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The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies of Charles Darwin |  | Author: Benjamin Wiker
Publisher: Regnery Press
List Price: $27.95
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Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 123588
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 1596980974
Dewey Decimal Number: 576.82092
EAN: 9781596980976
ASIN: 1596980974
Publication Date: June 2, 2009
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Product Description
In "The Darwin Myth", author Benjamin Wiker offers a critical analysis of Darwin's theories as well as the social, scientific, and religious implications of his work, leading us to the inevitable truth about Darwin's powerful - yet ultimately poisonous - legacy. Scientists often challenge conventional wisdom and spark debates that last for generations. But no scientist has fuelled more debate than Charles Darwin. To some he is the revolutionary 'father' of evolution. To others he is the perverse 'originator' of modern eugenics. And in "The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies of Charles Darwin", author Benjamin Wiker brings these conflicting identities to light. He offers a critical examination of Darwin's theories as well as the scientific, social, and religious implications of his life and work. In "The Darwin Myth", Wiker reveals: How Darwin's theories were originally met by scepticism and criticism - much of which he couldn't refute and are still valid today; why Darwin didn't 'discover' evolution; and how science itself suggests God created the universe. Laying out the evidence and sound scientific arguments, Wiker illuminates the inevitable truth about Darwin's powerful - yet ultimately poisonous - legacy.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
 Better Than Expected... November 5, 2009
Bobbyjon Bauman
Readable, charitable and cogent. The Darwin Myth is not overblown propoganda but rather sober and grace filled in its treatment of Darwin. It presents him as a benificent affiable man and yet who seemed hamstrung by adopting a materialistic philosophy of life that boxed him in a corner concerning how to explain why a person should "be moral". I almost wish the title was different so that those who hold to Darwinistic philosophy might be more inclined to read it since it truly was a work that could benefit all.
 Exciting story, but unfortunately not of the Real Charles Darwin November 4, 2009
Herbert Gintis (Northampton, MA USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Wiker mostly is interested in discrediting evolutionary biology, and in this pursuit this book offers nothing new. Wiker's claim to fame is that he attributes Darwin's discoveries to his rampant atheism.
I have read several biographies of Charles Darwin, but this is the least compelling, written clearly to discredit the man and the evolutionary biology that he initiated. The motive of Darwin, in The Origin of the Species and other works, according to Wiker, was to give support for Darwin's strongly-held atheistic beliefs, and to apply a deadly thrust to theistic beliefs. Of course, only an individual of limited mental capacity could reason that if Darwin had ulterior motives in his research, the results should be rejected. Evolutionary theory has been validated literally thousands of times and never has been contradicted. It is now the basis for all of biological theory. Moreover, Darwinian evolution in no way undermines a belief in God, although it is incompatible with some religious cosmologies, including the fact that the Universe is many billions of years old and humans and chimpanzees have a common ancestor.
The fact is that Darwin was a believer for most of his life, and his faith was shattered only when his beloved daughter Annie was taken from the world a the age of ten. Darwin later likened this event with what appeared to be the egregious horrors in the battle for survival exhibited by many natural species. Certainly Darwin was never hostile to religion. His wife was deeply religious and Darwin himself was involved in religious practices to the end of his days.
Darwin was ill and wracked with pain most of his life, but he was a rather upstanding, highly moral, scientist, father, and husband. Darwin regretted his agnosticism, and always considered himself as a believer in a higher being, his agnosticism being only a scientist's reaction to the lack of proof of the exisence of this higher being. Nor was Darwin himself ever a supporter of what came to be known as "Sccial Darwinism," a highly popular but pernicious political doctrine.
I have not read Darwin's autobiography, but the Rev. Paul Fayter reports on his web site the following facts, which confirm my analysis:
Near the end of his life, Darwin thought it impossible to conceive that "this immense and wonderful universe" was "the result of blind chance or necessity." No, it still seemed that the world had been willed into being. "I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man," he wrote in his autobiography, "and I deserve to be called a Theist." At the same time, Darwin believed that "the mystery of the beginning of all things" was simply unsolvable; and so he also declared, "I for one must be content to remain an agnostic."
