EVOLUTIONARY ARROGANCE (SHAMAN ALERT)

Institute for Creation Research ^ | February 2003 | Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.

[PatrickHenry]

Luddite ping.

[This ping list is for the evolution -- not creationism -- side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. To be added (or dropped), let me know via freepmail.]

[js1138]

Criticising ideas in print is debate. I suppose you are referring to something like Crossfire, something designed to settle deep issues in a dignified forum.

[Remedy]

ARE YOU A PROFESSIONAL LIAR?

[VadeRetro]

Strange that, in his 1433 pages, not to mention his copious other writings, Dr. Gould failed to site a single example of such misquotations.

Well, gee! I wonder if anyone has looked into that claim?

[gomaaa]

Dr. Gould failed to site a single example of such misquotations.

Then I shall reveal a couple in just the opening paragrahs of this essay.

One of their communicants, in fact, calls them its "shamans." He says, We show deference to our leaders, pay respect to our elders and follow the dictates of our shamans; this being the Age of Science, it is scien-tism's shamans who command our veneration. . . . scientists [are] the premier mythmakers of our time.1

He is citing Michel Shermer, head to the Skeptic society and holding him up as speaking for all of science.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?colID=13&articleID=000AA74F-FF5F-1CDB-B4A8809EC588EEDF

Dr. Shermer is a psychologist by training, and while I would say he does a lot to promote good science, he seems VERY idealistic. In the cited article, he talks mostly about Stephen Hawking, and explicitly compares him to God. This is a claim that I suspect Hawking himself would take issue with. His article, as implied by Morris, is trying to establish science as a religion in its own right. I, for one, do NOT think that this is an accurate representation of the position of most scientists. He even quotes Dr. Hawking as saying "I do not answer 'God' questions." then procedes to claim, as Morris suggests, that science can and does answer all the questions that religions purport to. I would say the Dr. Hawking's approach is far more representative of most scientists, and Shermer is out on a limb. As such, quoting him as speaking for the scientific community is a terrible misrepresentation of that community.

Many people of normal intelligence, including most scientists, have acknowledged that science can deal with questions beginning with "What?" and "Where," and "How," but not "Why?" The latter requires a theological answer, or at least philosophical. But not Shaman Mayr. He says: There is not a single Why? question in biology that can be answered adequately without a consideration of evolution.2

I, for one, would fully agree with the first statement, but Moriss's quotation of Mayr is a semantic juggling act. Mayr is explicitly referring to questions in biology. Questions about why fetuses develop in the way they do, or why the human is so similar to that of apes. Morris is trying to say that he was talking about philosophical questions such as why are we here? Why do we suffer? This is a gross and obvious mischaracterization of what Mayr was trying to say, but it sounds good out of context and if you don't think too much about it, so Morris whips it right out there. He subsequently backs it up with our old friend Shermer, who again is talking about something completely different from Mayr.

The rest of the essay is an exercise in the same sort of flat declarations (no proof!) that we've heard a million times. He's basically whining about how noone in the scientific community takes him seriously without providing a shread of contradictory evidence himself.

This sort of irresponsible writing really irks me. If someone does not want to believe in evolution because their faith in God doesn't allow it, then fine. I can acutally respect that quite a bit. But I wish Morris and his ilk would quit trying to twist science around to suit their needs! He is guilty of precisely the same misquoting practices that he dismisses in the same essay!

Faith in God I can deeply respect even if I disagree. Intellectual hypocrisy just pisses me off!

[Dataman]

scientists [are] the premier mythmakers of our time.1

[Dataman]

You already had the earlier thread pulled. Do you not work for a living? Are you on government assistance?

Thank you for that valuable contribution. I will ponder the problem. It seems to me either a problem of perception or a problem of the will. On one hand, we noticed you woke up on the wrong side of the bed and were name-calling early in the morning (do you not work for a living?). On the other hand you may not completely understand that you are crabby. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

[4CJ]

Evolution: The universe created itself, than after billions & billions of years, and septillions upon septillions of little "random" events occurred, somehow something became a living cell - life from non-life, which then somehow magically reproduced itself, and from it begat every other living creature.

Creation: God spoke. It happened. Which is more believable?

