At 09:24 AM 3/1/00 -0500, Ted Davis wrote:
>Once again, AD White has been quoted on a religion/science subject in this
>forum. I've talked about this before, but I really must protest against
>virtually any use of AD White without a critical analysis: he's almost
>always dead wrong in his interpretation of the "facts" he gives, and often
>his "facts" are wrong also. Glenn Morton's recent post on the antipodes
>entirely overlooks the fact that the ancient Greek writers orginated the
>idea of the uninhabitability of the torrid zone (as they called it), and
>that Augustine was simply reflecting good science in his day. And it wasn't
>Magellan who provided the evidence against it, it was earlier Portuguese
>navigators who circumnavigated Africa--events that led later to the slave
>trade. Above all, it is the absurdly biased tone of White's discussion that
>utterly defeats its use as a scholarly source. He's just entirely unwilling
>to put events into their context, and to realize that church writers are
>using good science from their day. He wouldn't get tenure at a decent
>university if he were working today without a change in attitude.
>
>So, PLEASE stop quoting this guy.
From what I can see in Cosmas' book, A.D.White didn't mis-represent what
Cosmas said. And while the portuguese navigators (Magellan became one of
them) may have disproved the torrid zone, they actually didn't disprove the
idea that the antipodes were uninhabited. India was never considered part
of the antipodes.
And by the way, are you saying that 100%, absolutely everything White says
is trash, untrue and thus unworthy of citing? . That would be a sweeping
statement. I don't see anyone even treating Henry Morris in that fashion.
Bias not withstanding, it isn't logically correct to dismiss someone's
argument because of their bias.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Mar 01 2000 - 19:33:09 EST