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Response to left-wing reviews of Absolute Power

I should say "reviews", because having now perused a few on the web, most are full of factual inaccuracies, spin and hate.

I could link to some, but frankly the following paragraph can be applied to all of them. My critics allege that Wishart's book Absolute Power is unfair to the Prime Minister, that I have inappropriately probed her life and political deeds.

Here's my response: Within the first 31 pages of Absolute Power, there is documented, incontrovertible proof that Prime Minister Helen Clark deliberately lied to a journalist for the purposes of destroying a senior public servant's career and life. Not just an allegation, not just hearsay: documented with legal proof. Regardless of how the Left paints Absolute Power, nowhere in that book did I deliberately lie to destroy anyone's life or career, not even the Prime Minister's. If the left-wing wishes to judge me as an author, great - but judge the Prime Minister to the same standards or you are nothing but hypocrites.

Of course, the Left can't do that. By definition, their reviews ignore or whitewash the documented crimes (both moral and legal) of Helen Clark, whilst trying to trash me.

So when you read reviews on the internet, remember that not one of them that I've seen so far has tackled the substance of the book.

Like I said: hypocrites.

Instead, here's what a former influential NZ political leader wrote about Absolute Power:

I picked up your new book "Absolute Power" by chance last week. I say "by chance" insofar as it will be interesting to see whether it's reviewed in the print-media, mindful of the fact that books editors are an effete and snobbish lot and your book may be deemed insufficiently boring to justify mention.

Anyway, first my congratulations. There was only a single hyperbolic fault, specifically your reference to our Police Force as the most corrupt in the southern hemisphere. Have a look at the map. When it comes to Zaire, Zimbabwe, Paraguay et al, and sadly, Chile and Australia, it is far and away the least corrupt.

And one other criticism on reflection, while wearing my pedant's hat, and that is your references to animal porn films and videos. An animal porn film could be a rooster having it off with a chicken. You should have referred to bestiality films and videos.

That said I agree with your general thesis regarding this government's incredible corruption. It is Third World in its moral standards and dishonesty and leaves me despairing.

I despair because your book will make no difference. The government will simply ignore it, and largely, so will the news-media.

In another age, three decades back, or indeed another first world country today, such as the USA or Britain, your book would run to endless reprints and bring down the government.

Consider Nixon's impeachment over a mere trifle to what you have outlined, or indeed, the near-miss impeachment of Clinton over a petty sexual matter and allegations of a playing-with-words denial.

At heart the problem lies in the depoliticalisation of New Zealanders. Today they simply don't care, as borne out by the startling revelation that circa 50% of Maoris and Islanders are unaware that this is an election year. Yet most will turn out to vote, oblivious of the issues you raise or indeed any others. People simply don't read anymore, or at least, not the majority under 40.

Oh for a barn-storming moralist like Muldoon!

I suppose there's one good thing from your efforts, namely that if ignored by the general public; you nevertheless keep the bastards at bay from even greater outrages; if that is the Electoral Finance Act and theft of public money in the past two elections can be surpassed.

Once again; well done on a great accomplishment.

The author of that letter is named in the next Investigate, due out Monday. I was stunned to discover from a reader last week that at that time there was a waiting list at the Auckland region's libraries for Absolute Power in excess of 700. It fluctuates rapidly because bestsellers are lent out for only a few days, but Auckland Public Library listed nearly 100 holds at the central library alone on Monday.

Seems like the message is getting through.

I had been intending to respond to some of the reviews, but with the magazine deadline I got sidetracked. This will suffice. My key point in response was simple: the Prime Minister deliberately falsified information she leaked to the media in order to personally destroy a civil servant she was targetting. I have never done that.

Everytime a reviewer targets me, ask yourself the question: why aren't they tackling the actions of the Prime Minister, as documented in the book?

Absolute Power goes to #1

NZ Bestsellers List, week to April 26 http://www.booksellers.co.nz/bk_bst_current.htm

And for a different perspective, Dymocks have issued the top ten across all genres.