[Dimensio]

Evolution: The universe created itself, than after billions & billions of years, and septillions upon septillions of little "random" events occurred, somehow something became a living cell - life from non-life, which then somehow magically reproduced itself, and from it begat every other living creature.

Your definition of evolution is a completely false strawman, as evolution has nothing to do with the origin of the universe, nor the ultimate origins of life. As such, your post is meaningless.

[f.Christian]

... wow ...

g3 ...

Evolution has not led to any scientific achievements because evolution, as I have said many times is ANTI-SCIENCE.

The central point of science is the discovery of causes and effects and materialist evolution denies it.

It proposes random events as the engine of the transformation of species.

This is totally unscientific,

it is an attack on science

which in order to expand human knowledge and human health and living standards

needs to find the causes and effects of how our Universe functions.

Randomness answers nothing and leads to no discoveries.

In fact it opposes scientific inquiry and is a philosophical know-nothingism.

That is why evolution has been popular with the masses and virtually ignored by scientists.

It is pseudo-science for morons.

With a few words such as 'survival of the fittest' and 'natural selection' it seeks to make idiots think they are knowledgeable

'evolution just happens'. Such is not science.


fC ...

Alien abductions ...

nothing you can say ---

some kind of mental epilepsy --- evolution !

Main Entry: ep·i·lep·sy
Pronunciation: 'e-p&-"lep-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -sies
Etymology: Middle French epilepsie, from Late Latin epilepsia, from Greek epilEpsia, from epilambanein to seize, from epi- + lambanein to take, seize -- more at LATCH
Date: 1543
: any of various disorders marked by disturbed electrical rhythms of the central nervous system and typically manifested by convulsive attacks usually with clouding of consciousness

[Dataman]

From the article:

Instead of opposing the creationists with scientific proofs of macroevolution, they resort to name-calling and ridicule.

[Dataman]

From the article:

But another type of evolutionary arrogance consists of their repeatedly professed amazement that anyone of intelligence could ever disagree with them.

[Dataman]

From the article:

that the "general public" has been taught only evolution in public schools and secular colleges all their lives. Evidently all this brainwashing somehow has failed.

[Con X-Poser]

<< Of course if the author was speaking of "creation science", then that is an oxymoron ... >>

He's not as literal on Genesis as we'd like, but he is a Christian and a creationist, and he blows away the argument that non-evolutionists are handicapped in science.

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http://www.counterbalance.com/bio/coll-body.html

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician-geneticist and the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH. In that role he oversees a fifteen year project aimed at mapping and sequencing all of the human DNA by the year 2005. Many consider this the most important scientific undertaking of our time. The project is currently running ahead of schedule and under budget.

---

X: Of course it was ahead of schedule and under budget - Dr. Collins is a *creationist*. He was not handicapped by evolutionary assumptions.

http://www.scienceshorts.com/FrancisCollins.html

<< Of special interest is Dr. Collins’ strong Christian commitment. Although growing up in a church-going family, Dr. Collins was quite boldly atheistic while a young adult. Personal reflection on issues of faith, significantly aided by the writings of C. S. Lewis, brought him to the point of conviction of the truthfulness of Christian truth claims. He states that his Christian commitment is "the most important organizing principle in my life" (www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/coll-body.html). >>

---

More from http://www.counterbalance.com/bio/coll-body.html

After a residency and chief residency in internal medicine in Chapel Hill, he returned to Yale for a fellowship in human genetics, where he worked on methods of crossing large stretches of DNA to identify disease genes. He continued to develop these ideas after joining the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1984. This approach, for which he later coined the term positional cloning, has developed into a powerful component of modern molecular genetics, as it allows the identification of disease genes for almost any condition, without knowing ahead of time what the functional abnormality might be.

Together with Lap-Chee Tsui and Jack Riordan of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada, his research team identified the gene for cystic fibrosis using this strategy in 1989. That was followed by his group's identification of the neurofibromatosis gene in 1990, and a successful collaborative effort to identify the gene for Huntington disease in 1993.

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X: How could he ever have accomplished all this? Doesn't he know that evolution is the unifying factor of all sciences? Isn't he aware that genetic disease resistance proves evolution and nothing can be accomplished in genetics without an evolutionary paradigm?

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http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/coll-body.html

QUESTION: What is your own faith and religious background?

