Evolution (Evolution)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Sunday, February 08, 2009, 19:36 (5765 days ago) @ David Turell

Christopher Booker is a journalist who specialises in being sceptical or ornery about scientific controversies: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Booker - Quote from wikipedia:
Via his long-running column in the UK's Sunday Telegraph, Booker has claimed that man-made global warming was "disproved" in 2008[1], that white asbestos is "chemically identical to talcum powder" and poses a "non-existent risk" to human health[2], that "scientific evidence to support [the] belief that inhaling other people's smoke causes cancer simply does not exist"[3] and that there is "no proof that BSE causes CJD in humans"[4]. He has also defended the theory of Intelligent Design, maintaining that Darwinians "rest their case on nothing more than blind faith and unexamined a priori assumptions".[5] - DT writes: "The above column from the UK should be carefully read and absorbed." - I would say it should be treated as the ignorant rambling, and deliberate stirring up of controversy, that it probably is. - DT asks: "Shocked at those of us who doubt global warming?" - No. I've long been undecided on these issues, but I'm more persuaded by the recent PCCC reports (just as David Attenborough has been). But in any case "Global Warming" is an oversimplified statement of the problem, and a misleading label, deliberately seized upon by controversialists, of which I fear DT is becoming one. "Climate Change" is a better term, and covers the study of climate over millennia, during which there have been enormous changes, ice ages, magnetic reversals, tectonic plate movements, Milankovitch cycles, etc. etc. - DT writes: "Only intellectual lemmings let their opinions be led around by their nose in so-called majority opinions in newsprint, radio and TV. True scientific established results are not found by a vote of a majority. Science as a religion is 'scientism'." - I've recently been reading "Flat Earth: The History of an Infamous Idea" by Christine Garwood: - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flat-Earth-History-Infamous-Idea/dp/140504702X - And exactly these kinds of arguments were used by the leading Flat Earther, "Parallax" (Samuel Birley Rowbotham) to promote his "Zetetic Astronomy". - http://www.sacred-texts.com/earth/za/index.htm - "Zetetic" doesn't mean "Flat Earth" it means "Sceptical", "Investigative", "Doubting", meaning believing the evidence of your own eyes and not being taken in by those scientific frauds like the Astromomer Royal (George Biddell Airey at the time) and Alfred Russel Wallace (who took up a wager placed by one of Parallax's followers, but lived to regret it). - DT concludes: "Darwinism is scientism." Like "Global Warming" the term "Darwinism" is a simplistic term used by propagandists, or has so become. The scientific subject is "Biological Evolution" to which Charles Darwin was a just one of the major contributors, not the fount of all wisdom. Parallax attacked "Newtonianism" in the same way.

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GPJ