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To: Captain Rhino
You cannot blame the last 150 years of science, or the consensus for evolution therein, on "pressure to conform." You have to blame the evidence.

As far as your link goes, the antiscience scoffers on this thread need to read this part:

He tells fellow evangelicals that opposition to evolution undermines the credibility of faith. He finds the first "fundamentally flawed" and warns that the second builds upon gaps in evidence that scientists are very likely to fill in the future, among other objections.
That first sentence: He tells fellow evangelicals that opposition to evolution undermines the credibility of faith.

Creationist propaganda is a melange of willful ignorance and untruth instantly detectable as such. The endless dance of "You can't make me see" which its purveyors engage in amounts to adults misbehaving in public.

... the second builds upon gaps in evidence that scientists are very likely to fill in the future ...

Another problem is the seething hostility to scientific knowledge and the absolute crowing over real or (in many cases) imagined areas of ignorance. Such people are obviously not interested in learning anything. This is not hard to detect. You read a thread like this one and it's out there plain as day.

This is the guy you cite for as evidence for "Yes, Vade, there is a controversy in science after all." No there isn't. It's all trumped up by charlatans to fool credulous people who would have been more at home scientifically in the Bronze Age.

215 posted on 07/22/2006 1:46:09 PM PDT by VadeRetro (Faster than a speeding building; able to leap tall bullets at a single bound!)
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To: VadeRetro
You cannot blame the last 150 years of science, or the consensus for evolution therein, on "pressure to conform." You have to blame the evidence.

The disputable character of the evidence was where this thread started.

The original article was the source for any comments I concerning shortcomings in the current theory of gradual evolution. I cited the Dr. Collins link simply as an example of the fact that mainstream scientists like him can be both scientific and religious at the same time. (I assume, perhaps wrongly, you agree that the head of the Humane Genome Project does, in fact, qualify as a mainstream scientist.) As for the block you cited from the article, it is a little confusing, isn't it? Is it evolution or the evangelical opposition to evolution that undermines the faith? Some clue to Dr. Collins' position is evident in the bullet immediately above your quotation:
He asks scientific skeptics to investigate God with the same open-minded zeal they apply to the natural world, assuring them there's no incompatibility between belief and scientific rigor.
Apparently, the good Doctor, who, of course, is a believer, feels confident that an open-minded investigation into God conducted with scientific rigor will lead to belief. But it probably won't be the Genesis Chapter 1 type of belief. And that brings in the issue of the Creationists and fundamentalist evangelicals. They argue from a pre-conceived conclusion and usually a pretty ridiculous one at that. IMO, Dr. Collins doesn't feel faith and evolution are incompatible. It is the "created in 6 24-hour days and rested on the 7th" and the "simultaneous creation of all forms" claims that are untenable. Further, he rightly notes that Creationism is built upon gaps in evidence that scientists are very likely to fill in the future. I'm not sure if there would ever be enough transitional forms discovered to "prove" the theory of evolution to the satisfaction of the Creationists is possible. But their absence (which was the main thrust of original article) after 150 years of increasingly intense searching is notable. Finally, he also notes "For a scientist, it's uncomfortable to admit there are questions that your scientific method isn't going to be able to address, ..." And that is a caution against inventing information to fill in gaps, which is something evolutionary science has done since the beginning and continues to do now.

As for the pressure to conform, since we are citing from the article, let's continue:

"Surveys have indicated 40 percent of scientists are religious, Dr. Collins remarked in an interview before the conference, but "if 40 percent of my own scientific colleagues are believers in a personal God, they're keeping pretty quiet about it."
Now, why would that be? Could it be because of having to endure abusive language like this and worse from evolutionists whenever the slightest hint of disagreement with their theory is raised:
Creationist propaganda is a melange of willful ignorance and untruth instantly detectable as such. The endless dance of "You can't make me see" which its purveyors engage in amounts to adults misbehaving in public.
or this:
Such people are obviously not interested in learning anything. This is not hard to detect. You read a thread like this one and it's out there plain as day.
or this???
It's all trumped up by charlatans to fool credulous people who would have been more at home scientifically in the Bronze Age.
Why does the level of discourse always come do to this on the evolutionist side? Normally, name calling and casting personal aspersions on the opposition is considered the last and worst tactic of the losing side during debate. If you are so confident of your position, why not state it clearly and unemotionally?

Until you can, I consider my previous question: "Is the notable lack of controversy you cite really evidence of a lack of controversy or is it evidence of an effective campaign to suppress dissenting views?" to be unanswered.
280 posted on 07/22/2006 4:25:04 PM PDT by Captain Rhino ( Dollars spent in India help a friend; dollars spent in China arm an enemy.)
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