Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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53 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Creation Scientists Answer Nothing, October 9, 2006
Even by the stunted standards of 'creation science' Duane Gish stands out as a cornucopia of cluelessness unconstrained by any philosophical, intellectual, or ethical criteria. Gish's pseudoscientific sophistry and staccato stupidity during debates is universally derided as the 'Gish gallop.' His farcical fire, ready, aim approach to logic delivers one non-sequitur after another - a stock-in-tirade that also applies to "Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics."
Although Gish didn't invent the lying for Jesus genre he successfully marketed it to current Young Earth Creationists. Luther would be proud of them all:
"What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church - a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them."
- Martin Luther
This obscurationist opus beats stables of dead horses in a vain attempt to refute mainstream science. My personal favorite is Gish's through misunderstanding and misapplication of thermodynamics in general, and the second law in particular, as he attempts to prove (by his bonsai-brain standards anyway) that evolution is impossible.
Ilya Prigogine (a reality-based scientist) won the Nobel prize in 1977 for his work on the thermodynamics of nonequilibrium systems. Part of this research included publication of an article explaining how nonequilibrium thermodynamics allows life to originate and increase its state of order (complexity) in spite of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics (Prigogine 1972).
The second law states that the ability of energy to do useful work in a closed system decreases over time as energy is converted into forms that are unavailable for use. This is the concept of entropy - an increase in disorder. Creationist cretins superficially interpret this to mean that complex living systems could never evolve from simpler forms because "things run down rather than build up." However Prigogine irrefutably demonstrated that living entities are open systems far from a state of equilibrium. They acquire energy from the sun or other sources and can locally decrease entropy (increase in order and complexity) without violating the second law. In a very fundamental sense Prigogine proved that the second law, and entropy, are essential to the origin of life and evolution!
Gish plays a amateurish shell-game with the facts by claiming that Prigogine said the origin of life is virtually impossible because of the second law of thermodynamics. Prigogine's words were deceptively quote mined from the beginning of his 1972 article where he summarized the fallacious argument that he spent the next several pages demolishing. Perhaps a lazy Gish only read the first page. He also implies that Prigogine is not competent to theorize on the origin of life claiming that he "hasn't spent any time in the laboratory in years." Gish writes:
"Prigogine's theoretical ideas are buttressed with a large amount of complicated mathematics which few biochemists and molecular biologists can understand, but it all does look deliciously scientific. Since Prigogine's speculations lend comfort to his fellow evolutionists among the biochemists and molecular biologists, they are only too eager to bow to the authority of this Nobel Prize winner." (pp. 186-187)
A logical inference from this slanderous statement is that Gish, a biochemist who never seen the inside of a laboratory in years, does not understand the significance and profound importance of Prigogine's mathematics. Unwilling to admit this, he casts an aspersion on the entire scientific community by attributing lemming-like obeisance to a Nobel prize winner. All of this dirty dish from Gish - who couldn't win a third place prize at a 'homeskhool sceince fayre.'
Gish's tenuous grasp of reality was cruelly confirmed years ago, when he was invited along with Henry Morris (the founding fraud of contemporary Young Earth Creationism), to give a dinner presentation to a group of United States Geological Survey scientists. Gish and Morris were invited as entertainment - but both creationists thought they were on the verge of completely revamping geological orthodoxy!
Ben Franklin noted that the definition of insanity "is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." By this standard Duane Gish's apologetic reductio ad absurdum known as "Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics" is simply insane.
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38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Creation Scientists show who really quotes out of context., January 11, 1997
By A Customer
Time and Time again one can read in evolutionists material
how that the Creation Scientists "misquote" them or "quote
out of context". This is done in hopes of discrediting them
so that their observations will not have to be considered.
Dr. Gish Tackles two problems with this book.
1.) He sets the
record straight as to who is quoting who out of context. He does
this by documenting the actual claims of evolutionists who
assert the misquotes and then showing exactly what was said in
the quote being attacked. The end result of which shows that
the cited Evolutionists are the ones in error. It does get a
bit tedious reading all the quotes at times, since the pattern
becomes repetitive where the assertions are shown to be erroneous.
2.) After clarifying whos' integrity is really in question,
the good stuff is noted. Many theories that are put forth as
evidence for evolution are shown to be flawed or simply to
be speculative. Among the most interesting discussions is on
the Laws of thermodynamics and of course the Fossils.
I would recommend this book for anyone who is serious about
the study of origins and have only been exposed to the speculations
on the evolutionary side of the issue including the negative
propaganda levelled at creationists. See for yourself that
Creation Scientists are apparently better "Scientists" than their counterparts.