7000 copies and counting

UPDATE: The latest bestsellers list features Absolute Power, even though the list closed off (April 19) two days before the book was officially released (April 21).

I can only presume that some of the shops on the bestsellers survey broke the embargo when stock arrived on the 18th.

In 48 hours of release, Absolute Power has rocketed out shop doors…some stores are now onto their third round of supply. It has beaten Howling At The Moon's previous internal record of 5,000 copies in two days, set by The Paradise Conspiracy in 1995, which went on to sell 35,000 copies.

More recently, Nicky Hager's The Hollow Men had an initial print run of 3,000 copies.

We have ordered delivery of several thousand further copies of Absolute Power from the printer.

Thank you to those who have read the book and passed genuine comment.

COMING SOON: Absolute Power

http://www.helenclarkbook.com

Reviews of The Divinity Code

Because this book does not have its own dedicated website, I figured it might be helpful to collate a central posting linking all of the online reviews of The Divinity Code, with my comments on them where needed.

As new reviews come in, I'll update links to those also.

NZ CONSERVATIVE

NZ Conservative has the first thread going on the book, with this post:

I am just getting started reading Ian Wishart's new book now, but I have to say it appears to be selling very well. It took me ages to find any place that had a copy. First stop was Borders in Sylvia Park who had sold out. Next I tried both Whitcoulls and Paper Plus from my local Westfield Mall and it had sold out both places there as well. Eventually I found a Whitcoulls that had a copy, although it took some hunting around to find it (they also told me it had been selling very well).

Given that Borders in Sylvia Park has had somewhere in the region of 70 to 80 copies, that's not bad going.

THE REVIEW IN PROGRESS AT STATEHIGHWAYONE:

Over at StateHighwayOne, Ryan Sproull appears pleasantly surprised he wasn't misquoted (did he really think he would be?) and has begun a chapter by chapter takedown of The Divinity Code that makes for interesting reading. This is largely because a review carried out as a work in progress poses questions or challenges that the reviewer doesn't realise are answered later in the book. Ryan will discover this as he goes, however.

Nonetheless, some of his comments are worth highlighting:

The Divinity Code deals with actual concrete arguments, and that is refreshing as all hell. Gives a fellow some traction.

On Chapter Two, Ryan agrees that I've probably adequately debunked the Axial theory beloved of Lloyd Geering, Karen Armstrong, and Don Cupitt, that religion evolved from primitive belief in many gods to just one God:

I think he adequately messes with the theory that monotheism is only ever a development out of polytheism, rather than a potentially older idea...Ian does a good job here of presenting counter-examples to the evolving-religion hypothesis he finds in Armstrong.

Of Chapter 3, and his encounter of the cosmological design argument, Ryan runs through a smidgen of the evidence presented and acknowledges this:

"Ian declares at the end of the chapter that this is going to be a major theme of his book. There are so many things that "could have" been different, therefore we are so lucky to be here that it is unbelievable that our being here is not the result of sentient intention.

At first glance, it's a compelling argument. It makes a few assumptions, though, that aren't immediately obvious."

The "assumptions" that he proceeds to list are all dealt with in the chapters that follow. I will not be commenting in this thread on the merits or otherwise of some of Ryan's points, preferring to do it in the context of his entire review when completed and on his own blog, as a courtesy. All I am doing here is alerting you to its existence.

RESPONSE TO THE WAIKATO TIMES REVIEW (on the Stuff website)

The first media review was delivered, strangely, by a poetry reviewer and artist Peter Dornauf in the Waikato Times.

Dornauf's review was a disgrace. Not because of his opinion (he's perfectly entitled to dislike the book because of his own beliefs) but because he gets his facts wrong and then beats me over the head with his own mistakes.

I have penned the following letter to the editor in response:

I must admit I was bemused when you gave The Divinity Code to Peter Dornauf, a poetry reviewer and artist, to review. And then I realized what the paper had left off the reviewer's qualifications: "grumpy old atheist".

Even the Listener picked up on this in a review of Dornauf's own first book in 2004: "For a few pages in this story of a tortured farm boy growing up in rural and urban 1960s

New Zealand

, Dornauf desists from raving about Life, Love and God. He stops being angry: the tale takes a breath and achieves a measure of coherency."

