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Saturday, June 03, 2006

Coulter's New Book get's Evolution all Wrong

(Keywords: , , , whacko 's an ary scientist now)

WorldNetDaily.com has a typically fawning article about Ann Coulter's new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. In an article titled, Coulter exposes liberals' 'Godless religion': New book launching 6-6-06 her most controversial, they say, "Set to launch on 6-6-06, best-selling author Ann Coulter throws open the doors of the "Church of Liberalism" in her latest and most controversial book to date.

"'If a Martian landed in America and set out to determine the nation's official state religion, he would have to conclude it is liberalism, while Christianity and Judaism are prohibited by law,' Coulter writes in 'Godless: The Church of Liberalism.'"

Right... If he took a look at the president, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court and came to the conclusion that liberalism was the state religion, then this would be one seriously stupid martian. But here's the part I love - unintentional humor is the best kind:

In her new book, available now through the WND Book Service at a discount of 32 percent, Coulter takes on what she calls the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

For liberals, evolution is the touchstone that separates the enlightened from the benighted. But Coulter neatly reverses the pretense that liberals are rationalists guided by the ideals of free inquiry and the scientific method. She exposes the essential truth about Darwinian evolution that liberals refuse to confront: It is bogus science.

Writing with a keen appreciation for genuine science, Coulter reveals that the so-called "gaps" in the theory of evolution are all there is – Darwinism is nothing but a gap. After 150 years of dedicated searching into the fossil record, evolution's proponents have failed utterly to substantiate its claims. And a long line of supposed evidence, from the infamous Piltdown Man to the "evolving" peppered moths of England, has been exposed as hoaxes. Still, liberals treat those who question evolution as religious heretics and prohibit students from hearing about real science when it contradicts Darwinism. And these are the people who say they want to keep faith out of the classroom?


Geez, how uncritical can a review be when you're hawking the book in the middle of the review? And a 'keen appreciation for genuine science'? Yeah, Ann Coulter's a regular Stephen Hawking - excuse me while I go laugh for about a half an hour. One thing you need to use in science is logic - and Coulter isn't using it here. A series of hoaxes doesn't automatically mean the theory is wrong. There have been medical hoaxes. Does that mean the entire field of medical science is a scam?

When they say, "Still, liberals treat those who question evolution as religious heretics and prohibit students from hearing about real science when it contradicts Darwinism," I have to ask, what real science? What experiment can you conduct to show that god did it? None.

In fact, in a letter to the Kansas Board of Education, thirty-eight Nobel laureates wrote, "Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection. As the foundation of modern biology, its indispensable role has been further strengthened by the capacity to study DNA. In contrast, intelligent design is fundamentally unscientific; it cannot be tested as scientific theory because its central conclusion is based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent."

Of course, thirty-eight Nobel Prizewinning brains pale in comparison to the towering intellect of Ann freakin' Coulter. The problem with creationism and intelligent design is that there's nothing there. All these 'theories' contain are a laundry list of criticism regarding evolution - remove those and you have nothing. That's not a theory of anything. Again, the logic test is failed - even if they managed to concretely disprove evolutionary theory, it wouldn't do a damn thing to prove their central claim, that living things were designed by a deity, true.

But then, it is Ann Coulter we're talking about. By all accounts, she's an intelligent enough woman when it comes to creating a rightwing fantasyland were conservatives are the noble victims of lefty fascism. But when it comes to the subject of reality, the woman's about as sharp as a sack of wet feathers.

--Wisco

13 comments:

NewsBlog 5000 said...

She's got nothing on this woman.

Wisco said...

As an atheist, I couldn't care less what's in the bible.

You do get one thing right, though. When you say, "no one should be afraid to bring his "truth" to the table for examination," you describe creationists and IDers to a T.

There has been no peer reviewed publication of either hypothesis. Apparently, they're afraid of risking peer review, because they know it won't stand up.

Neither creationism nor ID have a scientific leg to stand on and, I'm sorry, only a prize chump would fall for either.

Anonymous said...

Sevi, great satire.

Wisco said...

Your "little, atheist colleague who wrote his response" is also the author of the article.

As far as this goes; "But as the mind matures, if it is honest within itself, it must admit to itself that the nuts and bolts explanation for life is as meaningfully dry as the Sahara during a global warming induced draught in a place that never had its own water to begin with." Who ever said that life had some inherent meaning?

