Does censorship belong in science?
> Does censorship belong in science?
No, but then again neither does superstitious claptrap like ID. Consequently, "censorship" in this area is like an observatory "censoring" papers on astrology.
Sure. We censor things all the time.
Try to get a grant for a perpetual motion machine?
Or, better yet, for researching the demon theory of mental illness.
The Shell Game of Evolution and Creation
by Hugh Ross, Ph. D.
The many debates, court cases, letters to the editor, and talk shows on the subject of evolution and creation almost without exception demonstrate the shell game played with the terms creationism, evolution, science, religion, and faith. The game usually begins with a statement that evolution is a proven fact. Next, this claim is established by the presentation of voluminous evidence from the physical sciences and the fossil record for changes in the universe, the earth, and the forms of life on the earth over the course of the last several billion years. Therefore, it is then claimed (or implied) that the theory that lifeforms developed out of some kind of primordial soup and changed through strictly natural processes into more and more advanced species is unquestionably correct.
At some point in the game, creation is defined as adherence to Archbishop Ussher's chronology for the Bible-the claim that God must have created the universe and everything within it in the last 6,000 years or so. Then, more evidences are presented to show the ridiculousness of the 6,000-year time-scale. Finally, the reader is told (condescendingly) that he is free to believe in creation, if he insists, as an act of faith, but that our schools and educators must confine themselves to the facts. Meanwhile, we should exercise the tolerance to grant churches the freedom to teach their religious myths, but only to their own constituency, not to society at large.
What is the result of these shell games? Only one view may be presented to society at large: atheistic materialism (which is, by the way, a religion of sorts).
As an astronomer, educator, and evangelical minister, I concur that the normal physical science definition for evolution is well established—things do change with respect to time and in some cases over a time-scale of billions of years. Incidentally, this fact can be established not just from the scientific record but also from the Bible. The first chapter of Genesis is set up as a chronology documenting how God changed the world over six specific time periods. A literal and consistent reading of the Bible, taking into account all its statements on creation, makes clear that the Genesis creation days cannot possibly be six consecutive 24-hour days. They must be six lengthy epochs. Ussher's chronology represents faulty exegesis, as many Bible scholars affirm.
It is the common life science definition for evolution that must be questioned—the hypothesis that all the changes that take place in lifeforms, both in the present and the past, are by strictly natural processes. For the lifeforms of the present era, I would agree. We do see natural selection and mutational advance at work within some species. But, as biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich report, "The production of a new animal species in nature has yet to be documented. In the vast majority of cases, the rate of change is so slow that it has not even been possible to detect an increase in the amount of differentiation."
At the same time, as the Ehrlichs also point out, we are witnessing an extinction rate of about one species per hour. Even if the human activity factors are removed, one is still left with an extinction rate of at least one species every year. Yet, the fossil record reveals millennia of both a high extinction rate and a high speciation rate. The Bible offers a solution to the enigma. We are now in God's seventh day of rest; He has ceased from making new creatures. For six days (as seen in the fossil record), God created. On the seventh day (the present era), He rested.
Since the 1986 Origin of Life Conference in Berkeley, the primordial soup hypothesis has been acknowledged by many leading scientists as utterly lacking in factual support. Even the self-proclaimed atheist Robert Shapiro, professor of chemistry at New York University, proclaims that no natural explanation for the origin of life exists. Interested readers may want to check out his book, Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Origin of Life on Planet Earth (New York: Summit Books, 1986). An extensive bibliography on this subject is available from the organization I work for, Reasons To Believe.
Science is never religiously neutral. Science deals with cause and effect. Unless one makes the dogmatic presupposition that causes can only be natural, it must be said that causes can be either natural or supernatural. In the case of the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the appearance of most, if not all, new species, science can show us no natural causes. In the case of the universe, direct proof now exists that the cause, or causer, must transcend matter, energy, length, width, height, and time. In other words, the causer must be supernatural.
Similarly, faith is never scientifically neutral. It can dogmatically presuppose that natural processes had no part in creation. The New Testament, however, defines faith as belief and action based on established facts. The established facts, for example, tell us that stars, like raindrops, evolve under natural processes. As a physicist, I have never seen a fundamental particle called a neutrino. But I have faith in its existence and act accordingly because of certain well-established facts. As a Christian, I have never seen God. But I have faith in His existence and act accordingly because of certain well established facts.
This kind of stuff just cracks me up.
The "Intelligent Design" folks have been loudly proclaiming for years now that they're not "really" creationists, and they're not "really" trying to get religion into schools, they're just an "alternate scientific hypothesis", and the (unnamed, unspecified) "designer(s)" might well be space aliens or who-knows-what.
