In the early 1900s, various ‘morality tales’ sought to advance the idea of eugenics. Squarely based on evolutionary belief in ‘survival of the fittest’, the eugenics movement was founded by Francis Galton, cousin to Charles Darwin.

This taught that, just as a farmer controls the breeding of his livestock to enhance the quality of his herd, promoting the childbearing of ‘ideal’ people and preventing ‘undesirable’ people from having children could improve the human race. One of the most popular pro-eugenics accounts was the story of ‘Deborah Kallikak’ (a pseudonym).

The story of the ‘Kallikak’ family supposedly went back to an ancestor code-named ‘Martin Kallikak’, who as a young man had a relationship with a “feebleminded barmaid” that resulted in the birth of Martin Jr. Later, Martin married a “worthy Puritan woman”, and their union produced many productive people. But alas, the damage had been done, because Martin Jr, a drunkard and worthless individual, had many children, and those children were all morally and intellectually bankrupt. Supposedly Deborah was a direct descendant of Martin Jr, and she was tested to be ‘feebleminded’, and was locked away in an asylum, supposedly to keep her from immorality.

‘Deborah Kallikak’ was a pseudonym for the real woman Emma Wolverton. The problem is, the story was wrong from beginning to end. The genealogy was wrong for a start. ‘Martin’ and ‘Martin, Jr.’ were second cousins, not father and son, and were both the offspring of respectable married couples.3 And the testing used on Emma was invalid, as they didn’t take into account her complete lack of previous schooling when she first came to the asylum. Later evaluations also tended to downplay the significant gains that she made in learning practical skills. In fact, visitors to the asylum frequently expressed astonishment that such a ‘feebleminded’ woman could present herself so well. But unfortunately, no one ever doubted the story that Emma was feebleminded.

Emma entered Vineland Training School in Vineland, New Jersey at eight years old, and as a young woman was transferred to the women’s institution across the street. She was never offered the chance to have a life of her own—she was not offered freedom until she was far too old and ill to accept it. She died in 1978 at 89 years of age, having been a victim of a cruel branch of pseudoscience.4

Why does this matter?

Some might wonder why Emma Wolverton is important today. It is a sad story, but she died almost 40 years ago. Today, eugenics has a bad name because the Nazis used the ideology to support exterminating Jews and other ‘lesser’ races—after using it to justify murdering large numbers of mentally and physically handicapped people in the name of preventing them passing on their supposedly ‘inferior genes’.

But when Emma first entered the Vineland Training School, it was the scientific consensus in the western world, accepted by all preeminent researchers in the field, and approved by the US Supreme Court (Buck v. Bell, 1927). It seemed self-evident, enough to justify the lifetime incarceration of some ‘feeble-minded’ people, and the permanent sterilization of tens of thousands more.5 We look back in horror on the atrocities committed against people whose only ‘crime’ was being poor, uneducated, or otherwise disadvantaged, who were abused to advance a theory that built the careers of some of the most famous scientists of the day.

But it’s easy to forget that scientists still make pronouncements that affect the life and death of people today. Some ‘ethicists’ say that it is more merciful to kill a child in the womb when he or she may be born disabled, and that it is better to help a troubled or ill person to commit suicide rather than to ‘force’ him or her to live a life that they arbitrarily decide is ‘not worth living’. Someone as famous as Richard Dawkins proclaimed that the ‘moral’ thing was to abort a Down Syndrome baby and ‘try again’,6 and Peter Singer (Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University) infamously remarked that some animals have more moral value than some newborn babies.7

The only worldview that upholds the value of all human life, regardless of intelligence and ability, is the Christian worldview, because Scripture teaches that all human beings are created in the image of God and are thus inherently valuable, despite that image being marred by sin.

Source

johnydon22:
Ex nihilo. Lol. So something can come out of nothing then?

That's weird

Except that God and His powerful, creative Word is not nothing. You can say that the world came into being from nothing by the power in the Word of God. "Let there be..." "And there was..."

1. You believe the Bible contains truth therefore whatever the bible says must be true.

Yes.

That's devoid of any logical chain of thought.

It is not more devoid of logical chain of thoughts than is the belief that matter is all there is, or the belief that all things arose through natural processes.

Wouldn't real knowledge transcend belief as a background

Not quite. Belief (of some sort) is necessary for any knowledge. To even begin with, we have to believe that we are thinking properly and rationally for us to make any progress in our quest for knowledge. We also have to believe that there is objective reality, and that this reality is governed by laws that are decipherable.

and allow questions to be answered based on verifiable qualities of its method and not because this thing right here says it is so and i believe this is so and therefore it is so.

it depends on which question is being asked. Mind you, experimentation cannot actually reveal all truths.

Doesn't this lead to a form of circular reasoning? Example: I believe this Batman vs Superman comic to be true, this comic book says someone can shoot laser from his eyes, therefore this must be true.

I don't know if what you have described is actually circular reasoning. But I don't think that my reasoning is circular. The question should be more of "what makes you think the Bible contains truth."? But that is a whole new, potentially big discussion.

Do you still a problem with this?

2. Outline some of these observations.

I no get strength abeg. Go find them for Creation.com

I'm not sure you can recognize something except you have an idea of what exactly you are looking for.

A modus tollens argument against the Bible should falsify it but don't ask me for one now.

But the problem is, your attachment is based on belief, how can someone effectively show that the Bible isn't true when belief bypasses the importance of the subject of belief being true?

Note that my belief is not exactly represented by "the Bible can never be proven wrong." My belief is more like this: "I think everything the Bible says is true. I am waiting for anyone who would prove that something the Bible said is wrong."

1 or 2 doesn't hurt.

Doesn't this primary reason belief necessitate dogma?

I think this demonstrates the problem with belief, it gives you a lense by which you look at things and if the primary basis (subject of belief) is untrue, the whole chain is likewise untrue. But you can't really explore this since the subject isn't held as truth by some deductive means of determining what is most likely to be true, but rather an exercise of trust on the conveyor of the subject hence belief.

I must take it that you're demonstrating a problem with our general system of seeking knowledge, because it involves belief in the veracity of the axioms that underly our logic.

Dogma is demonstrated when your fundamental reason is based on belief on the conveyor of the subject.

okay

Argument of design can/cannot be a dogma
Materialism/naturalism likewise.

whatever disparaging thing you can say about creationism can be said about naturalism too. Don't be deceived though: both have conveyors. For creationism, you can say it's the Bible. For naturalism, it can be the naturalist himself.

It depends really and how your train of thought starts.

...

If it starts by assuming the conveyor of the idea is true then it is a dogma.

anything that applies to creationism here applies to naturalism too.

I actually admire your honesty about your view

Thank you.

Ihedinobi3:

Another golden thread. Well done, brother.

Thanks a lot bro.

I especially love this piece because the book in question was written by an evolutionist, detailing the outcomes of a by-invitation-only meeting of 16 evolutionists, who met to discuss the crises in which evolution has found itself. And all the quotes in this piece are by the evolutionists themselves who attended the meeting. The quotes are so telling that that the only thing that amazes me more is the level of propaganda needed to sustain faith in this evolutionary fairytale despite the fact that those in the know acknowledge that the theory is in crises.

Ihedinobi3:

Wow!! This brought back memories, my brother. It reminded me of when apologetics was an exciting sport. Good one.

