Creationists often bring up Piltdown Man* as an example of an evolutionary fraud, and claim that it was the foundation of huge volumes of research. It was a fraud, and it did linger unpleasantly in the scientific literature for far too long, but you’d be hard pressed to find a serious work of science that used it any more. Until now. That genius of the modern era, L. Ron Hubbard, cited Piltdown in Scientology: A History of Man.
*By the way, if you haven’t been reading Richard Harter’s World, you should. It’s a sort of antediluvian blog, with none of the conventions we’ve grown accustomed to, but it’s an amazing pile of entertaining and random oddities…including the Piltdown information, monthly joke collections, bits of math and poetry. It’ll keep you busy for days, at least—the archives go back to 1996.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Opera_in_Scientology_Doctrine
Creationists never seem to recall that the Piltdown hoax was exposed by evolutionary scientists who (a) noticed that Dawson’s “dawn man” made less and less sense in light of the accumulating evidence relating to human descent and (b) did the work of carefully re-examining the bones to uncover the truth. Creationists can’t take any credit for that. Perhaps Piltdown survived longer than it should have because people wanted to believe in it, but ultimately it serves as an example of science’s self-correcting nature.
Ward Churchill wrote an essay about Piltdown Man and Carlos Casteneda’s “Teachings of Don Juan”. He basically thought that both hoax’s were a result of insufficient peer review and certain members of the academy and the public believing what they wanted to instead of what was true. In both cases people were not skeptical enough. I’d say the fundies read some Churchill, if the mere thought of him didn’t burn their faces off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_History_of_Man
What’s even more amusing are the principal conclusions that Hubbard drew from the Piltdown remains:
“The PILTDOWN contains freakish acts of strange “logic,” of
demonstrating dangerous on one’s fellows, of eating one’s wife and
other somewhat illogical activities. The PILTDOWN teeth were ENORMOUS
and he was quite careless as to whom and what he bit and often very
much surprised at the resulting damage.”
“Obsessions about biting efforts to hide the mouth and early familial
troubles can be found in the PILTDOWN. It is a wonderful area in which to locate GE overt acts.”
L. Ron Hubbard, _A History of Man_, p. 27
Well, there are certainly plenty of examples of “freakish acts of strange logic” and “demonstrating dangerous on one’s fellows” to be found within the creationism movement. I’m not so sure about “eating one’s wife and other somewhat illogical activities.”
So Tom Cruise thinks we’re descendant from Clams????
Oh snap! Wonder how badly he would lose it if someone questioned that belief.
It’s too bad Giovanni Ribisi is a scientologist too.
Oh, it gets even better than that. Hubbard was a creationist – just not the type that Pharyngulites usually come across. He denounces evolution as the “man from mud” theory:
Well, of course! See http://www.rehabilitatenz.co.nz/pages/man-from-mud.html for more Hubbardian lunacy.
I think it’s rather significant that the vast majority of Scientologists live in the United States and that it’s attracted only limited traction elsewhere. What makes Americans more attracted to Scientology than people in other countries?
To be fair to our dear friend Mr. Cruise, there was at one point serious speculation concerning a urochordate origin for vertebrates through neoteny. I rather doubt an origin in tunicate larvae would seem any less shocking at first glance to an unschooled layperson than descent from clams.
What makes Americans more attracted to Scientology than people in other countries?
I think it’s the other way around, Scientology is attracted to Americans.
Gullible *and* wealthy.
I’ve always wondered why so many Hollywood celebrities are Scientologists.
I mean, I know why, they have the money, but it’s still weird to me. Do they like, send people to your house after your movie makes a certian amount of money or something? Do they fight with the Kabbalists for the best access to you?
It must be bizarre to be a celebrity.
Harter IS amusing: eg this http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1997/tenure.html is sharp!
@plucky punk: That is because they are highly educated, advance this very world, brought us into the 21st century, and are everything to be desired for and an ideal role modell for you.
Did it every occur to you that stupidity is in fact defined as illiteracy, as neurologically there is just no basis for such a claim, and science is about logic. Moreover did it ever occur to you that there is a direct proportionality between the learning of logic (science) and educational lack thereof, wherefore a direct proportionality exists between believe and logic.
This doesn`t mean that a farmer is stupid, in fact he can just be as smart as anyone else, it doesn`t matter how he derived his logic – it sure is however for the most part his environment, or have you ever heard of a bushman pondering about the mathematical description of the world.
The stupid will always be exploited. Did it ever occur to you that what basically ANY conman exploits is faith and believe (and physical disabilities – but way less, as clearly disabled are less common than -let`s be blunt, stupid people), think about that.
If you wanna make a career for yourself, become a conartist like Ron – the Con, or for fu***s sake write a novel about atlantis and their alien heritage.
ChrisO: I would guess: compartively poor school-age education, extreme affluence, cults of personality (which need to be explained too) and, paradoxically enough, extreme religious tolerance.
And yes, the Scientologists do explicitly target Hollywood celebrities, not charge them as much, treat them far better than the common run of ‘fresh meat’ and so on and so forth. It’s all quite intentional.