Dornauf makes wild, sweeping generalisations about The Divinity Code without offering solid evidence to back up his criticisms. Example? "The writer plays fast and loose with the facts."

What 'facts' did I play fast and loose with? We aren't told.

Not content with failing to provide evidence, Dornauf resorts to making things up. Example? "Earthquakes and volcanoes are, for example, God having fun playing tenpin bowling with the planets!"

Good luck finding that in The Divinity Code because, of course, it is not there.

Negative reviews are one thing, but negative reviews out of context and with "facts" made up by the reviewer are not professional.

Yours sincerely

Ian Wishart

In a further covering explanation to the Waikato Times editor, I wrote:

I’m presuming you personally have not read the book, because if you had you would have seen Peter’s review was little more than a cheap hatchet job with little factual basis. 

For example, he rants about discredited arguments. Really? I took the absolute cutting edge arguments used by Dawkins and the secular web groups like Infidels, and then deconstructed them.

I think Peter draws an extremely long bow trying to blow off The Divinity Code by implying (defamatorily, in my view) I was using ancient “discredited” arguments like those of William Paley two centuries ago…when in fact I’m quoting leading cosmologists [like Paul Davies] and molecular chemists [Robert Shapiro] from papers published in 2007.

The general consensus at the top levels of science is that the search for a natural origin of DNA based life on earth has failed; or as Shapiro puts it: “Many chemists, confronted with these difficulties, have fled the RNA-first hypothesis as if it were a building on fire…Further, the spontaneous appearance of any such replicator without the assistance of a chemist faces implausibilities that dwarf those involved in the preparation of a mere nucleotide soup…The chances for the spontaneous assembly of a replicator [in such a soup] can be compared to those of a gorilla composing, in English, a coherent recipe for the preparation of chili con carne.”

The Divinity Code is packed full of accounts such as that one. I strongly recommend that you ask Peter if he really believes his review is remotely defensible under the heading “honest opinion”, and whether he has any evidence at all that discredits my book and my analysis.

His “earthquakes” jibe at me, for example, is thoroughly misleading, suggesting that I have used the argument that God directly causes quakes and eruptions as part of a game of skittles. Not only is this wrong, it is defamatory. I argue clearly in the book that earthquakes and volcanoes are natural forces releasing energy in a manner essential for life. Our planet is unique in the solar system in having the plate tectonics system – for reasons I cite in The Divinity Code we are extremely fortunate in having it.

The bowling analogy came not earthquakes, but from the scientific discovery that our moon was created when a Mars-sized planet slammed into Earth in another unique event, to which I joked that God playing ten-pin bowling was as good an explanation as any. This, however, is a far cry from the implied statement that my book argues God is behind every earthquake or volcanic eruption, which is a ridiculous assertion.

Don’t get me wrong…I’m happy for him that he’s an atheist, or whatever…but his review along the lines of “it’s all a pack of discredited lies” is not fit to be called a review…

Cheers

Ian

As more reviews come to light, I'll link to them. Comments on this particular post, because of its function and focus, are turned off. You can of course comment on anything you read here now or later over at the open discussion thread

The weaknesses of Dawkins

With The Divinity Code's release this week marking the final chapter in my rebuttal of Richard Dawkins, I happened across the exact correspondence I had with the Herald's John Roughan on why he gave Eve's Bite a bad review on the Dawkins issue.

Here's what I asked him:

John

I’m working on the sequel to Eve’s Bite, and perchance find myself digging back through The God Delusion. I have to ask the question, politely: did you actually understand the science that Dawkins and I were debating there, when you dissed my section on Dawkins in your review?

I ask this purely because Dawkins’ arguments hinge throughout on things he plucked out of thin air. If you actually read Delusion, page 138, his entire argument about probability supporting science, not Design, rests on “Suppose it was so improbable as to occur on only one in a billion planets.”

