Tuesday, March 24, 2015

#1325: Eugene C. Ashby


Eugene C. Ashby is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Georgia Institute of Technology, and a hardcore intelligent design creationist. As a creationist, Ashby has apparently made a zealous effort to perpetuate all the standard misunderstandings and untruths concerning evolution associated with creationism, many of which he published in his book (tract, really) Understanding the Creation/Evolution Controversy, in which he amply demonstrated that he does not understand the Creation/Evolution “controversy”. Oh yes, you will find the creationist distinction between macro- and microevolution, Haeckel’s embryos, and peppered moths, and that’s just the beginning. It’s really all there.

Ashby also supported the infamous disclaimer stickers in Cobb County, GA, put on biology textbooks proclaiming that evolution is “a theory, not a fact”. And, since he does indeed possess a legitimate degree (contrary to what you’d be led to expect from his support for the aforementioned sticker), a signatory to the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism.

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientist. Ashby has a real degree, but his education does not seem to have given him much grasp of science.

7 comments:

  1. Creationism collapses from the beginning, since creationists need to find a perfect, unborn principle that justifies and explains the complexity of the Universe. Of course this forces us to assume the existence of some-thing or some-one much more complex that His/Her creation. This shows the logical fallacy of false attribution that happens when an advocate appeals to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased or fabricated source in support of an argument. Also we find the circular reasoning fallacy:Circular reasoning is often of the form: "A is true because B is true; B is true because A is true."A classic sample is what follows: " The Bible is true because it's inspired by God...the Bible tells us that it is inspired by God.." Of course, if Evolution is just a theory, what is creationism? Is nonsense, of course.

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  2. It's clear that James Black is not a Phd.
    It is also clear that he has either not read this book or does not understand the science involved.
    Dr Ashby has a list of accomplishments that would not fit on this page. Dr Abby also list a number of Nobel laureates that would argue in favor of his points.
    My question to you is how many different single cell organisms accidentally assembled themselves from the primordial ooze to justify all the different life forms in the history of the earth.
    His point starts even before the first living cell.
    Lastly, can you provide even one single verifiable example of macro evolution, without witch all other arguments fail.

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    1. Ashby does indeed have numerous research papers and awards to his name. His degrees and area of research, however, are in chemistry and nothing approximating biology or anything remotely relating to evolutionary theory.

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  3. Pseudoscientist GD what type of imbecile makes a babbling commentary about someone and something he knows nothing about. Dr Ashby has a history of not only being a world class scientist who won both national and international awards for his scientific achievements in the field of Organometalic reaction mechanisms. He was the only American to win the Lavoisier medal of the French Chemical Society. He also won the top award of the Americal Chemical Society as the top chemist in the country, twice. You sir are just a self important joke and a loser without any credibility whatsoever.

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  4. I was a student of Dr. Ashby's Organic Chemistry class at GT in the 1990s and found him to be an arrogant, condescending, blowhard. A PhD in chemistry and accolades doesn't make him competent to write the aforementioned book. Many MDs are quacks. Ashby is indeed a loon.

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    Replies
    1. I met Dr. Ashby while a student at Georgia Tech from 1978 to 1979 and found him to be disagreeable. I liked Dr. Charles Liotta better.

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