Reasonable Dissent

Ray Comfort changes intro to Origin of Species

No doubt many people have heard about this, and it’s provoked a huge array of responses. Ray Comfort is planning to give away free copies of Darwin’s Origin of Species for the 150th anniversary – with an added introduction that attempts discredits the work specifically, and evolution in general.

As you can imagine, this has caused quite the uproar. There are people saying they want to take as many as they can and throw them away, or rip out the introduction and redistribute it, or even organize book-burnings because of the introduction. Until now, I’ve stayed quite on the issue, because I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it. It’s not the clear-cut issue that some people would make it out to be.

First, if the theory is good, it should stand up to criticism. As long as he doesn’t lie outright about the facts, shouldn’t a discerning mind be able to decide if the introduction has better arguments or the book itself? Of course, this relies on the “discerning mind” to do the legwork, and if we’re talking about someone who only decided to investigate the issue because a free book was handed to them in the course of their daily campus stroll, then maybe they won’t. Still, I remember college being full of people on the sidewalk handing out pamphlets and bibles for free, and that doesn’t mean that I read them and immediately agreed with them.

But then I read about how his introduction would be fraught with, at the very least, deceptive tactics in order to discredit not only the theory, but the man (who I might add has nothing to do with the merit of the idea). Indeed, some on his side even find this admirable:

The introduction gives a time line of Darwin’s life, and his thoughts on the existence of God. It lists the theories of many hoaxes, exposes the unscientific belief that nothing created everything, points to the incredible structure of DNA, and notes the absence of any undisputed transitional forms.

To show the dangerous fruit of evolution, it also mentions Hitler’s undeniable connections to the theory, Darwin’s racism, and his disdain for women. In addition, it counters the claim that creationists are “anti-science” by citing numerous scientists who believed that God created the universe — scientists such as Einstein, Newton, Copernicus, Bacon, Faraday, Pasteur, and Kepler.

“The dangerous fruit of evolution”? “Hitler…racism…distain for women” ? What do these have anything to do with the validity of the theory? Unfortunately, I don’t always think that people correctly see through these misleading issues. I was about to jump right in and say “shame on him” for trying to win a scientific (well, at least on one side) debate with such sleaze. But I investigated and it seems that he’s trying to change it to make it a little less repulsive. According to his website, he’s changing the introduction to account for a lot of this: check it out for yourself. It isn’t available by the time of this writing, so we should keep checking back. I want to read it. If he’s willing to make it not such a complete mockery of real debate, then maybe this will actually turn out to be good.

Can giving away 100,000 copies of a very thought-provoking book be bad? I would hope that anyone who had their consciousness raised to this debate would use this as motivation to search for more answers. For me, it’s clear where that should lead. If we get him to make his introduction even-handed and let him spout bible-literalism, I really think it will do the opposite of what he wants.

Tags: evolution, fundamentalist, science