As I pointed out in Eve’s Bite then, and re-emphasise to you now, he offered no science for his “Suppose” statement.  I did. I quoted the probability studies that had been done.

I’m curious to know, as you never spelt it out in the review, where my attack on Dawkins was weak in your eyes, and why.

Regards

Ian Wishart

Now here's his response:

Hi Ian,

I haven't read Dawkins' book, have no wish to, and know of his argument only what you have written. I indicated in the review that I find academic atheists' views of religion trite and that I found your rebuttal of Dawkins equally unconvincing. I n saying that I had in mind not your probability measure but the argument from outside the notion of time. I don't think the human mind can operate outside time, which does not mean there is no such realm, just that there is no point reasoning with us on that basis.

Regards,
John.

Given that the probability evidence against Dawkins is utterly decisive, it seems John missed the bigger picture of the chapter...hopefully The Divinity Code will make it clearer...

The Divinity Code

Yes, the latest book is about to ship...and officially should be in the shops from next Monday. Those wishing to beat the common herd to this 120,000 word book can still get one delivered to your door at the end of this coming week if you order now...

We again have a limited number of review copies for bloggers...email me to get your name on that list...

The back cover reads as follows, an a brief extract from the start of the book continues below:

And all this time you thought I was just twiddling my thumbs?

 

THE DIVINITY CODE
takes you on a journey, as we ask the fundamental questions:
where did we come from? why are we here?

Did the Universe accidentally create humans, or is there hard scientific evidence of a
secret ‘divinity code’ written in life itself?

For decades science has assumed life began randomly, but now new data is forcing
a radical re-think of everything we have believed

Join investigative journalist Ian Wishart on the trail of the evidence that leading scientists are
calling “the fingerprints of God” in the Universe, in our genetic code, even in the laws of Nature

And find out how these discoveries are shedding new light on the world’s religions...

Coming out Nov 19...

Some more searingly good Eve's Bite reviews...

This one...

And this one

And the interesting thing about these Eve's Bite reviews is that liberals are latching on to it...

NZ Herald altered quotes from Ian Wishart's book

New Zealand Herald columnist John Roughan has some questions to answer after the discovery that he misquoted Ian Wishart in a review of his new book EVE's BITE, by deleting key qualifying words from a quote.

In the review, Roughan wrote:

"This matters to Wishart because 'if you believe that (species can evolve), then you'll believe life is not special and mankind is the master of all her (sic) surveys. You'll believe there is no God and free yourself and your family from any moral code."

The actual quote, on page 40 of the book, reads (with missing words in bold):

"If you believe that, then you'll believe life is not special, and Mankind is the master of all he surveys. You'll believe there is no God (the Darwinists hope), and free yourself and your family from any moral code."

It's full context, and indeed that of the Chapter, is that atheistic scientists are using Darwinism in the classroom to deliberately try and crush students' religious faith: Here's the lead-up to the disputed quote:

The basic issues are these: there is ample evidence to support one element of Darwin's theory - microevolution. This means examples of change within a species. But there is virtually no evidence for macroevolution - the claim that one species can mutate into something else.

Evolutionists often deliberately distort the two issues, using the ample evidence of change within a species (moth colourations/finch beak sizes/bacterial resistance to antibiotics) to argue that evolution as the wider public understands it (pond-slime to space traveler) is therefore true. The problem with their argument is this. A moth that changes colour is still a ...? A bird that has a bigger beak remains a...? A bacteria that becomes resistant to an antibiotic remains a...? A human who becomes immune to a bacteria remains a...?

You know the answers.

And the reason Darwinists desperately want you to sign up to the whole package is because the religious aspect of their package only kicks in if you believe macroevolution - that a monkey can become a man, or a 10 tonne Triceratops can become a turkey. If you believe that, then you'll believe life is not special, and Mankind is the master of all he surveys. You'll believe there is no God (the Darwinists hope), and free yourself and your family from any moral code.

It is patently obvious that by deleting the qualifying comment, John Roughan altered the quote from me setting out the atheistic Darwinist position, to me simply suggesting that people were idiots if they believed "species can evolve". Which is ridiculous, given my assertion just a few paragraphs earlier that there is "ample evidence" in favour of Darwinian microevolution.

