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Piltdown Man and Global Climate Change
Piltdown Man and Global Climate Change
Piltdown Man and Global Climate Change
Appeal To Authority
A local AM talk-radio program regularly features guest speakers, and callers can offer questions or comments for discussion. One of the hosts is a staunch Tea Party advocate and his co-host is more liberal in his views and often assumes the role of devils advocate (plus, he is clearly more knowledgeable of government and history). The liberal co-host posed this question,
global climate scientists were not out to prove anything either, but rather, win a Nobel prize, sell a book/video series and go on the lecture circuit in the case of Gore, and keep the grant money and publications flowing in the case of the climate scientists.
Ad Hominem
The second flank of the attack on the theory of evolution by Darwins Rascists authors Sharon Sebastian & Raymond G. Bohlin is more fallacious ad hominem attacks on Charles Darwin. In the abovementioned radio program Ms. Sebastians argument against the theory of evolution is that Darwins Origin of Species has discussions of race, which in some contexts include human races. She argues further that Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler and President Obama have read Darwins work and have therefore are guilty of racism. That is equivalent to saying that if Saddam Hussein, Ted Kaczynski and Richard Nixon all read John Lockes Two Treatises of Civil Government, all the ideas would be invalidated by association with persons some would find objectionable. Self-described experts like Sharon Sebastian can only make arguments against theories such as evolution or global climate change that rely on discrediting the science by personal attack, or logical fallacy. I conclude with these questions: If Albert Einstein was a different person, perhaps an alcoholic, racist, homophobic, child molester, would his theories of relativity be invalid? If a person miscontrues valid scientific data for personal gain or malicious intent, does that invalidate the science? by James Check