I'm with Sartre here, we choose our own purpose through our actions. If you don't actually do anything positive, then your life is meaningless. If all you do is sit around and contemplate the almighty, then that's a wasted life.

If you try to improve this world and reduced the sum total of human misery, that is not a meaningless existence.

Wisco said...

One hell of a lot of nothing there, Sevi.

You wrote, "Okay, I apologize but I won't be able to write back anymore because I'm extremely busy. But there is a lot of evidence to support, scientifically, the "theory" that everything was purposefully created. Why don't you check it out more and not let your emotions or prejudicial thinking get in the way of finding something higher than chemicals and brain cells, though you'll need them to come along on the journey."

I'm not doing your legwork for you, fundie. You had plenty of opportunity to put some of this 'evidence' in that essay you just posted, but you didn't. You seem to believe that the more words you use, the truer something becomes.

But the truth is you're just burying bullshit in a pile of logorhea. There is no evidence at all that anything was created or designed. The reason you didn't post any is because you don't know of any.

Wisco said...

LOL! Check out my profile; "I'm an irritated guy in Wisconsin. Give me a chance - I'll irritate you, too..."

Mission accomplished there, huh?

Your comment is what's known in forums as a 'flounce'. Basically, it's a way to back out of an argument you can't logically support without admitting you're slinking off.

Again, you had the opportunity to present this 'evidence' you've been lying about and again you've failed to provide it.

Have fun with your delusion and don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

Scott Allan said...

I'm a conservative from Alabama who likes Ann Coulter, but I agree with you on this. Ms. Coulter is dimissing valid scientific evidence since it contradicts her personal beliefs just as she accuses liberals of the same thing. She offers no alternative to evolution based on science.

As I have written in my own blog, here and here:

1. The Catholic Church disagrees with her. Pope Pius XII in 1950 and Pope John Paul II have both ackowledged the validity of evolution. As Stephen Hawking pointed out, the Catholic Church condemned Galileo for his theory that the earth revolves around the sun since it contradicted their theology. Oops.

2.Scientists are great detectives. You don't need to see the pink elephant in the room to prove that it was there. In other words, you don't need to discover every missing link to prove evolution happened. Evidence of evolution is all around us. It's hard to miss.

Wisco said...

No. The bible says the earth is a circle. A circle is not the same as a sphere - what the bible describes is a dinner plate. This is why the idea of a flat earth persisted until the rennaissance.

The Church wasn't opposed to Galileo because he said the earth was round, they opposed him for saying the earth orbited the sun, which they saw as contradicting this:

"Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up
the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight
of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the
valley of Ajalon.

"And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had
avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day."

Wisco said...

Hebrew and aramaic are moot points, Sevi. The NT is written in greek - which makes a distinction between a circle and a sphere. It's common for primitive people to mistake the earth for a circle, since the horizon is a circle around you - it looks like a circle.

The event in the bible is completely impossible. Pope Pious saw that and concluded that Galileo, not the bible, was wrong. But the truth is, the bible must be wrong on this point. The sun can't stop in the sky unless the earth stops turning. And the earth can't stop turning without everything on it flying forward, carried by inertia, at just a little over a thousand miles an hour. It would be the end of life on earth.

There's no way for the bible to be correct on either point.

I'd point out that any explanation of how these verse could be true are inherently unbiblical. They're simply rationalizations used to get the bible to fit the facts.

Wisco said...

Boy, Sevi, the bar you set for the miraculous is pretty damned low.

I rest my case for atheism.

Wisco said...

Drug's'll wreck your life, Sevi.

Anonymous said...

Wisco, listen to the wise lady, your eternal life might depend upon what she reveals.

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don't believe, no proof is possible.”

Wisco said...

I'm not going to lose a lot of sleep over it, Jennifer. If God's a tyrant who demands we believe things that aren't true, then morality dictates that people oppose this god, no matter the consequence.

Luckily, that's not the case. I'm heading the same place you are -- after I'm dead I'll be in the same situation I was in before I was born.

I simply won't exist. I don't look at the roman empire with dread because I didn't exist then and I don't look at the post-Wisco world with dread for the same reason.