Scientific anomalies journalist Richard Milton wrote an article entitled "Neo-Darwinism: time to reconsider", where he attemped to address some of the problems that, in his opinion, present the neo-darwinian theory of evolution.Well, atheist Richard Dawkins used his influences to censor that article and avoid that it could be read by the public. The basic argument of Dawkins was "Milton is a creationist". Obviously, Dawkins couldn't prove such assertion since Milton IS NOT a creationist.
But let's suppose (for the sake of the argument) that Milton is actually a creationist. Does it refute his arguments? Is not an ad hominem fallacy to refute an argument discrediting the author of the argument? And keep in mind such obvious fallacy is committed by a man who consider himself "rational" and a defender or "science and reason".
According to this website "The article below was commissioned in February 1995 by the British weekly newspaper, "Times Higher Education Supplement" to appear in March 1995. It has been censored because it challenges, scientifically, the empirical foundations of the neo-Darwinist theory of evolution.
The article was "spiked" by the THES Following a campaign against it by Richard Dawkins, of Oxford University.
In the interests of freedom of speech, and so that such attempts at censorship cannot succeed, I am placing the article in the public domain without copyright restriction and am posting it as widely as possible on the Internet. I also attach a copy of my letter to the editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement saying why I believe this article should be published.
I believe there is an issue of scientific censorship involved here that affects us all equally -- even if you disagree with the conclusions in my article.
Auriol Stevens
Editor
Times Higher Education Supplement
Admiral House
66-68 East Smithfield
London E1 9XY
16 March 1995
Dear Ms Stevens,
I know that my article on the decline of the neo-Darwinist theory of evolution has caused some controversy and is bound, if published, to cause even more. May I draw your attention to two points that I believe are important?
The first is that it has been said, by some scientists, that I am a secret creationist opposed to neo-Darwinism for religious reasons. I am not a creationist and my criticisms of the neo- Darwinist mechanism are purely scientific objections -- as any reading of the article itself clearly shows.
The second point is far more important. I believe that the great strength of science and the scientific method is its openness to debate. Science is strong because errors are exposed through the process of open argument and counter-argument. Science does not need vigilante scientists to guard the gates against heretics. If the heresy is true it will become accepted. If false, it will be shown to be false, by rational discourse.
In his "The Open Society and its Enemies" Sir Karl Popper says that the great value of the scientific method is that it saves us from "The tyranny of opinion". If neo-Darwinists can counter the evidence I present, let them do so. If they seek to prevent my writing being published because they don't like it, then it is not just I that fall victim to the "tyranny of opinion", it is all of us.
If this article were about any other subject -- finance, politics, the economy -- I know it would be welcomed as well- written and thought-provoking even if its claims were controversial. It is only because it is about neo-Darwinism, a subject on which some biologists feel insecure and ultra- sensitive, that doubts have been raised about it.
Best wishes
Yours sincerely
Richard Milton"
When you confront ideological darwinists with arguments challenging their beliefs, some of them (the most irrational ones) will reply with an ad hominem fallacy: you're a creationist (or your sources are creationists, or your arguments are held by creationists). In his dogmatic and ideologically bigoted mind, it put an end to the debate. The word "creationist" suffices, for these brillant "intellectuals", to protect their beliefs of any rational and critical scrutiny.
If the objections against the neo-darwinian theory are false and easily refutable, why do some of them use an ad hominen fallacy as their best reply?
Not all the darwinists are so irrational; some of them actually give scientific reasons to reject objections against neo-darwinism (regardless of if such objections are posed by "creationists", or by any other people). But in this moment, I'm refering to the irrational ones (very common on the internet)
But ideology-driven individuals like Dawkins, a preacher for atheism and materialism (see for example this attempt to indoctrinate children into the ideas of secular humanism and atheism) seem sometimes to be unable to reply with rational arguments to criticisms of his cherished biological theory.
I suspect the reason is that a strong part of Dawkins' atheism is based on the truth of neo-darwinism; so any criticism of it is seen as a direct challenge to his ideological worldview, and this is why such challenge is replied with religious and ideological counter-arguments (like "you're a creationist"). For them, it is not a scientific problem, but an ideological struggle for the supremacy of materialism (and its implied atheism and agnosticism).
If it's true (and I let you to consider rationally such hypothesis), then we know the agenda of such individuals is ideological, not scientific. They use the labels of "reason" and "science" to give credibility and plausibility to their ideology. But you won't get fooled by labels, you have to try to find the truth under the appearences, propagandistic slogans and rhetorical sleighs of hand.
Finally, keep in mind that Dawkins' "methods" are not used only to censor scientific discussion about the (possible) flaws of neo-darwinism. He has used similar methods against Rupert Sheldrake's experimental research on telepathy.
According to this article by Rupert Sheldrake: "Soon before Enemies of Reason was filmed, the production company, IWC Media, told me that Richard Dawkins wanted to visit me to discuss my research on unexplained abilities of people and animals. I was reluctant to take part, but the company’s representative assured me that “this documentary, at Channel 4’s insistence, will be an entirely more balanced affair than The Root of All Evil was.” She added, “We are very keen for it to be a discussion between two scientists, about scientific modes of enquiry”. So I agreed and we fixed a date. I was still not sure what to expect. Was Richard Dawkins going to be dogmatic, with a mental firewall that blocked out any evidence that went against his beliefs? Or would he be open-minded, and fun to talk to?
