Reading List

[Petrel]

Well I recently passed my candidacy exam and have more time than before. Since I became mired in the theistic evolution/YE creation debate I've been prompted to do some reading. Here are some of the books I've read recently:

-Ancient Earth, Ancient Skies: the Age of Earth and Its Cosmic Surroundings, G. Brent Dalrymple, 2004
-Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World, Jonathan I. Lunine, 1999
-Molecular Evolution and Adaptive Radiation, Thomash Givnish, Kenneth Sytsma, 1997
-The Development of Animal Form: Ontogeny, Morphology, and Evolution, Alessandro Minelli, 2003
-Human Gene Evolution, David Cooper, 1999
-Chromosomes: Organization and Function, Adrian Sumner, 2003

I just checked these out today:

-Telling the Evolutionary Time: Molecular Clocks and the Fossil Record, Philip Donoghue, M. Paul Smith, 2003
-Microfossils, Howard Armstrong, Martin Brasier, 2005
-Dinosaurs of the Air, Gregory Paul, 2002

Ancient Earth, Ancient Skies was fun reading, being more targeted at a general audience than some of the others.

The Development of Animal Form was rather mind-blowing in that the author thinks about animal development in a totally different way than I have been used to. He thinks that development should not be looked at as a goal-oriented process. He says that at every step in development the body of a creature has a certain structure because it is useful at that stage, not because it will become useful sometime later. So perhaps shells may be useful in the adult animal for protection from crushing, but in the immature animal they instead serve the purpose of providing a solid base for orientation and attachment of cells. Additionally, he thinks that too much emphasis is placed on genetic effects and not enough on "generic" effects in animal structure. Generic effects are information passed on by the cytoskeletal structure in mitosis, for instance, or orientation information derived from gravity or from the point of entry of a sperm cell into an egg cell. Those are just two examples of some of the (for me) unusual concepts in the book.

Does anyone else have some interesting science reading they would suggest?

 

[Deacon]

Who was Adam? A Creation Model Approach to the Origin of Man
by Fazale Rana with Hugh Ross (NavPress 2005)

Before you read it you should be familiar with the Progressive Creationism model of origins
(otherwise known as 'old earth creationism').

See: http://www.reasons.org/ for a web site promoting the model.

The book is not quite enough for the scientific crowd and too much for the general crowd
(but just right for someone like me who has been out of mix for a while).

Fazale discusses fossil finds relating to man.
He goes over the genetics of man and how it relates to our 'closest' relatives.

And he even gets into the DNA of man, with a brief discussion of the 'mutated' GLO pseudogene (vitamin C).

Rob

 

[UTEOTW]

Petrel

That is quite a reading list. Hats off.


Deacon

I would be curious how that particular book deals with the subjects you mentioned.

And I, personally, like stuff that is not quite up to the level of having to be a scientist to grasp it but well above the general public level.

 

[jcrawford]

Originally posted by Petrel:
Does anyone else have some interesting science reading they would suggest?

"Bones of Contention" by Marvin Lubenow. BakerBooks, 2004 edition.

Any neo-Darwinist theorist of human evolution who hasn't read Lubenow's assessment of the human fossil record doesn't know what they are talking about.

 

[UTEOTW]

Originally posted by jcrawford:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Petrel:
Does anyone else have some interesting science reading they would suggest?

"Bones of Contention" by Marvin Lubenow. BakerBooks, 2004 edition.

Any neo-Darwinist theorist of human evolution who hasn't read Lubenow's assessment of the human fossil record doesn't know what they are talking about. </font>[/QUOTE]Thus far, you inability to detail a single good argument from him with references in your posts leads to the inevitable conclusion that this book appears to be totally worthless. When you add in the time or two that you have made specific arguments from the book and how easy they were to find gaping errors, this book does not seem to offer much in the way of scholarship.

Maybe it would make a good paperweight.

 

[jcrawford]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by jcrawford:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Petrel:
Does anyone else have some interesting science reading they would suggest?

"Bones of Contention" by Marvin Lubenow. BakerBooks, 2004 edition.

