Hi Nic, you ask: "... is it not a good thing that this kind of book is written,it just helps validate the truth further. I often find that reading counter aruguments to any subject matter helps clarify the truth..or are we saying that the first book written on any subject should be taken as the truth."
The sounds terribly reasonable. It sounds all the more reasonable when one bears in mind that certain malicious sources have spread the rumour that I for example tend to be argumentative instead of accepting rival opinions as soon as they are branded as authoritative.
Your point is in essence reasonable, and would in fact have been unassailable 150, or possibly even 100 years ago. However, in those days a great deal was not known, that nowadays is commonplace, or should be. It would have been meritorious if it had been calculated to if such a book were to stimulate even one reader in a hundred to study the subject to the point where he could assess the relative merits of the matter. But it does not. Instead every book of that type that I have seen propagates lies, disinformation, illogic, and dyseducation. They are malicious, parasitic, counter-scientific, and pernicious. A lot are plain stupid as well; unbelievably so. And why stupid? Because it does not matter how stupid the arguments you fling at the converted; they will kill to support anything the Jim Browns of their flock fling at them.
I wonder, can anyone who reads this trace a book for me (I have lost the reference) that was co-authored by a woman whose name escapes me, some university in the American bible belt I think, but am unsure. The book took the form of a creationist's glossary or the like. In it she explained that the information content of text was zero if the text was random, and at a maximum when the randomness was at a minimum. She illustrated this with an actual program using the RND function. It was such a dramatic example of illiteracy in matters of not only biology, but information theory as well, that I should like to find it again, if only as a horrible example.
Now, Nicolas, you might argue that such stimuli cannot be all bad. But just how much stimulus does it take to pay for the educational damage? I don't know whether you have children, or if not whether you take the importance of education seriously (you give me the impression that you would take it seriously, being, as you apparently are, willing to read such books and question the subject matter) but I for one regard deliberate or negligent dyseducation as criminal. You might find it ironic that I reacted with no more than occasional irritation when my own children encountered misinformation, but they knew enough and understood enough to dissect illogic, and if necessary, to argue it out in the family, and to ask for information when they were confronted with flatly nonsensical allegations of fact such as: "Do you realise that far more biologists do not believe in evolution than accept the theory?"
That little gem came from a maverick geologist in a university where one of the zoologists and one of the geneticists happened to be "born-again" disbelievers in any field of study that they perceived to be counter-biblical. No doubt you will not be surprised to hear my highly unprofessional assessment that in each case the underlying problem was emotional, as it often is in such cases, when money is not the driving motive.
In the university in question the general attitude is reasonable and liberal, but it does serve a population in which rejection of scientific facts and scientific principles in favour of invalid theology is quite common.
Now, the likes of Pete and Stephen I am sure, will share some of my attitudes towards the indication of their own children, with confidence in their good sense. However I am equally sure that they will realise that largely as a result of their own efforts in family education, their children are reasonably inoculated against such problems. (Perfect protection does not exist! To bad!)
However I invite them (and anyone else reading this) to imagine the emotional traumas of youngsters doing say, biochemistry or biology, who never had encountered any sound education in Darwinism, which philosophically speaking is as near as one comes to a coherent framework for modern biology, who for the first time in counter those concepts after they have left school, and now have to reconcile their faith and worldview with abominations in the eyes of their family and religious community. So far so bad. And then they encounter people in positions of authority who use specious and often dishonest arguments (I could give you chapter and verse out of books in my possession, but you can find enough of your own online or in that book in your possession, without my having to fuel my nausea) to undo their painful progress. I have seen some of the results, and they were not even slightly funny.
Not everyone agrees with that last assessment. Some say that such children should not have been in such courses anyway, and if they were, it was high time that they said goodbye to their intellectual virginity so to speak, and that if they could not handle it, they should get back to Sunday school. What do you think? Before answering, remember that we are talking about genuine pain, genuine harm, and in some cases a genuine and expensive loss of talent.
You might well argue that similar attacks on physics would not work; anyone can see that a ball falls if dropped. Why should biology receive special treatment if biologists cannot produce clear simple and incontrovertible demonstrations to crush doubters? Well actually it is not as simple as that. Argument against simple physics are commonplace and tedious, as any physicist can tell you; scientifically illiterate argument against thermodynamics, elementary Newtonian mechanics, and heaven help us, shelves and bushels against Einsteinian theory. The more bankrupt the argument, the more cocksure and strident the critic.
As for chemistry and nutrition...!
And biology? You have just read that book, I take it? Need I elaborate? If you found a single argument therein, that you think deserves a serious rebuttal, then try us on it. As a personal favour, I would be grateful if you tried to find something at least slightly substantial; my eyes glaze over at the standard fare.
Now, in modern education the sheer volume of what a child should learn is more than could reasonably be expected, and much more than most can afford or are willing to. The sophistication required to learn it with a critical and synthetic attitude is downright rare. To suggest that in technical fields one should routinely invest more than the intrinsically critical techniques of experimental science, is in most cases downright unrealistic.
To put up with bad faith and parasitism as well is too much, say I. Once is hilarious; twice is funny, three times is tedious, and repeatedly is enemy action.
Am I getting through?