Unfortunately, atheists are liars, not just any kind of liars, but the kind that is not ashamed to lie about what is obvious, so this does not really make much of a difference. It only works - as all of our defense against their incredible lies - to expose their hypocrisy.

I also agree that johnydon22 (pardon my mentioning you if it offends you, sir) is a special specimen among their number, but I don't share the enthusiasm you have about him. Being an atheist takes a very unique approach to life and reality. It is a very conscious decision to reject what is obvious in favor of insane fantasies that one then defends with a manic fervor that bewilders anyone else listening to them.

As for the other one, I don't know if I know any more dishonest person on Nairaland. The shorter the conversation with him/her, the better.

Bro. It's great and exciting to see you again. Yeah. I agree with you so much that this looks like it's not gonna make much difference with the situation of the atheists. I also totally agree with you that the main thing is to continue to lay open their hypocrisies to everyone, and especially the unsuspecting.

I had to applaud johny's response because it was just in line with proper reasoning. Johny is also a kind of fresh air when it comes to arguments atheists on this forum. Sure, I don't approve of his atheism, but on the line of being honest with arguments, he stands ahead of a lot of them.

johnydon22:


1. So, the universe to you was created ex materia (cosmos from chaos) and not ex nihilo?

I don't speak Latin But I believe that the universe was created out of nothing by God.

2. What makes you think the earth or universe is 6,000 years? Any external pointers that informed this belief?

Primarily because the Bible says so. I believe that the Bible contains truth. The Bible informs my belief. Observations seems to agree with, and solidify, it.

3. What evidences would you expect could make you understand earth isn't just 6000 years?

I think the best way for me to answer this is to say that if the evidences come, I will recognize them. But a good place to start is to try to show that the Bible is dubious (both in its origin and in what it teaches).

What observations?

Can I really list all of them right now? [url]Creation.com[/url] I believe is doing a good job of documenting them.

So, your only reason to believe in creationism is the bible and because you believe the bible is true.

The primary reason, not exactly, the "only" reason.

Doesn't this belief effectively result in a form of bias against ideas that question this belief?

I admit that my worldview is creationism. It is based on the Bible. Through that lens I look at things. This does not mean that I am not able to receive other people's arguments on their merits, and critically examine them. But when the only thing that clashes is the worldview, I take the side of creationism. Thus, the geologic column may serve as evidence of evolution to some, but it may as evidence of Noah's flood for me.

Other people have other worldviews, like materialism, naturalism, etc. And if creationism is dogmatic, these other worldviews are just as, if not more, dogmatic.

Because as you have shown, your agreement is built on primarily belief ground not any form of deductive logical chain of thoughts

That's pretty weak argument to be honest.

Read my argument to hakeem4 to see the fundamental argument for design

Deductions have certain starting assumptions. Those assumptions have roots. I have only been very candid with my views. Suffice it to say that my worldview in no way prevents me from engaging the real world which we observe. But it may prevent me from taking a position that is built on a conflicting worldview.

johnydon22:

No. Because it attempts to answer a question which humanity sort answers for.

I remember one Copernicus who in his days was afraid to publish his Heliocentric hypothesis because of the censorship built around the feverish dogma of the geocentric authorities of his days.

I also remember one Monseigneur Georges Lamitre, who was ignored and mostly not taken serious when he first propounded his theory of the primordial or cosmic atom because they thought it sounded too religious.

My stance simply is, no attempt to answer a question should be censored, it only should be left to the merits of it's argument to either convince you or otherwise.

When you start to hush and censor contradicting ideas in the name of science, something has gone horribly wrong.

You are so different from much of these atheists. You seem to understand far better than most of them.

I applaud this response.

What is your own response to your OP, johnydon?

Okay here we go.

I subscribe to creationism, and in particular Biblical creationism. I believe that the universe which we observe was created by God in 6 literal days, as Genesis describes. (Is this my view classified under intelligent design (ID))? Therefore, because of the Biblical account, this earth, and this universe which we observe, cannot be more than about 6000 years old.

I hold this view first and foremost because the Bible teaches it. Yes! That is the primary reason why I hold this view. I believe that the Bible contains truth. Therefore what it says about origins is true. The second reason is that observations seem to agree, and is not at odds, with what the Bible said about the universe, and with what would be expected if the Biblical narrative is true.

I think other views of origins are wrong primarily because they don't agree with the Bible, which, I believe, contains truth.

johnydon22:


So, the whole premise is that Creationism (Biblical or as a whole?) Can and is also published notable scientific journals?

That's fair.

Not exactly. Lemme try to put it better.

First, the author(s) are Christian creationists. So they're most probably talking about Biblical views. But the gist of the OP is that creationist scientist publish in notable journals:

1. Sometimes on topics that are not concerned with origins
2. Sometimes papers that contain solid data that have creationist implications, but without overt creationist conclusions in the paper
3. Sometimes papers that openly promote creation science/scientific creationism. (at least there's the 18 which Eugenie Scott and co found)

But then Creation scientists meet bitter resistance in trying to publish their works in some of these journals. Sometimes their papers, which don't even deal with evolution/creation get rejected simply because they themselves are creationists. We all can see open-mindedness in action.

Self-censorship

Disinterest by the mainstream media is one thing, but Mazur is especially alarmed with the self-censorship by evolutionary leaders themselves. Why are they keeping the American public in the dark? She asks why have the two major evolution conferences of the year “been hosted outside the United States”? Why in foreign languages? She is alarmed “The English-speaking world may not be getting the message” (p. 217). Why are evolutionary leaders not getting the message out? She repeatedly returns to this puzzle.

“I asked [Eugenie Scott, from the National Center for Science Education—the NCSE] what she thought about self-organization and why self-organization was not represented in the books NCSE was promoting? She responded that people confuse self-organization with intelligent design and that is why NCSE has not been supportive” (Mazur, p. 101).

More precisely, the NCSE “does not recommend textbooks for schools if those texts include a discussion of self-organization” (p. 254).

Eugenie Scott’s statement is nonsense. No matter what the new evolutionary theories may be, no-one will confuse those with intelligent design. She’s trying to blame her opponents for something within the evolutionist camp. I’ll explain her mischief later.

Mazur then asks Stuart Newman: “To what do you attribute the reluctance to distribute literature about self-organization by organizations like the National Center for Science Education?” (p. 131). He gets a little closer to the truth.

“I think there is a challenge that self-organization and plasticity in general presents to Darwinian theory … . To my mind, self-organization does represent a challenge to the Darwinian, i.e. the modern synthesis and the perceived understanding of evolutionary theory. … [P]eople are concerned that if they open up the door to non-Darwinian mechanisms, then they’re going to allow creationists to slip through the door as well [emphasis added]” (Stuart Newman, pp. 131–132).

Evolutionists are again blaming creationists as a factor that keeps evolutionists silent.

“I think that abandoning Darwinism (or explicitly relegating it where it belongs, in the refinement and tuning of existing forms) sounds anti-scientific. They [the many contributors to non-Darwinian evolutionary theories] fear that the tenants of intelligent design and the creationists (people I hate as much as they do) will rejoice and quote them as being on their side. They really fear that, so they are prudent, some in good faith, some for calculated fear of being cast out of the scientific community” (Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, p. 317).

