John Martindale's Reviews > The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies Charles Darwin
The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies Charles Darwin
by Benjamin Wiker
by Benjamin Wiker
John Martindale's review
bookshelves: biography, science, audiobook
Nov 11, 11
bookshelves: biography, science, audiobook
Read in November, 2011
Despite the title, I thought the book really balanced. It is written by an evolutionist whose goal is to not discredit Darwin's theory, but just to give an accurate biography of the man. Because Darwin is the secular saint, Wiker did not really feel there was much out there that was objective. So he attempts to show Darwin's strengths and weaknesses and complexities. What was most interesting to me was how Charles Darwin's grandfather enthusiastically believed in evolution and Charles came from a family line of secularist, so Darwin went out looking for evidence to prove what He assumed before hand was true, it was not like he stumped upon the facts which were so overwhelming that he gave in, lost his faith and surrendered to the truth of science. All of this fits with my notion of the power of presuppositions, Darwin wanted the theory to be true, it had to be true, and this colors his perception of things. Those after him have come from the standpoint that it has to be true, for there is no alternatives, they are committed to it with a religious zeal and devotion, which makes them as acceptable to BS as religious people are. Like Bill Bryson wrote that (I am paraphrasing) "we typically don't think you can get something from nothing, but since there was nothing, and now we have a universe, we have proof that it can happen" and Quinton Smith wrote "the most reasonable thing to believe is that everything came from nothing, by nothing and for nothing" and this kind of nonsense (I say nonsense, in that it is non-sense, something beyond our senses) is embraced by scientist, who don't seem to even pause to reflect how unscientific such a conclusion is. But since it HAD to happen that way, well, it happened. Sorry but I don't have enough faith to believe the laws of nature just accidentally popped in existence, and that nothingness just randomly produced an explosion that produced a finely tuned universe upon which life somehow accidentally got this near magical power to adapt and evolve and now waala I am writing this review. To believe this kind of thing is not science. So yeah, one point that Wiker makes towards the end of the book, is that embracing darwin's theory of evolution is different from embracing Darwinism, which in essence is to believe everything HAD to come from nothing, by nothing and for nothing, which is an unprovable, non-scientific philosophical assumption which sadly is proudly paraded around as fact, by those who think themselves men of reason and not of faith. Oh how gullible to wild speculation and myths the atheist are, how blind they are to absurdities, oh how they have a religious zeal, a a childlike faith and a dogmatic confidence. Oh how they create an us vs. them mentality, All that they condemn the religious for, they practice. They try to remove the speck from our eye, while all the while they have a plank in their own eye.
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