I do not believe in ad hominem argument, and I am willing to believe that those who detract from Darwin's image as a decent person are motivated purely by their love of God, and do not suffer from the bigotry and limited intelligence that they appear to reveal. However, this does not absolve them from responsibility for their errors. The love of God is not an excuse for egregious and blatant error.
A Balanced VIew of One of the Nineteeth Century's Most Influential Thinkers October 20, 2009
Harold W. Miller
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Coming from Regnery I thought this book would be a one-sided slam at someone they don't like. This relatively short book is very fair to Charles Darwin. His personal life was a model of a decent individual. Compare his family life with that of Karl Marx. He also gives credit for the enormous amount of work that Charles Darwin did throughout his life. His criticism is that Darwin had an agenda: a godless, secular version of evolution. He does point out that Darwin didn't invent evolution, he merely popularized it. In so doing, with the aid of his apologists, he turned a fairly common idea among the intelligentsia into a weapon against religion. Wiker says that Darwin was intensely conflicted about his theory: he abhorred slavery but he admitted that nature did produce slavery. Darwin would have been shocked but shouldn't have been surprised at the multiple bad outcomes that came from his theory. I also appreciated that the people of his day who opposed his theory weren't the typical, young-earth fundamentalists that Darwin apologist always characterize them as. Wiker says that the choice between Darwinist evolution and a literal interpretation of the Bible is a false choice. Wiker, a professing Christian, doesn't advocate the literalist view but says quite frankly that evolution as opposed to Darwinist evolution is a fact. I'm surprised this hasn't been criticized. This is a good read with interesting and surprising insights.
miracle-free natural selection September 16, 2009
Keith (Regina, SK)
15 out of 22 found this review helpful
The book's underlying argument: because science prescribes to methodological naturalism, Darwin, by following this methodology, proposed the theory of natural selection thereby leaving God out. "That evolution must be godless to be scientific is the Darwin Myth, so profoundly misleading that it must be called a great lie,..." (pxi) According to the author then, this myth has supposedly distorted our understanding of the scientific evidence and the debates surrounding evolution (but not any scientific debates). So the author's core complaint here is with methodological naturalism generally, and Darwin's adherence to it in formulating the theory of natural selection.
Simply stated, methodological naturalism mandates that hypotheses or the causes behind phenomena are to be explained using only natural processes. Supernatural or theistic explanations are not admitted at the outset. It's not that scientists don't believe there is a God; it's just that introducing 'Him' into the explanatory process is irrelevant. The reason for this is that methodological naturalism has been enormously successful in providing explanations, in furthering research and in providing practical engineering applications for example. Science, per definitionem *is* methodological naturalism.
Even though science arose out of disciplines more mystical in nature (as in alchemy becoming chemistry for instance), the superstitious side sent countless individuals down nonproductive alleys and dead ends. Supernatural explanations (if there is such a thing) are unproductive. They really don't explain anything. In spite of there always being some things currently deemed supernatural or inexplicable, they may or may not be explained in the future as some unusual natural phenomena. But it doesn't follow that because science doesn't currently have an answer, that the explanation *must* resort to a supernatural one.
Additionally, the idea that a supreme being created everything or intervened is not the only supernatural hypothesis one could propose. The list could be endless: from lesser gods to evil spirits, demons, Satan, goblins, mind control, psychic energy, aliens? etc. How would one eliminate the panoply of possibilities? How would one, by empirical means determine whether a particular event is the work of God or Satan for example?
The author complains about the Origin's 4th edition containing a reference to the creator as being merely a sop--a concession to appease the religious--but it actually shows that it makes no difference to Darwin's basic argument whether a creator is added in or not. Darwin is just saying that once life got started, it diversified via the process of natural selection without *any* interference from God. He doesn't really discuss the origin of life from non-life (abiogenesis). This point is continually lost on creationists discussing origins or Darwin or evolution.