Mazur writes, “This is a big debate, which the media is not covering. It’s reached a crescendo and a lot of people are saying there’s a sea change happening” (p. 252). Meanwhile, at nearly the same time, the National Academy of Sciences published its book, Science, Evolution, and Creationism, as a denunciation of intelligent design and a defense of teaching only evolution in the public schools.3 In other words, the NAS book omitted the crescendo of controversy and painted a false picture of unity about evolutionary theory and origins. Mazur pans it as “a very general book” and wryly asks Niles Eldredge about its ‘simplicity’. He responds:

“No. I mean look, when you’re fighting school boards who want to adopt Intelligent Design, you’ve got to write in very basic terms. It is a political problem. And there’s always a problem, as you know … in communicating science to the public and being clear about it [Mazur’s ellipsis]” (Niles Eldredge, p. 329).

Eldredge adopts the usual justification: when dealing with the public, simplification is necessary— so long as the simplification favours evolution. If the simplification were to dis-favour evolution, evolutionists would soon discover their tongues and loudly denounce it.

(Note: It would be helpful if evolutionists dealt with origins in the same way they wanted their opponents to deal with it. Habitual ‘simplification’ in one’s own favour can be a form of dishonesty.)

Mazur objects that the NAS book didn’t include any ‘additional ways’ to consider, such as self-assembly and self-organization. So Eldredge answers:

“No, because it’s all regarded as speculative and on the forefront and stuff … . What they’re trying to do [in the NAS book] is say where we are now, where we’re comfortable, where we can actually say that this is the way people really do think for the most part” (Niles Eldredge, pp. 329–330).

Eldredge is comfortable omitting the new evolutionary explanations, because those are ‘speculative’. But the problems aren’t speculative; they’re rock solid scientifically, and Eldredge/Mazur did not object to omitting those from the NAS book.

The self-censorship can now be explained. The new evolutionary mechanisms of self-assembly and self-organization arise from the evolutionists’ attempts to answer overwhelming problems that are scientifically rock-hard and straightforward to describe. But the evolutionary ‘answers’ are flakey, fluff, undemonstrated, and untestable—not scientific.

That explains why evolutionists prefer venues where evolution is taken as ‘fact’—say, at their by-invitation-only conferences. That explains why evolutionists avoid ‘self-organization’ for the general public, such as the NAS book. That explains why Eugenie Scott and the NCSE actively oppose including ‘self-organization’ in school textbooks. The NCSE is America’s leading anti-creation organization, and they don’t want ugly questions rising, such as: “What is the evidence for self-organization?” Because the answer would be: “The evidence for ‘self-organization’ is the overwhelming problems faced by evolutionary theory, taken together with the ‘fact’ of evolution?” This won’t look pretty in classrooms.

“Silence is the strongest weapon. The disregard for science’s ethical principles is widespread” (Lima-de-Faria, p. 91).

Suzan Mazur observes self-censorship in America, and she searches sincerely for its causes. But the dark truth is that she has censored her own book. Because she’s an evolutionist, she withheld from her readers a robust discussion of the many serious problems that are forcing evolutionists to such desperate solutions as self-assembly and self-organization.4 I would welcome a sequel from her documenting these in the same professional, journalistic (unbiased) fashion with which she’s handled the majority of the material.

Source.

The concealment of funding

Lynn Margulis saw that government funding for evolutionary research comes in a disjointed manner from various distinctly separate government agencies and departments, rather than from a coherent single entity. So she, together with other evolutionists, wrote a letter to the National Science Foundation [NSF] urging it to set up a single entity, especially for funding evolution research.

“So we talked about ways of putting pressure on the National Science Foundation to set up an evolution section. … . This would lead to reduction of redundancy and save money for the funding agencies. … . Anyway, I deduced that the NSF scientist-bureaucrats were conflicted about our letter. The woman [representative from the NSF] assigned to answer us wrote to say there were so many American citizens opposed to evolution that if the NSF put chemistry, geology, etc. into a single evolution division, it would be like sticking out our heads to be chopped off. Such a proposal, no matter its intellectual validity, would surely not fly! She said the NSF thought it would strengthen evolution science by avoidance of the word ‘evolution’ and not by centralizing research activities” (Lynn Margulis, pp. 263–264).

This shows how a centralized government can relabel things and partition a large funding stream in various confusing ways, so as to intentionally obscure where taxpayer money is going—and intentionally get around the will of the people. Evolutionists use this maneuver, and Mazur reports no objection to it. Evolutionists feel justified in intentionally withholding key information from the public. This is consistent with their belief system that morals are merely products of evolution.

Censorship

Mazur calls attention to the existing censorship against non-Darwinian ideas. She opposes that censorship, and rightly so. Creationists experience far heavier censorship against their ideas. Yet her explanations for the censorship are nearly identical to what creationists say.

“The commercial media is both ignorant of and blocks coverage of stories about non-centrality of the gene because its science advertising dollars come from the gene-centered Darwin industry. … . At the same time, the Darwin industry is also in bed with government, even as political leaders remain clueless about evolution. Thus, the public is unaware that its dollars are being squandered on funding of mediocre, middlebrow science or that its children are being intellectually starved as a result of outdated texts and unenlightened teachers” (Mazur, p. ix).

“The mainstream media has failed to cover the non-centrality of the gene story to any extent. … this has to do largely with Darwin-based industry advertising, editors not doing their homework and others just trying to hold on to their jobs” (Mazur, p. 104).

“The thinking is we can no longer pretend evolution is just about Darwinian natural selection even if that’s what most biologists say it’s about and textbooks repeat it” (Mazur, p. 105).

“The consensus of the evolution pack [i.e. the science blogs] still seems to be that if an idea doesn’t fit in with Darwinism and neo-Darwinism—keep it out” (Mazur, p. viii).

“Unless the discourse around evolution is opened up to scientific perspectives beyond Darwinism, the education of generations to come is at risk of being sacrificed for the benefit of a dying theory” (Stuart Newman, p. 104).

“One reason that so little progress has been made in this area is that perfectly valid scientific concepts that employ nonadaptive evolutionary mechanisms are rarely considered because of the hegemony of the neo-Darwinian framework” (Stuart Newman, p. 131).

Lynn Margulis reveals how the established worldview (evolution) enforces unity within its ranks:

“[P]eople are always more loyal to their tribal group than to any abstract notion of “truth”— scientists especially. If not they are unemployable. It is professional suicide to continually contradict one’s teachers or social leaders” (Lynn Margulis, p. 275).

Evolutionary epistemology

Here is how evolutionists arrive at what they ‘know’ about origins:

1. they take evolution as an unshakeable ‘fact’, and

2. science provides compelling evidence against many evolutionary explanations.

Those are taken together as evidence for the remaining evolutionary explanations—no matter how flakey, unsupported, or unscientific. This method of knowing runs deep within the evolutionist mindset. Evolutionists are constitutionally unable to ‘see’ evidence against evolution, even when hitting them in the face. The Altenberg 16 provides an example. There are many examples.

There is so-called ‘convergence’, which is superabundant in life. For example, evolutionists claim vision arose more than forty separate times, and that a complex eye like yours—with a lens and retina— originated at least five separate times, as it is found separately in vertebrates, cephalopods (octopus/squid), annelid worms, jellyfish, and a spider (figure 2). Such origins have not remotely been demonstrated experimentally, and though these designs are complex, their similarity cannot be explained:

•by common descent, or

•by atavism (i.e. the masking, and later un-masking of genetic traits), or

•by sideways transposition of traits from one lineage to another (such as by lateral gene transfer, or endosymbiosis).

