Evolution on Trial by Bill Whitehouse

Hi moe, welcome to EvCForum.Have you read the book? I'd be interested to hear your take on it. Much of the book is available free on-line here. Whitehouse himself seems to be an interesting character, but much of his writing deals with "novelized" accounts of Sufi mysticism and spirituality. Hard to see (without reading the thing in its entirety) what he's on about. Love to hear your ideas, or anyone's perspective on the book.Edited by Quetzal, : I'm really having problems with ubb code today

I read that in his introduction as well. I'm always a bit concerned when I encounter the rhetorical equivalent of "if you don't agree with me, you're too stupid to understand the argument". That and his conflation of abiogenesis with evolution doesn't bode well for the rest of the book. I'll be curious to see if he does any better in presenting the pro- vs. con- arguments in detail. The skim I did of the rest (admittedly superficial), seems to present his protagonist Corrigan as a poor, innocent teacher who's only "crime" was to teach the controversy. Not a good thing if the author is claiming that all he wants to do is give everyone an understanding of the issue.

It is of course possible I'm reading too much into it, but that was I'm afraid the initial impression I got when I read it. And indeed, Scopes was protrayed "as an innocent teacher", even though found guilty ultimately. It is quite obvious that Whitehouse is using that intentionally - sort of an "anti-Scopes".I'm not trying to pooh-pooh the book - I haven't read the whole thing, obviously. Just wanted to get some of my initial impressions out. I'm interested to hear what you think about it, whether the presentations are in fact even-handed, and what particular arguments/evidence Yardley presents.

Ostensibly that is true - it's what Whitehouse laid out as the basis for the book in the introduction. Unfortunately, as several people have pointed out, origins of life (abiogenesis) research is fundamentally different from evolutionary biology. I know it sounds like nothing more than a quibble, but the reality is most evolutionary biologists (and others of that ilk), would be very quick to point out that the two are quite distinct disciplines. For Yardley to fail to jump on that point right from the beginning is suspect in my book. On the other hand, regardless of Whitehouse's introduction, this is in fact a very standard and oft-heard tactic of creationists seeking to derail discussion from the well-supported ToE to the much less well supported (in fact, in many ways highly speculative) origins research.I guess this is another aspect that makes me question Whitehouse's motivation. Not that I have any basis to question him specifically, but the use of such tactics as are common with biblical creationists may be quite revealing.