Arizona Atheist vs. David Marshall

In October of this year I decided to copy a document I'd written titled 10 Errors in the Truth Behind the New Atheism into the Customer Discussion forums of Amazon.com. Not surprisingly David Marshall arrived to give a response almost a month later. As usual, he resorts to his usual nonsense by claiming I can't read and whatnot, when it's clear I pointed out cases where he couldn't read or failed to conduct proper research.

This list is only a very brief sample of the issues I uncovered in Marshall's book. For the full treatment please read my extensive review of his book.

I have copied each post in its entirety with Marshall's replies in blockquotes with my replies in regular font.

Here was my initial post:

The Truth Behind the New Atheism (Harvest House Publishers, September 1, 2007) is a Christian apologetic work by David Marshall that aims to refute the New Atheism as a whole. Despite many errors being pointed out by skeptics such as myself and others, Marshall has refused to admit a single error even when they're as plain as the nose on his face. Sure, as he's told me a few times, he has admitted a few typos and whatnot but that's not what us critics are complaining about. We're talking about bona fide factual and logical errors on his part. Many of these are undeniable and he still refuses to acknowledge them. We're not sure why he does this. Perhaps it's an enormous case of confirmation bias? Perhaps it's something to do with his ego? Either way, Marshall is definitely as stubborn as they come at admitting mistakes.

This was written to give anyone who may be curious about the book a quick guide to a handful of the errors Marshall makes and to expose his dishonest rhetoric. You may even be familiar with Marshall from participating at the Amazon.com Customer Discussions. Marshall seems to mostly hang out at the The God Delusion forum where myself and other critics have tried in vain to point out an error - any error - that Marshall may actually admit to, but to no avail.

I hope you enjoy this brief exposé of The Truth Behind the New Atheism.

1. Marshall claims that Richard Sternberg was "shunned, lied about, and kept from doing research" because he allowed a pro-intelligent design paper to be published in a scientific journal. (42)

The only truthful statement here was that Sternberg allowed a paper on intelligent design to be published in a scientific journal. What Marshall doesn't tell you is that Sternberg had ties to Meyer and the intelligent design movement. He also bypassed the proper peer review process and published the article himself. There is a lot to this story so that's all I will say about it and I will direct you to an excellent article on the subject by Ed Brayton: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/12/creating_a_martyr_the_sternber.php

This lapse of Marshall's research is continued throughout the entire book. Even though information was available about the incident at the time of the book's writing (even the emails countering these very allegations) Marshall failed to find out the other side of the story and swallowed the propaganda hook, line, and sinker. I wonder if Marshall will realize the irony about this and his insistence that "human testimony" is a reliable method of getting information? Doubtful.

2. Marshall argues that Richard "Dawkins admits his own intention to 'focus on,' or intrude in, other peoples' families." He also accuses Dawkins of believing that "children have a right to be indoctrinated into thinking [religions are] all evil, no matter what their parents say." (184-186)

Nowhere is this ever stated in any of Dawkins' writings, in fact the opposite is found. Allow me to quote from The God Delusion, page 327:

"If, having been fairly and properly exposed to all the scientific evidence, they grow up and decide that the bible is literally true or that the movements of the planets rule their lives, that is their privilege. The important point is that it is their privilege to decide what they shall think, not their parents' privilege to impose it by force majeure."

Dawkins is expressing his belief that you should educate a child, not indoctrinate like many religious types do. Of course Dawkins does not want to stop anyone from doing anything. His only goal is 'raising consciousness' of his view that the labeling of children is child abuse, not that teaching them religion is. Even in The God Delusion Dawkins makes specific claims about how children should be taught about religion, though should also learn about science too, and not be exposed to just one view point so they can more freely make up their minds once they're able to.

When directly asked in a 2003 interview if he'd want to stop children from learning religion he stated quite clearly,

"Well, I wouldn't want to have the thought police going to people's homes, dictating what they teach their children. I don't want to be Big Brotherish. I would hate that."