Those are merely the three versions of simple inheritance that evolutionists actively employ in their storytelling. But all three of these simple explanations are eliminated by the data. (Note: this was necessary to meet the goals predicted by Message Theory.1)

Evolutionists are left with their least-easy, least plausible ‘explanation’ of the situation—the bald-faced, unscientific claim for the independent origin of similar biological complexities. In short, these are strong anti-evolutionary evidences. Given the incredible flexibility of evolutionary storytelling, ‘convergences’ are as anti-evolutionary as they can be.

Ironically, the more profound the antievolutionary evidence, the more the evolutionist sees it as evidence for the incredible power of some evolutionary mechanism! All evolutionists interpret convergence as evidence for the incredible power of natural selection.

Evolutionists instinctively recognize convergence as antievolutionary evidence, because they tend to avoid it in venues where evolution is not assumed as fact, such as debates with creationists. The evolutionist method is to set aside the anti-evolutionary evidences long enough to conclude evolution is a ‘fact’, and then later reinterpret those as evidence for some evolutionary mechanism.

Simon Conway Morris gives convergence a book-length discussion.2 He documents countless examples of astounding convergence, and, taken together with his assumption of evolution as ‘fact’, he is forced to conclude that convergence is inevitable, and extraterrestrial life, if it produces higher lifeforms, would likely produce bilateral large-brained humanoids, much like ourselves! Natural selection is that powerful! Convergence is that inevitable! What is the evidence that convergence is inevitable? Answer: that it exists, abundantly—no further evidence is needed. To evolutionists, sufficient experimental demonstration is not required of evolution, and neither is scientific testability.

Another example. The classical Darwinians sought to identify ancestors and used these as their central predicted evidence for evolution. (If they had succeeded, I would be an evolutionist today.) In various ways they created illusions, and their research program took 120 years to collapse. They failed because clear-cut ancestors and lineages are systematically absent. Therefore, starting in the mid-1970s, evolutionists sought to reformulate their theory (and their predictions, and their so-called ‘evidence’) so as to have no need for identifying the ancestors. The cladistic methodology then rose to prominence, and it never identifies real ancestors. Likewise, punctuated equilibria theory rose to prominence largely because it attempts to explain away this central failure of Darwinism.

Evolutionists began to acknowledge three profound anti-evolutionary patterns in the fossil record:

1. absence of change—non-change or ‘stasis’—throughout the existence of fossil species

2. the systematic existence of large morphological gaps between lifeforms (i.e. the systematic absence of gradualism), which Stephen Jay Gould famously called, ‘the trade secret of paleontology’)

3. systematic absences of clear-cut ancestors and clear-cut lineages.

Evolutionists used these anti-evolutionary evidences, taken together with the ‘fact’ of evolution, as evidence for a new theory of evolutionary mechanism. If you locked yourself in a room with little but those things, you would eventually come out with their theory, punctuated equilibria, in all its essential details.

Items 1 and 2 were used as evidence for ‘rapid evolution’ at the origin of new species. But unknown to most people, item 3 gives the theory much of its distinctive character. According to the theory, evolution occurs predominantly at branching events (called speciation), in sudden rapid bursts, in random (largely non-adaptive) directions—thereby scrambling any lingering appearance of clear-cut ancestors and lineage. The theory was specially designed to scramble lineages and make the identification of ancestors ‘indecipherable’. Evolutionists embrace this theory, despite its lack of experimental demonstration and lack of scientific testability. The theory is now well-protected, because ironically, the only way to refute it would be to provide convincing evidence for evolution.

As another example, take von Baer’s laws of embryology, which remain central to our best description of the patterns of embryo development. Those patterns happen to be anti-evolutionary evidence, especially the tendency for embryos to soon display their most-generalized characters and then continue in-sequence to display less-generalized characters, and eventually to display their most specialized characters. Put crudely, a given embryo soon displays the characteristics of its phyla, followed by the characteristics of its Linnaean class, then its Linnaean order, then family, and so forth. This embryological sequence—from generalized to specialized—is quite awkward for evolutionists to explain. Can you recall any evolutionist ever trying to explain von Baer’s laws? The problem is so difficult; I can find no ready example of evolutionists ever explicitly trying to explain them. Instead, their answer was implicitly given, as Recapitulation Theory. The theory can be derived by locking oneself in a room with little but von Baer’s laws, together with the ‘fact’ of universal common descent. You would come out of the room with Recapitulation Theory, in all its essential details.

But Recapitulation Theory requires highly peculiar mechanisms, for which there exists no serious experimental demonstrations. Nonetheless, evolutionists widely promoted those recapitulation mechanisms as real, and foisted it all off on schoolchildren, even for many decades after evolutionist researchers privately knew it was false. Though recapitulation was thought finally expunged by Stephen Jay Gould (in his 1977 book Ontogeny and Phylogeny), it is still widely held today—because evolutionists possess no better answer. The central evidence for ‘recapitulation mechanisms’ is the anti-evolutionary evidence from embryology, taken together with the ‘fact’ of evolution.

For another example, look at the origin of life. Take the universe of ideas, and subtract all that don’t take naturalistic origin of life as a fact. Then further subtract all ideas that have been scientifically refuted. The remainders are what textbooks teach about the origin of life—regardless of how flakey, undemonstrated, or untestable. Here the textbooks omit the real science. What we really know—scientifically—is the many ways the origin-of-life didn’t happen naturalistically. Creationists now scientifically own the origin of life issue.

But to evolutionists, all evidence supports some evolutionary mechanism. It cannot be otherwise. It simply must be so, because evolution is a ‘fact’.

Why is natural selection insufficient?

The book identifies key areas where natural selection is not a sufficient explanation, but discusses those only briefly and superficially. Mazur could have done a better job explaining these problems that are driving evolutionary scientists up the wall. I’ll greatly expand the discussion here.

One area is obviously the origin of life, since natural selection can’t operate until after life has begun. Yet modern science has revealed breathtaking complexity of the simplest known self-reproducing lifeforms. To explain away these difficulties, evolutionists are claiming the existence, on Earth, of countless lifeforms unlike any known lifeforms. They have no evidence of that; instead they are trying to keep their worldview from being falsified, by floating untestable explanations. In addition, evolutionists are now offering unknown processes of ‘self-assembly’ and ‘self-organization’ (and associated terms like ‘plasticity’).

Another key area is the origin of higher taxa, especially the origin of phyla and classes. According to evolutionists themselves, the origin of all the animal phyla occurred within (or very near) a brief geological twinkling of an eye, known as the Cambrian Explosion. This is a big problem in itself.

But it gets worse. Stephen Jay Gould noted that the fossil sequence shows the most disparate (most different) biological designs tend to show up first! Followed by the slightly less-disparate designs. Followed by the still less different designs. Until, lastly, the last slight bits of interspecies biological diversity are filled-in at the very end of the process. The general trend in the fossil sequence is: the various phyla show up first, later various Linnaean classes are filled in, and still later various Linnaean orders are filled in … and so forth. Gould called this pattern ‘disparity precedes diversity’. And evolutionists cannot blame this sequence on an ‘incomplete fossil record’, as they often try to do.

