogma. A loving God would not allow his children to live in such horrid conditions..either that, or the Apocalypse is upon us, and God doesn't have the time to keep us well because he's busy fighting Satan.

I can not argue either the existence of God or truth behind Creationism, frankly because I have no evidence of it. I can not deny what science indoctrinates into me. Another writer posted that science has nothing to do with whether we live or do, we die regardless of science. Science shows that as the body ages, the systems that create red blood cells slowly begins to shut down from wear. Red blood cells are hard coded to die at a certain time, the gene that does this has been discovered, and geneticists are working on therapy to make ever lasting rbcs. The death of red blood cells is directly related to how we die. And as for life, as it is now, not Original being,... I don't need to go into a high school level of reproductive biology.

sorry steve-b this wasn't meant to go straight to you, this is a bunch of things that I read in the first 50 posts.

just my feelings on the matter.


-Derek

[BMCDA]

LOL, but how do you explain to somebody that he will die if this person has no concept of death?

[RaceBannon]

Once God killed the animal that He made the skins from, I'll bet he understood! :-)

[RaceBannon]

Ain’t America grand, a place where people are free to believe whatever they choose, right? Unfortunately, if taught in schools the net result would leave the next generation at the mercy of those countries that build their science on a foundation of truth. <P. You're right! That's why we need to remove evolution from schools, it's bad science!

[BMCDA]

Yeah, but that was only after they ate from the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil". I think that was when they realized that they were nekkid (strange that some natives in South America don't have this problem).

[f.Christian]

The way the real story goes...

miraculously all the pure blood goes to the saved---

and all the bad blood is put in the donor to be fried-eradicated in hell---

then the resurrection/eternity...

"it is finished"

[ko_kyi]

That is possibly beacuse you spend WAY too much time, fondling the useless (so far) evolutionary parts that are dangling from your body.

My time to fondle is my own, thanks. Physical masterbation is time no more wasted than contemplating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin. And the parts aren't useless. I have 2 great kids that I love dearly.

[Elsie]

Really? I'm sure you could give an example of discrepencies...

---

I'm still not sure what it is that you are trying to prove. Are you suggesting that the Bible is a comprehensive collection of news stories, the originals of which were destroyed in great wars?

Oh.... I don't know. Switching between channels, I observed that ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX seemed to be carrying a story about a crash, but they did not agree on some of the details.

(Now about them four OTHER guys: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John................)

295 posted on 7/4/02 5:01 AM Pacific by Elsie

---

No, I can't; since I mentioned DETAILS, not discrepencies.

When you go to work with a new wardrobe,

and co-worker A says,"My, Dimensio, that sure is a nice shirt you are wearing",

and co-worker B says,"My, Dimensio, that sure is a nice tie you have on",

and co-worker C says,"My, Dimensio, those sure are nice new shoes" - think DETAILS: not discrepanies.

[Elsie]

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

---

NIV Exodus 5:6-23
 6.  That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people:
 7.  "You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw.
 8.  But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don't reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, `Let us go and sacrifice to our God.'
 9.  Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies."
 10.  Then the slave drivers and the foremen went out and said to the people, "This is what Pharaoh says: `I will not give you any more straw.
 11.  Go and get your own straw wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced at all.'"
 12.  So the people scattered all over Egypt to gather stubble to use for straw.
 13.  The slave drivers kept pressing them, saying, "Complete the work required of you for each day, just as when you had straw."
 14.  The Israelite foremen appointed by Pharaoh's slave drivers were beaten and were asked, "Why didn't you meet your quota of bricks yesterday or today, as before?"
 15.  Then the Israelite foremen went and appealed to Pharaoh: "Why have you treated your servants this way?
 16.  Your servants are given no straw, yet we are told, `Make bricks!' Your servants are being beaten, but the fault is with your own people."
 17.  Pharaoh said, "Lazy, that's what you are--lazy! That is why you keep saying, `Let us go and sacrifice to the LORD.'
 18.  Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks."
 19.  The Israelite foremen realized they were in trouble when they were told, "You are not to reduce the number of bricks required of you for each day."
 20.  When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them,
 21.  and they said, "May the LORD look upon you and judge you! You have made us a stench to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us."
 22.  Moses returned to the LORD and said, "O Lord, why have you brought trouble upon this people? Is this why you sent me?
 23.  Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble upon this people, and you have not rescued your people at all."

 

 

NIV Judges 19:19
 19.  We have both straw and fodder for our donkeys and bread and wine for ourselves your servants--me, your maidservant, and the young man with us. We don't need anything."

 

NIV 1 Kings 4:28-29
 28.  They also brought to the proper place their quotas of barley and straw for the chariot horses and the other horses.
 29.  God gave Solomon wisdom and very great insight, and a breadth of understanding as measureless as the sand on the seashore.

 

NIV Job 21:18
 18.  How often are they like straw before the wind, like chaff swept away by a gale?

