Spirited biologist PZ Myers recently debated Geoffrey Simmons, a clueless twit who seems to know almost nothing about evolution and yet has written an anti-evolution book titled What Darwin Didn’t Know.
PZ posts about the "debate" here:
I was shocked for a moment when, after I’d mentioned the recent discovery of Indohyus, he went on to claim that there were no intermediates between that deer-like artiodactyl and modern whales … and when I tried to mention Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Rhodcetus, Basilosaurus, etc., he seemed to have never heard of them, claimed his information came from a Scientific American article some months ago (way to plumb the depths of the scientific literature, Dr Simmons!), and then started making up stuff about them not exhibiting dorsoventral flexion in swimming, and not having dorsal blowholes. He wrote a whole book about "Billions of missing links"! His other book, What Darwin Didn’t Know, needs to be retitled in a new edition, What Geoffrey Simmons Doesn’t Know. It will be a very large book.
Fortunately the radio station provides online access to its audio archives, so you can listen to the good Dr Simmons swallowing his tongue as PZ politely tears him to pieces.
PZ has always come off as pretty forthright on his blog, so I was quite surprised at his softly spoken manner and the admirable restraint he showed during the debate. He could have easily added the words "…you idiot" to the end of everything he said, and I still think it would have been a fair exchange.
If you think Dr Simmons is getting a raw deal here, bear in mind he claims to have studied evolution for 40 years and understand it well enough to call out huge problems with it (having written at least two books claiming everyone else has it wrong) yet he appears unaware of the current state of the literature and offers no evidence or suggested mechanism for any alternative theory. He keeps harping on his point that no one is allowed to question Darwin’s evolution, even though there is significant debate within the field of biology on the details and mechanisms at work, and evolution belongs no more to Darwin than gravity does to Newton or Einstein. Simmons deserves about as much respect as someone standing in the middle of the room shouting about how maths is pointless and doesn’t explain anything.
Below the fold is a transcript of Intelligent Design fans listening to their champion go down in flames. Sooooo delicious :) It is provided here in the spirit of fair use, and also because it was disappeared from the site where it was originally posted (ie they deleted it because they were embarrassed by it).