Re: re-whales from rodents
John M. Lynch (jmlynch@geocities.com)
Tue, 10 Aug 1999 10:17:36 -0700
> Finally, you wrote:
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> As to the second part of your objection, I do know that he used a 20+
> year
> old paleontology text by Barbara Stahl as his prime source for his 1991
> book. Why didn't he use Carrol's 1988 vertebrate paleo book? It would
> have
> been better. Johnson engaged in poor scholarship.
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> I did not object, AFAIK, to that statement; if I seem to have done so,
> apologies. It is a reasonable question to raise; I have no particular
> feeling about whether or not the question has a good rebuttal. It does
> not
> seem, to me, to be all that important. I'm sure you disagree.
It is important - if one is attempting to "defeat darwin" as Johnson is, you
cannot erect a straw-man by using out-dated information. It's not good
scholarship and wouldn't get him tenure in any field (even law!).
Whether or not PEJ believes that whales came from rodents, he (i) should
have realized no evolutionists make that claim, and (ii) should have
refrained from using such an absurd example - it only seeks to bias his
readers. Given the rhetorical tricks lawyers are famed for (and Johnson
being a representative example), it not a surprise that he would not give
the real hypothesis about whale origins, after all, it's not as crazy as his
version.
-jml