Richard Milton, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism (Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1997), pp. 308.
Preface
WHEN THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS BOOK was published, in 1992, it was greeted with a storm of controversy no less fervent than the debate that met the publication of Darwin’s theory of evolution one hundred and thirty years ago.
On one hand, according to a leading article in The Times; “Richard Milton’s Shattering the Myths of Darwinism …could shake the 'religion' of evolution as much as Honest to God shook popular Christianity 30 years ago.”
While on the other, according to a review by Darwinist Richard Dawkins, the book is “loony,” “stupid,” “drivel” and its author a “harmless fruitcake” who “needs psychiatric help.”
When Shattering the Myths of Darwinism was published, I expected it to arouse controversy, because it reports on scientific research that is itself controversial and because it deals with Darwinism — always a touchy subject with the biology establishment.
I didn’t expect science to welcome an inquisitive reporter, but I did expect the controversy to be conducted at a rational level, that people would rightly demand to inspect my evidence more closely and question me on the correctness of this or that fact. To my horror, I found that instead of challenging me, orthodox scientists simply set about seeing me off “their” property.
Richard Dawkins, a reader in zoology at Oxford University, wrote his review for the New Statesman magazine “lest the paper commission someone else who would treat it as a serious scientific treatise.” Dawkins devoted two-thirds of his review to attacking British publishers, Fourth Estate, for their irresponsibility in daring to accept a book criticizing Darwinism and the remainder to assassinating my own character in the sort of terms quoted above.
Dawkins is employed at one of Britain’s most distinguished universities and is responsible for the education of future generations of students. Yet this is not the language of a responsible scientist and teacher. It is the language of a religious fundamentalist whose faith has been profaned.
Nature magazine, probably the most highly respected scientific magazine in the world, scented blood and joined in the frenzy. Its editor, John Maddox, ran a leading article that described me as believing science to be a myth (I don’t), evolution to be false (I don’t), and natural selection to be a pack of lies (I don’t). It also magisterially rebuked the Sunday Times for daring to devote most of one of its main news pages to reporting the book’s disclosures.
These intemperate responses betoken more than a squabble between an inquisitive journalist and a couple of reactionary academics. They raise a number of important questions of general public interest. Who do you have to be to have a voice about scientific research on which large sums of public money are spent? Who decides who you have to be? In what forum, or by what mechanism, can the voices of dissent ever be heard in science?
It is not just outsiders who cannot be heard, it is dissenting members of the scientific professions themselves. In my mailbox are letters from biologists who are concerned by the teaching of Darwinism as holy writ and from medical men whose practices have led them to make medical discoveries having a bearing on evolutionary biology. They have sought to publicize these discoveries in journals such as Nature but have been universally rejected because their discoveries are anti-Darwinian in implication and hence counter to the ruling ideology in the life sciences. They have appealed to me — a non-scientist — to help them gain publicity.
It is worrying to learn that in countries like Britain and the United States, thought to be among the most civilized on Earth, some professional scientists can feel so isolated and ignored that they have to take their case directly to the public via the popular press. Equally, it is depressing to discover that in countries which pride themselves on their intellectual tolerance, it is impossible to voice scientific dissent without attracting this kind of response from those who perceive themselves to be the guardians of orthodoxy.
In seeking to defend the ideological citadel of Darwinism, the most vociferous critics of this book have allowed their emotions to mislead them so far as to attack me for advocating beliefs that I have never held and do not support. Both Richard Dawkins and Nature have tried to suggest that I do not believe in evolution and that I belive the Earth is merely a few thousand years old.
To forestall any repetition of false claims like these, let me make my position clear on both issues from the outset. I accept that there is persuasive circumstantial evidence for evolution, but I do not accept that there is any significant evidence that the mechanism driving that evolution is the neo-Darwinian mechanism of chance mutation coupled with natural selection. Second, I do not believe that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. I present evidence that currently accepted methods of dating are seriously flawed and are supported by Darwinists only because they provide the billions of years required by Darwinist theories. Because radioactive dating methods are scientifically unreliable, it is at present impossible to say with any confidence how old the Earth is.