That contradicts the expectations of Darwinism (and neo-Darwinism), which expects slow change that, over time, will gradually accumulate to large differences. In short, Darwinism expects the most disparate designs to show up last, not first. This is contradicted by the fossil record. (To be honest, to most people not emotionally invested in the matter, it falsifies the Darwinism.) Something is wrong at the core of Darwinian theory.

But it gets still worse. Recent discoveries in genetics are adding another interesting new challenge to the problem. Developmental biologists have observed a small set of genes coordinating organismal development of body plans—and these are present across the multicellular kingdom, in the various phyla and classes. Evolutionists call this the ‘Developmental Genetic Toolkit’. According to evolutionary thinking, this complex toolkit must have originated in some common ancestor to all the phyla. But that common ancestor must have existed prior to first appearance of these phyla—in other words, prior to the Cambrian Explosion. The common ancestor (whose identity is still unknown) must have existed in the Pre-Cambrian— prior to the origin of multicellular life. In short, the genes that control body plans had to have originated when there were no bodies. The genes that control embryological development had to have originated when there were no embryos.

“At the point when the modern animal body plans first emerged [half a billion years ago] just about all the genes that are used in modern organisms to make embryos were already there. They had evolved in the single-celled world but they weren’t doing embryogenesis [Mazur’s braces]” (Stuart Newman, p. 52).

Natural selection cannot solve that problem: it cannot ‘look ahead’ and create an embryological toolkit for some future use. It cannot develop the ‘tools’ for making multicellular bodies when there are no multicellular bodies. Natural selection is insufficient, so once again evolutionists are appealing to mechanisms of self-assembly and self-organization.

Stuart Newman’s paper, which “served as the centerpiece of the Altenberg symposium” (Mazur, p. 12), claims that all 35 or so animal phyla physically self-organized by the time of the Cambrian explosion, and selection followed later as a ‘stabilizer’ of the self-organized novelties.

“Look, when Sherman stresses that the sea urchin [which has no eyes] has, in-expressed, the genes for the eyes and for antibodies (genes that are well known and fully active in later species), how can we not agree with him that canonical neo-Darwinism cannot begin to explain such facts?” (Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, p. 321).

This problem, from genetics and the fossil record, is scientifically solid and firm—but the evolutionists’ solution is not. Yet Mazur inverts the proper handling by giving a superficial description of the problem. Few of her readers will understand what is driving evolutionary scientists to such desperate lengths.

Testability and experimental demonstrations

The evolutionary ideas of self-assembly and self-organization have two faults. First there is insufficient experimental demonstration.

“Self-organization is of course an important component, but not much has been discovered beyond generalities. The immense amount of intricate detail that geneticists and developmentalists have been discovering over the years dwarfs general metaphors like autoevolution and even self-organization [emphasis added]” (Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, p. 322).

Moreover, these evolutionary explanations lack scientific testability, or seriously risk that they could potentially be empirically falsified. Nobody seems to know how to test these.

“I think self-organization is part of an alternative to natural selection. Let me try to frame it for you. In fact, it’s a huge debate. The truth is that we don’t know how to think about it” (Stuart Kauffman, p. 291).

Due to this two-fold scientific failure, these mechanisms can kindly be called hyperbole, or just plain hype—not science. These do not meet the requirements for science that evolutionists endorsed in all their court cases. But this deficiency is not discussed in the book.

As we would predict for an evolutionary book of this type, it suggests no need whatever for testability of evolutionary explanations, in fact it scarcely mentions testability. Meanwhile evolutionists elsewhere resolutely demand testability from creation theories. This book is another example of the evolutionists’ routine double standard: One standard (testability) required of creation theory; and a far lower standard required of evolutionary theory.

A review of "The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry" by Suzan Mazur

Reviewed by Walter J. ReMine

Because this book was written by an evolutionist, creation scholars will especially love it. The Altenberg 16 looks at the rivalry in science today surrounding attempts to discover “the elusive process of evolution”. Its centerpiece is the by-invitation-only symposium held at Altenberg, Austria, in July 2008, attended by 16 evolutionary scientists, called the Altenberg 16 (figure 1).

“[W]hile the Altenberg 16 have roots in neo-Darwinian theory, they recognize the need to challenge the prevailing Modern Synthesis, because there’s too much it doesn’t explain [emphasis added]” (p. vii).

“The Altenberg 16 … recognize that the theory of evolution which most practicing biologists accept and which is taught in classrooms today, is inadequate in explaining our existence [emphasis added]” (p. 19).

“A wave of scientists now questions natural selection’s role, though fewer will publicly admit it” (p. 20).

“Evolutionary science is as much about the posturing, salesmanship, stonewalling and bullying that goes on as it is about actual scientific theory. It is a social discourse involving hypotheses of staggering complexity with scientists, recipients of the biggest grants of any intellectuals, assuming the power of politicians while engaged in Animal House pie-throwing and name-calling: ‘ham-fisted’, ‘looney Marxist hangover’, ‘secular creationist’, ‘philosopher’ (a scientist who can’t get grants anymore), ‘quack’, ‘crackpot’ …

“In short, it’s a modern day quest for the holy grail, but with few knights. At a time that calls for scientific vision, scientific inquiry’s been hijacked by an industry of greed, with evolution books hyped like snake oil at a carnival.

“Perhaps the most egregious display of commercial dishonesty is this year’s celebration of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species—the so-called theory of evolution by natural selection, i.e., survival of the fittest, a brand foisted on us 150 years ago.

“Scientists agree that natural selection can occur. But the scientific community also knows that natural selection has little to do with long-term changes in populations [emphasis added, ellipsis in original]” (p. v).

Good reporting

The book gives numerous statements that creation scholars will cheer. I therefore expected its author, Suzan Mazur, to offset those by giving the usual, obligatory, condemnation of creationists or the usual, stern (but empty), warning that ‘creationists will find nothing useful here’. I was pleasantly surprised these were absent from her prose. Though Mazur is an evolutionist, she is clearly a serious reporter, committed to the reporter’s craft of excluding her own views. The book is careful reportage throughout. She asks pointed questions of many evolutionary scientists, and gives lengthy transcripts of their responses, along with biographies, and observations about their appearance, manner, habits, and hobbies. It’s unlikely a creationist reporter could have gotten these same evolutionists to open up that much.

Natural selection is insufficient

The book openly acknowledges the insufficiency of explaining evolution via natural selection (i.e. mutation and recombination plus various forms of selection)—and documents this point with statements from leading evolutionary scientists.

“We are grappling with the increasing feeling … that we just don’t have the theoretical and analytical tools necessary to make sense of the bewildering diversity and complexity of living organisms” (from the invitation to attend the Altenberg conference, p. 31).

“Basically I don’t think anybody knows how evolution works [emphasis added]” (Jerry Fodor, p. 34).

“Oh sure natural selection’s been demonstrated … the interesting point, however, is that it has rarely if ever been demonstrated to have anything to do with evolution in the sense of long-term changes in populations. … Summing up we can see that the import of the Darwinian theory of evolution is just unexplainable caprice from top to bottom. What evolves is just what happens to happen [ellipsis in original]” (Stanley Salthe, p. 21).

“There are people spouting off as if we know the answer. We don’t know the answer” (Stuart Kauffman, p. 54).