A reasonable job is done in providing a biographical portrait of Darwin and the genesis of his theory. We are told that we're going to get a more honest rendering; one that is without the usual heroic Whig history that usually issues from other Darwin biographers (who are Darwinists no doubt). He gives us the 'straight goods' on some items in Darwin's autobiography. One has to wonder how these biographers get it so wrong whereas this Discovery Institute senior is giving us a truer, nonpartisan? account. But Whig science history is appropriate here as Steven Weinberg comments; "What Herbert Butterfield called the Whig interpretation of history is legitimate in the history of science in a way that it is not in the history of politics or culture, because science is cumulative, and permits definite judgments of success or failure." ([...])
So one really can say whether a scientist in the past got it right or wrong. Darwin got it right.
The author examples Mivart's (a contemporary of Darwin) problems he had with Darwin's theory using the flounder's eyes example where, after being born, one eye migrates to the other side of this fish. Mivart can't see how this could possibly happen by natural selection. There's a great answer now and the author is just pointing out the old God-of-the-gaps argument here: we can't explain it so God must of done it. But note that this hasn't explained it either. Why wouldn't God just 'make' a flounder with eyes already on one side so it doesn't have to migrate to one side after it was born? Anyway, Google: Odd Fish Find Contradicts Intelligent-Design Argument.
Trying to say that others previously came up with the idea of evolution and Darwin contributed nothing significant seems disparaging to his contribution and his theory. Lucretius (99-55 BC) didn't believe in new species arising from older ones. He denied that land animals evolved from aquatic ones. Species were born from the earth period. Darwin's grandfather Erasmus (who wrote Zoonomia), had no self-governing systems of how species change such as reproduction, selection, variation and inheritance. Lamarck was wrong. With Vestiges of Creation by Robert Chambers, life spontaneously generated and it was progressive in nature with (Caucasian) Man at the top. Chambers had no transitions; species just suddenly appeared in leaps. There was no discussion of adaptation and variation. If Darwin's theory was like previous ones, why did it hit like such a bombshell then? It's not simply about sales-pitching your idea or having influential friends.
Near the book's end, the tired rhetorical Hitler card is played and 'Darwinism' is indicted for the Nazi atrocities; but this is entirely irrelevant to the veracity of Darwin's theory, his place in science history and the theory's importance within evolutionary biology today. The author's implicit religious undertow here is that we need an absolute moral compass (based on the Bible and Christianity I would guess) to guide our lives. Darwinism--that godless form of natural selection--not only fails to provide one, it supposedly has undermined previous (religious) ones. It also can't explain the origin of our exalted traits such as reasoning, aesthetics or morality. So we supposedly need a more-inclusive theory that does include these: supernatural selection?
Darwin, and all of science for that matter, didn't take God out; just the miracle part was removed. It's not godless natural selection; it's miracle-free natural selection.
 A break-even read, more or less September 4, 2009
John P. Rickert
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book was approximately worth the time it took to read it, basically break-even on the time and effort involved. I didn't really learn much. Darwin commandeered pre-existing theories of evolution to his own credit. You can get the idea by imagining someone appropriating a lot of software to his own credit and becoming an industry giant from the pilfering. In his own personal life, Darwin was a swell guy. That's about all I learned from the book. As brief as this book is, I did find it rather repetitious. A certain amount of circling back helps to reinforce a point, no doubt. But I think the basic points that this book tried to get across could have been condensed into a longish essay and published in a journal. I found the last chapter very disappointing in several respects, not the least of which is that it regards as stunted or irrational those who disagree. This is simply the Al Gore trick: If you don't agree with me, you are being irrational. I have yet to see anybody who's willing to take the view that we don't really know as much as we thought we knew. 2.5 stars.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
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