Posted on 05/05/2004 11:10:33 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
SEATTLE, MAY 3 Recent California voters overwhelmingly support teaching the scientific evidence both for and against Darwins theory of evolution, according to two new surveys conducted by Arnold Steinberg & Associates. The surveys address the issue of how best to teach evolution, which increasingly is under deliberation by state and local school districts in California and around the nation.
The first survey was a random sample of 551 California voters living in a household in which at least one voter voted in the November 2002 general election and the October 2003 special election for governor. When asked: Which statement is closest to your view about what biology teachers in public schools should teach about Darwins theory of evolution, 73.5 percent replied, Teach the scientific evidence for and against it, while only 16.5 percent answered, Teach only the scientific evidence for it. (7.9 percent were either Unsure or gave another response.)
The second survey was a random sample of 605 California voters living in a household in which the first voter in the household was under 50, and in which at least one voter voted in the November 2002 general election and the October 2003 special election for governor. When asked: Which statement is closest to your view about what biology teachers in public schools should teach about Darwins theory of evolution, 79.3 percent replied, Teach the scientific evidence for and against it, while only 14.7 percent answered, Teach only the scientific evidence for it. (6 percent were either Unsure or gave another response.)
Although recent voters in California as a whole overwhelmingly favor teaching both sides of the scientific evidence about evolution, those under 50 are even more supportive of this approach, said Bruce Chapman, president of Discovery Institute. These California survey results are similar to those of states like Ohio and Texas, as well as a national survey undertaken in 2001. The preferences of the majority of Californians are also in line with the recommendations of Congress in the report of the No Child Left Behind Act regarding teaching biological evolution and a recent policy letter from the U.S. Department of Education that expressed support for Academic freedom and scientific inquiry on such matters such as these.
The margin of error for each survey was +/- 4 percent. Both surveys were conducted by Arnold Steinberg & Associates, a California-based polling firm, and released by Discovery Institute, a national public policy organization headquartered in Seattle, Wa. whose Center for Science and Culture has issued a statement from 300 scientists who are skeptical of the central claim of neo-Darwinian evolution.
The only way the Darwin-only lobby can spin these kind of survey results, added Chapman, is to claim that the public is just ignorant. But that view is untenable in light of the more than 300 scientists who have publicly expressed their dissent from Darwinism, to say nothing of the many scientific articles that have been published critiquing the theory.
You're being unduly harsh. It's a very late transcription of a much older oral tradition, by an unsophisticated and relatively primitive middle-eastern tribe.The only dummies are those who contend such a document could be inerrant.
Doubtful.
But why are two sets of very large plankton feeders (whales and whale sharks) designed along completely different principles, such that each has immensely more similarities to land mammals on the one hand, and carnivorous sharks on the other, than they have to each other? That's a very unintelligent way to design a plankton feeder, no?
While the following article doesn't specify 30,000, it does mention documented cases of discrimination exceeding 1,000. It also shows the widespread discrimination against creationists.
Scientists are always objective when they do their research and publicly express their belief in evolution.
By Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon
To the contrary, scientists are people and people are not often objective and neutral. Scientists, of course, work harder at being objective because of the limits and goals of the scientific disciplines, but this doesnt mean personal preferences or ideologies never get in the way of their research. Unfortunately, the scientific community has its share of ambition, suppression of truth, prejudice, plagiarism, manipulation of data, etc. This is illustrated by Tel Aviv Medical Schools Professor of Urology Alexander Kohn in his False Prophets: Fraud and Error in Science and Medicine (1986), by Broad and Wades Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Halls of Science (1982), and other books and articles.
For example, that many scientists have biases against scientific creationism can be seen through contemporary examples. When one of the greatest thinkers and scholars of modern times, Mortimer J. Adler of the University of Chicago, referred to evolution as a popular myth, the well known materialist and critic, Martin Gardner, actually included him in his study of quacks and frauds in Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science.56 Philosopher and historian Dr. Rousas Rushdoony was entirely correct when he observed of evolution, To question the myth or to request proof is to be pilloried as a modern heretic and fool.57
Consider the case of Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith. As noted, Smith earned three doctorates in the field of science; his noteworthy academic career spanned over 40 years including the publication of over 100 scientific papers and over 40 books which have been published in 17 languages. Before discussing his own case, he illustrates with two others where eminent scientists have been silenced because they dared question evolutionary belief: Over and above this, the situation is such today that any scientist expressing doubts about evolutionary theory is rapidly silenced.
Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous astronomer, was well on his way to being nominated for the Nobel Prize. However, after the appearance of his books expressing mathematically based doubts as to Darwinism, he was rapidly eliminated. His books were negatively reviewed and no more was heard about his Nobel Prize.
