
David Kleinhofer: It is encouraging to know that although there is a cult of ignorant Darwinian atheists as arrogant in England as there is in the United States, acute ignorance finds the right response from the right-minded.
Why are Darwinians afraid to read a signature in a cell?
- David Kleinhofer.
It is encouraging to know that although there is a cult of ignorant, egotistical Darwinist atheists in England such as those in the United States, acute ignorance finds an appropriate response from the right-thinking and open-minded. Among the latter are atheists, but they have come to their unbelief through honest thinking rather than disrupting the mind due to loyalty to Darwinian belief.
"It is a detailed description of the problem of how life emerges from inanimate matter, something that must happen before the process of biological evolution can begin...Mayer is a Christian, but atheists and believers who believe that God does not interfere with the natural world, will benefit from his careful presentation of this damningly difficult problem."
Nagel’s review drew the attention of Darwinists, who made no effort even to pretend to have carried this 611-page book, let alone read a page of it. The University of Chicago biologist Jerry Quinn complained in his blog “Why Evolution is Real”2 that they should not have even allowed such an opinion to appear in the August columns of the Times Literary Supplement, saying, “It’s a detailed description?
Cowen then asked for help. Not only did he not read the book, but he ignored it as “religious speculation,” he asked for help: “Do any of you know about criticism of Meyer’s book written by scholars?
Quinn's help came later when British chemist Stephen Fletcher published a critical letter to the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, in which he linked Mayer's argument for faith to "gods, demons, goblins, and fairies", and recommended that readers learn about chemical evolution by reading about it elsewhere from an unmistakable scientific source, rather than from Mayer's book:
"Readers wishing to learn more about this subject are advised to keep their hard-earned money, leave Mayer's book, and read only the RNA world article on Wikipedia."
Nagel, in turn, responded with his own letter to the editor,4 and seemed to express doubts as to whether the chemist actually read the signature book in the cell before objecting to Nagel's flattery:
“Fletcher’s statement that it’s hard to imagine a worse book’ indicates that he’s read it, and if he’s read it, he should know that it includes a chapter on the RNA world’ that describes that hypothesis about the origin of DNA more comprehensively, at least, than the Wikipedia article he recommended. Mayer discussed this hypothesis and other suggestions about the chemical precursors of DNA, and discussed the idea that they all pose similar problems about how the process can begin.”
Nagel's letter appears along with another from another British chemist at the University of St Andrews, John C. Walton, who seems to have read the book due to describing it with a profile on the back cover as "fun". Walton answers in his letter: "It is a funny irony that although Fletcher harshly criticizes the students of religion for their belief in supernatural forces, he instead suggests these forces which are not the 'cursing world'!"
Do you notice the commonality in all this? It seems that everyone who hates Mayer’s book has not read it. We also have the complaint of the Darwinist atheist P.Z. Myers, a well-known biographer and blogger, who explains that he couldn’t read the book, which he calls “hatred” and “nonsense,” because he didn’t have to receive the free version he promised! But rest assured, I’ll be late in the mail.
Dr. Myers teaches at Morris on campus at the University of Minnesota, the renowned college of Harvard Morris, Minnesota. So when he takes up a book he hasn’t looked at, and calls it “ridiculous,” that view is certainly very important!
But let’s talk seriously, what is wrong with those who make a point about a book they’ve never read, or (as with Jerry Quinn) have only read one review?
Even for a much more telling writer such as Jonathan Derbyshire, who wrote in the New Statesman about Nagel's altercation in the Times Literary Supplement, he admits: "I have not read the book of Myer, and I am not qualified to evaluate Fletcher's claim that Nagel had grasped science in the wrong way." (6) We appreciate the honesty, but Derbyshire had to take the trouble to write Mayer's name correctly.
Unfortunately, neglect and misinformation are the hallmarks of Darwinists. By the way, legions of them have tried to flood Amazon’s signature book page with obscene “reviews,” trying once again to pretend they read one page, and then later trying to back up their false assessments by grouping them into email lists and pressing the “Yes” button to ask “Was this review helpful to you?” according to Amazon’s easy-to-use internal rules.
(1) The Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year 2009, November 25, 2009,
https://web.archive.org/.../the_tls/article6931364.ece, Last Accessed May 4, 2018.
(2) Jerry Coyne, Distinguished philosopher blurbs intelligent-design book, December 1, 2009, http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/.../distinguishe.../, Last Accessed May 4, 2018.
(3) Jerry Coyne, More on Nagel, Meyer, and the origin of life, December 2, 2009, https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/.../more-on.../, Last Accessed May 4, 2018.
(4) The Times Literary Supplement, TLS Letters 09/12/09: The 'prebiotic soup', Humanities funding, Immensely learned, etc, December 9, 2009, https://web.archive.org/.../the_tls/article6950227.ece, Last Accessed May, 4, 2018.
(5) PZ Myers, You know it’s a stinker when they’re afraid of the reviewers, 11 December 2009, https://freethoughtblogs.com/.../you-know-its-a-stinker.../, Last Accessed May 4, 2018.
(6) Jonathan Derbyshire, A theory of everything? Why you don't have to be a theist to think physics can't explain it all, New Statesman, 16 Dec 2009
https://www.newstatesman.com/.../nagel-fletcher-everything, Last Accessed May 4, 2018.
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Source: Published on Facebook's "Braheen Center" page
https://www.facebook.com/braheen.org/posts/pfbid02i86i7EL6CLYGc1J4tS9fq2osEtggJ7FJHLSZa3Xx5iLDvFU8Q6Jz3xwqGresf8Pwl
