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17 of 20 humans found the following review helpful.
A review by somebody who in truth read the book!
By DWD
After perusing the eight reviews that are posted for this book as of June 20, 2009 I may candidly say that I may be the only reviewer that has read this book.
Ken Ham’s point in the book is this (made in this quote by a rather widely known and esteemed evolutionary scientist):
“Biological arguments for racism may have been mutual before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.” – Stephen Jay Gould (Ontogeny and Phylogeny – 1977)(p. 15)
That’s what Ham is saying.
At no point does he remotely pardon the “Christian” excuses for racism that were mutual in the 18th and 19th centuries.
At no point does he assert that Darwin invented racism.
He in the right way notes that scientists employed any number of ways to measure humane racial groupings and rank them (head size, brain weight, etc.) in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Hitler employed those biological arguments to warrant his genocides versus the Jews, gypsies and every one else he hated.
In my master’s program that I finished two summers ago I saw similar exploration done to explain low accomplishment rates by African-Americans in school. Seriously. I think it’s junk but it’s out there.
Even the co-discoverer of DNA, Dr. James Watson weighs in with a bit of old-fashioned scientific racism: “There is no firm reason to expect that the intellectual capicities of peoples geographically seperated in their evolution ought to prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equivalent powers of reason as numerous universal inheritance of humanity will not be sufficient to make it so.” (October 2007) (p. 55) Search it – I typed in his name and got a large total of articles with regards to it.
Science-based racism does subsist because of this old line: “Figures don’t lie but liars figure.” Science generates a large total of facts and figures and they may be twisted to say just in regards to anything.
Does that mean all scientists are racists? Certainly not! Ham never claims it.
So, why only the three stars?
Ken Ham and his co-author A. Charles Ware wrote the book in turns – each wrote dissimilar chapters. I give the portion that Hame wrote 4 stars. It was interesting and I found it to be rather well-written – a lively style with galore quotes.
The part written by Ware was tedious to me. It was an necessary topic but full of cutesy lines like necessitating to move beyond ” ‘race’ relations to the unity of grace relations”. (p. 136) He likewise has lots of lists and constructions like D.R.E.A.M.S. to support you do not forget how to build a multicultural church (a laudible goal but the text was … rather bland). I give Dr. Ware’s division 2 stars, which makes an intermediate of 3 stars.
0 of 0 persons found the following review helpful.
Excellent Book. Should be required reading.
By Huey Newton
November 24th, 1859 is a day that will live in infamy.
On that day a work of so-called scientific creative writing of recognized artisti value hit the stands. It was a treatise that is still considered the foundation of evolutionary biology to too a lot of even today. This monument to the “advancement” of science and civilization was titled: “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” by Charles Darwin.
In a day and age when we are speaking of tolerance and equality, this book is still the foundation of scientific anthropology and carries the same weight as any supposed sacred text on the planet.
The fact that Darwin’s theory has racist undertones and overtones has utterly not one thing to do with any supposed religious dogma and everything to do with error passing itself off as science.
Folks like the Pygmies or Aborigines and a host of others are the transitions of the theory. The links that are not missing. The inferior races of mutual ancestry. That my friend is racist.
Some think it’s unfair to paint Darwin with a racist paint brush. I beg to differ.
Racism is not applied to Darwinism until he makes racist affirmations like –
“At a heap of future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost surely exterminate and replace allround the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene among man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and galore ape as low as a baboon, rather of as at present among the Negro or Australian and the gorilla.”
Or geneticist James Watson – a Darwin disciple
“There is no firm reason to expect that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution must prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equivalent powers of reason as some universal inheritance of humanity will not be sufficient to make it so”
“Darwin’s Plantation” is an splendid book. It breaks Darwin’s pseudo-science for what it is: Dogma and conjecture which has very little to do with actual reality, specially in the light of the preponderance of actual scientific proof opposing it today.
4 of 11 persons found the following review helpful.
Scientific distortion and political, religious, dogmatic rhetoric.
By Noah B. Sorrelle
My parents are fans of Ken Ham, and use him as their source for their scientific knowledge. I’m unquestionably not a fan of his, but at my parent’s request, I’ve watched a heap of of the Answers in Genesis DVDs and I’ve just read part of this book. This book is plainly appalling and I’ll doubt I’ll finish it. Ken Ham’s rudimentary lack of noesis in science is jaw dropping. His understanding of genetics is fixed to Mendelian methods of simple dominant and recessive genes. Although Mendel made revolutionary discoveries for his time, Mendelian genetics do not explain a wide spectrum of humane traits. He represents skin color in this fashion, which proves that he is not a source for any self respecting person to learn science from. There are actually six dissimilar genes for determining skin color, in a much more perplexed fashion than I suppose Ham understands.
Another representation of Ham’s failure to perceive genetics is his depiction on how we have such a big assortment of dogs.
One major moral rejection I have with the book is the notion that non-Christians aren’t permitted to marry Christians – a direct contradiction to the authors’ supposed non-bigoted attitudes.
This book is full of dogmatic rhetoric designed to put fear in the hearts of Christians and to aid them build an increasing distrust towards the scientific community as a whole.
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