I don't think you can get any clearer than that. What Marshall says about Dawkins is an outright falsehood.

3. Science confirms the genesis account of the universe having a beginning. Marshall writes, "The Book of Beginnings says the universe came from nothing. We have tried alternative theories: everything from an egg, elephants all the way down, 'cosmic crunch,' 'steady state' - but the biblical idea of a cosmic origin has now been vindicated." (55)

If Marshall would have read up on what cosmologists and physicists have been working on the last twenty years or so he would have found out that the conclusion that there was a singularity, thus a beginning, follows from the theory of general relativity, however back in the 80's it was realized that general relativity breaks down once you begin to talk about the size of the universe before it expanded and quantum mechanics must be used to determine its behavior. When this is done there is no longer a singularity and the equations allow for an infinite past. When you take quantum physics into account there is no longer any beginning. Stephen Hawking said as much about twenty years ago in his popular book A Brief History of Time. He writes,

"[...] I am now trying to convince other physicists that there was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe - as we shall see later, it can disappear once quantum effects are taken into account." (pg. 67 in updated The Illustrated A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking, Bantam Books, 1996)

4. In the first chapter Marshall plays the typical apologist language game when he tries to argue that faith is synonymous with reason and evidence and cites a variety of sources to prove his point, from the bible to Michael Shermer (out of context by the way). On page 18 Marshall cites Isaiah 1:18, "Come let us reason together!" and argues this is an example of the bible supporting "reason, empirical facts, and experiment." Though, when you read the entirety of Isaiah this has nothing to do with testing some proposition or looking for evidence, but of god trying to convince his followers to obey him! Slyly, it seems, Marshall neglects to tell his readers where this passage is from and it's clearly being taken out of context.

5. Similar to the bible quote being ripped out of context Marshall did the same thing to the popular skeptic Michael Shermer in his book Why Darwin Matters, from chapter 3. Marshall fails to give an actual quote of Shermer's and simply claims that he says Christians are rational in their beliefs. Marshall writes, "Both answers, [people claim design to be why they believe in god] Shermer (a leading skeptic) recognized, are essentially rational." (24)

This is clearly not what Shermer was saying. Marshall takes Shermer out of context, and he didn't seem to bother to read the rest of the chapter. While Shermer does admit that many of these beliefs are "powerful intellectual justification[s]" for belief in god, Shermer goes on for several pages explaining why humans seem to see themselves as believing for rational reasons, while at the same time projecting emotional reasons for belief upon others. He goes on to explain how evolution seems to have primed humans to perceive design in the world, even when it's not present.

Shermer then goes on to explain the deep flaws in the design argument, showing that these beliefs about design are actually flawed when looked at more closely. If Shermer truly believed these arguments were based on reason, why does he spend the rest of the chapter explaining why 'design' is not a logical argument for god?

6. When attempting to deflect blame from Christianity for the killing and persecution of witches in Chapter 9 Marshall claims, "Even atheists and skeptics such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin advocated the killing of witches, the latter of whom wanted it done in the slowest possible fire." (161)

While both of these individuals did profess their dislike of witches neither of these men were atheists.

In the case of Hobbes he has often been accused of atheism because of his anti-religious views and his harsh criticisms of the church, but one must remember that even Deists did such things during the Enlightenment. Just because an individual is a materialist or dislikes religion, that doesn't make one an atheist. In response to Bishop Bramhall's criticism in his book, The Catching of the Leviathan, wherein he called Hobbes an atheist, Hobbes responded with the following,

"Because he does not so much as offer any refutation of any thing in my Leviathan concluded, I needed not to have answered either of them. ***Yet to the first I here answer, because the words atheism, impiety, and the like, are words of the greatest defamation possible.*** And this I had done sooner, if I had sooner known that such a book was extant. He wrote it ten years since, and yet I never heard of it till about three months since; so little talk there was of his Lordship's writings." (emphasis mine)

