Thursday, October 11, 2012

Dale Nierode is a Shoddy Apologist



They say there's nothing new under the sun, and "Why Evolution is Not True - The Puzzle of Life Finally Comes Together" by Dale Nierode seems determined to do its best to apply that adage to Creationism. Instead of an honest attempt at examining the real data, the book ignores anything that contradicts it's fundamental premise. Even the abstract contains outright misinformation, insisting, for example, that no transitional fossils have been found. This nonsense ignores the well documented evolution of whales, the pre-human transitional fossils and all the others that have been uncovered. One is left wondering if Dale Nierode is deliberately lying, or merely an incompetent, lazy researcher.

The book is an embarrassment to Creationists and Apologetic writing. If I were conspiracy minded, I'd accuse Nierode of being a deep cover humanist out to mock and ridicule Creationism by depicting Biblical literalists as developmentally disabled idiots incapable of cracking open a book.

If you want a well written, thoughtful, insightful, well researched book supporting Creationism, this volume is the exact opposite of what you're seeking. If you want to get a Creationist to seriously consider Evolution as a feasible explanation for the variety of living creatures on Earth, give them this book, as it sets up a chain of shoddy arguments and straw men that are unsportingly easy to knock down. Follow up by giving them a copy of Why Evolution Is True to show them what happens when a competent writer does actual research.

3 comments:

dalen@whyevolutionisnottrue.com said...

I'm glad you found my e-book - I think. I'm not shoddy. I wear nice clothes! The good news is that you don't need to buy the book. You can view videos on my website www.whyevolutionisnottrue.com instead. I suggest you look at Part 1 and Part 2 under the "Teaching Videos" tab and let me know where you disagree.

From all the reading I have done on Evolution, I've concluded that most evolutionists don't think they have a competitive opponent in Biblical Creation. In my view that is no longer true.

Matthew Miller said...

Dale,

I strongly recommend reviewing your web site in more than one browser. In Firefox 19 for example, the text bleeds off the left edge of the screen, resulting in a good portion of your text being unreadable. Given the overall simplicity of your site's look and feel, there really is no reason for this to be happening.

I haven't had a chance to review your videos, but a quick look at your "summary of the status of Evolution Theory and Biblical Creation History" looks like the content consists largely of a video of you talking. I suggest that instead of a video, you offer an audio only download, preferably in a common format such as MP3. This will make it easier for people to listen to what you have to say and open the door to producing a podcast of your arguments.

The "PA Video" player being used on your web site is a rather poor one. You can't really skip ahead in the videos. I don't know who provided you with the tools you used to design your web site, but whatever you paid it was too much. I suggest uploading your videos to Youtube and embedding them on your site. This will have the added advantage of tapping into Youtube's "related videos" recommendations, which will make them available to a wider audience.

Matthew Miller said...

Dale,

I took a look at the site source, and it looks like you're using an unnecessarily beefy MP4 file. This is a MAJOR waste of bandwidth for both you and anyone watching your videos. Even if you stick with MP4 for the video format, you really need to be streaming the video at a lower resolution and quality level. The summary video on the front page clocks in at 256 megs for a video that's just under 33 minutes. That's excessive for the content in question.

You have a handful of powerpoint slides in the video, but frankly you don't need them to convey the information you're going for. You can go audio-only with minimal modification to the shooting script.

If you insist upon keeping it as a video:

*Drop the frame rate.
*You don't need this to be a stereo recording, mono is fine.
*Revisit the codec you used for the original video. You can probably use a codec that does a better job compressing the video.
*Trim the video to a lower resolution. The PopwerPoint slides are already so badly framed that adding some pan and scan action to those sections won't really distract.

Regardless of if you go audio only or keep it as a video, drop the audio sample rage. You're currently clocking in at 44 kHz, CD quality. This is not a music video, this is a lecture. You can safely drop down to 22 kHz, possibly 11. Experiment a bit.