Page 182 - The Evolution Impasse 2

180 Reductionism

parts. You can with equal fa cil i ty mod - in the me dia and in ac a dem ic sour -
el on a Neanderthaloid skull the fea - ces. Evolutionists may draw and
tures of a chim pan zee or the lin e a - paint im ag i nary be ings, but the lack
ments of a phi los o pher. These al leged of any fos sils be long ing to those
res to ra tions of an cient types of man
crea tures is a ma jor stum bling block
have very lit tle if any sci en tif ic val ue
for them. One of the meth ods of ten
and are like ly on ly to mis lead the pub -
used to re solve this prob lem has
lic… So put not your trust in re con -
been to man u fac ture what ev er fos -
struc tions. 201
sils they have been un a ble to find.
The bi ased in ter pre ta tion of fos -
Piltdown Man, a ma jor scan dal in
sils and the pro duc tion of fan tas tic
the his to ry of sci ence, is one in -
draw ings are ev i dence of how in ten -
stance. (See Piltdown Man Fraud,
sive ly ev o lu tion ists re sort to de cep -
The.)
tion. Yet com pared with the var i ous
con crete frauds that have been per -
pe trat ed over the past 150 years, REDUCTIONISM
these pale in to in sig nif i cance.
Reductionism is the idea that
No con crete fos sil ev i dence sup -
things that do not ap pear ma te ri al
ports the pic ture of the ape-man
can be ex plained in terms of ma te ri -
con stant ly prop a gat ed
al ef fects. The ma te ri al ist phi los o phy
un der ly ing the the o ry of ev o lu tion
as sumes that ev ery thing that ex ists
con sists sole ly of mat ter. (See
Materialism.) According to this phi -
los o phy, mat ter has ex ist ed for all
time, and noth ing ex ists apart from
mat ter. Materialists em ploy a log ic
known as re duc tion ism to sup port
these claims.
For ex am ple, the hu man mind
can not be touched or seen. In ad di -
FALSE tion, the mind is not cen tered any -
where in the hu man brain. This in ev -
Reconstructions re - i ta bly leads us to con clude that the
flect on ly the im ag i -
mind is a su per-ma te ri al con cept. In
na tion of ev o lu tion -
ists, not the sci en tif -
The Evolution Impasse II
ic facts.