Regarding Bodin, his views are also very much misunderstood, but it seems he was not an atheist. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says of Bodin's beliefs,

"During his youth, Bodin received a Catholic education and he remained loyal to the Church until his death. Demonstrating his religious convictions, in a testament from June 7, 1596, he requested to be buried in a Catholic Church. Nevertheless, during his middle years, he was critical of the church hierarchy and occasionally expressed antipapal sentiments. On the basis of this evidence, his biographers have quickly labeled him a Protestant. Yet in his Lettre à Jean Bautru des Matras, a text based on his youthful religious ideas, it is clear that Bodin was not a pure Protestant, but rather a critic of the Roman Catholic clergy, its hierarchy, and some of its doubtful religious practices. Bodin was a fervent believer in the "true religion" which he considered "nothing other than looking to God with a purified spirit." [...] His antipapal sentiments, interspersed throughout his writings, have provided historians with evidence to label Bodin a Protestant."

Clearly, neither man could be considered an atheist, and given their religious backgrounds and the religious cultures they were immersed in, it's not too surprising their views on witches.

7. In his conclusion to the 11th Chapter Marshall writes,

"I see no evidence that the world will be better without God. We can try to persuade ourselves Communism was a fluke, that it was "lack of reason," not faith, that sent a third of the world into a murderous tailspin. We do share "deep conscience." But the logic of ideas - you only go around once, moral relativity, we're all material girls and boys, man as a "survival machine" for genes, survival of the fittest, the relativity of morality, [didn't he already say this?] the tendency to exalt government to the throne of God - can and do subvert what we know is right." (206)

In one of his attempts to prove that secularism is bad for a society he cites the likes of Alfred Kinsey and Margaret Sanger and argues their scientific findings influenced society for the worst. He writes, "If Kinsey was the father of sexology, Sanger can be seen as the mother of the single-parent household - though she spent her own spare time chasing lovers across oceans." (204)

If secularism was truly bad for the family unit wouldn't we find that the most religious countries have the most stable families? On the contrary, we see the opposite.

Which countries host the most number of households that contain both parents? How does the united states, one of the most Christian countries compare to some of the least religious countries? Once again, Marshall would rather spew his propaganda than look at the facts. In 2007 the percentage of both parents living together with their children in the united states was roughly 70%. In some of the least religious countries, such as Finland the percentage was roughly 95% and in the Netherlands the percentage was roughly 83%. (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KcbtdAX8EPk/TkGVMKJSlpI/AAAAAAAACqU/dSNhX-dLqB4/s1600/Single%2Bparents%2Bby%2Bcountry.jpg)

In complete contradiction to Marshall's argument Sociologist Phil Zuckerman points out this fact,

"If this often-touted religious theory were correct - that turning away from god is at the root of all societal ills - then we would expect to find the least religious nations on earth to be bastions of crime, poverty and disease and most religious countries to be models of societal health."

"A comparison of highly irreligious countries with highly religious countries, however, reveals a very different state of affairs. In reality, the most secular countries - those with the highest proportion of atheists and agnostics - are among the most stable, peaceful, free, wealthy, and healthy societies. And the most religious nations - wherein worship of god is in abundance - are among the most unstable, violent, oppressive, poor and destitute."

8. Again in the 11th Chapter Marshall accuses Alfred Kinsey of skewering his results because he included too many pedophiles and prison inmates in his sampling and came out with an inflated percentage of homosexuality. Marshall writes, "His research methods have been panned for poor sampling (too many prison inmates and pedophiles) and gross ethical lapses. His results - he claimed ten percent of males were homosexual - inflated margins at the expense of the center." (204)

In actuality, this is false. The criticism of Kinsey's sampling has been addressed by one of the fellow researchers, Paul Gebhard, who in the 1970's removed all "suspect data" (prison inmates and pedophiles for example) from the results of the percentage of homosexuality and surprisingly came out with figures that were very close to the original. The original percentage was 37%, while Gebhard's newly figured percentage was 36.4%.

