RE: [asa] The scientific vacuity of Ann Coulter

It's a fine line between helping people understand the
truely poor scientific arguments in Coulter's 'book'
and helping increase the sales of said book.
If people who read the rebuttals feel compelled to buy
the book then the rebuttals were not really meant for
them anyway. Some people plainly refuse to accept the
facts and there is nothing I can do about it. I can
help however those who may be guided down a wrong path
based on Coulter's comments.

--- Debbie Mann <deborahjmann@insightbb.com> wrote:

> Coulter is purposely antogonistic - she has another
> word for it.
>
> I went to see 'Agnes of God'. There had been a huge
> tado about it. It wasn't
> a good movie. Without the tado from the religious
> objectors, it probably
> would have done far worse than it did.
>
> "the only bad publicity is no publicity" is all too
> true.
>
> Be careful that your rebuttals don't end up getting
> Coulter more book sales.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu
> [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
> Behalf Of Pim van Meurs
> Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2006 6:45 PM
> To: asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: [asa] The scientific vacuity of Ann Coulter
>
>
> On Panda's Thumb, PZ Myers reports his review of Ann
> Coulter's ghastly ignorant book 'Godless'. As
> expected, Ann's understanding of evolutionary
> sciences
> in particular is significantly lacking despite it
> being reviewed by notable ID activists such as
> Dembski
>
>
> <quote>I've now read all of the science-related
> (that's applying the term "related" very generously)
> stuff in Ann Coulter's awful, ghastly, ignorant
> book,
> Godless, and it's a bit overwhelming. This far
> right-wing political pundit with no knowledge of
> science at all has written a lengthy tract that is
> wall-to-wall error: To cover it all would require a
> sentence-by-sentence dissection that would generate
> another book, ten times longer than Coulter's, all
> merely to point out that her book is pure garbage.
> So
> I'm stumped. I'm not interested in writing such a
> lengthy rebuttal, and I'm sure this is exactly what
> Coulter is counting on—tell enough lazy lies, and no
> one in the world will have time enough to correct
> them
> conscientiously. She's a shameless fraud.
>
> What to do? Well, we can't take apart the whole
> thing,
> but what we can do is focus on individual claims and
> show that Coulter is outrageously wrong—that she has
> written things that indicate an utter lack of
> knowledge of the subject. Some of us at the Panda's
> Thumb are going to be doing just that—look there
> later
> for more—and what I'm going to do here is address
> one
> very broad claim that Coulter has made repeatedly,
> and
> that is also common to many creationists.
>
> That claim is that there is no evidence for
> evolution.
> I know, to anybody who has even a passing
> acquaintance
> with biology, that sounds like a ridiculous
> statement,
> like declaring that people can live on nothing but
> air
> and sunlight, or that yeti are transdimensional UFO
> pilots. Yet Coulter baldly makes the absurd claim
> that
> "There's no physical evidence for [evolution]", and
> insists in chapter 8 of her new book that there is
> "no
> proof in the scientist's laboratory or the fossil
> record." This is like standing outside in a
> drenching
> rainstorm and declaring that there is no evidence
> that
> you are getting wet.</quote>
>
> Continued at
>
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/06/ann_coulter_no_evidence_for_ev.ph
> p
>
> I am slowly working my way through Ann's terrible
> understanding of evolutionary science myself and am
> appaled at her treatment of the peppered moth. A
> treatment which beats Jonathan Wells' Icons by
> miles.
>
> One would expect that after the debacle of Icons and
> the peppered moth, creationists would be more
> careful.
> Ann Coulter proves one wrong.
>
> As someone on PZ Myers' blog suggested, perhaps we
> are
> taking Ann too seriously and she is just 'pandering'
> to a group of people's beliefs for political
> expedience or perhaps because 'controversy sells'.
> However, if creationists or conservatives believe
> that
> Ann Coulter's musings are anything more than
> scientific ignorance, then they will be in for a big
> surprise as PZ Myers has so clearly shown.
>
>
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Received on Sun Jun 18 21:44:56 2006