...but look at an "IDer" the wrong way, or reject an "ID" paper as poor science, or give a hard time to someone who lets a shoddy "ID" article get published, and suddenly they all yell, "RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION!!"
Gosh, guys, I thought ID wasn't *about* religion...
And there is a huge Amen corner right here on FR for this sort of thuggery.
It's pathetic and harms real sceintists and biologists.
Riiiiiight.
If someone who doubts evolution dared respond that the system is prejudiced to prevent such publication, the snickers began. As can be clearly seen in this case, that prejudice not only exists, but exists and is acted upon with academic/scientific brutality. The evolutionists set out with clear intent of a career assasination of this man, and he's not even an ID proponent. He was simply the overseer of a magazine who, after the article was reviewed and deemed fit for publication by renowned scientists, dared to let those evil words of dissent be printed.
The reaction he encountered is of course identical to what we see playing out on the issue from the non-scientist evolutionists, as well. A tiny sticker hidden in the front of a textbook must be shut down. A thirty-second statement designed to be read in a class room must be silenced. Any deviation at all from the Darwin Dogma must be crushed quickly and without mercy.
Back to the world of scientific publishing for a moment, there is no reason at all to believe that the attitudes uncovered here are somehow magically isolated to the Smithsonian. In fact, it's a total and utter violation of common sense to believe such a thing. It's starkly clear, and has been for a long time to many of us, that dissent is not welcome, indeed not tolerated. To even entertain the notion that evolutionists have it wrong is career suicide for the vast majority of scientists. Thus they keep their mouths shut, no matter what they believe, and the facade/lie of virtual unanimity is preserved.
Thankfully, more are speaking out and this is a welcome case of fighting back against the ridiculous scientific tyranny that has existed around this issue for so very long. As I've pointed out before, if evolution (as commonly taught) were a truly defensible theory, its proponents would welcome the opportunity to publicly humiliate the other side through plain old debate and discussion of the issues. It's not, so they behave exactly the way liberals behave regarding race or any other sensitive issue: Shout down the opposition, make them out to be fools for daring to offer up their ludicrous thoughts. Chuckle, chortle, and point, so the rubes will slink quietly away and think long and hard before daring to open their mouths again. If that doesn't work, scorch the very Earth they walk on.
MM
This just confirms my thoughts that there are a lot of scientists for whom science is their religion. And they have a lot of zeal for their religion. It's funny to see them dismiss ID completely as hogwash, but then seem to be afraid to fight it out in the realm of ideas. Instead, you see a lot of baseless, ad hominum attacks and the crap mentioned in this article. There's no excuse for this behavior, whether you agree that this man should have allowed the ID paper in the journal or not.
After the nasty dose of billingsgate in this thread, Fred Reed's column "The Metaphysics of Evolution" was a breath of fresh air. (do a Google search to find it; I would give a link, but ran across it at a Site We Are Not Supposed To Quote From)
Excerpt:
Intelligent Design
An interesting thought that drives evolutionists mad is called Intelligent Design, or ID. It is the view that things that appear to have been done deliberately might have been. Some look at, say, the human eye and think, "This looks like really good engineering. Elaborate retina of twelve layers, marvelously transparent cornea, pump system to keep the whole thing inflated, suspensory ligaments, really slick lens, the underlying cell biology. Very clever."
I gather that a lot of ID folk are in fact Christian apologists trying to drape Genesis in scientific respectability. That is, things looked to have been designed, therefore there must be a designer, now will Yahweh step forward. Yet an idea is not intellectually disreputable because some of the people who hold it are. The genuine defects of ID are the lack of a detectible designer, and that evolution appears to have occurred. This leads some to the thought that consciousness is involved and evolution may be shaping itself. I can think of no way to test the idea.
In any event, to anyone of modest rationality, the evolutionist's hostility to Intelligent Design is amusing. Many evolutionists argue, perhaps correctly, that Any Day Now we will create life in the laboratory, which would be intelligent design. Believing that life arose by chemical accident, they will argue (reasonably, given their assumptions) that life must have evolved countless times throughout the universe. It follows then that, if we will soon be able to design life, someone else might have designed us.
In Conclusion
To evolutionists I say, "I am perfectly willing to believe what you can actually establish. Reproducibly create life in a test tube, and I will accept that it can be done. Do it under conditions that reasonably may have existed long ago, and I will accept as likely the proposition that such conditions existed and gave rise to life. I bear no animus against the theory, and champion no competing creed. But don't expect me to accept fluid speculation, sloppy logic, and secular theology."
I once told my daughters, "Whatever you most ardently believe, remember that there is another side. Try, however hard it may be, to put yourself in the shoes of those whose views you most dislike. Force yourself to make a reasoned argument for their position. Do that, think long and hard, and conclude as you will. You can do no better, and you may be surprised."