This is just a brief sampling of several simpler errors made in the book as there are many more. Many of the errors would take an entire page or two in order to fully expose so I tried to include errors that could be easily summed up in few words. However, I believe that these few errors alone do well to expose Marshall's lack of scholarly ability. This handful of errors is a symptom of a much larger inability or unwillingness to check the facts and/or present the oppositions' views fairly and accurately.

Note: While I was writing this post I discovered that Marshall's comment was deleted by Amazon.com on November 19, 2011, but I copied it before it was deleted. I'm not sure why it was deleted. He's made more crude remarks to me in the past than he does in his reply below. Oh well. Serves him right for being a jerk all the time.

Here is Marshall's lame response:

Ken: Don't become obsessed: it's bad for your mental health. Go on to other things. No one is buying this book right now, at least not in English, and I have other things to attend to.

But having a little free time at the moment, I'll respond to your allegations quickly:

(1) Why are you so obsessed with Sternburg? This is a very minor sub-issue of a sub-issue of a sub-issue. Admittedly, I accepted his account of the persecution, given that (a) the US House of Representatives seems to have found evidence of same, (b) I've seen so much hatred expressed towards ID proponents, including justification of exactly the same sorts of persecution, that it fit the larger pattern, and (c) the man probably does know what happened to him. The issue here, though, is not admitting an error, but taking the time to verify again on a very minor point, just because some Internet fanatic happens to be obsessed with it. Of course it's possible that Sternburg lied about the experience; it's more probable both sides are seeing things through the prism of their own commitments. Since nothing important stands or falls with the difference, and I'm not reediting the book right now, I have no reason to check into it further right now.

2. "Marshall argues that Richard "Dawkins admits his own intention to 'focus on,' or intrude in, other peoples' families." He also accuses Dawkins of believing that "children have a right to be indoctrinated into thinking [religions are] all evil, no matter what their parents say." (184-186)

"Nowhere is this ever stated in any of Dawkins' writings . . . "

Yes it is, and I quote him on it directly.

"In fact the opposite is found . . . "If, having been fairly and properly exposed to all the scientific evidence, they grow up and decide that the bible is literally true or that the movements of the planets rule their lives, that is their privilege. The important point is that it is their privilege to decide what they shall think, not their parents' privilege to impose it by force majeure."

This is hardly the "opposite" of what I say Dawkins says -- it is the very same thing! By being "fairly and properly exposed to all the scientific evidence," Dawkins means being brainwashed into his own worldview, as I show. That is hardly the "opposite" of teaching kids religions are evil -- surely you are not so illiterate as to really think that!

"When directly asked in a 2003 interview if he'd want to stop children from learning religion he stated quite clearly . . . "

And why was he asked that question? Obvioiusly, because I'm not the only person who read GD, and found his pernicious comparisons between Catholics raising their children to believe Catholicism, and child abuse, disgusting.

"Well, I wouldn't want to have the thought police going to people's homes, dictating what they teach their children. I don't want to be Big Brotherish. I would hate that."

But if, as Dawkins says, teaching children the Bible is WORSE than child abuse, shouldn't that be the government's duty? We DO send the police in, in cases of child abuse. Why should we let parents get away with what is even worse?

It's not his critics fault if Dawkins can't make a clear argument without contradicting himself.

"I don't think you can get any clearer than that. What Marshall says about Dawkins is an outright falsehood."

Nonsense. I wasn't rebutting his interview, I was rebutting his book. Again, its not his critics fault when Dawkins contradicts himself.