Any neo-Darwinist theorist of human evolution who hasn't read Lubenow's assessment of the human fossil record doesn't know what they are talking about. </font>[/QUOTE]Thus far, you inability to detail a single good argument from him with references in your posts leads to the inevitable conclusion that this book appears to be totally worthless. When you add in the time or two that you have made specific arguments from the book and how easy they were to find gaping errors, this book does not seem to offer much in the way of scholarship.</font>[/QUOTE]In order to scholarly evaluate and criticize scholarship, one must first read the published works of the scholar. This preliminary scholarly requirement, you have obviously scholastically failed at.

Maybe it would make a good paperweight.

Like any fossilized human skull would make a good paperweight. Have you seen any good specimens in public museums lately, other than those plaster casts of the reconstructed ones? Of course not.

 

[UTEOTW]

"In order to scholarly evaluate and criticize scholarship, one must first read the published works of the scholar. This preliminary scholarly requirement, you have obviously scholastically failed at."

I have no evidence to suggest that we are in fact dealing with a scholarly work. Furthermore, most reviews of the work that I have seen point out that the level of scholarship is as low as what I have come to believe based on your tireless promotion of the work and the few points you have tried to raise from the book.

 

[Petrel]

I skimmed through about 60% of it. In the first chapter I was a bit baffled because he said:

1. Everyone thinks we have oodles of human/humanoid fossils.
2. Really there aren't that many fossils and no one gets to look at the originals.
3. On the other hand, there are a lot of human/humanoid fossils.



Then there were a lot of claims like "Y couldn't have descended from X because X still existed after Y originated." This argument showed up many times. And then he kept complaining that evolutionists choose the age at the old end of the possible spectrum for certain fossils, so he corrects this by always choosing the youngest possible age. Finally, there was the implication that because Piltdown Man was a hoax, no scientific research can be trusted.

I really do think a paperweight would make a better paperweight, though.

 

[Petrel]

Oh yes! I did press some tofu with the book before I returned it to the library. It worked quite well.

 

[jcrawford]

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
[QB] "In order to scholarly evaluate and criticize scholarship, one must first read the published works of the scholar. This preliminary scholarly requirement, you have obviously scholastically failed at."

I have no evidence to suggest that we are in fact dealing with a scholarly work.

Of course not. You haven't even read the book, let alone be in possession of it.

Furthermore, most reviews of the work that I have seen point out that the level of scholarship is as low as what I have come to believe based on your tireless promotion of the work and the few points you have tried to raise from the book.

You are just basing this conclusion on your preducially assumed premise that the reviews of Lubenow's scholarly work are themselves scholastic in some way, shape or form.

How do you know that all neo-Darwinist racial beliefs about primitive evolution in Africa are not some modern scientific form of religious beliefs?

After all, believing in 'science' and the 'scientific method' is a form of religious belief, is it not?

Prove otherwise.

 

[jcrawford]

Originally posted by Petrel:
I skimmed through about 60% of it. In the first chapter I was a bit baffled because he said:

1. Everyone thinks we have oodles of human/humanoid fossils.
2. Really there aren't that many fossils and no one gets to look at the originals.
3. On the other hand, there are a lot of human/humanoid fossils.



Then there were a lot of claims like "Y couldn't have descended from X because X still existed after Y originated." This argument showed up many times. And then he kept complaining that evolutionists choose the age at the old end of the possible spectrum for certain fossils, so he corrects this by always choosing the youngest possible age. Finally, there was the implication that because Piltdown Man was a hoax, no scientific research can be trusted.

Which edition (1992 or 2004) are you paraphrasing from, so that we may accurately verify the context in the pages you are referring to.

For instance: how do Lubenow's claims that "Y couldn't have descended from X because X still existed after Y originated," contradict modern neo-Darwinist racial arguments that Homo erectus people in Asia and Europe were wiped out by advancing hordes of African Homo sapiens?

It is incumbent on modern neo-Darwinist theory of human evolution out of Africa to eliminate, if necessary, by genocide, the entire human erectus race on earth, to make way for the evolutionist advancement of superior human beings out of Africa whose ancestors we are told by neo-Darwinists, evolved out of sub-human African ape and monkey ancestors.

 

[jcrawford]

Originally posted by Petrel:
Oh yes! I did press some tofu with the book before I returned it to the library. It worked quite well.

Thanks for suggesting the addition of tofu in my next batch of delicious Darwin soup. After all, protein is one of the basic building blocks of sound mental health.