Evolution Exposed - Roger Patterson

I will give Creationists their due - their arguments have become marginally more sophisticated since I first read their anti-Darwin screeds, but starting from zero they haven't had to come far.  This is one of those books I can only read in small doses before the stupid starts to burn and I have to stop.

The first thing to remember when reading this book is that it is not meant to be a textbook, nor is it designed to inform.  Rather, it is a guide for disrupting science lessons.  Creationist teenagers are advised to team up and assail science teachers in tag teams, retaining Christ-like meekness as they seek to sabotage the education of their less religiously motivated classmates.  The questions the book presents are not adequately answered (a link to answersingenesis.org is not an adequate answer), nor are they meant to be - the intellectual guerrillas for Jesus are instead urged to throw questions in the hope that the teachers will not know the answers, thereby undermining the credibility of Darwinism in front of openminded schoolkids.

In other words, this is a pretty disreputable book, using the tactics of the courtroom barrister and the spin doctor to achieve its objectives.  If a textbook phrases a sentence just so, the book seizes on the literal meaning to set up a straw man and then knock it down.  Some of these straw men are so obvious it is hard to ascribe it to the author's ingenuousness.  If an evolutionary family tree, constructed from isolated specimens and fragmentary fossils, is amended even once, it means Darwin was wrong (a principle which does not apply to so-called Creation science such as Flood Geology, freely described as a work in progress).  A fraudulent fossil put together by a sharp-eyed Chinese dealer not only disproves Darwinism but proves that scientists are dishonest.  The old creationist tactic of referring to controversies long laid to rest as if they had not been resolved features strongly - this shabby volume pays homage to Fred Hoyle's half-baked allegation that Archaeopteryx is a fraud.  The fact that Alan Charig and others demolished ol' Fred's gadfly speculation quarter of a century ago does not butter Patterson's parsnips.

Also egregious with the book's habit of referring to all pre-19th century scientists as 'Creationists', which most people were by default.

Creationist theory, such as it is, aims at reducing the gaps to which their God is confined.  Where things are demonstrably true and where denial just looks plain mad, Creationists withdraw.  But evolutionary theory is almost (but not quite) impossible to observe in action, so Creationists insist that there resides a gap for God to live in by using the smokescreen of loaded questions and wilful incomprehension.

But of course, 'disproving' Darwinism, a front on which even the Creationists can only hope for a stalemate, is not the ultimate aim.  They want to indoctrinate your children and impose their belief system on them.  This can only be good, they reason.  After all, evolutionists and atheists are evil people who want to justify their own sinful and villainous lives by proving the non-existence of God.  The book says as much, if you read it through and piece it together.  I suppose we should be grateful that Darwin doesn't get blamed for the Holocaust until page 218.  The book also accuses Darwin of fuelling racism rather than inventing it, no doubt aware of the risk of being accused of hypocrisy in that Genesis 9:25 was used to justify the abduction of millions of west Africans during the era of slavery, which ended before Darwin published his work.

All teachers interested in science need to read this book and if possible familiarise themselves with the questions posed and arm themselves with answers.  Sadly, the best way to counteract its pernicious influence may be to buy it, if only to rubbish its assertions.