Darwinism and the neo-Darwinian synthesis, last dusted off 70 years ago, actually hinder discovery of the mechanism of evolution” (Antonio Lima-de-Faria, p. 83).

“Do I think natural selection should be relegated to a less import role in the discussion of evolution? Yes I do” (Scott Gilbert, p. 221).

“She [Lynn Margulis] sees natural selection as ‘neither the source of heritable novelty nor the entire evolutionary process’ and has pronounced neo-Darwinism ‘dead’, since there’s no adequate evidence in the literature that random mutations result in new species” (Mazur, p. 257).

“At that meeting [Francisco] Ayala agreed with me when I stated that this doctrinaire neo-Darwinism is dead. He was a practitioner of neo-Darwinism but advances in molecular genetics, evolution, ecology, biochemistry, and other news had led him to agree that neo-Darwinism’s now dead” (Lynn Margulis, p. 278).

“The point is, however, that an organism can be modified and refined by natural selection, but that is not the way new species and new classes and new phyla originated” (Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, p. 314).

Highlight from the OP:

"In their study of creationist publishing practices (‘The Elusive Scientific Basis of Creation “Science”’, Quarterly Review of Biology 60:21–30, 1985), Eugenie Scott and Henry Cole surveyed the editors of 68 journals for the period from 1980–1983, looking for creationist submissions. Out of an estimated 135,000 submitted papers, Scott and Cole found only 18 that could be described ‘as advocating scientific creationism’ (p.26)."

budaatum:

In a nutshell, that's exactly what he is saying, though he does not say why, or rather, claims it is because of a bias against creationism. Could it be because creationism is pseudoscience? After all, before one can claim creationism one would have to show evidence for a creator, which, outside the realm of theology, does just not exist!

Nice try Doc!

I overrated you, your understanding, and your ability to make logical arguments anyway.

budaatum:

You have misunderstood evolution.
Please read some more on the topic.

Classic.

You guys all over the world must have gathered together in one place to learn this reply.

Q: Do creation scientists publish in secular journals?

We referred this question to Dr D. Russell Humphreys, a physicist who works at Sandia National Laboratories. Dr Humphreys says he has often had this question put to him. He writes:

Dr D. Russell Humphreys
‘When people ask me this, I feel a certain amount of frustration because of the evolutionist brainwashing in our society which it reveals.

‘Firstly, it shows that the questioner is unaware of the large number of published professional scientists who are creationists. Where I live and work (Albuquerque, New Mexico) there are large numbers of scientists, and I know many who happen to be biblical creationists. Using a simple statistical approach, I would conservatively estimate that in the United States alone, there are around 10,000 practising professional scientists who openly believe in six-day recent creation.

‘Secondly, it suggests that the questioner doesn’t understand what the day-to-day life of a scientist is all about. One could almost say that publication in professional journals is the essence of being a scientist. So asking a man who says he is a scientist if he’s published in secular journals is like asking a man who says he’s married if he’s got a wife!

‘I would therefore reply to such a question ‘Are there any who don’t?’ Every one I know does publish. Even scientists who are full-time in creationist organisations usually have a few such publications, despite the serious disadvantage their institutional connections give them. Although there is strong discrimination against high-profile creationist scientists, most creationist scientists publish non-creationist scientific articles frequently. Moreover, many of them have published data with important creationist implications—but without explicit creationist conclusions, which would point out the significance of the data to the average non-creationist scientist.

‘What about creationist scientists publishing articles, in secular journals, which specifically come to creationist conclusions? The bitter experience of a number of us has made it clear that there is almost no chance that such articles will pass the review process, no matter what their quality. I have also had repeated correspondence with the letters editors of major journals, having submitted brief, well-written items which critiqued published conclusions favourable to long-agers or ‘big-bangers’. These contained no explicit creationist connotations, but I have concluded that, now that I am known as a creationist, such items have virtually no chance of publication.’

That’s why creationists have had to develop their own peer-reviewed journals, such as the Creation Research Society Quarterly and the Journal of Creation. Some creationist scientists are world leaders in their field, like geophysicist Dr John Baumgardner of Los Alamos Laboratories, in the field of plate tectonics [see interview Creation 19(3):40–43, 1997].

Source

By David Buckna

In his book The Monkey Business (1982) paleontologist Niles Eldredge wrote that no author who published in the Creation Research Society Quarterly ‘has contributed a single article to any reputable scientific journal’ (p.83). Apparently Eldredge couldn't be bothered to glance at the Science Citation Index or any other major science bibliographic source.

Developmental biologist Willem J. Ouweneel, a Dutch creationist and CRSQ contributor, published a classic and widely cited paper on developmental anomalies in fruit flies (‘Developmental genetics of homoeosis’, Advances in Genetics, 16:179–248, 1976). Herpetologist Wayne Frair, a frequent CRSQ contributor, publishes his work on turtle systematics and serology in such journals as Journal of Herpetology, Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology, Science, and Herpetologica.

In their study of creationist publishing practices (‘The Elusive Scientific Basis of Creation “Science”’, Quarterly Review of Biology 60:21–30, 1985), Eugenie Scott and Henry Cole surveyed the editors of 68 journals for the period from 1980–1983, looking for creationist submissions. Out of an estimated 135,000 submitted papers, Scott and Cole found only 18 that could be described ‘as advocating scientific creationism’ (p.26).

Scott and Cole were not looking for papers like the following: In 1983, the German creationist and microbiologist Siegfried Scherer published a critique of evolutionary theories of the origin of photosynthesis entitled ‘Basic Functional States in the Evolution of Light-driven Cyclic Electron Transport’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 104: 289–299, 1983, one of the journals Scott and Cole surveyed. Only an editor who had a complete roster of European creationists, and the insight to follow the implications of Scherer's argument would have flagged the paper as ‘creationist’.

How many papers did Scott and Cole miss? Let's look at 1984, one year past the end of their survey. Would Scott and Cole have turned up ‘Enzymic Editing Mechanisms and the Origin of Biological Information Transfer’, by the creationist biochemist Grant Lambert (Journal of Theoretical Biology, 107:387–403, 1984)? Lambert argues that without editing enzymes, primitive DNA replication, transcription, and translation would have been swamped by extremely high error rates. But the editing enzymes are themselves produced by DNA.

It’s a brilliant argument for design. Lambert understandably counts on some subtlety and insight from his readers, however. Lambert doesn’t ‘explicitly’ wave his creationist banner, leaving the dilemma as ‘an unresolved problem in theoretical biology’ (p.401). By Scott and Cole’s criteria, such papers don’t really count. By any other reasonable criteria, however, they do.

Dr D. Russell Humphreys, a physicist working for the prestigious Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico (who is involved with the laboratory's particle beam fusion project, concerning thermonuclear fusion energy research) is a board member of the Creation Research Society. He has about 30 published articles in mainstream technical journals from 1968 to the present. In the last eight years a lot of his work has been classified, so there has been less of it in the open literature.

His most recent unclassified publication is a multiple-author article in Review of Scientific Instruments 63(10):5068–5071, October 1992, ‘Comparison of experimental results and calculated detector responses for PBFAII thermal source experiments.’ I understand that a more recent unclassified article will be published in the near future.

Here is just a sampling of some of his earlier articles:

‘Inertial confinement fusion with light ion beams’, (Multiple-author) International Atomic Energy Agency, 13th International Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research, Washington D.C., 1–6 October 1990.

