[ILUG] OT: Irish minister for science helping launch ananti-evolution book?

[Mark Dennehy]

On 13 September 2010 22:49, Frank Murphy <frankly3d at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are people who have differnet viewpoints,
> there are those who support and object to both.
> I forgot the third, Aliens.

This isn't about differing viewpoints from two sides investigating in
good faith; this is one lone crackpot writing a book that says that a
scientific theory which has more evidence confirming it than any other
scientific theory in history (with the sole possible exception of the
Standard Model in particle physics), is bunk, purely because organisms
are complicated.
That's the sole point of his argument. Not that he has a competing
theory with supporting evidence. This isn't Gould-v-Myers here, or a
debate on whether or not punctuated equilibrium is a better model for
evolutionary progress or any such thing; this is one man, with no
credentials, self-publishing a book which says that his inability to
grasp geological timeframes and incremental change has more scientific
weight than a century and a half of accumulated evidence from the
macroscopic observations of current species, to the fossil record of
past species, to DNA analysis.
And our Minister for Science is giving this nutjob the support of his
office. On our euro.


> Would that not be the logical next step, if tax money is being used also to
> pulish it or indeed any other book someone may disagree with?

Tax money is not being used to publish it. It's self-published.
Tax money is being used to promote it. And there's no rational way you
can say that not promoting a book by having a Minister attend the book
launch is a form of censorship.

> The Constitution was written in a diffrent age for a different age,
> I also feel it needs to be badly updated.

You and I both; but it hasn't been yet.

> That is anyone's right, but why bring it to the soap box?
> That is the real question!

I didn't, but someone fired up the [OT] tag and I commented.
Or are you saying I should be censored because we disagree? :-D

-- 
Mark Dennehy