The case of the halo dating methods developed by Robert V. Gentry tell a similar story. Gentry gave good evidence that the earths age, when measured by the radiation halo method using polonium, might not be so great as had been thought when measured by more conventional methods. A postulate of this type would have robbed Darwinism of its main weapon, namely long time periods. Gentry lost his research grants and job at one sweep.
It is by such methods, often bordering on psychoterror, that the latter day phlogiston theory (Neodarwinism) still manages to imprint itself in pretty well all scientific publications today. I myself gave the Huxley Memorial Lecture at the Oxford Union, Oxford University, on February 14, 1986. My theses were well received even by my opponents in the debate following the lecture. But I have been to date unable to persuade any reputable scientific journal to publish the manuscript. The comment is uniformly that the text does not fit their scheme of publications. I recently (December 1986) received an enquiry from the Radcliffe Science Library, Oxford, asking if I had ever really held the Huxley Memorial Lecture on February 14, 1986. No records of my having held the lecture as part of the Oxford Union debate could be found in any library nor was the substance of this debate ever officially recorded. No national newspapers, radio or TV station breathed a word about it. So total is the current censorship on any effective criticism of Neodarwinian science and on any genuine alternative.58
Dr. Jerry Bergman and others have documented that there are thousands of cases of discrimination against creationistsof competent science teachers being fired merely because they taught a two model approach to origins; of highly qualified science professors being denied tenure because of their refusal to declare their faith in evolution; of students doctoral dissertations in science rejected simply because they supported creation; of students being expelled from class for challenging the idea that evolution is a fact, etc.59
Prominent lawyer Wendell R. Byrd, author of The Origin of Species Revisited observes that most of higher education is dogmatic and irrationally committed to affirm evolution and to suppress creation science, not on the basis of the scientific evidence but in disregard of that evidence.60 He correctly refers to the intolerance, hysteria, and unfairness of the evolutionary establishment and to the intolerable denials of tenure, denials of promotion, denials of contract renewals, denials of earned degrees, denials of admission into graduate programs, and other discrimination against that minority that disagrees with the prevailing dogmatism and dares affirm creation science. . . .From my research for published articles in the Yale Law Journal and Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and from my legal work in First Amendment litigation, it is my professional judgment that the cases of discrimination reported [by Bergman]. . .are a very tiny fraction of the general pattern and practice of discrimination against creationists and creation science at both the college and university level and the secondary and elementary school level.61
In doing research for his book, The Criterion, Dr. Bergman interviewed over 100 creationists who had at least a masters degree in science, the majority with a Ph.D. degree among them Nobel prize winners and those with multiple doctorates in science. Nevertheless, all, without exception, reported that they had experienced some discrimination some cases were tragic in the extent, blatancy and consequences of the discrimination.62
For example, over 12 percent of those interviewed stated that they had received death threats, highly emotional non-verbal feedback or irrational verbalizations against them and creationists have never won a single employment discrimination court case. Further, Many persons who were denied degrees or lost jobs were forced to move to another community and start over .
Many creationists publish under pseudonyms; others are extremely careful to hide their beliefs while earning their degree and come out of the closet only after they have the degree in hand or have earned tenure.63 One department supervisor stated, You creationists are Stone Age Neanderthals, and if I had my way I would fire every one of you.64
One creationist had a Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University. He had actively been seeking a teaching osition for 12 years. One employer told him: Frankly, I dont like holy people, fundamentalists, especially Baptists, Church of Christ types, Pentecostals or other seventeenth century retrogressives. If we find out we hired one, especially if they start talking to the other research scientists about their beliefs, I terminate them within the month. Usually they leave without much of a protest. And Ive never had one bring suit even though firing on religious grounds is illegal, and I know that it is.65
Consider other illustrations of religious bigotry from the evolutionary establishment66: Dr. Bergman states that several of his colleagues told him that if they discovered one of their students was a conservative Christian, they would fail him/her. One professor said, I dont think this kind of people should get degrees and Im going to do what I can to stop them.
Bergman observes that some professors are openly advocating failing creationists and he cites examples. A professor of biology at a large state university was denied tenure admittedly because of his creationist views although he had more publications in scientific journals (well over 100) than any other member of his department, many of them in the most prestigious journals in his field. When the university that granted his Ph.D. in biology learned he was an active creationist, they assembled a committee to rescind his degree six years after it was issued!
A Michigan science teacher was fired shortly after he donated several boxes of books on creationism to the school library. A South Dakota Outstanding Teacher of the Year recipient was also fired because he was teaching creationism in class.
