Tony Woodcock attacks evolution

Aaron Oakley (s_aarono@eduserv.its.unimelb.EDU.AU)
Thu, 20 Mar 1997 11:37:30 +1100 (EST)

On Wed, 19 Mar 1997, Anthony R. Woodcock wrote:

> Hello, this is Tony Woodcock. I'm sorry have you learned
> evolution, or have you tested it? Of course many evolutionist claim many
> things, but usually don't have the backing needed for the claim. Show me
> some experimental evidences, and/or some factual evidences that back up
> the hypothesis of evolution, and also show me why the experimental
> evidences that are against the hypothesis are just misunderstandings.

Aaron-
Of course, the scientific literature is loaded with evidence
for evolution. Far too much to be repeated here. Why doesn't
Tony go read some of the literature, and not what the creationists
say about it?

> I will now discuss a little about how there WERE supposive interstitials
> between the ape and the man in the hypothetical evolutionary theory. All
> of the supposive interstitial have been refuted according to up-to-date
> scientists...to bad it still has not reached the public. One
> of the earliest supposive interstitials ended up being of a pigs bone.

Aaron-
It would be nice if Tony gave some actual citations so that we
can have some idea of what he is trying to say. I suppose that
Tony is talking here about "nebraska man". Nebraska man
was a popular newspaper beat-up, revolving around some pig teeth
(not bones). The article discrediting nebraska man was
done by those scientists who discovered the teeth fossils,
and showed that they were the teeth of a pig. Nebraska man
appears regularly in the creationist litrerature, and in many
books, it is raised as proof that the hominid fossil record
is inaccurate, despite the fact that for about 70 years
the nebraska man newspaper story has been shown to be a fabrication.
This should be emarrassing to Tony. He has effectively made
a straw man attack on evolution, by attacking something
which is simply not used by contemporary scientists to support
evolution. There is plenty of real evidence for hominid evolution,
but Tony wont attack that, because he knows he cannot.

> (Tell how much of an embarrasment this would be to the public to hear
> this.) All of the other supposive interstitials were found to be
> either human or ape. It took scientists 10 years approximately to

Citations, please?

> disprove the FALSE CLAIM that these bone structures were interstitials
> between ape and man. This shows how there must have been a PRIOR
> assumption at that time that we evolutionized. Even if scientists still
> didn't really know whether or not these interstitials were fake or not,
> there is NOT enough of them to throw a penny at. There should be about as
> many or much MORE of these interstitials(which there is NONE of now) than

More rhetoric. Of cource, there will NEVER be enough evidence
to make Tony happy. I could go on to discredit the rest of Tony's post,
but the task would be both boring and unprofitable.
I imagine that Tony has read the creationist
literature and now uses it to make ad hoc attacks on evolution.
If anyone is interested, there is a book called "Telling Lies for
God" by Iam Plimer, published by Random House
detailing the sort of lies, shoddy reasoning and general dishonesty
of the "creation science" mob.

Cheers,
AAron.