OK, as promised, here's a chapter by chapter account of the strawman/PRATTS/fallacies/misconceptions in Strobel's "The Case for a Creator" Now, I'm not going to bother to refute these things, because its all been done before, here and elsewhere. But if someone wants to bring up a point, have at it.
Let's look at Chapter 2*, shall we?
After a brief walk down memory lane, Strobel exposes the reader to what he calles the 'Images of Evolutions" He will use these images to characterize the theory of evolution throughout the book.
Image #1: The Stanley Miller Experiment: this is a mischaracterization of the theory of evolution. First swing at plate and Strobel misses. He immediately asserts that abiogenesis is part and parcel with evolution. Its not, nuff said.
Image #2: Darwin's Tree of Life: Strobel makes another mischaracterization here by taking the opportunity to artificially split 'micro' evolution from 'macro' evolution. Secondly he focuses and stayes focused on Darwin's original conceptualization. The reader discovers that he never moves beyond this, and never recognizes the changes the theory has undergone over more than a century of scrutiny and development
Image #3: Ernst Haeckel's Drawing of Embryos: honestly before Strobel mentioned them, I had never seen reference to these before. See this
Linky to see the refutation. Basically Strobel is perpetuating the myth that this has anything to do with modern evolutionary theory.
Image #4: The Missing Link: I'll hold off on this until Strobel gets back to it later. It is interesting, though, that Strobel takes this opportunity to link, once again, evolution to atheism.
Now, the great big Bible Hammer on pages 21-24. Here Strobel basically pre-empts any notion that a Christian can accept evolution by characterizing the two as incompatible. I'll provide this quote from William Provine as used by Strobel on page 22, "A widespread theological view now exists saying that God started off the world, props it up and works through laws of nature, very subtly that its action is undetectable. But that kind of God is effectively no different to my mind than atheism." He goes on with further quotes that cast 'Darwinism' as having the intent to refute God. Strobel does this alot throughout the book, confuse the science of evolution with the possible philosophical/political/theological ramifications of evolution without ever acknowledging that the science is science, but that what one makes of it is a personal interpretation.
Finally he concludes Chapter 2 by declaring that he will search for 'the truth' by consulting "authorities in various scientific disciplines about the most current findings in their fields." But then he moves on to say that he will pick experts "who refuse to limit themselves only to the politicallyh correct world of naturalism or materialism. After all, it wouldn't make sense to rule out any hypothesis at the outset. I wanted the freedom to pursue all possibilities."
In otherwords, he's stacking the deck with expert witnesses who hold his own presuppositions and who define science so broadly that it would be impossible to exclude that which would not conform to emperical science. This becomes really evident once one sees who he has called upon as his experts.
Chapter 3 tomorrow.
*I'm skipping over Chapter 1 right now in order to get to the strawmen as quickly as possible. But I'll come back around to that in the end.
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