Dr. David A. Warriner received his B.S. in chemistry from Tulane University, his Ph.D. from Cornell University and was close to a second Ph.D. He was invited to join the Natural Science Department at Michigan State University as a creationist. After four years his department head suggested tenure but the dean of the department claimed he had damaged the image of science for the university and was dismissed. He has been unable to find a teaching position at any other university.
A creationist working on his Ph.D. in zoology at a major university, with almost straight As, expressed serious reservations about evolution to his dissertation committee. He was required to take four more courses in evolutionary biology before they would permit him to graduate. After the courses were completed, his dissertation committee asked whether he now believed in evolution. When he replied he was more firmly convinced of the validity of creationism than ever before, the dissertation committee broke their agreement and refused to grant his degree.
A researcher at a Cancer Research Center who had earned an excellent reputation for his six years work was forced to resign once his creationist views became known.
Chandra Wickramasinghe of the University College in Cardiff, Wales and co-worker with Fred Hoyle, one of the worlds best known living astronomers, allegedly received death threats merely for speaking out in favor of a two-model teaching position.
Jim Melnicks study in the Newsletter on Intellectual Freedom, May 1982, observed that Significant creationist literature has been self-censored from nearly every major secular university library in America.67
The hypocrisy in all this seems evident enough. The evolutionary establishment demands freedom of expression for itself but refuses this to its opposition. As Dr. Thomas Dwight of Harvard observed, The tyranny in the matter of evolution is overwhelming to a degree of which the outsider has no idea.68
In our colleges and universities today, the Christian faith can be ridiculed all day long, Marxism can be espoused, the Constitution criticized, marriage degraded, and homosexuality encouragedbut the theory of evolution is somehow sacrosanct. Chicago Universitys Professor Paul Shoray observed, There is no cause so completely immune from criticism today as evolution.69
Even the head of the science department at an ivy league university tore out an article in Systematic Zoology because it was critical of natural selection. When confronted he said, Well of course I dont believe in censorship in any form, but I just couldnt bear the idea of my students reading that article.70
FOOTNOTES
56. R. J. Rushdoony, The Mythology of Science (Nutley, NJ: Craig Press, 1968), p. 13.
57. Ibid.
58. A. E. Wilder-Smith, The Scientific Alternative to Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory: Information, Sources and Structures (Costa Mesa, Calif: TWFP Publishers, 1987), pp. iii-iv.
59. Jerry Bergman, The Criterion (Richfield, MN: Onesimus Publishers, 1984), passim.
60. Ibid., p. vii.
61. Ibid., pp. vii-viii.
62. Ibid., p. xi.
63. Ibid., p. xiii, xv.
64. Ibid., p. xi.
65. Ibid., p. 54.
66. These are taken from ibid., pp. 4-11, 20-24.
67. Ibid., 56-57.
68. Ibid., 7.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid., 28.
The problem here is that evolutionist scientists refuse to consider scientific observations in support of Creationism, because they consider creationism superstition, not because such observations don't exist.
Now, if a scientist were to present *actual* *evidence* and a cogent theory that stood inopposition to evolution, they would be listened to.
No they wouldn't and that article pointed out several cases where people were fired despite the evidence, such as the guy who developed Plutonium hologram dating.
Evolutionists just don't want to hear opposing viewpoints. It upsets their worldview. It means those immature unchristlike morons who beat you up in High School, were right about Creation and you were wrong. It means that if there is a designer, then that designer is very likely God and you will have to answer to him. Better to bury your head in the sand. Anything but that. If I ignore His existence, if I'm unwavering in my insistence that I just didn't know, He can't prove anything on me.
So block it out, ridicule it, say it amounts to nothing more than "God did it!". The scientific observations are what they are, even if they support Creationism.
If the observation is that life arises suddenly in the fossil record complete with advanced forms of life, that can't be true, because it points to a designer, and the most obvious designer is God.
If the observations are that most dinosaurs fossils were the result of a huge Catastrophic flood, ignore it.
If no fossil can be found anywhere that has the Carbon-14 completely depleted which should have occurred in every fossil over 90,000 years old, then ignore it. Say that it is from contamination. And then ignore what that level of contamination implies for most of the other methods of radiometric dating.
If there are major holes in the assumptions of radiometric dating and conflicting data in radiometric readings, bury the conflict and conform your findings to the evolutionist worldview.
If someone comes up with an alternative dating method that threatens evolution. Fire him. Don't consider the evidence.