3. Science confirms the genesis account of the universe having a beginning. Marshall writes, "The Book of Beginnings says the universe came from nothing. We have tried alternative theories: everything from an egg, elephants all the way down, 'cosmic crunch,' 'steady state' - but the biblical idea of a cosmic origin has now been vindicated." (55)

"When you take quantum physics into account there is no longer any beginning. Stephen Hawking said as much about twenty years ago in his popular book A Brief History of Time. He writes,

"[...] I am now trying to convince other physicists that there was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe - as we shall see later, it can disappear once quantum effects are taken into account." (pg. 67 in updated The Illustrated A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking, Bantam Books, 1996)

This, too, is just sloppy reading. First of all, Hawking clearly implies that most physicists do not agree with this idea -- that is why he is "trying to convince them" of it. Secondly, I said THIS universe has been shown to have a beginning. It has. I did NOT say that all material reality has been proven to have had a beginning. We are talking about the origins of THIS universe.

"4. In the first chapter Marshall plays the typical apologist language game when he tries to argue that faith is synonymous with reason and evidence . . . "

That's not my argument. I've written enough on the subject already. If you still haven't gotten it right, you probably never will.

"5. Marshall takes Shermer out of context, and he didn't seem to bother to read the rest of the chapter."

Yes, I did. I read the whole book, parts of it multiple times. And I cited Shermer accurately.

"While Shermer does admit that many of these beliefs are "powerful intellectual justification[s]" for belief in god, Shermer goes on for several pages explaining why humans seem to see themselves as believing for rational reasons, while at the same time projecting emotional reasons for belief upon others. He goes on to explain how evolution seems to have primed humans to perceive design in the world, even when it's not present."

Of course Shermer is trying to spin the evidence to assuage his cognitive dissonance at his own results. That's not the issue. The issue is whether people claim rational reasons for faith or not. Shermer shows that they do, thus refuting Dawkins' and Harris' point. Read MY quote in context, for heaven's sake.

For the hundredth time, the issue in this chapter is emphatically NOT whether faith is in fact based on good evidence, but whether what Christians mean by "faith" presupposes evidence in theory. How often to I have to explain this simple fact to you? The distinction should not be that hard to grasp, even for you.

"6. When attempting to deflect blame from Christianity for the killing and persecution of witches in Chapter 9 Marshall claims, "Even atheists and skeptics such as Thomas Hobbes and Jean Bodin advocated the killing of witches, the latter of whom wanted it done in the slowest possible fire." (161)

"While both of these individuals did profess their dislike of witches neither of these men were atheists."

Your quote from Hobbes does not prove that, only that Hobbes recognized the accusation of atheism as a "defamation" in his society, which of course it was. Many scholars believe Hobbes was, in fact, an atheist. He was certainly one of the fathers of the Enlightenment, so-called, and my reference is therefore pertinent to the point, if of minor importance.

I didn't say Bodin was an atheist; the grammar of my sentence only requires that of one of them.

7. "In complete contradiction to Marshall's argument Sociologist Phil Zuckerman points out this fact,

"If this often-touted religious theory were correct - that turning away from god is at the root of all societal ills - then we would expect to find the least religious nations on earth to be bastions of crime, poverty and disease and most religious countries to be models of societal health."

Here Ken again just misreads me. I do not, in fact, claim that "turning away from god is at the root of all societal ills." Ken does not seem capable of reading and accurately representing my arguments, and to answer all his erroneous representations grows more and more tedious.

"8. The criticism of Kinsey's sampling has been addressed by one of the fellow researchers, Paul Gebhard, who in the 1970's removed all "suspect data" (prison inmates and pedophiles for example) from the results of the percentage of homosexuality and surprisingly came out with figures that were very close to the original. The original percentage was 37%, while Gebhard's newly figured percentage was 36.4%."

This is just incoherent. If my charge was "false," why did Gebhard need to remove "suspect data" that didn't actually exist? Ken implicitly admits my charge was actually quite true, but claims that it doesn't matter, for some reason.

Nor does he explain what 37% is supposed to be. The only percent mentioned in the quote he gives of me is about the percent of homosexual men. Is Ken claiming that 37% of all males are gay? He seems to have gotten lost in the toolies on this one, too.

