William D. Rubinstein, a professor of modern history at the University of Wales-Aberystwyth, has written an incredibly intellectually dishonest piece about evolution, characterizing it as a “theory” without acknowledging the special scientific meaning of “theory,” and going on to set up a series of strawmen. PZ Myers tears this apart, paragraph by paragraph:
Evolution appears to be plainly impossible. Animals cannot “evolve” into new and different species. If one breeds cats for a thousand generations, they will still be cats, won’t they? They simply will not “evolve” into cats which look like kangaroos and are genetically different from felis domesticus. It simply won’t happen.
I guess getting a history degree requires no knowledge of logic. Declaring something impossible because it “appears to be plainly impossible” and “it simply won’t happen” is, well, inane. Cats are not expected to evolve into kangaroos, but cats and kangaroos did evolve from ratlike ancestors, not over a thousand generations, but over tens of millions of years.
(via Kottke)