I'm sure that everyone of the people who discriminated against Creationists had rationalized it as the right thing to do in their own minds. That's what Eve did in the garden, That's what the Nazi's did. It's easy to ignore truth. Man has a long history of doing so.
The scientific community has a long history of doing so too. The list of famous scientists that the scientific community has ridiculed is very long. The sad fact is that most scientists simply repeat what they have been taught. They do not approach their work unbiased and they do not do original research to satisfy their own assumptions.
One name: John Davison, aka Novisad on the ISCID forums. He has been trying to further his theory for awhile now and has been repeatedly shunned by the scientific establishment.
Course, he doesn't exactly go easy on traditional Darwinism, so that could explain the disdain some scientists hold toward him.
There is only one problem with Darwinian evolution. It is the same problem that Lamarckian evolution has presented. Both Have failed endless critical experimental analyses. Accordingly, both must be rejected. Lamarckism has been largely rejected. Why Darwinism survives is a mystery. I hope I may be forgiven for introducing my own Semi-meiotic Hypothesis, but the simple undeniable fact is that it has not been subjected to experimental analysis. Until it is it must be considered viable. There is also evidence accumulating from molecular biology that fundamental gene families common to huge groups of organisms have existed since very early in evolutionary history, which certainly is compatible with the notion that chromosome restructuring alone can serve to release novel genetic expressions which were latent and unexpressed perhaps for many millions of years. Both the Semi-meiotic Hypothesis and the correlated Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis have yet to be even recognized, let alone tested. It may prove that there is really no significant role for micromutational (base pair) genetic alterations in determining evolutionary destiny. In any event, as I and others have indicated, there is no compelling evidence that evolution above the species level is even occurring. That certainly is the perspective of Pierre Grasse, Robert Broom and of all people, the author of "Evolution: The Modern Synthesis", Julian Huxley, not to mention myself. Godfrey Hardy felt that mathematics existed independent of the human condition and needed only to be discovered. I accept that interpretation and have chosen to extend that prefomed concept to include the whole of science to include evolution which I now regard as essentially an emergent phenomenon prescribed just as certainly as were the conic sections, the periodic table of the elements and all of Newtonian physics and Einstein's relativity. Science is nothing but the discovery of what is there. That is the best evidence against the Darwin/Wallace hypothesis. They discovered nothing. They simply reacted to their common reading experience with the works of Malthus and Lyell. The laws of physics have been discovered. The laws that have driven evolution (past tense) will ultimately be discovered. When that finally occurs, and I firmly believe it will, both Lamarckism and Darwinism, like the Phlogiston of chemistry and the Ether of physics will become nothing but historical curiosities.
You think that the fact his steady-state cosmology, for which he was best known, was shown to be dead wrong had nothing to do with this?
As noted, Smith earned three doctorates in the field of science; his noteworthy academic career spanned over 40 years including the publication of over 100 scientific papers and over 40 books which have been published in 17 languages.
One of the strange things about science (and maybe academia) is that two degrees of the same type are not better than one. Having two doctorates just makes you look like some kind of dilletante. Three is genuinely weird. If you want to change fields, you just change fields, you don't go get another degree. My PhD.'s in biophysics; I'm cateogorized as a physical chemist; nobody told me to go get another doctorate.
100 papers over 40 years is also not impressive.
Sorry to get personal, but if you're going to argue by credentials, we get to question the credentials.
Amazing he has time to do science, considering he's also running for Governor.
Amazing he has time to do science, considering he's also running for Governor.
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Novisad:
You speak of "selection pressure" as if it were a reality. Where is the evidence for "selection pressure"? It is a mandatory consideration for the Darwinian model, yet it cannot be clearly documented except in microorganisms. Even there, preadaptation may be at work. Someone once wisely observed - "Animals are not struggling for existence; most of the time they are sitting around doing nothing at all!" Your comments also suggests that evolution is going on at present which is very much in doubt, as I and many others have maintained. What we are actually witnessing at present is the antithesis of evolution - rampant extinction. Of the literally hundreds of species that have disappeared in recent times, not one replacement can be documented. We are observing only the products of evolution, the terminal twigs of the evolutionary tree and it is being severely pruned by a drastically altered environment. If there was ever a test of the Darwinian scheme, it is right now. It is a dismal failure.
Well I guess since you said so - Gentry should just give up eh?
I love how you guys post talkorigins links all the time and expect everyone to take one person's "rebuttal" as fact. The NAS won't debate him publicly - I wonder if Baillieul will?
Maybe I'll try to set-up an online debate between the two. That would be fun, eh?
Yeah, I can see the NAS sending some Nobelist out to Wichita State at short notice, to debate someone they likely consider a crank.
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