Firing the Foxy Evolution Story

Regular readers should have noticed that creationists not only encourage people to use critical thinking, but to ask questions as well. Not just superficial questions, either. Add to that a bit of skill at spotting logical fallacies, and people are much less easily deceived by Darwinian just-so stories.

Credit: US National Park Service / Jessica Weinberg McClosky
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A few years back, the hands at the Darwin Ranch (go past Stinking Lake toward Deception Pass) got all het up about "Hobbits" (H. florensis) diminutive humans that apparently suffered from microcephaly. In a recent bit of malarkey, it has been suggested that studying the island fox is a key to human evolution. Was the author's reasoning influenced by peyote buttons? Asking for a friend. They eat those things like taco chips at the Darwin Ranch, you know.

There is one redeeming feature in this otherwise non-rigorous Darwin story: a lesson about avoiding assumptions.

The fallacy starts right in the headline. A press release from the University of Missouri, affectionately known as Mizzou, begins, “A new evolutionary clue: University of Missouri researcher adds to timeline of human evolution by studying an island fox.”

She’s serious. She thinks she found a “new evolutionary clue” about humans by studying a completely different mammal on the other side of the world. This only could make sense to a Darwin-indoctrinated grad student like Colleen B. Young working in a Darwin echo chamber in academia. She launches into her illogical story by thinking about how Homo floresiensis, the “Hobbit” from an Indonesian cave that confused the academic world in 2003, became so small. And so she went to California. California? Sure; why not? The whole world is Darwin’s playground. Some people are foxy, aren’t they?

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