Here's some happy news for all you warriors against creationism: Mark Isaak's Counter-Creationism Handbook(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), that wonderfully indispensable and entirely portable version of the Index to Creationist Claims, can now be purchased in paperback for less than $15. It was previously only available in a rather pricey but but extremely well bound edition. Next time you attend a talk by Ken Ham or Duane Gish or any of the common-as-dirt wandering creationists (or Kent Hovind, once they let him out of jail*), you'll want a copy of this with you—teach them to fear the power of well-referenced and clear answers to their crazy objections.
*Say, do you think we ought to take up a collection and buy a copy for the prison library?
We should definitely send one to the prison library with whole bunch of good reading.
Where do we send our $$$? ;-)
Is it going to be avaiable in the UK by any chance ? I’ve checked Amazon.co.uk. Unfortunately it’s not there.
I think I’ll take up a collection at my church, buy some copies, and donate them to Dover High School.
No, mark, see, in order to get into the full spirit of it, you have to: - Make a meandering statement about how people can give if they want, but it’s no big deal if they don’t, because after all, it isn’t an official collection. - Give the money to your father, who will then write a check for the order, making him simultaneously the source and not the source of the books (depending on which is more convenient at the time) - And most importantly, deny all knowledge of the process.
After all, if they can do it and try to get away with it, why shouldn’t we?
It does appear on Amazon UK for me - try searching for “Mark Isaak” and it’ll come up.
It’s a shame that this really is nothing more than a paper version of the TalkOrigins archive. As useful as that is, I would have liked to see some of the referenced papers discussed in more detail. Just printing the URL isn’t much help; if I were sat in front of a computer with an internet connection I wouldn’t need the book in the first place.
Thanks Matthew. I’ll try that. It really is an excellent piece of work.
A book version of TalkOrigins? Egads, the online version is dreadful enough.
Some interesting responses from those wacky Creationists:
http://creationwiki.org/Index_to_Cr[…]onist_Claims
What’s interesting about them? It’s the same old denial of reality. It’s hard to take someone seriously when they say things like this:
The “Index to Creationist Claims” page on Talk Origins seems to be updated frequently. Why hasn’t the “Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics” page been updated since 2003? Is it perhaps because the scientific evidence hasn’t been very favorable for the “shared errors” argument? I take a stab at the issue in the following essay. Since my position is pro-ID, I suspect the essay will go over like a lead balloon in this forum, but here goes:
http://www.geocities.com/wade_schau[…]ing_Tide.pdf
For the interest of PT’s audience, a piece from today’s Guardian: Richard Buggs: Intelligent design is a science, not a faith.
The only new twist that distinguishes it about standard creationist letters is that, Mr Buggs readily refers to his publications to claim some authority in talking about Darwin and evolution.
I just bumped into this:
Debate on Evolution and Intelligent Design - Lewis Wolpert vs Steve Fuller at Royal Hollaway University of London on 21st Feb
Wade Schauer:
There’s nothing in your article that is inconsistent with evolutionary theory, and there is no evidence that there was an intelligent designer designing all these organisms.
Heh, for a second there I thought Fuller was gonna debate David Wolpert, of “No Free Lunch” and “Jello” fame.
But this is gonna be very cool nonetheless.
The evidence presented in the anti-“Junk DNA” portion of my essay does severely weaken some of the main “evidences for evolution”. For example, in the “Index to Creationist Claims” we find the following:
There is now abundant evidence that many ERVs are not “parasites” - they serve functional roles in humans and the same roles in chimps. Therefor, common descent is not the only explanation for shared ERVs between species, common design is equally valid. http://www.geocities.com/wade_schau[…]ing_Tide.pdf
Wade, you have to start making specific predictions of what is to be discovered, and be more accurate than those predictions made re evolution, if you wish to be taken seriously. After-the-fact handwaving doesn’t count, no matter how persuasive it might sound to those who already agree with you.
Back in 1999 when Richard Dawkins estimated that only 2% of the human genome was used, many ID proponents instead “predicted” that much of what was once considered junk would be found to be functional based upon the design argument. http://www.researchintelligentdesig[…]iki/Junk_DNA
Wade, I’m not buying it. Cite your source, and give us direct quotes, with appropriate context. What did Richard Dawkins really say?
OK - here you go:
And you will see from the information I list in my essay that he was wrong about tandem repeats and about the amount of the human genome that is used. http://www.geocities.com/wade_schau[…]ing_Tide.pdf
Update