"I believe that these few errors alone do well to expose Marshall's lack of scholarly ability."

Heh. Coming from Ken, that's some insult.

Given contrary views expressed by professors at schools like Oxford, Marquette, Duke, and Baylor, I'll trade that in for a nickel and see if I can get a cold cup of coffee for it.

Here is my most recent reply:

David! Hello. So nice to see you. I'm flattered you're so concerned about my health but rest assured I'm feeling quite alright. I had actually written this up about a year ago and decided to post it for curious potential buyers.

1. Obsessed with Sternberg? Heavens, no. This is one gaping error in your book and is a [perfect] example of your lack of research for the book. You failed to consult the emails that started off the entire affair, which contradicted the false allegations by Sternberg. Your blustering, in looking for an excuse for your failure to look into the matter, by saying that perhaps both sides' versions of the story may distorted is falsified by the emails I mentioned. The facts are layed out in the link I gave. There was actually only one person who was very angry at Sternberg (and it's Sternberg, NOT SternbUrg) and he was the curator of the specimens at the museum. The reason he was angry was because when Sternberg would borrow his collections he wouldn't take care of them. The curator was angry because Sternberg allowed the specimens he took so much time to care for to basically rot in his office and he failed to return them when he was supposed to. There was no persecution here. He had a legitimate reason to be upset. And in the emails this one individual was the person who was most hostile and others told him to calm down. Some conspiracy, eh? One person who was angry at him and for a very good reason.

2. Wow... That's an amazing ability you have. You're able to read "brainwashed into his own worldview" into "The important point is that it is their privilege to decide what they shall think, not their parents' privilege to impose it by force majeure." No, Dawkins is very clear on this point. Children are to learn of the scientific evidence and learn about religion and make up their own minds. That's so far from "brainwashing" that I'm speechless. Brainwashing entails a forceful viewpoint being thrust upon someone without allowing contrary views to be learned. The complete opposite of Dawkins' view, but quite in line with what some religious parents force on their children.

Marshall says, "But if, as Dawkins says, teaching children the Bible is WORSE than child abuse, shouldn't that be the government's duty? We DO send the police in, in cases of child abuse. Why should we let parents get away with what is even worse? It's not his critics fault if Dawkins can't make a clear argument without contradicting himself."

You and many others have actually taken Dawkins out of context. This was an "off the cuff remark" that Dawkins blurted out during a lecture and simply used this personal story as a segue to his actual point, which was the psychological harm of scaring young children with threats of hell and punishment. It's not that raising children in a religious environment in and of itself can be equated with the harm of sexual abuse. Dawkins writes, in context,

Once, in the question time after a lecture in Dublin, I was asked what I thought about the widely publicized cases of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland. I replied that, horrible as sexual abuse no doubt was, the damage was arguably less than the long-term psychological damage inflicted by bringing the child up Catholic in the first place. ***It was an off-the-cuff remark made in the heat of the moment, and I was surprised that it earned a round of enthusiastic applause from that Irish audience. [...] But I was reminded of the incident later when I received a letter from an American woman in her forties who had been brought up Roman Catholic.*** At the age of seven, she told me, two unpleasant things had happened to her. She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his car. And, around the same time, a little schoolfriend of hers, who had tragically died, went to hell because she was a Protestant. Or so my correspondent had been led to believe by the then official doctrine of her parents' church. Her view as a mature adult was that, of these two examples of Roman Catholic child abuse, the one physical and the other mental, the second was by far the worst. (emphasis mine)"

It should be more than clear. Dawkins was relating this story because of a letter he received from a woman who believed that the beliefs about hell that were forced upon her were worse than the sexual abuse she endured. He wasn't making any kinds of arguments with this statement. He was using her as an example of the cruel nature of forcing stories of hell fire on children.

3. Sloppy reading? That's funny considering the fact that Hawking's book was written in the 80's and now a days the consensus is that the universe had no singularity due to the reasons I explained. You're relying on outdated ideas. You're referring to this universe you say? Funny... you don't mention that anywhere in your argument.

