I first learned about the countless “factual errors, mistakes, and wrongs judgments” in Darwin’s Doubt by reading the Amazon book reviews posted by prominent scientists such as Christine Janis and David Levin. One reviewer supplemented his detailed book review summary with a chapter by chapter expanded review in the comments section. Those chapter-reviews included long lists of Meyer’s errors.To read about those errata, you can simply select the one-star review link on the Darwin’s Doubt webpage at Amazon and look at some of the longer reviews. I remember several of the comment sections under various reviews went on for many weeks and reached the 10,000 comment limit. (Various scientists critiqued the book and fielded the many questions and denials coming from Meyer’s defenders. The review section at Amazon used to be a very active discussion forum.)
I wish I had at hand a convenient link to Dr. Christine Janis’ list of Darwin’s Doubt errors of fact. She’s a comparative vertebrate anatomist and paleontologist and co-author of one of the most popular comparative anatomy textbooks used by universities all over the world.
Hmm. I could put stock in the writings of Stephen Meyer, a philosopher and historian with degrees in physics—or I could consider what accomplished Ph.D. biologists, paleontologists, and anatomists have to say about evolutionary processes.
Because I find peer-reviewed science the safer bet, I’m going to look to the actual experts to educate me on these topics.
POSTSCRIPT: I suppose this thread is starting to head into “piling on” territory—but that is how piles and piles of compelling evidence tend to work. Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt has been out for many years now and it was a complete failure at presenting any evidence or analysis that made any sort of dent in the massive evidence which supports our understanding of evolutionary processes. Meyer writes books for the general public because he knows that he can’t make a competent case for his yet to be adequately defined “ID theory” that could ever pass editorial peer-review and get published in any well-regarded academic journal. (Of course, the Discovery Institute has long promoted various legislative strategies—such as “academic freedom” state laws—in hopes of achieving by political means with the general public what they can’t achieve in the rough-and-tumble, evidence-based world of scientific peer-review.)
You say: “If you are naive enough that you read only one side of the debate”
So go ahead and explain why the observations by Arthur Hunt and Nathan Lents regarding Behe’s recent book is wrong in the thread I linked to. No one from the ID camp has addressed it.
John Harshman’s linked article included this interesting item about Meyer’s misrepresentation of the evidence:
The Burgess bestiary. All about the Burgess Shale and, eventually, the Chengjiang fauna, interpreted as weird wonders with no relatives. Hallucigenia, for example, is considered a bizarre, one-of-a-kind monster, which was certainly Conway Morris’s original notion; but that changed, and now we know it’s connected to a number of other Cambrian fossils and to modern onychophorans.
This “one-of-a-kind monster” argument reminds me of a classic anti-evolution Young Earth Creationist argument (such as by Ray Comfort, Kent Hovind, and the late Henry Morris) which goes something like this: “The duck-billed platypus is yet another proof that the Creator didn’t use evolution to create anything. This unique animal has a hodge-podge of anatomical features taken randomly from a variety of unrelated creatures. It has the bill of a duck, the tail of a beaver, the feet of an otter, the venom of a snake, the electroreception location abilities of some fish, and the milk-production and fur of a mammal. The platypus continues to mock evolutionists!” Uninformed audiences absolutely love that one. Applause often follows.
Yes. Instead of addressing those long lists of errata which biologists have compiled in response to Meyer’s book, he repeats so many of those errors in later publications and in his presentations to audiences. If Meyer were correct in his arguments, he would be able to publish thorough point-by-point rebuttals to his critics—but instead he doubles down on the philosophical and semi-veiled theological rhetoric and focuses on non-scientists who have no knowledge-based for seeing through his fog. He does understand his lay audience well. They don’t care about the biological details because most of the science goes right over their heads any way. (Sadly, much of the evidence flies over Meyer’s head as well.)
This dodging of the evidence and critical reviews was also among the reasons why I left the anti-evolution “creation science” community long ago. I was frustrated that activist speakers and authors like Duane Gish would get solidly rebuked for scientific errors and misrepresentations (and sometimes he would even promise to correct them in a future edition of his book) but he somehow managed to repeat the very same errors at the next week’s conference or church.
What experiments do they need funding for? Could you describe the experiments ID scientists would do in order to produce positive evidence for ID? As far as I am aware, no ID scientist has ever submitted an ID grant to any of the big government funding agencies (e.g. NIH, NSF).
You can’t complain about not getting government funding if you never apply for it.
The Discovery Institute, for example, has had a multi-million dollar annual budget for many years now, very generous funding which many modestly paid professors and post-doc scientists at various universities can only dream about! Even so, can you name even one scientific discovery coming from the Discovery Institute’s research—or even a single ground-breaking peer-reviewed journal article?
This “The ID community would have published significant discoveries by now if only we had access to more grant money” is as traditional and as lame of an argument as the “evolution theory is going to collapse any day now” and the “scientists are abandoning evolution in droves” tropes.
annual budget varies from 3 to 5 million USA dollars, which is a drop, in comparison government funded research institutions and not to say universities
