Thursday, October 27, 2005

Argumentum ad frothing fit

"By their fruits ye shall know them."

If you want to know whether some movement or belief system is fair or foul, look at what it produces. If it yields good fruit, it's a good tree; if it yields bad fruit, it's a bad tree.

Here's an example of a very bad fruit.

"Dr." Joseph mastrpaolo [sic] writes a screed the likes of which must have gotten flecks of foam all over his monitor. It is one long argument by assertion – indeed, argument by rant.

It leads off with a real winner:

The implosion of Greek civilization, the most brilliant civilization in history, was caused by the atheism of evolution.

I had no idea Darwin was that old.

I suspect the good "Doctor"'s mind is filled to overflowing with his own unique definition of the word "evolution". I'm not sure what this definition may be, but whatever it is, he's certainly full of it.

And it gets worse.

...continued in full post...

Darwin based evolution on the inheritability of somatic changes that had been discredited scientifically half a century before, and by casual observation more than 4,000 years before.

He seems to be asserting that somatic changes are not inherited. It would seem that offspring don't resemble their parents, or at least, if they do, it's not the result of any form of inheritance. It must be a coincidence.

The next paragraph in the "Doctor"'s piece is worth reproducing in its entirety:

The forged Protamoeba primitiva, the alleged missing-link cell, and the plagiarized then forged embryo drawings that alleged evolutionary recapitulation, and the forged industrial melanism, and the forged molecular clock, and the fraudulent Stanley Miller experiment, and the plagiarized then forged skeletal evidence of ape to man, and the forged Piltdown man, and the forged Nebraska man, and the forged Pekin man, and the travesty of exhibiting an African pygmy in the Monkey House of the Bronx Zoo as the missing link, and the fact that Oxnard in 1975 and Mastropaolo in 2002 proved that all ape-men must be frauds or forgeries, and the fact that Francesco Redi in 1665 and Louis Pasteur in 1864 and John Tyndall in 1877 disproved evolution with experiments that have never been overturned.

Quick: What's the main verb in this sentence?

What we seem to have here is an attempt at the Gish Gallop. In "debates", Duane Gish uses a technique of listing "problems" one after the other. A skilled debater, Gish can list a dozen "problems" with evolution in under a minute, and each one requires at least twenty minutes to explain why it's not really a problem after all.

Of course, the Gish Gallop works best in an oral format where time constraints are severe. In a written forum with ample room for replies and rebuttals, it fails miserably.

"Dr." mastropaolo [sic] lists sixteen items in the sentence fragment above. For ease of reference, I'll separate them out"

Amoeba primitiva
No trace of this turned up on a Google search. "Dr." mastropaolo [sic] has no references in his rant, so I have no idea what he's referring to.
Embryo drawings
Presumably Haeckel's drawings, and presumably from Wells, Icons of Evolution. A couple of points about the "forgeries": Evolutionary theory is not founded on Haeckel's observations or theories. Haeckel's work was discredited in the 19th century, and has not been relevant to biology since the rediscovery of Mendel's laws of genetics.
The similarities between vertebrate embryos are real. We must distinguish between observations of those similarities and hypotheses about their causes.
A neat article can be found here
Industrial melanism
More from Wells. The thing is, when pollution was killing off lichen and turning trees dark, the proportion of melanistic moths in the peppered moth population increased. When pollution controls were implemented, and the trees returned to their lighter color, the proportion decreased again. This is historical fact. Natural selection is one explanation, and critics have offered no other one.
For reference, I'm just going to link to this article on industrial melanism in peppered moths.
The molecular clock
Again, from Wells' book. You might want to compare Wells' treatment with what real scientists do. Here's a link to that article.
The Stanley Miller experiment
Presumably the Miller-Urey experiment. Another topic in Wells' book.
First and foremost: it's grossly deceptive to call the experiment "forged". The experiment was run, and the results were as reported. Period. What's more, anyone reading is free to look it up, build a similar apparatus, run the experiment, and analyze the results. You'll find similar chemicals in the flask.
Wells misleads by leaving out a huge body of scientific data, and also by misrepresenting the significance of the experiment. The main point of the experiment was that amino acids and other "building blocks" of life would form from relatively simple precursors, with the application of pretty basic forms of energy such as electric sparks (lightning) or UV radiation. In particular, their production did not depend on the application of any intelligence, or any sort of vital force unique to living things.
Further reading.
Peking man
Um... What about it? (Here's where citing reference would have been helpful.) (A real doctor would know about citing references.)
Piltdown man
This was a hoax. It was uncovered by scientists, not by creationists, and is not used as evidence for evolution in any textbook.
Nebraska man
More of an argument than a hoax. Teeth from the pig family can be confusingly similar to primate teeth. Eventually, the argument was settled in favor of the tooth belonging to a peccary.
"The travesty of exhibiting an African pygmy in the Monkey House"
I'd like to see more context here. I have no idea what he's referring to.
Oxnard, Mastropaolo, Redi, Pasteur, and Tyndall
I'd like to see much more specific citations on all of these. I have a feeling they are either misprepresented or (in a couple of cases) misrepresenting.

One final quote from the rant:

Falsus in uno falsus in omnibus.

OK, but that doesn't bode well for his thesis.

1 comment:

Norm Weatherby said...

"The implosion of Greek civilization, the most brilliant civilization in history, was caused by the atheism of evolution." Duhh!
Obviously a nut case. I have people who send me stuff like that. It gives me a headache. Sometimes the pain is a bit lower. -Quantumthought