Niles Eldredge, in _The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at
Creationism_ (1982, Washington Square Press, pp. 130-131) writes
regarding the ICR's Gary Parker and Luther Sunderland:

   The ICR's Gary Parker has been among the more blatant offenders
   [in distorting the words of scientists].  On page 95 of his
   _Creation: The Facts of Life_, we read:  "Famous paleontologists
   at Harvard, the American Museum, and even the British Museum say
   we have _not a single_ example of evolutionary transition at all."
   This is untrue.  A prominent creationist [Sunderland] interviewed
   a number of paleontologists at those institutions and elsewhere
   (actually, he never did get to Harvard).  I was one of them.  Some
   of us candidly admitted that there are some procedural difficulties
   in recognizing ancestors and that, yes, the fossil record is
   rather full of gaps.  Nothing new there.  This creationist then
   wrote letters to various newspapers, and even testified at
   hearings that the paleontologists he interviewed "admitted" that
   there are no intermediates in the fossil record.  Thus, the lie has
   been perpetuated by Parker.  All of the paleontologists interviewed
   have told me that they did cite examples of intermediates to the
   interviewer.  The statement is an outright distortion of the
   willing admission by paleontologists concerned with accuracy, that,
   to be sure, there are gaps in the fossil record.  Such is creationist
   "scholarship."

David Raup, in a letter to Thomas J. Wheeler dated December 9, 1987 (quoted
in Wheeler's "A Response to D. James Kennedy's Presentations on Creationism
and Evolution on 'The John Ankerberg Show'," available from Wheeler at
426 Deerfield Lane, Louisville, KY 40207) wrote regarding a quote about
the horse series being "phony" (used by Kennedy) that:

   I suspect that much of the quote from the radio [actually television]
   came from the Sunderland interviews.  Although I might easily have
   made the statement about the horse series, I do not remember doing
   so.  In my interview with Sunderland I said:  "Well, as more is
   learned about the evolution of the horse, more separate lineages
   have been recognized and it's far more complicated than early work
   indicated."  I suspect that the quoted statements were actually made
   either by Eldredge or Gould.  I have heard Gould repeatedly
   criticize the traditional museum treatment of horse evolution.  And
   Eldredge said in his Sunderland interview that the AMNH [American
   Museum of Natural History] exhibit on the subject is "lamentable."

Wheeler notes that when he asked Kennedy for the source of the Raup
quote, he was sent a photocopy of a page from _The Quote Book_ which
did not at all match what Kennedy said on the air (Wheeler reprinted
it in full on p. 26 of his response) and does not state that there
are no transitions in the horse series.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

      This is from Strahler's book, page 354,
      It's a letter from Patterson to Steven Binkley:

      "Obviously I have not helped you fight your local creationists --
sorry. The story behind the 'Impact' article is that last November I gave
a talk to the systematics discussion group in the American Museum of Natural
History. I was asked to talk on 'evolutionism and creationism,' and knowing
the meetings of the group as informal sessions where ideas could be kicked
around among specialists, I put a case for difficulties and problems with
evolution, specifically in the field of systematics. I was too naive and
foolish to guess what might happen: the talk was taped by a creationist who
passed the tape to Luther Sunderland. Sunderland made a transcript, which I
refused to edit, since it was pretty garbled, and since I had no exact
record of what I did say. Since, in my view, the tape was obtained unethically,
I asked Sunderland to stop circulating the transcript, but of course to no
effect.
      There is not much point in my going through the article point by
point. I was putting a case for discussion, as I thought off the record, and
was speaking only about systematics, a specialized field. I do not support
the creationist movement in any way, and in particualr I am opposed to their
efforts to modify school curricula. In short, the article does not fairly
represent my views. But even if it did, so what? The issue should been [sic]
resolved by rational discussion, and not by quoting 'authorities,' which
seems to be the creationists' principal mode of argument."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The author of Darwin on Trial was not a scientist of any kind. He used
rhetoric and appeal to emotion rather that appeal to understanding.

It depends how somebody approaches a problem that is outside his area
of expertise. If they research the problem properly and argue logically,
that is one thing. But if they base their arguments on discredited ideas
and use rhetoric or appeal to emotion rather than logic, then they will
deservedly get shot down in flames.

The author of "Darwin on Trial" is a lawyer, well versed in courtroom
techniques, which include using emotion and rhetoric to convince jurors,
also the discrediting of witnesses because they do not have particular
facts immediately. All these are succesful techniques to win a debate.

But debates and trials do not establish scientific FACTS like gravity,
light and evolution. All they do is generate a layman's opinion.

A scientist on the other hand uses the scientific method. After all, that's
what works. This is based on putting forward hypotheses and then disproving
them until one is found that fits the evidence. Sometimes they can be
dismissed immediately because of obvious discrepancies, even though the
correct answer might not be known. Sometimes they take time and research
to disprove. This is the absolute opposite of debating and trials.
Scientists usually lose debates because they are too honest. The attacker
makes a charge like "what about human and dinosaur tracks together at
Paluxy". If the scientist has heard of these, he will know that they have
been discredited. If not, he will go away and do some research before he
will commit himself. Of course, anybody with a modicum of education knows
that the dinosaurs were supposed to be extinct before man came on the scene,
but in a debate before the uneducated this does not matter.

And yes, they get very boring and wordy because their written words have
to be exact, and leave no room for ambiguity.

The author of 'Darwin on Trial' is a lawyer who hadn't researched his
subject properly. The arguments were based on rhetoric and appeal to
emotion. This is why his book was dismissed so easily on talk.origins
a while back.

Incidentally, without evolution, most of modern science could not exist.
Oil deposits are found using geological principals that are based on the
evolution of the Earth's crust. Do you use petrol (gasoline) in your car,
or plastic products in your home? The sciences of biology and biochemistry
have lead to modern medical techniques.

Even if evolution is somehow discredited, the creationists would still
have to explain ALL the observations that support it, in a way BETTER
than evolution does.

You used the word "evolutionist". This tells us plenty about you, and your
position. It is a word that is used by the US creation movement to describe
everybody who doesn't believe the biblical creation myths, which means the
rest of the educated world. It's all rather pathetic, and more than a little
paranoid.

Chris Lee