I expect most people living in democratic countries believe they are not vulnerable to being conditioned into ignoring proven yet painful facts and lies. If you are such a person, then let me just ask you this one telling question:
“Would you look deeper and bother to look at and then weigh the empirical facts if someone told you that they had empirical data (the most important and essential stuff of science and history) that proves Charles Darwin was a serial liar and science fraudster (as was his associate Alfred Wallace)? Or would you metaphorically point at this written question and screech “witch”, or more likely today: “filthy lying creationist troll“?
I think we all would agree that what we are dealing with today in the story of Matthew, Darwin and Wallace is the question of how to weigh the empirical facts.
Jim Dempster did an excellent job (in his three books) of revealing the empirical facts of the huge similarities between what Patrick Matthew first wrote in his 1831 book and then what Darwin and Wallace each replicated in 1858/59.
On top of that, we now have the proven empirical facts of Darwin’s lies about Mathew’s readership. We now also have the empirical fact of Wallace’s slyly doctored letter in his autobiography. Most importantly, we now also have the empirical facts of who definitely read Mathew’s book pre-1858, because it is a fact they cited it in the literature. And it is an empirical fact that one of those pre-1858 citers was Selby (Wallace’s 1855 Sarawak paper editor), another was Chambers (Darwin’s admitted influencer, correspondent and associate and Wallace’s admitted greatest influencer) and Jameson (regular correspondent of William Hooker who was Darwin’s friend and father of Darwin’s best friend and personal mentor and customer for Wallace’s collecting in Indonesia all pre-1858). And many more scientists and others besides.
Empirical facts are the basis of science and history. The problem we face right now is the Darwin Industry propaganda machine has proven to us that in Western democracies people are as open to being conditioned by powerful interest groups to blindly accept what they are told and to attack / dismiss / ignore those who present uncomfortable verifiable empirical facts that challenge the institutional establishment line. In the Western industrialized world we are all as vulnerable and receptive to blindly believing lies and propaganda as those living under autocratic governments such as in Russia, North Korea and China.
The story of Matthew Darwin and Wallace should be used to remind us just how vulnerable we all are to the dangers of blindly believing indoctrinated lies.
Even if you have pointed at my words above and screeched “troll”, you can still learn the hateful truth that future generations will accept and will look back on with amusement at how the Darwin Industry misled the entire world for over 150 years.
Read the facts. Don’t be manipulated by lies, misinformation and other propaganda. Because we all know where that leads. It leads to an early grave buried in ignorance. Is that what rational people want for themsleves?
So tell me, are you feeling more immune today than an incurious and credulous Russian peasant fed a diet of Putin’s state news lies and propaganda? If so, why? Because you have most likely been had too. How will the so called “establishment” mislead you next?