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"[American scientists]...announced yesterday that Ardi’s discovery proves that humans did not evolve from ancestors that resemble chimpanzees, which refutes the longstanding assumption that humans evolved from monkeys.”Teh stupid burns, as the pro-science blogosphere jargon goes. It's one of those cases of twisted logic that makes you head spin when trying to make sense of it.
The winner is Don McLeroy, who has just been ousted from the Texas Board of Education (*cheers*). Deservedly. Though Ray Comfort could also easily have won, for distributing his reprint of The Origin with his own foreword.
Heh, I remember that Al Jazeera fubar... One might call it a meta-strawman:
ReplyDeleteFirst, construct a strawman of your opponent (humans evolved from monkeys). Criticize this mercilessly as per the usual strawman technique.
Second, wait for your opponent to say something which proves that your strawman portrayal of them is inaccurate. But don't panic! Simply point out that they have now contradicted themselves by failing to be strawmanny enough.
Example: I heard that all evolutionary biologists are Satanists. However, I have never seen Bjorn encouraging Satan worship. Therefore, I can safely conclude that not only is Bjorn a Satanist, but he is also very lazy about religious observances!
Man, this is awesome...
Awesome and brilliant - if your audience are religious ditto-heads.
ReplyDeleteHey Bjorn,
ReplyDeleteDid you ever read any of that forward by Comfort? Absolute propaganda.
Unfortunately, no. Never got the chance, though I'm sure there is an online pdf somewhere. Would have liked a copy for my shelf.
ReplyDeleteSo, is there anything novel in the foreword, at least? I mean, he's up for that, like with the banana-argument, which was genuinely fabulous.
Well, he provides a really shitty history of Darwin, drops in some quotes from Origin of Species, and then launches into Hitler quotes. It's a real piece of work. You have to see it to believe it...kinda like the Banana Theory thing.
ReplyDeleteDo you think it would convert any of those who haven't yet made up their mind?
ReplyDeleteWell...I guess it could convince someone who didn't take the time to look any further. Kinda like the people who felt that the Ben Stein film was convincing. This "forward" by Comfort was nothing more than a really bad hit piece on Darwin--and it suffers (as usual) from a really faulty understanding of history--and evolutionary theory. There are some big leaps of logic; he basically links Darwin directly to Hitler, and then concludes that evolution is evil.
ReplyDelete