A.k.a. Bill Davis
Percival Davis is an author, young earth creationist, and
proponent of teaching intelligent design in public education (since young earth
creationism, what he really believes, won’t fly). Davis does indeed have a
master of arts in zoology from Columbia, and is also a visiting professor of
biology at Clearwater Christian College (which strongly suggests that this
ain’t a place to go for an education), but is hardly a legitimate authority on
biology.
In fact, Davis is – together with Dean Kenyon (to be
covered) – responsible for popularizing the term “intelligent design,” particularly
through writing the infamous ID creationist textbook Of Pandas and People,
which presented intelligent design in a manner the creationists (after McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education)
deemed suitable for school kids for legal purposes – in other words, Davis is another
prime example of the creationist agenda of trying to convert kids instead of
actually doing science to support their silly ideas. “Of Pandas and People” was
of course the book that subsequently formed the backdrop for the Dover Trial,
for those who are unfamiliar with the details of ID propagation.
The book suggested that Darwinism had outlived its
usefulness, primarily because of irreducible complexity,
which the authors took as good evidence for the unfalsifiable and hence
unverifiable theory that an intelligent designer was behind it all. And yes, it
contained all the standard creationist fallacies, PRATTs,
quote-mining,
and Gish gallops in the book; and yes, it is only about objecting to evolution – no positive
case is made for ID, and the authors seem to assume that if evolution fails, creationism must be right,
which is quite simply a mistake. It is reviewed here.
Concerning the obvious agenda behind the book, Davis commented “Of course my
motives were religious. There's no question about it.” Here is a selection from the Dover ruling showing what role Of Pandas and People was really supposed to play. You can read how
the ID crowd reacted here.
Davis has also co-written Case for Creation (with Wayne Frair, also to be covered in the
relatively near future).
Diagnosis: One of the stalwarts of the utterly dishonest
insanity movement that is the Intelligent Design movement, and a complete
fucking moron. Dangerous.
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