Helpful Score: 2
It is difficult to say that the quote I have chosen is the most ignorant but it is certainly in the running:
"Liberals' creation myth is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor. It's a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientist's laboratory or the fossil record--and that's after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn't still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God."
I read a few of the chapters of this book this weekend and find it truly troubling to think that this is a national best seller. The chapters I read dealt with her ignorant views of science in which she utterly misunderstands and misrepresents science to push her political agenda. Despite having no scientific credentials or even basic understanding her tone is extremely arrogant. This is not a good start. For sure, science and politics do not go together and what is troubling is that the general public will believe what a lawyer (like Ann Coulter or Phillip Johnson) has to say about global warming and evolutionary theory. What drives me nuts about the extreme right is their incessant need to try and discredit evolutionary theory because they believe evolution is the root of all evils in society (like there wasn't crime, rape, etc. before Darwin and Wallace) and evolutionary theory is in direct conflict with a literal account of genesis and a 6000 year old earth. Coulter, because of her scientific ignorance, must rely on secondary sources (such as creationist/intelligent design popular books) instead of interpreting the primary literature (peer-reviewed scientific literature). She echoes the creationist/intelligent design crowd calling scientists "Darwinists" or "Darwiniacs" even though we are well beyond Darwin's mechanism for evolution being natural selection. She neglects to mention (because she is unaware) that modern molecular genetics, population genetics and genomics have shown that there are several equally if not more prominent evolutionary forces than natural selection and all mechanisms have been thoroughly verified. She uses the same creationist arguments that have been repeated ad nosium; basically there is nothing novel in her book regarding erroneous criticism of evolution. Most glaringly, she completely misunderstands the very goal of evolutionary biology and the nature of historical sciences. She repeats the creationist line that "Darwiniacs" fail to show the origins of life....but even Darwin said in the Origin of Species: "I must premise that I have nothing to do with the origin of the primary mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself." Darwin rightly recognized that this was beyond the scope of observable science at his time. This question will remain speculative no matter how plausible the biochemistry because the first cells did not leave a trace. Evolutionary theory is the basis of novel treatments of the AIDS virus as well as our understanding of antibiotic resistance in bacteria (which creationists will say is not evolution but "microevolution"). In her opening statement she suggests evolution is a tautology (while certainly not the first) due to the statement coined by Herbert Spencer "survival of the fittest". She and others declare this statement to be circular: rewritten "survival of the survivors". The faulty assumption is that fitness is not defined by any independent criterion other than survival. It turns out that fitness is expressed as survival but not defined by it. This statement can be reworded to reflect what Spencer and Darwin intended: `Enhanced reproduction and survival is a consequence of harboring beneficial traits' which is not tautological. Finally, it is absurd to say that evolutionary theory disproves God. We cannot disprove what we cannot observe; no scientific theory can. There is only a conflict with science and religion when one takes a literal interpretation of genesis and `calculate' the age of the earth based on the genealogies in the Old Testament. For those that take this view, this book will strengthen your worldview. For me, the bible is a book of faith not history. I am a scientist and have formally studied molecular biology, genetics, and evolutionary theory and nowhere in this study was my faith threatened. What concerns me is that a lawyer is distorting facts (surprise) to push her agenda while sadly many actually believe that what she is selling is accurate. One star.
"Liberals' creation myth is Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor. It's a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientist's laboratory or the fossil record--and that's after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn't still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God."
I read a few of the chapters of this book this weekend and find it truly troubling to think that this is a national best seller. The chapters I read dealt with her ignorant views of science in which she utterly misunderstands and misrepresents science to push her political agenda. Despite having no scientific credentials or even basic understanding her tone is extremely arrogant. This is not a good start. For sure, science and politics do not go together and what is troubling is that the general public will believe what a lawyer (like Ann Coulter or Phillip Johnson) has to say about global warming and evolutionary theory. What drives me nuts about the extreme right is their incessant need to try and discredit evolutionary theory because they believe evolution is the root of all evils in society (like there wasn't crime, rape, etc. before Darwin and Wallace) and evolutionary theory is in direct conflict with a literal account of genesis and a 6000 year old earth. Coulter, because of her scientific ignorance, must rely on secondary sources (such as creationist/intelligent design popular books) instead of interpreting the primary literature (peer-reviewed scientific literature). She echoes the creationist/intelligent design crowd calling scientists "Darwinists" or "Darwiniacs" even though we are well beyond Darwin's mechanism for evolution being natural selection. She neglects to mention (because she is unaware) that modern molecular genetics, population genetics and genomics have shown that there are several equally if not more prominent evolutionary forces than natural selection and all mechanisms have been thoroughly verified. She uses the same creationist arguments that have been repeated ad nosium; basically there is nothing novel in her book regarding erroneous criticism of evolution. Most glaringly, she completely misunderstands the very goal of evolutionary biology and the nature of historical sciences. She repeats the creationist line that "Darwiniacs" fail to show the origins of life....but even Darwin said in the Origin of Species: "I must premise that I have nothing to do with the origin of the primary mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself." Darwin rightly recognized that this was beyond the scope of observable science at his time. This question will remain speculative no matter how plausible the biochemistry because the first cells did not leave a trace. Evolutionary theory is the basis of novel treatments of the AIDS virus as well as our understanding of antibiotic resistance in bacteria (which creationists will say is not evolution but "microevolution"). In her opening statement she suggests evolution is a tautology (while certainly not the first) due to the statement coined by Herbert Spencer "survival of the fittest". She and others declare this statement to be circular: rewritten "survival of the survivors". The faulty assumption is that fitness is not defined by any independent criterion other than survival. It turns out that fitness is expressed as survival but not defined by it. This statement can be reworded to reflect what Spencer and Darwin intended: `Enhanced reproduction and survival is a consequence of harboring beneficial traits' which is not tautological. Finally, it is absurd to say that evolutionary theory disproves God. We cannot disprove what we cannot observe; no scientific theory can. There is only a conflict with science and religion when one takes a literal interpretation of genesis and `calculate' the age of the earth based on the genealogies in the Old Testament. For those that take this view, this book will strengthen your worldview. For me, the bible is a book of faith not history. I am a scientist and have formally studied molecular biology, genetics, and evolutionary theory and nowhere in this study was my faith threatened. What concerns me is that a lawyer is distorting facts (surprise) to push her agenda while sadly many actually believe that what she is selling is accurate. One star.
