We conclude, from part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, our consideration of Richard Dawkins’ review of Richard Milton’s book Shattering the Myth of Darwinism (New Statesman August 28, 1992 AD).
Dawkins continues with his generic statements with regards to recessive genes which refers to “a gene whose effect is masked by another (dominant) gene at the same locus…large stretches of chromosomes are inert – untranslated. This kind of inertness has not the smallest connection with the ‘recessive’ kind.” The generic part comes in when he merely asserts that “Milton manages the feat of confusing the two. Any slightly qualified referee would have picked up this clanger.”
I am wondering why I should be made to scour Milton’s book as a reply to Dawkins when, apparently, no one, such as a slightly qualified referee, asked him to a quotation or citation.
Dawkins notes that Milton “correctly” states “that Immanuel Velikovsky was ridiculed in his own time” but that, as Milton puts it, “Today, only forty years later, a concept closely similar to Velikovsky’s is widely accepted by many geologists – that the major extinction at the end of the Cretaceous … was caused by collision with a giant meteor or even asteroid.” Dawkins steps in not with scientific evidence to the contrary but with playing mind reader as he merely asserts that “the whole reason why Milton, with his eccentric views on the age of the earth [keeping in mind that Milton wrote “I do not believe that the Earth is only a few thousand years old], champions him) is that his collision was supposed to have happened recently; recently…The geologists’ meteorite, on the other hand, is supposed to have impacted 65 million years ago!”
Dawkins further mind reads in stating, “If Velikovsky had placed his collision tens of millions of years ago he would not have been ridiculed.” Apparently, unable to help himself, Dawkins concludes this particular criticism by writing, “To represent him [Velikovsky] as a misjudged, wilderness-figure who has finally come into his own is either disingenuous or – more charitably and plausibly – stupid.”
Failing to learn lessons from facts, Dawkins writes, that “In these post-Leakey, post-Johanson days, creationist preachers are having to learn that there is no mileage in ‘missing links.’”
He is identifying and/or correlating Richard Milton with “creationist preachers” when Milton states of himself, “I accept that there is persuasive circumstantial evidence for evolution” and “Let me make it unambiguously clear that I am not a creationist, nor do I have any religious beliefs of any kind.”
But what of missing links a concept out of which Darwinists have gone many miles. Dawkins wrote, “Far from being missing, the fossil links between modern humans and our ape ancestors now constitute an elegantly continuous series.” By this he means that hoaxes, frauds, tentative interpretation of evidence via a Darwinian worldview-philosophy are artfully reconstructed, illustrated, computer animated in a neat little line that only exists in artfully reconstructed, illustrated, computer animated elegantly continuous series.
Richard Dawkins asks “One is left wondering what a fossil has to do – what more could a fossil do – to qualify as a ‘missing link’?” This is because Milton wrote that “the only ‘missing link’ so far discovered remains the bogus Piltdown Man.” Oddly, Dawkins writes, “Australopithecus, correctly described as a human body with an ape’s head, doesn’t qualify because it is ‘really’ an ape.” Milton also writes that Homo habilis/handy man which had a brain “perhaps only half the size of the average modern human’s…is a human – not a missing link.”
Yet, Milton does not simply speak authoritatively, as does Dawkins, but notes the following along with various other references on this point, “Dr. A. J. White has pointed out, the habilines were also small in stature, so their brains were not small in relation to their body size, rather like modern pygmies.” Thus, smaller body, smaller head, smaller cranial capacity, smaller brain does not mean that they were not smaller humans.
Dawkins asserts that the real issue is not what the various fossils are but takes aim at naming conventions which is rather waste of time to bother with here.
He ends with “As for would-be purchasers, if you want this sort of silly-season drivel you’d be better off with a couple of Jehovah’s Witness tracts. They are more amusing to read, they have rather sweet pictures, and they put their religious cards on the table.” Apparently, Dawkins, still, thinks that Richard Milton is a lying crypto-creationist. He is such a conspiracy theorist that he states that Milton “pretends not to be religious himself.”
In this way, Dawkins can shrug him off with a few one liners and Darwinians-Dawkinsians can elbow each other in the ribs and walk away as if no challenge has been offered to them.