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50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Stupid and dishonest, typical for Gish, June 18, 2005
Gish recently retired, so let's take one last look at one of his major books, Creation Scientists Answer Their Critics (CSATC).
The book has ten chapters, three of which respond to specific books: "Scientists Confront Creationism," (Laurie Godfrey, ed.); Philip Kitcher's "Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism;" and Niles Eldredge's "Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism." (All three books were very good, by the way, especially the first, though they are all a bit dated by now, being over 20 years old.). The other chapters were more general discussions about thermodynamics, the fossil record, and general creationist theory. The last chapter consisted of nothing but quotations, most of them ancient, many of them irrelevant. That's just bizarre.
Those quotes also present a problem. Throughout his creationist career, Gish was a prime example of the "lying for Jesus" strategy, with a dreadful reputation for using quotes out of context. The number of quotes in this book, many of them ancient, many more with no context given whatsoever, are highly suspicious, given Gish's well deserved reputation for dishonesty.
For example, in debates in the '70s and `80s, Gish claimed that the geologic column is based on the assumption of evolution, but in 1982 Chris McGowan challenged him with a geology book written before Darwin had even been born, showing essentially the same geologic column used today. Faced with this evidence, Gish admitted his error and withdrew the argument. So, that seems reasonable. Gish made an innocent mistake, admitted the error, and withdrew the argument. End of story, right? Not quite. Despite having admitted that the argument was wrong, Gish continued using it in subsequent debates and books! That's contemptible.
Richard Trott reports a whole series of falsehoods by Gish during a 1994 talk at Rutgers. For example, Gish stated that there are no fossil precursors to the dinosaur Triceratops. In reality there are well known precursors, Monoclonius and Protoceratops, which appear in proper sequence in the fossil record and show the expected change in body size, number of horns, etc. Gish also indicated that all three ceratopsians were contemporaneous. In reality, Protoceratops came first, followed by Monoclonius, followed by Triceratops. Trott's article about Gish's falsehoods prompted a reply from Gish which contained still more dishonest statements! (Which certainly makes one wonder about Gish's truthfulness in the responses he put in this book!)
Joyce Arthur reports another series of Gish falsehoods. In the 1979 version of Evolution? The Fossils Say No! (ETFSN), Gish claimed that Dubois concealed his discovery of Wadjak Man for about 30 years. But in 1982 C. Loring Brace corrected Gish, informing him in a debate that Dubois had actually published, not one, but two reports about Wadjak Man shortly after its discovery. Nevertheless, Gish repeated the same falsehood in Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record (1985) and again in a 1992 debate with Karl Fezer. At that point, Fezer provided Gish with the specific references for Dubois's publications on Wadjak Man, but Gish repeated the same falsehood yet again in the 1995 edition of ETFSN. Arthur herself corrected Gish's falsehood again in 1996, but Gish repeated it yet again in a 1997 debate! Such blatant dishonesty, carried on for almost 20 years, is simply contemptible.
During a 1983 PBS broadcast, Gish dismissed the significance of the similarity of chimp and human proteins, claiming that some bullfrog proteins were more similar to human proteins than chimp proteins were. Asked to identify the specific proteins, Gish promised to do so, claiming that he had them in his records, but he never produced them. In fact, there were no such proteins. Gish simply fabricated the whole thing.
Gish recently announced his retirement from the Institute for Creation Research, an organization that worked hand in hand with Gish in spreading falsehoods. The ICR promotes and sells Gish's trashy books, including his comic book Have You Been Brainwashed? The ICR continued selling the original version for at least nine more years after Gish himself admitted that it contained numerous errors. The ICR is still selling a revised, 1994 version, but the revised edition still contains some of the same errors as the original! So who is brainwashing whom???
The ICR was also involved in promoting the notorious hoax concerning the "discovery" of Noah's Ark in 1993. The "piece of Noah's Ark" that they promoted was nothing more than an old railroad tie that had been soaked in teriyaki and barbecue sauces and then microwaved and baked to make it look old. So Gish and the ICR were certainly a good match for each other!
These examples (and many others) show how dishonest Gish is and help explain why creationists publish their ideas in oral debates and lectures, or in popular books like CSATC, not in professional science journals. In debates, if Gish is caught in a falsehood in front of one audience, that doesn't prevent him from repeating the same falsehood in front of other audiences. And in books like CSATC, Gish knows he can get away with lying, because most creationists aren't likely to check his statements. Such blatant dishonesty can't survive the peer-review process of professional science journals, however, which is why creationists like Gish never publish their creationist trash there.
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