What choice do I have? You've laid down the gauntlet.... I must confess that I, like Fred, have very little knowledge of the subject he has chosen to discuss. I suspect I know a little more than he, but comparisons between him and me on that point are about as meaningful is comparisons of our relative height against the standard of a Great Sequoia. In other words, neither of us knows squat next to what there is to be known. Yet, it is one thing to look up at the grandeur of the object in innocent ignorance. It's quite another thing, while ignorant, to stand on a nearby stump and make proclamations about how small the object really is, despite what the measuring tape says.

I don't know Fred's motives. Only he knows his own heart. He says that it isn't about advancing a religious view (but even the most transparent evangelists of his class try to adopt the mantle of "science" for their reasoning). Perhaps he's telling the truth about his motives... perhaps he's merely stroking his own ego (I know some of the evangelists have a similar motive). I do know that he seems to enjoy shedding the light of his "questions" on the twigs and root tendrils still hidden from science's view in hopes of distracting attention from the trunk and branches of evolutionary knowledge that are in plain view. So, while he quizzes us on the precise lineage of the giraffe neck, he ignores the overwhelming fossil evidence of such transitions as that from land animal to whale, that from reptile to mammal, from dinosaur to bird, from ape to human, and countless in between. While he shines light on scientists' admittedly murky view of the chemical origins of life, he ignores the ubiquitous genetic evidence of universal common descent. While he makes propabalistic arguments that even he admits are unsound, he ignores the variety of hypotheses currently being explored concerning the early history of life and the chemistry of RNA and its' possible precursors.
Most appalling, he claims that only those who work in the life sciences are "doctrinaire" about theories under attack from creationists, when a look around at anyone from geologist Glenn Morton to cosmologist Stephen Weinberg has leant their voice to defending science from the peddlers of snake oil who attack it with slick words and no evidence, and he ignores the fact that most of the people who work in fields that he, from the summit of his tree-stump, has declared "true" science are in full agreement, as far as their understanding of the field allows, as those in the class Fred calls "doctrinaire."
Perhaps Fred had his ego bruised in an internet debate against science, and now he's salving it by spitting his venom. Personally, I take him no more seriously than the youth who carves a profanity in the base of the sequoia. In the end, it isn't the dignity of the tree that suffers.

Posted by smijer on March 8, 2005 08:17 PM Link to comment

I'm glad you read it.

I get a kick out of Fred Reed and I cannot for the life of me imagine him getting his ego bruised.

I just think he likes to ask questions that have no answers and see how people respond. You can tell a lot about a person by how they answer the unanswerable.

It seems to me that Fred considers himself to be one of those "defending science from the peddlers of snake oil who attack it with slick words and no evidence". I know the evolution argument can get quite heated between those who say they understand it. I am so ignorant on the subject that for me it is simply entertainment.

It is like watching Christians argue about rapture, pre-tribulation or post-tribulation. Everybody gets worked up and all I see is a dog chasing its tail.

But it's fun to watch.

Posted by Buck on March 8, 2005 09:50 PM Link to comment