In the 12th September (2009) issue of UK weekly political magazine The Spectator, (Vol 311, number 9,446, fact fans) Rod Liddle wrote an article entitled “Do we really need Hitler to warn us about Aids?”
What follows is about a somewhat throwaway remark in Liddle’s article, which was concerned, primarily, with something entirely different (though related).
The article currently under advisement is about, as the Speccy subs (one assumes) put it in the strapline, how, “the advertising world has plumbed new depths of macabre tactlessness.” (I.e not about, as we’re going to come on to, the specific subject of “evolution deniers”.)
One of the examples of the advertising world's egregiousness in Liddle’s article is, as he puts it “a long and pornographic” advert on the perils of AIDS shown in Germany, in which (I haven’t seen it) Liddle says:
“an attractive naked woman whinned and yelped her way towards sexual climax,”, whilst being “rogered from behind” by someone who turned out to be “Adolf Hitler.”
The subtext, says Liddle, is “that Aids is universal, a great leveler like TB, and we are all at risk.”
“To deny this,” he goes on, “is akin to denying the Holocaust, -- to being a ‘Holocaust denier’. Much as, these days, one can be a ‘climate change denier’– a deliberate allusion, on the part of our eco-warriors, to Holocaust denial, and in their eyes, every bit as grave a charge. Calling people ‘deniers’, with that obvious allusion, in very au contrant – I notice Richard Dawkins has started calling people who disagree with Charles Darwin ‘evolution deniers.’”
Whoa. (To quote Alan Partridge, that’s English for “stop a horse!”) This suggests (surely) that Dawkins is jumping on some sort of recent bandwagon, and that the label “evolution deniers” is a sort of empty, politically correct, label.
To be honest, I’ve not got the energy to do a massive amount of research on this, but, five minutes rummaging amongst books I actually own have revealed:
Dawkins’s most recent book The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, suggests that:
i] his preferred term is “history deniers” (or “40-percenters”) – see, for example, the Appendix, or, indeed, page 7 (of Chapter 1!) of the UK hardback of Greatest Show; and;
ii] other books I own suggest that the term ‘evolution deniers’, is, though perfectly apt and interchangeable with, in this case, ‘history deniers’ it is not only not au contrant, but at least 12 years old. (And I’m sure there must be earlier examples.)
In his marvellous book Why People Believe Weird Things (1997), Michael Shermer spends considerable time demolishing the arguments of both holocaust and evolution deniers.
Not only, as Shermer correctly made clear (in the last century!) is “‘evolution deniers’” a “more appropriate term than ‘creationists’”, the comparison with ‘holocaust deniers’ is valid for at least three reasons (this and all following quotes are from p. 132 of the 2000 WH Freeman and Co. paperback (3rd printing) of Shermer's book):
1] Holocaust deniers find errors in the scholarship of historians and then imply that therefore their conclusions are wrong, as if historians never make mistakes. Evolution deniers find errors in the science and imply that all of science is wrong, as if scientists never make mistakes.
2] Holocaust deniers are fond of quoting, usually out of context, leading Nazis, Jews, and Holocaust scholars to make it sound like they are supporting Holocaust deniers’ claims. Evolution deniers are fond of quoting leading scientists like Stephen J. Gould and Enrst Mayr out of context and implying that they are cagily denying the reality of evolution.
3] Holocaust deniers contend that genuine and honest debate between Holocaust scholars mean they themselves doubt the Holocaust or cannot get their stories straight. Evolution deniers argue that genuine and honest debate between scientists mean even they doubt evolution or cannot get their science straight.
As Shermer says, the irony of this is that Holocaust deniers can “at least be partially right” (for example: as new discoveries have been made, as Shermer rightly says, the best estimate of the number of Jews murdered at Auschwitz has changed over the years).
On the other hand, not only does each new discovery reinforce the evidence for evolution and render “disagreeing with Charles Darwin” (one presumes Liddle doesn’t mean about his choice of favorite breakfast) ever more fatuous, once, as Shermer so rightly says:
“you allow divine intervention into the scientific process, all assumptions about natural law go out the window, and with them science.”
In other words, whilst people are of course at liberty to imply that “disagreeing with Charles Darwin” is in some way remotely sensible, it’s sadly and continuingly necessary to point out how obviously daft such views are...
[Slightly edited for clarity since first posted -- MW]
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