His misquotation and deletion of the qualifier also makes it appear that I am saying belief in God and basic human morality are impossible if you accept any part of evolutionary theory, which is also a ridiculous assertion. What I argue in the book is that Darwinism, as it is taught by atheist science teachers, is loaded with anti-Christian baggage deliberately. And it is this widespread approach to pushing Darwinism in this way that has damaged society.

He also divorced the quote from its real context. And in case anyone doubts that leading Darwinists are adopting the position I allege, here are further quotes from the book:

And just in case there are still lingering doubts about the religious aspects of Darwinism, British atheist Richard Dawkins wrote in The Blind Watchmaker that Darwin “made it possible to be an intellectually-fulfilled atheist”. Expressed another way – take away the crutch of evolution and atheism once again loses any claim to have an intelligent or intellectual basis.

Cornell University’s William Provine, another prominent evolutionist and atheist, went even further in print by saying that if Darwinism is true, then there are five inescapable conclusions: there’s no evidence for God; there’s no life after death; there’s no absolute foundation for right and wrong; there’s no ultimate meaning for life; and people don’t really have free will.

When evolutionists go beyond the theory to argue the metaphysical, they then invite a full on, knock-em-down-drag-em-out debate...

...The fact that virtually all the leading lights involved in trying to protect Darwin’s monopoly on school science classes are atheists, indicates to me that schools have been captured by what is effectively a rival religion.

Strong evidence of this is supported by the late Harvard Zoologist Ernst Mayr, one of Darwinism’s most respected defenders, who confesses that when evolutionists all come together to ridicule Intelligent Design, they do so primarily for a religious reason (source: Mayr, Ernst [Emeritus Professor of Zoology, Harvard University], "One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought," Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1991, p.99):

"There is indeed one belief that all true original Darwinians held in common, and that was their rejection of creationism, their rejection of special creation. This was the flag around which they assembled and under which they marched. When Hull claimed that "the Darwinians did not totally agree with each other, even over essentials" (1985:785), he overlooked one essential on which all these Darwinians agreed.

“Nothing was more essential for them than to decide whether evolution is a natural phenomenon or something controlled by God. [emphasis added] The conviction that the diversity of the natural world was the result of natural processes and not the work of God was the idea that brought all the so-called Darwinians together in spite of their disagreements on other of Darwin's theories..." 

Does that sound like balanced science of the kind you’d find in a biology class, or the transcript of discussion at the annual Satanists Picnic? I would have thought that “Nothing was more essential than finding the truth.” Apparently not. The real aim of Darwinism in science is to promote the “death of God” movement. Are you comfortable that you received an honest science education, or that your kids are receiving one, when these are the confessions of what motivates “scientists”?

If there is no overwhelming scientific reason to teach Darwinism in schools, then the motivation for some of these people must indeed be religious: Dawkins and others are already on the public record linking Darwinism as a foundation pillar of their faith in the non-existence of God. Ernst Mayr agrees that Darwinism is the key to social change in the Western world:

"The truth of the matter is that unless a person is still an adherent of creationism and believes in the literal truth of every word in the Bible, every modern thinker - any modern person who has a worldview - is in the last analysis a Darwinian. The rejection of special creation, the inclusion of man into the realm of the living world (the elimination of the special position of man versus the animals), and various other beliefs of every enlightened modern person are ultimately all based on the consequences of the theories contained in the Origin of Species."

In other words, by teaching what Ann Coulter calls “the Liberals’ creation myth” in schools, scientists reckon they have successfully brainwashed an entire generation of Westerners. And scientists have the cheek to complain about religion?

Atheism, along with its cousins rationalism and secular humanism, is a religion. The existence or non-existence of God cannot be proven on current knowledge scientifically, therefore belief or disbelief are flipsides of the same religious coin. They are “faith” decisions.

The New Zealand Herald now needs to explain its justification for altering a direct quote without acknowledging the edit in any way - a clear breach of journalistic ethics.