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The Forum > Article Comments > The Windschuttle treatment: a lesson in how not to read a text > Comments

The Windschuttle treatment: a lesson in how not to read a text : Comments

By Andrew Bonnell, published 30/3/2005

Andrew Bonnell argues Windschuttle misleads readers in his recent essay 'Tutorials in terrorism'.

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Morgan,

It's hardly surprising that you would support Bonnell and others against Windschuttle [Deleted for flaming, author suspended].

You said: "In these forums you have rejected scientific method in favour of creation mythology"

Wrong. I love science and I love the scientific method. What I reject is materialistic philosophy and ideology (eg. evolution) masquerading as science.

You said: "sex education in favour of puritan represssion"

Wrong. I am all for sex education. Our kids need it. But it needs to be good and accurate and complete - and it needs to have a developmental perspective.

You said: "and now [you reject] historical scholarship in favour of far-right rabid polemicism."

Wrong. I reject historical revisionism not historical scholarship. A significant component of my Master of Arts involved research in the history of science. And there is an incredible amount of histroical revisionism in this area! Galileo is a classic example, as is the account of Columbus supposedly sailing around the world to prove it was not flat.

You said: "Elsewhere, you have even tried to argue that the intellectual and scientific advances of the Enlightenment weren't an improvement on the Dark Ages."

Wrong. The dark ages were not dark, and the enlightenment was hardly enlightening. Enlightenment ideas were solely responsible for the 200 million deaths in the 20th century. This has been thoroughly documented by R. J. Rummel in his book "Death by Government".
Posted by Aslan, Sunday, 3 April 2005 1:26:04 AM
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Having worked up north for a number of years i will believe the genocide stories of the Aboriginals that survived rather than the PM,S man, windshuttle .
when i innocently asked my old , revered , and now deceased head stockman In the 1960,s " have you murdered any blacks ? " he casually said he hadn,t , but that he had well known of it to happen . i did not pursue the question further .
he would have been a young man in central Australia around the time of the massacre of Walpiri people in 1928 and spent the rest of his life on mostly remote cattle stations "at home" with tribal Aboriginals .
windshuttle and his supporters can have no idea of the mechanisms of survival and black labour management employed in "frontier" station life up until surviving Aboriginals were turfed off their ancestal homes in the late 60,s.
After their parents and grandparents survived invasion and settlement, many of my young black friends then died quickly from neglect, alcohol abuse, disease and broken spirits in town fringe shanty camps. No "fancy" science by dodgy academics will hide the truth of what happened.
Posted by kartiya, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 12:58:55 AM
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terrific work Kartiya. You know a man, "who heard of that kind of thing happening".. Yet you fail to see the irony of critising Windshuttle with such a quote.
Gave me a good laugh though. Great work. Keep it up & you might even get employed by the ABC.
Posted by Sayeret, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 7:57:25 AM
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I heard Mr Windshuttle interviewed on the radio. He seemed reasoned any lucid to me. His views might be polemic to some but that in no way diminishes his right to hold or express them.

As for the polemics - I would not have banned the Hitler Apologist David Irving from visiting Australia - not because I in anyway agreed with his view, I simply agreed with Voltaire's.

Now to my view - history is a process which is often the victim of the interests of political agendas and the "truth" will generally be found to be less dramatic and more mundane than the supposed great injustices and extremes which results from hyperbole (the Holocaust, Hitler and Stalin exempted).

When we can consider both Mr Windshuttles and what has become the "contemporary and politically correct conventional view" (flavour enhanced with a liberal sprinkling of leftwing academic socialism) as opinions and form our own individual interpretation based on all inputs then we will advance.
Otherwise we are the puppets responding to how others choose to pull the strings of things which occured to get us here, where we are today.
Posted by Col Rouge, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 8:34:12 AM
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sayeret ,
Please have another close look at what i have written on the recall of my old pioneering head stockman boss.There is nothing in it of 19th [or 20th] century hearsay .
Thanks for the positives ..... me at the ABC while You get a job with Windschuttle at the Quadrant .
Posted by kartiya, Tuesday, 5 April 2005 9:58:43 PM
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Great K. I get to keep my credibility.
Posted by Sayeret, Wednesday, 6 April 2005 7:51:42 AM
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