Friday, November 25, 2011

Anti-Darwin site takes Onion article as reality

Referred to nonexistent news conference


The site darwinthenandnow.com is dedicated to refuting Darwin. Well, as Darwin explicitly said he expected would happen, some parts of his 1859 work HAVE been refuted or replaced by better theories, and other aspects are still mysteries.  I have sympathy with Lynn Margulis' point that "natural selection" has become a deified term that explains everything, instead of a basic idea that is still in the process of refinement.  (Finally, while I fully believe in evolution/natural selection of physical forms over billions of years, as a Christian, I think there was something more at work in producing beings - us - that are spiritually self-aware.  Yes, I know purely deterministic ideas have been put forth to explain our theological leanings. I just don't find them convincing.)
OK, that was a very long digression, so back to what inspired this post.  The author of this site seems to have, to put it politely, gone off the rails. In this article, he challenges the standard view of history, saying the Greek civilization never existed. His source: The satirical site The Onion, which published a humor piece saying National Geographic held a news conference to announce Greek civilization's record was faked.  Seriously, he believes this is real. 
(I could have made a Comment on the darwinthenandnow site pointing out the absurdity, but I'm more interested in just watching it and seeing how long it takes before the whole page disappears.)
The point: if you want to challenge science, fine: challenging existing wisdom is how science advances. But you have to use science, not fiction.

Onion article

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