Friday, July 04, 2008

"Dr." McVety's Wisdom...

It would seem that all of the degree mill diplomas that "Dr." Charles McVety claims to have earned (paid for) haven't exactly enhanced the man's critical thinking skills.

For example, consider the following bit of drooling stupidity published on http://www.charlesdarwin.ca.

Entitled "Sexism in Schools" sexism in schools, it attempts to portray evolution theory as outright sexist, and all of the evil things that it says to put women into a second place status in society:

Darwin’s theory of natural selection as the process for progress of a species places the developmental responsibility on the male; therefore, man is further developed than woman. The stronger, more fit man will out do the weaker man and win the woman, ultimately producing stronger offspring, contributing to the evolution of man. This conclusion that the woman plays little or no part in development leads to the belief that women have not evolved as far as man.


Ummm...no, it doesn't Mr. McVety. Even the most egregious abuse of what Darwin wrote in 'The Origin of Species' could justify that particular position.

However, even if Darwin had written precisely that in The Origin of Species, it hardly reflects the current day understanding of evolution - or science in general for that matter.

You see, unlike raving nutballs like Charles McVety, science long ago figured out that it must change as new data emerges - and plenty of data to refute whatever piece of Darwin's writing McVety is nitpicking about has come along. (Remember, Darwin wrote much of his material long before women were considered equal citizens in our society - if some of it has undercurrents of what today we would call sexism, we shouldn't be surprised).

However, I suppose McVety can be forgiven such failings, as he comes from a tradition where reading and actually interpreting things is verboten - after all scripture is the "unchanging word of God", is it not?

But, then he goes on and proceeds to drop an even better turd out of his intellectual orifice:

Evolutionists also teach that the woman resembles an eleven-year-old male therefore is clearly lesser developed than man is. This type of superficial conclusion only reveals the ignorance of so-called scientists that propagate such nonsense. They obviously do not look beyond outward appearance and have no understanding of women.

Another “brain storm” of evolution is that women are over burdened by strong senses to the point that they have no ability to develop intellectually. Evolutionists compare women to lesser developed species like dogs that have such strong noses that their minds are constantly overwhelmed by the sense of smell, so that they cannot progress mentally. This is utter nonsense and highly offensive to all mankind.


I don't even want to know where he derived that bit of nonsense from. It's beyond stupid, and lands firmly in the realm of just plain crap. If one were to make an utterly ridiculous extrapolation from observed evidence, you could probably derive whatever McVety is dribbling on about (it's fairly well known that women have more sensitive senses of sight and smell than men do - on average - but I don't think anyone with half a brain views that as anything other than a difference, especially in the context of science classes).

As for what is supposedly taught in high school science courses, I don't think it comes anywhere near to spouting the kind of drivel that McVety is manufacturing. He's actually being somewhat less coherent in his arguments than Behe was in Darwin's Black Box - a feat that I find somewhat surprising.

Mr. McVety might want to do a couple of remedial exercises - actually read "The Origin of Species", as well as one or two current day books that talk about evolution. Shouldn't be a difficult thing for a man with a PhD. to do ... if he actually earned that PhD the old fashioned way...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps PhD means in this case "practically half done".

MAS

MgS said...

Ouch!

Niles said...

The 'sexist' attack is just an adjunct to the 'racist' accusations he launched in his little letter and sideshow the last month.

The idea the fundamentalist evangelists are trying to position themselves as outraged proponents of feminism is hysterically funny.

I wonder how McVety equates that with how a good woman must submit to her husband as he submits to God.

But hey, the only reason they get on about Darwin is because it's the one name made popular in the Scopes 'monkey' trial (and they won that case, dammit...*dammit*!). If they railed against someone like PZ Meyers, people would go "who?".

Anonymous said...

That pretzeled logic of McVety's has a familiar ring to it. It reminds me of the kind of selective fact-plucking and slippery conflation of unrelated points (plus of course outright falsehoods) that you find in any New Age tome, Fraser Institute op-ed, or advert for the latest altie medicine "woo" that Orac at Respectful Insolence writes about so entertainingly.

I find it odd that each of these different sets of liars doesn't have their own unique bag of slimy tricks, instead of apparently all having studied from the same manual, but there it is. Perhaps the nature of bullshit is that it can only be delivered in a fairly limited number of ways? If so, that's fortunate for the rest of us, since it makes the treachery easier to spot.

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