Notes
(1) An example, for anyone interested, of the sort of unlogic to which I was exposed by evolutionists: Some simple viruses are strings of nucleotides in a particular order. In 2002 Eckhard Wimmer, at the University of New York at Stony Brook, downloaded the sequence for polio from the Internet, bought the necessary nucleotides from a biological supply house, strung them together, and got a functioning virus that caused polio in mice. It was a slick piece of work.
When I ask evolutionists whether the chance creation of life has been demonstrated in the laboratory, I get email offering Wimmer's work as evidence that it has been done. But (even stipulating that viruses are alive) what Wimmer did was to put OTS nucleotides together according to a known pattern in a well-equipped laboratory. This is intelligent design, or at least intelligent plagiarism. It is not chance anything. At least some of the men who offered Wimmer's work as what it wasn't are far too intelligent not to see the illogic – except when they are defending the faith.
(2) Many Evolutionists respond to skepticism about life's starting by chance by appealing to the vastness of time. "Fred, there were billions and billions of gallons of ocean, for billions of years, or billions of generations of spiders or bugs or little funny things with too many legs, so the odds are in all that time...." Give something long enough and it has to happen, they say. Maybe. But probabilities don't always work the way they look like they ought.
Someone is said to have said that a monkey banging at random on a typewriter would eventually type all the books in the British Museum. (Some of the books suggest that this may have happened, but never mind.) Well, yes. The monkey would. But it could be a wait. The size of the wait is worth pondering.
Let's consider the chance that the chimp would type a particular book. To make the arithmetic easy, let's take a bestseller with 200,000 words. By a common newspaper estimate of five letters per word on average, that's a million letters. What's the chance the monkey will get the book in a given string of a million characters?
For simplicity, assume a keyboard of 100 keys. The monkey has a 1/100 chance of getting the first letter, times 1/100 of getting the second letter, and so on. His chance of getting the book is therefore one in 1 in 100 exp 1,000,000, or 1 in 10 exp 2,000,000. (I don't offhand know log 3 but, thirty being greater than ten, a 30-character keyboard would give well in excess of 10 exp 1,000,000.)
Now, let's be fair to the Bandar Log. Instead of one monkey, let's use 10 exp 100 monkeys. Given that the number of subatomic particles in the universe is supposed to be 10 exp 87 (or something), that seems to be a fair dose of monkeys. (I picture a cowering electron surrounded by 10 exp 13 monkeys.) Let's say they type 10 exp 10 characters per second per each, for 10 exp 100 seconds which, considering that the age of the universe (I read somewhere) is 10 exp 18 seconds, seems more than fair.
Do the arithmetic. For practical purposes, those monkeys have no more chance of getting the book than the single monkey had, which, for practical purposes, was none.
Now, I don't suggest that the foregoing calculation has any direct application to the chance formation of life. (I will get seriously stupid email from people who ignore the foregoing sentence.) But neither do I know that the chance appearance of a cell does not involve paralyzing improbabilities. Without unambiguous numbers arising from unarguable assumptions, invoking time as a substitute for knowledge can be hazardous.
Is theory without supporting 'fact' science? How much supporting 'fact' at minimum is required before an invalid theory becomes a valid scientific theory?
LOL --ID theory is no less science that is evolution theory. This argument is not about science -the arguiment is about ateists that wish to censor the religious... Aethiest bigots that drape themselves in science and practice the religion of human secularism...
It's not censorship, it's peer review. That's how science works. Science doesn't have to give equal time to nutjobs.
Richard von Sternberg was on Fox' Bill O'Reilly tonight. He discussed how he was targeted as a religious fanatic by his employers.
Here is another link to this story by the Washington Post:
"They were saying I accepted money under the table, that I was a crypto-priest, that I was a sleeper cell operative for the creationists," said Steinberg, 42 , who is a Smithsonian research associate. "I was basically run out of there."
An independent agency has come to the same conclusion, accusing top scientists at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History of retaliating against Sternberg by investigating his religion and smearing him as a "creationist."
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which was established to protect federal employees from reprisals, examined e-mail traffic from these scientists and noted that "retaliation came in many forms . . . misinformation was disseminated through the Smithsonian Institution and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false."
"The rumor mill became so infected," James McVay, the principal legal adviser in the Office of Special Counsel, wrote to Sternberg, "that one of your colleagues had to circulate [your résumé] simply to dispel the rumor that you were not a scientist."
'snip'
Sternberg is an unlikely revolutionary. He holds two PhDs in evolutionary biology, his graduate work draws praise from his former professors, and in 2000 he gained a coveted research associate appointment at the Smithsonian Institution.
'snip'
"I am not convinced by intelligent design but they have brought a lot of difficult questions to the fore," Sternberg said. "Science only moves forward on controversy."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801680_3.html