MR. COLLINS: I was not raised in a particularly religious household. I went to church, but it was mostly to learn music, which was a good place to learn music. But I didn't learn a whole lot about theology. And for quite a while, in my early 20s, I was a pretty obnoxious atheist. Then at the age of 27, after a good deal of intellectual debating with myself about the plausibility of faith, and particularly with strong influence from C.S. Lewis, I became convinced that this was a decision I wanted to make. And I became, by choice, a Christian, a serious Christian, who believes that faith is not something that you just do on Sunday, but that if it makes any sense at all, it's part of your whole life. It's the most important organizing principle in my life.

QUESTION: As a scientist, have you ever found that your faith has conflicted with your scientific work?

MR. COLLINS: I actually do not believe that there are any collisions between what I believe as a Christian, and what I know and have learned about as a scientist. I think there's a broad perception that that's the case, and that’s what scares many scientists away from a serious consideration of faith. But, unless one chooses to make an absolutely literal interpretation of the book of Genesis and the story of creation -- which I believe is not a choice that people made even before science came along in the last century to cast some doubt upon the timing of the creation events -- other than that I am not aware of any reasons why one cannot be a completely dedicated person of faith who believes that God inspired the writings in the Bible, and also be a rigorous, intellectually completely honest scientist, who does not accept things about the natural world until they're proven. ... For me, as a person of faith, that moment of discovery has an additional dimension. It's appreciating something, realizing something, knowing something that up until then no human had known - but God knew it. And there is an intricacy and an elegance in the nature of biology, particularly when it comes to the information carrying capacity of DNA, which is rather awesome. And so, in a way, perhaps, those moments of discovery also become moments of worship, moments of appreciation, of the incredible intricacies and beauty of biology, of the world, of life. And, therefore, an appreciation of God as the creator.

QUESTION: Richard Dawkins has raised the question that if God created the universe, then how come he seems to have disappeared from the universe?

MR. COLLINS: I'm sorry that God has disappeared for Richard Dawkins. He's not disappeared for me. I think you can make an argument that if God made himself so obvious, so known, so easily interpretable in daily events, then the whole concept of faith and of making a personal decision about where you stand would be pretty meaningless.

[Jael]

Great post, thank you for pinging me.

[gomaaa]

Here's a quote from another interview with this same guy. I kinda like him. He seems to find a very nice balance between his faith and scientific evidence. I don't know what made you think he was a creationist or had anything against evolution. I may disagree with him on the God-motivated evolution thing, but it doesn't blatantly contradict any current evidence and if it allows him to reconcile faith and evolution, fine.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/transcripts/collins.html

ABERNETHY: What do you say to your fellow Christians who say, "Evolution is just a theory, and I can't put that together with my idea of a creator God"?

COLLINS: Well, evolution is a theory. It's a very compelling one. As somebody who studies DNA, the fact that we are 98.4 percent identical at the DNA level to a chimpanzee, it's pretty hard to ignore the fact that when I am studying a particular gene, I can go to the mouse and find it's the similar gene, and it's 90 percent the same. It's certainly compatible with the theory of evolution, although it will always be a theory that we cannot actually prove. I'm a theistic evolutionist. I take the view that God, in His wisdom, used evolution as His creative scheme. I don't see why that's such a bad idea. That's pretty amazingly creative on His part. And what is wrong with that as a way of putting together in a synthetic way the view of God who is interested in creating a group of individuals that He can have fellowship with -- us? Why is evolution not an appropriate way to get to that goal? I don't see a problem with that. The only problems that get put forward are by those who would interpret Genesis 1 in a very literal way. And that interpretation in many ways is a -- is a modern one. Saint Augustine in 400 AD, without any reasons to try to be an apologist to Charles Darwin, agreed that that was not a particularly appropriate way to interpret the words that are written in that first chapter of the Bible.

[Ff--150]

Yeah, my great grand-dad, the sandstone rock...

Yet, my brain--MY BRAIN--not one with reasonable intelligencia, my brain is more complex than the rest of the universe...how much more complex is yours 8-)???

[balrog666]

Gomaaa, you killed the thread! You b#&($*d! /End South-Park-Mode

[gomaaa]

It wasn't me!

It's just that Henry Morris is no Isaac Asimov.

[Commander8]

Scientific Evolutionists and superstitious witch doctors. Strange bedfellows.