‘Progress toward a superconducting opening switch’, (Principal author), Proceedings of 6th IEEE Pulsed Power Conference (Arlington, VA June 29 – July 1, 1987) pp. 279–282.

‘Rimfire: a six megavolt laser-triggered gas-filled switch for PBFA II’, (Principal author), Proceedings of 5th IEEE Pulsed Power Conference (Arlington, VA June 10–12, 1985) pp. 262–2265.

‘Uranium logging with prompt fission neutrons’, (Principal author) International Journal of Applied Radiation and Isotopes, 34(1):261–268, 1983.

‘The 1/γ velocity dependence of nucleon-nucleus optical potentials’, (Only author) Nuclear Physics, A182:580–592, 1972.

Creationists such as Humphreys have extensive publications in mainstream journals on non-creationist topics. As mentioned previously, the article by Scott & Cole was a search for articles openly espousing creationism, which is a different matter altogether. Creationists who publish scientific research in mainstream journals have found that they can publish articles with data having creationist implications, but will not get articles with openly creationist conclusions published. When they attempt to do this, their articles are usually rejected. Those who are well-known to evolutionists as creationists have more difficulty even with articles which do not have obvious creationist implications.

In the summer of 1985 Humphreys wrote to the journal Science pointing out that openly creationist articles are suppressed by most journals. He asked if Science had ‘a hidden policy of suppressing creationist letters.’ Christine Gilbert, the letters editor, replied and admitted, ‘It is true that we are not likely to publish letters supporting creationism.’ This admission is particularly significant since Science’s official letters policy is that they represent ‘the range of opinions ’. e.g., letters must be representative of part of the spectrum of opinions. Yet of all the opinions they receive, Science does not print the creationist ones.

Humphreys’ letter and Ms Gilbert’s reply are reprinted in the book, Creation’s Tiny Mystery, by physicist Robert V. Gentry (Earth Science Associates, Knoxville, Tennessee, 2nd edition, 1988.)

On May 19, 1992 Humphreys submitted his article ‘Compton scattering and the cosmic microwave background bumps’ to the Scientific Correspondence section of the British journal Nature. The editorial staff knew Humphreys was a creationist and didn’t want to publish it (even though the article did not contain any glaring creationist implications). The editorial staff didn’t even want to send it through official peer review. Six months later Nature published an article by someone else on the same topic, having the same conclusions. Thus, most creationist researchers realize it is simply a waste of time to send journal editors openly creationist articles. To say that a ‘slight bias’ exists on the part of journal editors would be an understatement.

The Institute for Creation Research published a laymanized version of Humphreys’ article in their Impact series [No. 233, 'Bumps in the Big Bang’, November 1992]. Reference 5 of that article contains information about the Nature submission.

In the 70s and early 80s, physicist Robert Gentry had several articles with very significant creationist data published in mainstream journals (Science, Nature, Journal of Geophysical Research, etc.), but found he couldn’t publish openly creationist conclusions. Gentry had discovered that granites contain microscopic coloration halos produced by the radioactive decay of primordial polonium. According to evolutionary theory, polonium halos should not be there. Some believe that the existence of polonium halos is scientific evidence that the Earth was created instantaneously.

When Oak Ridge National Laboratories terminated Gentry’s connection with them as a visiting professor (shortly after it became nationally known he is a creationist) the number of his articles slowed down, but he continues to publish.

Another example of blatant discrimination is Scientific American’s refusal to hire Forrest Mims as their ‘Amateur Scientist’ columnist when they found out that he was a creationist, although they admitted that his work was ‘fabulous’, ‘great’ and ‘first rate’. Subsequently Mims invented a new haze detector praised in the ‘Amateur Scientist’ column, without mentioning that Mims was rejected for this very column purely because of religious discimination. So it’s hardly surprising that some creationists write creationist papers under pseudonyms to avoid being victimised by the bigoted establishment. See Revolutionary Atmospheric Invention by Victim of Anti-creationist Discrimination

Russell Humphreys said in a 1993 interview: ‘I’m part of a fairly large scientific community in New Mexico, and a good number of these are creationists. Many don’t actively belong to any creationist organization. Based on those proportions and knowing the membership of the Creation Research Society, it’s probably a conservative estimate that there are in the US alone around 10,000 practising scientists who are biblical creationists.’ (‘Creation in the Physics Lab’, Creation 15(3):20–23).

Additional information on Dr D. Russell Humphreys:

Dr Humphreys was awarded his Ph.D. in physics from Louisiana State University in 1972, by which time he was a fully convinced creationist. For the next 6 years he worked in the High Voltage Laboratory of General Electric Company. Since 1979, he has worked for Sandia National Laboratories in nuclear physics, geophysics, pulsed power research, theoretical atomic and nuclear physics, and the Particle Beam Fusion Project. Dr Humphreys is an adjunct professor of Geophysics and Astrophysics at the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, a Board member of the Creation Research Society and is president of the Creation Science Fellowship of New Mexico. He is also the author of the book Starlight and Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe, Master Books, 1994 (ISBN 0-89051-202-7) which details his white hole cosmology theory.

One other ICR Impact article by Humphreys can be viewed at: The Earth's Magnetic Field is Young.

Dr Michael Behe, associate professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University author of Darwin’s Black Box, is not even a biblical creationist, but has experienced blatant censorship simply because he highlights the strong evidence for an intelligent designer of life. Like Dr Gentry, he wasn’t even given a chance to respond to his critics — see his Correspondence with Science Journals.

Scientific American refused to allow Phillip Johnson to defend himself against a vindictive and petty review by the atheistic Marxist, Stephen Jay Gould. So Johnson published Response to Gould on the Internet, from Access Research Network.
Another prominent creationist who publishes in mainstream journals is Dr Robert A. Herrmann, professor of mathematics at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

See also the biographies of Dr Don Batten, Dr Jonathan Sarfati and Dr Pierre Jerlström for examples of mainstream scientific publications by full-time CMI scientists.

Source.

budaatum:
Vax, remember you and I having this discussion sometime ago? It eventually led to my subobj thread.


It seems you don't understand what SJG means.

No. On the contrary, it seems you don't understand what SJG meant.

He's saying basically that human beings are subjective by nature so their preconceptions and biases get in the way of their learning.

Except that he put it in a different, and stronger, way. He "tirelessly advocated" for the view that "science ... is never separable from human biases and preconceptions."(p.4). He declared that the idea of "a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method’, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology." (p.5). He said too that "Impartiality [in science] (even if desirable) is unattainable by human beings with inevitable backgrounds, needs, beliefs, and desires." (p.6)

Did you see the word "beliefs" there, Buda? Now, I put it to you that there is no type of belief, background, preconceptions, biases, or preferences that can influence anyone to arrive at a different conclusion as to the boiling point of water. No matter your beliefs, biases, preconceptions, and preferences, the boiling point of water is 100°C. Same with all of operational science.

But there's another type of science in which beliefs, backgrounds, needs, preferences, biases, preconceptions, and desires can (and must) influence conclusions. That type of science involves observing things in the present, and then interpreting them as evidence for ones's narrative/view of how things happened in the past. It is then immediately apparent that the views of how things happened has to have been formed before hand, and then observations only interpreted through the lens of those views. Richard Lewontin agrees with his "a prior commitment to materialism" quote. Note that materialism is a type of view/preconceptions which I'm talking about here. Another one is creationism.

