Andrew McKillop's argument goes like this:
The anti-peak oil arguments are just like those supporting evolution: they're full of gaps.
Let's stroll through and harvest some bouquets of fallacies:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')ight at the start of the Darwin controversy, from about 1859 with the publication of Darwin’s “Origins” masterwork, his evolutionary theory was mainly rejected outright. Not so very long after, however, it had become Official Science, and this for a variety of reasons. One in particular, that continues right up to now, is that Darwinist notions can be used to rationalize and justify the New Economy and it [sic] credo of deliberately increasing economic inequality, to “sharpen competition”. Many other Darwinist notions are apparently very comforting to not only some defenders of scientific orthodoxy, but also to performers in the political circus. Such is the desire to ensure that confusion and incoherence reigns, that, today, many US states school curriculums include not only Darwinist evolution, but also Creationism. Choose either one – you can only be wrong !
PeakOil is You
When did Andrew McKillop lose his mind?
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When did Andrew McKillop lose his mind?
by killJOY » Sun 23 Apr 2006, 09:57:29
"Darwinist ideas can be expropriated by the unscrupulous. Therefore, Darwinism is false." The point: anti-peak oil arguments can also be expropriated by "performers in the political circus."
No need to look at evidence. Just perform some arm-chair logical legerdemain and you've just kicked some Darwinist butt.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')arwin never directly said human beings are “descended from apes”, and likewise nobody serious in the Peak Oil movement, to my knowledge, says that we are at “the end of oil”. Yet this slogan is now everywhere, and is a red rag to the charging bulls of the bourse, or Growth Economy.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('But Darwin', 'W')e must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system - with all these exalted powers - Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.
One clue to not sounding like an idiot is to read a little about the subject.
Not only that, is there any Darwinist today who seriously thinks humans have not descended from primates, the same group apes belong to? [See "The Third Chimpanzee" by Jared Diamond]
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n New Economy fairytale economics the growth of the economy is slow, sure and permanent (rather like Darwinian evolution)
If two things are alike in some ways, well then they're alike in ALL ways. This is known as "FALSE ANALOGY" to college freshmen studying Logic 101.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'D')arwinism was (almost exactly) wrong.
The greatest problem with Darwinian evolution theory, apart from it [sic] being a theory that can never be verified – because we cant [sic]go back to the beginning of life on this planet and “see what happens” – is that no proof at all can be found of ongoing or contemporary evolution. Also, there are only missing links, and no common ancestors. Of course some die-hard Darwinists can howl at this brief summary, but Darwin theory is very, very shaky.
In the exact same way, Peak Oil Negationists, or defenders of the ever-full barrel, are improving their pitch and their research results due to constant discoveries of ‘new oil’ and ‘near oil’,[blah blah blah]
Poor lad! If his wife is murdered, we can never find a perpetrator and put him or her in jail, because, you see, we can't go back and "see what happened."
For this lad, evidence and inference and deduction do not exist. Only eyeballing "what happened."
Poor lad! He never read "The Beak of the Finch" by Jonathan Weiner, which details the decades-long studies of Darwin's favorite birds on the Galapagos Islands.
He has never read how infectious diseases evolve right before the eyes of researchers trying to eradicate them.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')hus the Peak Oil Negation industry will have to work a lot harder. What is needed is one or two more Ghawars or Canterells , nothing else will do ! This could be assimilated to the Darwinists finding fossils of real flying reptiles, or even more sensational, flying amphibians that ‘jumped the queue’ on their reptile competitors and got into the air first. The crushing absence of even trivial ‘evolutionary step’ fossils for almost any animal species you care to mention- and worse still for plants – was, and is a major reason that Darwinism is essentially a myth, and not anything that could be called ‘science’.
Well, no such anti-peak oil argument could be "assimilated" to Darwinism (see FALSE ANALOGY above).
As for the rest, have a gander at this:
Here's the height of absurdity:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')e note the clear connection: eagerly, or desperately seeking fossils to support a broken-back theory of the early 1800s (Darwin’s first completed draft of “Origins” was in the 1830s) is very comparable to seeking fossil energy reserves absolutely anywhere on Earth. Darwin himself mused, in print, on the vast new reserves of fossils remains that would surely be found in South America, in Asia, the Poles, and under the oceans, which of course would prove his theory.
Um, how could there even be "fossil energy reserves" without there being fossils in the first place?
Since Darwin's time, "reserves" of fossils have indeed been found--enough to blow his mind.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ince Darwin gave absolutely no scientific reasoning in coming to major conclusions, in many parts of his “origins” book, I can also economise on this tiresome detail - and leave it to the debating arena !