 

NIV Job 41:27-28
 27.  Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood.
 28.  Arrows do not make him flee; slingstones are like chaff to him.

 

NIV Isaiah 5:21-24
 21.  Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.
 22.  Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and champions at mixing drinks,
 23.  who acquit the guilty for a bribe, but deny justice to the innocent.
 24.  Therefore, as tongues of fire lick up straw and as dry grass sinks down in the flames, so their roots will decay and their flowers blow away like dust; for they have rejected the law of the LORD Almighty and spurned the word of the Holy One of Israel.

 

NIV Isaiah 11:7
 7.  The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

 

NIV Isaiah 25:10
 10.  The hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain; but Moab will be trampled under him as straw is trampled down in the manure.

 

NIV Isaiah 33:11
 11.  You conceive chaff, you give birth to straw; your breath is a fire that consumes you.

 

NIV Isaiah 65:25
 25.  The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain," says the LORD.

 

NIV Jeremiah 23:28
 28.  Let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream, but let the one who has my word speak it faithfully. For what has straw to do with grain?" declares the LORD.

 

NIV 1 Corinthians 3:11-16
 11.  For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
 12.  If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw,
 13.  his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work.
 14.  If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward.
 15.  If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.
 16.  Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?

[Dimensio]

* James 1:13 "Let no man say . . . I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man."
vs.
* Genesis 22:1 "And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham."

* Acts 9:7 "And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man."
vs.
* Acts 22:9 "And they that were with me saw indeed the light, and were afraid; but they heard not the voice of him that spake to me."

* II Samuel 6:23 "Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death."
vs.
* II Samuel 21:8 "But the king took the two sons of Rizpah . . . and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul."

Just details, I guess.

[Elsie]

Very Good!

 

You've pointed out, quite well, the problems the KJV only people have to deal with by continuing to use that 400 year old translation.  If you pick up a later translation, some of the supposed 'errors' are shown to be a bit different.

---

NIV Genesis 22

 

 1.  Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!"   "Here I am," he replied.

 

NIV James 1:13-14
 13.  When tempted, no one should say, "God is tempting me." For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone;
 14.  but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.

---

 

NIV Acts 9:3-7
 3.  As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.
 4.  He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"
 5.  "Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.   "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied.
 6.  "Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."
 7.  The men traveling with Saul stood there speechless; they heard the sound but did not see anyone.

 

 

NIV Acts 22:6-9
 6.  "About noon as I came near Damascus, suddenly a bright light from heaven flashed around me.
 7.  I fell to the ground and heard a voice say to me, `Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute me?'
 8.  "`Who are you, Lord?' I asked.   "`I am Jesus of Nazareth, whom you are persecuting,' he replied.
 9.  My companions saw the light, but they did not understand the voice of him who was speaking to me.

---

 

NIV 2 Samuel 6:20-23
 20.  When David returned home to bless his household, Michal daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, "How the king of Israel has distinguished himself today, disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would!"
 21.  David said to Michal, "It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD's people Israel--I will celebrate before the LORD.
 22.  I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor."
 23.  And Michal daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death.

 

NIV 2 Samuel 21:8
 8.  But the king took Armoni and Mephibosheth, the two sons of Aiah's daughter Rizpah, whom she had borne to Saul, together with the five sons of Saul's daughter Merab,  whom she had borne to Adriel son of Barzillai the Meholathite.

[stanz]

By dating the rock, it allows for dating of the fossil embedded in it. That's why it's an important tool in paleoanthroplogy. Your orininal response to me suggested that that it was not useful in dating fossil hominid bones.

[RaceBannon]

It still isn't sufficient. Too many reports of different dates from differetn labs, even within the same lab. Also has to assume there is a certain amount of parent atom to 'prove' decay rate is accurate.

[stanz]

True, but it allows for a range of dating fossil material in igneous formations which are anywhere from 100,000 to 2,000,000 years old. There are problems such as the amount of argon and/or potassium present in volcanic rock and also, the material can only be dated to as far back as the last molten period. But,as a means of estimating relative age of fossils, it is a generally dependable method- - -plus or minus the fluctuations from one lab to another.

[clamper1797]

Thanks for those words ... I'm not sure of your point ... but that's ok. I still liked those verses. What I mostly liked about them was that there was very little .. "do as I say or believe in me or else" tripe in them. The stuff that Khepra and L Christian sent me was full of threats and extortion. In the verses you sent me the theme was "straw" and straw appeared in pretty much each verse. In the verses that Khepra and L.Christian sent, the two words that constantly appeared were "death" and "offend /offense". See the difference ????

[RaceBannon]

It still does not explain how fresh magma, cooled off enough to touch and get in the lab, shows ages of thousands of years.

[stanz]

That's a good question. I wish I had time to sit down and research things like that. Unfortunately, I'm doomed to spend most of my days researching legal fees here....if I had my life to live over.........