The Director asked us to stand facing each other; we were filmed with a hand-held camera. Richard began by saying that he thought we probably agreed about many things, “But what worries me about you is that you are prepared to believe almost anything. Science should be based on the minimum number of beliefs.”
I agreed that we had a lot in common, “But what worries me about you is that you come across as dogmatic, giving people a bad impression of science.”
He then said that in a romantic spirit he himself would like to believe in telepathy, but there just wasn’t any evidence for it. He dismissed all research on the subject out of hand. He compared the lack of acceptance of telepathy by scientists such as himself with the way in which the echo-location system had been discovered in bats, followed by its rapid acceptance within the scientific community in the 1940s. In fact, as I later discovered, Lazzaro Spallanzani had shown in 1793 that bats rely on hearing to find their way around, but sceptical opponents dismissed his experiments as flawed, and helped set back research for well over a century. However, Richard recognized that telepathy posed a more radical challenge than echo-location. He said that if it really occurred, it would “turn the laws of physics upside down,” and added, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
“This depends on what you regard as extraordinary”, I replied. “Most people say they have experienced telepathy, especially in connection with telephone calls. In that sense, telepathy is ordinary. The claim that most people are deluded about their own experience is extraordinary. Where is the extraordinary evidence for that?”
He produced no evidence at all, apart from generic arguments about the fallibility of human judgment. He assumed that people want to believe in “the paranormal” because of wishful thinking.
We then agreed that controlled experiments were necessary. I said that this was why I had actually been doing such experiments, including tests to find out if people really could tell who was calling them on the telephone when the caller was selected at random. The results were far above the chance level.
The previous week I had sent Richard copies of some of my papers, published in peer-reviewed journals, so that he could look at the data.
Richard seemed uneasy and said, “I’m don’t want to discuss evidence”. “Why not?” I asked. “There isn’t time. It’s too complicated. And that’s not what this programme is about.” The camera stopped.
The Director, Russell Barnes, confirmed that he too was not interested in evidence. The film he was making was another Dawkins polemic.
I said to Russell, “If you’re treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion. If telepathy occurs, it’s not irrational to believe in it. I thought that’s what we were going to talk about. I made it clear from the outset that I wasn’t interested in taking part in another low grade debunking exercise.”
Richard said, “It’s not a low grade debunking exercise; it’s a high grade debunking exercise.”
In that case, I replied, there had been a serious misunderstanding, because I had been led to believe that this was to be a balanced scientific discussion about evidence. Russell Barnes asked to see the emails I had received from his assistant. He read them with obvious dismay, and said the assurances she had given me were wrong. The team packed up and left.
Richard Dawkins has long proclaimed his conviction that “The paranormal is bunk. Those who try to sell it to us are fakes and charlatans”. Enemies of Reason was intended to popularize this belief. But does his crusade really promote “the public understanding of science,” of which he is the professor at Oxford? Should science be a vehicle of prejudice, a kind of fundamentalist belief-system? Or should it be a method of enquiry into the unknown?"
Note that Dawkins supposedly wanted to visit Sheldrake to "discuss" evidence about the latter's research. But then Dawkins' real agenda was fully exposed when he claimed that "I don't want to discuss evidence" (If it's so, then why did Sheldrake was invited? The answer is suggested by Dawkins' comment "It's a high grade debunking exercise"). Is that a "rational" scientific behaviour regarding evidence? Obviously, it wasn't intended to be a rational and scientific examination or discussion of evidence, but to use of Sheldrake's name to promote Dawkins' anti-paranormal materialistic ideology.
Note that such individuals promote "debate", "reason", "severe criticism" and "critical thinking" when the ideas debated, criticized and examined are the ideas they disagree with (religion, the paranormal, afterlife research, scientific unorthodoxies, etc.) and such ideas are presented in their most uncharitable and weak form. But when you want to debate or critically examine their own ideas and assumptions (materialism, atheism, neo-darwinism, etc.) or actually discuss crucial empirical evidence that strongly support non-materialistic ideas, then evidence is not important or worth discussing; and your arguments are rejected and dismissed with rhetorical labels ("creationism", "pseudoscience", "fairy tales", etc.) and speculations about your hidden motives, not with scientific nor rational nor empirical nor factual arguments. Rhetoric makes the dirty work.
It's obvious these individuals are ideology-driven; and their minds and intellect have been destroyed by their indoctrination into atheistic materialism in such strong way that prevents them to realize their own irrationality, biases, dishonesty and bigotry. This is why they apply "skepticism" only to the ideas of their opponents, but in their writings you won't read anything questioning materialism or any official or orthodox scientific theory. In the name of "skepticism", they're acting like preachers and propagandists for the scientific orthodoxy and philosophical materialism.
If they would want to examine evidence for psi or anomalous phenomena in a serious, rational, scientific and objective way, they would focus themselves in the est evidence for such phenomena and in a critical and honest evaluation of them; and they would avoid the dishonest use of rhetorical and propagandistic devices and intentional traps (like those used by Dawkins above) to make their case. An example of serious evidence presented by Rupert Sheldrake can be watched in this lecture:
Links of interest:
-Richard Milton's entire article (censored by Dawkins' influence). Also, see Milton's website.
-Article "The new atheism movement is desctructive" (by atheist philosopher Julian Baggini)
-My posts about evidence of Richard Dawkins' moral relativism and about secular humanism's hidden agenda.
-Paper by a spanish biologist arguing for an naturalist alternative to neo-darwinism.
-Antony Flew's review of Dawkins' The God Delusion.