4. Poppycock. You clearly argued in your book that "In the Christian sense, faith means courageous trust in an object one has good reason to see as credible." Judging from this sentence it appears you're trying to argue that Christians view faith and reason to be synonymous.

5. More blustering, trying to cover up an obvious error. Shermer was not spinning anything. Yes, Christians give these reasons for why they believe but they are based on faulty reasoning. When looked at more closely it's not evidence for anything as Shermer explains.

6. Your sentence says "atheists and skeptics" - plural - and you cite two individuals Hobbes and Bodin, implying that both men were atheists and skeptics. You're going to defend your sloppy argument by citing an unnamed authority against a direct quote of Hobbes'? If you read the passage in context it's clear that Bramhall accuses Hobbes of being an atheist, which he is clearly offended by. If he was an atheist why be offended? It's clear Hobbes wasn't an atheist since he is also offended by being called impious, which means "lacking in reverence or proper respect (as for God or one's parents)." He was obviously religious judging by this quote. Your poor excuse has no evidence for it and is clearly ad hoc.

7. This is hilarious. What else might this quote imply? "I see no evidence that the world will be better without God. We can try to persuade ourselves Communism was a fluke, that it was "lack of reason," not faith, that sent a third of the world into a murderous tailspin." Even another Christian reader of his book came to the same conclusion and said so in his review. Sol Lobbes wrote in part: "Marshall points out the atrocities that have arisen from societies dismissive of belief in God." 7. (http://www.amazon.com/review/R1XL5C4KAH18DE/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0736922121&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=) Just pretend that's not what he means to avoid owning up to it. Sadly, he does this often.

8. Marshall misses the point here entirely. Marshall argues that Kinsey's use of prison inmates and the like skew the percentage of male homosexual activity in society. However, I point out the fact that Gebhard took these "suspect" individuals out of the sample and the percentage of homosexual activity still held despite this adjustment. Therefore, Kinsey's use of these "suspect" individuals did not harm or bias his results, as Marshall tries to argue.

As any readers hopefully have seen Marshall's over reliance on authority often causes him to have skewed views and this is never more sure than those "experts" who favored his book. Keep in mind, these weren't the most serious errors he made and they are by far not the only ones.

After this initial back and forth between Marshall and I a forum member commented and we had a discussion about Marshall and his book but since this isn't part of my discussion with Marshall I have not copied it here. However, here is a comment I made to the other member about Marshall's book since it is relevant to this post.

I replied:

Simon,

Here are a few more curious errors of Marshall's. Hardly serious ones but you'll see my point at the end.

1. In his discussion about the Unabomber he writes, "Kaczynski wrote in what became known as 'The Unabomber Manifesto', "There is no morality or objective set of values." Read Marshall's source, Alston Chase's 'Harvard and the Unabomber', and it's apparent he didn't read his source very carefully. Chase did not cite the 'Manifesto', but an essay Kaczynski had written for the psychology professor at the time, Henry Murray.

2. When discussing Richard Dawkins' views on "child abuse" Marshall misreads Dawkins and argues, "Relating a few horror stories to justify the absurdity, he quotes, with (lightly qualified) approval, the following comments by psychologist Nicholas Humphreys [...]"

Sorry, it's Nicholas Humphrey. Drop the 's'. In addition, Dawkins didn't approve of Humphrey's statement.

As Eugene Walker wrote in the comments of his review of Marshall's book (the #1 "helpful" review right now), "My paragraph about misspellings was of course not about them per se, but rather about a pattern of carelessness. Carelessness in details is often accompanied by carelessness about larger matters. So this is at least conceivably relevant, not mere pedantry."

Exactly.

As of November 26th David Marshall has neglected to reply. I don't blame him. His arguments are atrocious and easily refuted. Of course, if he responds at a later date I will edit this post.