Freethought & Rationalism Archive

yahwehyadayada · 10-13-2002, 03:31 PM

I saw him on C-Span2's Book TV, talking about Evolution, Creationism, & Other Myths, & I was just wondering if anyone had read it yet, & if so, what they thought of it.

pz · 10-13-2002, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by yahwehyadayada:
<strong>I saw him on C-Span2's Book TV, talking about Evolution, Creationism, & Other Myths, & I was just wondering if anyone had read it yet, & if so, what they thought of it.</strong>

Having read the old Vine Deloria, and seeing the title of the new Vine Deloria, I can't say that I'm at all interested. It looks like the same old unbelievable dreck.

Undercurrent · 10-13-2002, 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by yahwehyadayada:
<strong>I saw him on C-Span2's Book TV, talking about Evolution, Creationism, & Other Myths, & I was just wondering if anyone had read it yet, & if so, what they thought of it.</strong>

I saw that, too. He seems to use quite a lot of words to say quite a little. Waffled completely when that woman asked him what he thought of the Kennewick man, basically giving the standard "mistakes were made on both sides, let's all try to get along" non-opinion.

The thing that irritated me most about him was his belief that scientists don't study anything more deeply than the average Joe does, and hence these observations I have made poking through a few popular books from the comfort of my easy chair are just as worthy of belief as the efforts of countless reseachers in the lab an field. But that attitude is so common nowadays that it's hard to get worked up about it.

m.

lpetrich · 10-13-2002, 06:51 PM

What does Vine Deloria have to say in that book?

From <a href="http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/deloria/" target="_blank">this site on Red Earth, White Lies</a>, we find

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Science and the Oral Tradition basically deals with the fact that there are two ways of looking at data and suggests, since there were so many giants of science that fudged their figures or, like Freud, kept on patients to ensure themselves an income, or doctored results a la Kepler and Mendel, or stole other people's ideas - re Darwin and Wallace - that what is fed to us as "science" may well be unreliable.

However, Vine Deloria's writing of books suggests that he concedes the superior efficiency of literacy as opposed to transmitting oral traditions ("orality"?).

Also, he seems to be implying that many mainstream scientists are nothing but crooks. However, if science was as crook-infested as he and many other self-styled heretics imply, it would not have gotten anywhere.

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Evolutionary Prejudice highlights the American scholarly failing that since no Neanderthal bones were found in the western hemisphere, Indians must have come here late. In effect many American anthropologists want Indians to evolve from Neanderthal to Cro-Magnon and then cross the Bering Strait. But there are many very early finds here that date as Cro Magnon types and even Leakey knew that Cro Magnon and Neanderthal were contemporaries, and were not in a straight evolutionary line. Once that late date requirement is removed - by American schoalrs joining the rest of the world, then the North American picture looks very different.

Which is an exercise in irrelevancy. Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon coexistence has nothing to do with the first human arrivals in the Americas.

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The Low Bridge chapter - deals with the Bering Strait and goes outside the Indian area to ask what scholars think of the Bering Strait when they are not focused on Indians - well, it is a mess - they have the Bering land bridge opening every time they want to send some species back and forth between Asia and America in order to maintain their evolutionary trees. So we have bison, horses, mammoths, palm, oak and hickory trees, you name it, all traveling across the Bering Strait - Bob Bakker even has dinosaurs running back and forth. You can imagine the number of Ice Ages that would entail.

However, experience with introduced species indicates that if they can make the journey, they will. And one does not need ice ages to create land connections -- continental drift can do nicely, as has happened in the last few million years between North and South America.

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Pleistocene Hit Men reviews the Paul Martin theory that Indian ancestors tromped across the land bridge and engaged in a massive blood lust and exterminated some 39 species of megafauna. Martin and his supporters offer virtually no evidence other than that they do not want to accept a possible world-wide flood.

Which is a gigantic load of mammoth dung.

Is Vine Deloria supporting the recent-global-flood hypothesis? That would have caused MUCH BIGGER mass extinctions.

Also, such human-caused mass extinctions of megafauna have happened in several other places; though it's an interesting question why the North American and European mass extinctions were approximately coincident with the end of the last Ice Age. Could it be the combination of human hunting and climate change doing what they could not do individually?

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Geomythology suggests that many Indian acounts are eye-witness memories of spectacular geological events. I don't think anyone would argue that the Klamaths saw Crater Lake explode. I take a lot of the Cascade features and argue that the Indian accounts are reliable - thus there was one major flood at Spokane instead of 80 some - and caused by an earthquake and not by a glacial dam - which C. Warren Hunt has shown to be impossible anyway.

Except that the numerous repeats and the glacial dam break are well-established. Those remembering the big floods may have collapsed them into a single flood, and they may not have connected it with a glacial dam break, because it would have been a very long walk from much of the Columbia River basin to the Lake Missoula area.

yahwehyadayada · 10-14-2002, 11:48 AM

Thanks for the replies. I had never heard of him, but when I heard him talking about oral traditions & seven-foot-tall men & dinosaurs, my baloney detection alarm went off. Now at least I won't waste my money on his book.

10-13-2002, 03:31 PM	#1
yahwehyadayada Regular Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: WI Posts: 290	Has anybody read the new Vine Deloria? I saw him on C-Span2's Book TV, talking about Evolution, Creationism, & Other Myths, & I was just wondering if anyone had read it yet, & if so, what they thought of it.

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10-14-2002, 11:48 AM	#5
yahwehyadayada Regular Member Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: WI Posts: 290	Thanks for the replies. I had never heard of him, but when I heard him talking about oral traditions & seven-foot-tall men & dinosaurs, my baloney detection alarm went off. Now at least I won't waste my money on his book.

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