As both of you will know by now, my next book, which I’m writing now, will be called The Beowulf Effect: Fossils, Evolution and the Human Condition. In it, I revisit some of the themes I first explored in my book In Search of Deep Time more than a decade ago, specifically, the common mistake made by evolutionary biologists in re-telling evolutionary events as a story, glossing over the many gaps in the tale. Cretins creationists have happily seized on some of the things I’ve said, quoting liberally out of context, as if I am exposing evolution as a cover-up, or that criticism of some of the great pedogogical clichés of evolution – in particular the canonical parade of primitive forms advancing inexorably to advancement – amounts to criticism of evolution itself.
The latest stream of feculent arse-dribble from Devotees of the Invisible Sky Fairy (oh my! I am beginning to sound like PZ Myers – perish the thought!) comes in response to a review I’ve written in Your Favorite Weekly Professional Science Magazine Beginning With N about an excellent book called The Fossil Chronicles by Dean Falk. My review starts in this fashion:
We have all seen the canonical parade of apes, each one becoming more human. We know that, as a depiction of evolution, this line-up is tosh. Yet we cling to it.
Well, hardly is the ink dry than various miasmic gobbets of effluent from various knuckle-shuffling bronze-agers eructate onto the surface. Here is Uncommon Descent on the subject, and, if you can bear it, something called God’s iPod. This example is only bearable because it’s in a foreign language.
In The Beowulf Effect I am devoting a whole chapter to a collection of cretinist howlers directed at In Search of Deep Time and my other writings, as a kind of public service, so that if they quote me out of context from other parts of the book, one can always point to a chapter they can call their own. If you find any, please do pass them on. I already have the perfect epigraph for the chapter heading:
There is no God (Psalms 14:1)
I close with something I saw recently on the interwebs. It’s probably not for family viewing.
Religion is like a penis.
If you have one, be proud of it.
But please don’t wave it about in public.
But hold! I see it’s almost time for Downton Abbey.
UPDATE: Here is an altogether more sensible view of Falk’s book and my review of it.
It’s pretty depressing to see the extent to which people will go to misquote and lie to try and make such claims. It’s one thing to see their pitiful websites, but quite another to see how they try to spin a scientist’s words to their own agenda. Quite appalling and very depressing.
What’s next, gravity?
The opposite of gravity is levity.
Or stick it where it is not wanted…
Indeed. The draft of this post had something of the sort, but I thought it inelegant.
Whatever the genus Politicians, these do the same and pay (very much) them enough for doing that.
Let’s try that again.
Politicians are masters ejaculating over honest people for their purposes so they keep their jobs and high salaries, it is a shame ……takings advantage of honest people trying to make things right.
Los religiososo hacen lo mismo, finalmente es solo busqueda de poder y status
I guess you can console yourself with the fact that getting misquoted on a website devoted to preaching propaganda to the converted is not going to make much difference – they’d still believe what they believe even if you had been quoted accurately.
Self-consolation is one thing, but there is a more serious issue here, especially in the colonies. Back in 2007 I had lunch with PZ Myers and Eugenie Scott, and I asked PZ exactly why he was so angry about this sort of thing. His reason was clear – if you admit to being an atheist in the U. S. and A., you can kiss goodbye to the thought of any elected office – and this in a country where there is a constitutional separation between church and state. These sites preach propaganda, and it’s doing real damage, not just to science, but to the entire system of government in the most powerful country on the planet.
At this same lunch I sighed and said that that creationists will always be with us, somewhat like herpes, and there isn’t much one can do about it, to which Eugenie said ‘that’s no reason not to practice safe sex’, by which I think she meant that one shouldn’t go out of one’s way to give them any ammo. But PZ agreed with me that one shouldn’t compromise the scientific statements one makes for fear that creationists will quote one out of context, for if you do, then they’ve won. Perhaps writing a chapter sending them up might help.
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