Now that you know that, are you not supposed to ensure your preconceptions and biases do not get in the way of your learning?

in the way of my learning biology, physics, anatomy, or physiology, biochemistry or haematology? I don't see how my own preconceptions and biases can get in my way of gaining knowledge in those disciplines. No matter my biases and preconceptions: DNA is the genetic material of (most) organisms, water boils at 100°C, biceps brachii is located in the arm, the kidney is essential in homeostasis, glucose is metabolised by humans to generate energy, and red blood cells contain haemoglobin molecules which carry oxygen! Can my preconceptions and biases of creationism possibly get in my way of acquiring these knowledge? No.

Tell me doc, can one be a good doctor if one allows one's preconceptions and biases to get in the way when one is diagnosing a person's illness?

Except that the type of preconceptions and biases I'm talking about here don't really find their influences in the area of diagnoses. When I'm talking about biases and preconceptions, I mean things like materialism, creationism, etc. A creationist believes that God created all things. That can hardly get in the way of diagnosing a patient.

Do you seriously believe SJG is saying "allow your preconceptions and biases to get in the way of your learning"?

while he has not exactly put it that way, he put it in a different way. He was of the view that science is inseparable from these biases and preconceptions. He said too that impartiality is unattainable in science. (Surely this impartiality cannot be in determining, for example, the boiling point of water, or the melting point and atomic number of a newly discovered element). He even said that "This messy and personal side of science should not be disparaged, or covered up, by scientists..." (p.5)

Darwin perhaps put it in a better way, when he says that observations must be for or against a view. No wonder it is SJG's favorite quote.

budaatum:

I struck it through so you might understand what SJG meant. You can't just take a quote out of context as you have done and claim SJG is saying allow your "learning about the world to be strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking"! He himself was heavily against doing so as you'd find if you bother to read his books instead of relying on a couple of paragraphs quoted by a site that is the epitome of "preconceptions and bias"! My own quote by him presented is sufficient to make anyone question what you are claiming he meant.

Even as a doctor you must not allow your "preconceptions and bias" to influence your diagnosis. I would expect you to know that if you do allow your "preconceptions and bias" to influence your diagnosing you'd more likely be a crap doctor!

But please tell me I'm wrong, and that you do allow your "preconceptions and bias" to influence your diagnosing, if you really are a doctor, that is!

It appears I'm not the only one who holds my view of what Stephen Jay Gould thought about preconceptions and biases. Here is a biography of Stephen Jay Gould, entitled "Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life", edited by Warren D. Allmon, Patricia H. Kelly and Robert Ross. Check pages 4, 5 and 6 of the book.

Note the view which the author said SJG advocated, that science is "... never separable from human biases and preconceptions." (p.4). It may interest you to know that the author (Warren Allmon) received his PhD in 1988 under SJG's supervision.

Note, too, what the author says is SJG's favorite quote. (p.4) That's a quote by Darwin in which Darwin affirms that observations must be interpreted for or against a view. It appears that the staunch men of evolution recognize that worldviews affect a lot.

budaatum:

Reading is not only about what one says! SJG is pointing out that "OUR ways of learning about the world ARE strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that EACH scientist MUST might apply to any problem..." And not that one must apply "social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking" to one's education or problem!

If you had bothered to read the quote of his which I posted here, you might understand what he meant by "Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them" . Basically, your "preconceptions and biased modes of thinking" would not change the facts and make apples rise tomorrow!

Why striking the word "must", which appears in the original quote, and replacing it with "might"? Are you editing Stephen Jay Gould's quote for him? SJG uses the word "must" in the sense that that is what he observes "each" scientist doing, and which each scientist cannot avoid doing, i.e. "applying social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking to any problem." This is corroborated by the very next line of the quote, in which he affirms that the alternative idea, "The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method’, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology.”

Now with this explanation, read the quote again.

budaatum:

They were pointing out the errors some scientist make, and not advocating that scientists should make those errors, nor were they claiming all scientist make those errors. We should at least recognise them as errors, having had them pointed out to us, and refrain from making them ourselves.

The truth is, most of us grew up with the misconceptions and biases of creationism and only latter were we introduced to evolution, and not the other way round. The fact that we are willing to consider the validity of our early indoctrination says a lot about the facts and our ability to accept what is more likely to be the truth. You'd hardly find anyone on here accepting the Young Earth Creation theory, and anyone who does would have had to deny an awful lot of evidence to the contrary for reasons best known to them. They likely didn't go past third year secondary school science or went to a shitty school.

If I say you should read that quote again, you'd say that's insulting. But how you read that quote, and see SJG use language like "OUR ways of learning about the world ARE strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that EACH scientist MUST apply to any problem...", only for you to conclude that he was "pointing out the errors some scientist make, and not advocating that scientists should make those errors, nor were they claiming all scientist make those errors", eludes me.

budaatum:

It's likely you are taking what he wrote out of context just as you have done with SJG. I'm certain that's what creationdotcom does or how else would they get you and your sort, their only source of income, to send them money?

It's okay to appeal to ridicule. It's a popular cop out means.

budaatum:

I find it insulting when people ask me to "read again". They are implying that I am not using my mind when the truth is it is they who don't use their's. If you read the writings of Stephen Jay Gould, you would not be taking him out of context and you definitely would not be using creationdotcom's spin on him to try to prove the point you are trying to prove here. Read the quote from him above and learn!

If that quote is true, it does nothing more than portray SJG as subscribing to evolution. I, in fact, noted that he was an atheist. But it's refreshing to know that at some point he admitted the truth of preconceptions and biases.

vaxx:
why are you appealing to authority. You are commiting a fallacy. It is not needed in this kind of discussion unless we want scrutinised their model of enquiry which is not needed.

What is the whole Enterprise of preaching evolution if it is not the business of appeal to authority? What are you guys doing when you say things like "how many 'scientists' hold that opinion?"

budaatum:
That "candid observation" applies to crappy scientists! Stephen Jay Gould himself would never claim that's what he does!

If you learn your science in a proper school you would have had your subjective "preconceptions and biases" properly educated out of you and would have learnt to use your senses properly.

Easy, easy, easy. Now calm down, and slowly read that quote by Stephen Jay Gould again. Note the word "our".

budaatum:
This is abject rubbish!

You mean what Prof. Richard Lewontin wrote?

Our "prior commitment" is to creationism, which we adhered to but which we are now abandoning in light of superior information and an improvement in our ability to reason and understand.

You are talking about yourself right? Because Prof. Richard Lewontin spoke about himself and other scientists.

The atheist paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, made the following candid observation:

“Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method’, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology.”

Gould, S.J., Natural History 103(2):14, 1994. (Source)

Cc: Budaatum

The prominent evolutionist Professor Richard Lewontin said (emphases in original):

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Lewontin, R., Billions and billions of demons, The New York Review, January 9, 1997, p. 31. (Source)

budaatum:

Very good. Now, can you provide anything similar and worthy as that for any creationist on your list of scientists?

It means nothing bro. If anything, these awards only signify acceptance within the ruling paradigm. Is anybody going to give you awards if you keep challenging their evolutionary teachings? We both know the answer.

I posted those pictures though to show vaxx that the people who recognized the distinction between historical science and operational science were/are high-profile evolutionists.