CREATION : EVOLUTIONARY ARROGANCE (SHAMAN ALERT)
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
The investment of these leaders of the evolutionary faith with such pontifical authority, however, tends to generate in them an attitude of profound impatience with such heresies as creationism. Instead of opposing the creationists with scientific proofs of macroevolution, they resort to name-calling and ridicule. A professor at a Missouri university fulminates at the "lunatic literalism of the creationists,"4 especially "the weirdness produced by leaders such as Henry M. Morris."5
And even such an articulate and highly revered evolutionist as the late Stephen Jay Gould, in a voluminous book of 1433 pages published just before his death, referred angrily to "the scourge of creationism."6 He had refused many invitations to debate a qualified creationist scientist with the self-serving and misleading explanation that it would be a mistake to dignify creationism and its scientists in this way.
Dr. Massimo Pigliucci, who has lost a number of debates with Dr. Gish and other creationists, laments the fact that, "many Americans are still enchanted with dinosaurs such as John Morris and Duane Gish of the oxymoronically named Institute for Creation Research."7
Although Dr. Gould would never debate a creationist scientist, despite the inducement of large financial incentives to do so, he was quick to criticize them in print, calling them "fundamentalists who call themselves `creation scientists,' with their usual mixture of cynicism and ignorance."8 Gould often resorted, in fact, to the standard debate technique of name-calling and ad hominem arguments commonly used when one has no factual evidence to support his position.
One writer laments that even after the pope reaffirmed the commitment of the Catholic Church to evolution in 1996,
40 percent of American Catholics in a 2001 Gallup poll said they believed that God created human life in the past 10,000 years. Indeed, fully 45 percent of all Americans subscribe to this creationist view.12
But why would the public favor creation? Only a statistical minority of the "general public" attends church and Sunday school. Could it possibly be that evolution is so contrary to evidence and common sense that people intuitively know that evolution is wrong? And could it be that many of these have studied the evidences for themselves and thereby found that evolution is not really scientific after all?
Anti-Creationists Backed Into a Corner? Forrest Turpen, executive director of Christian Educators Association International, says it is obvious the evolution-only advocates feel their ideology and livelihood are being threatened.
Media Bias Stifles Creationists' Scientific Findings, Perspective He explains that the secular media -- which he describes as atheistic and anti-Christian -- publishes most anything it can that appears to indoctrinate people and "hits against the Bible."
Loosening Darwin's GripA poll released in May 2002 by Zogby International found that nearly eight out of every 10 Ohioans supported the teaching of intelligent design in classrooms where Darwinian evolution also is taught. A survey by The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland offered similar findings: 74 percent of Ohioans said evidence for and against evolution should be taught in science classrooms, while 59 percent said intelligent design should be included in origins study.
Intelligently Designed Films The two videos complement each other well. Unlocking the Mystery of Life develops all of Intelligent Design's major molecular-based arguments for an "intelligent cause" of life's complexity, and thus presents the positive case. Icons of Evolution, on the other hand, spotlights the problems of Darwinism: its censorship of key scientific information in public schools, and the scientific misinformation it spreads through public textbooks.
How Does the World View of the Scientist & the Clinician Influence Their Work?
Does the world view of the scientist influence his work as an investigator conducting research and as a clinician treating patients? Many scholars in the history of science would answer that question with a resounding "Yes." Some, like Thomas Kuhn in his widely quoted "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," have argued that the scientific process is less than an objective critical empirical investigation of the facts. They claim the work of scientists is greatly influenced by their culture, by social and psychological environment, by what Kuhn calls the "paradigm"--that is to say, the preferred or prevailing theories, methods and studies of that particular discipline, and above all by their world view--their specific beliefs about "the order of nature." Kuhn writes that two scientists with different views of the "order of nature" . . . see different things when they look from the same point in the same direction . . . they see different things and they see them in different relations to each other." And we might add that they tend to see and to accept those data that conform to or make sense in light of their world view. So evidence exists that the world view of scientists and the presuppositions that view implies may influence not only the problems scientists choose to investigate but also what they actually observe and fail to observe.
These are not required to graduate, nor are they required to continue your education. If he refused to 'sponsor' a Masters, or PhD; you'd have a case. Anyone may refuse to write a letter of recommendation to anyone, for any reason, or no reason. Granted, he's acting like a jerk; but he has the right to do so.
Total strawman. This is not the theory of evolution. Some evolutionists are atheists, but many are believers. Evolution may be inconsistent with a hyperliteral reading of Genesis 1-2, but is in no other way inconsistent with a belief in God or creation.
[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.]
Great line, Remedy.
Anti-evolution is NOT religous based .... except when it is useful.
Baghdad Bob refuses to take top anti-evolutionist PR position. Bob is quoted as saying "Being a spokesman for anti-evolution would ruin my creditability."
37 And Jacob took him rods of green poplar, and of the hazel and chesnut tree; and pilled white strakes in them, and made the white appear which was in the rods.
38 And he set the rods which he had pilled before the flocks in the gutters in the watering troughs when the flocks came to drink, that they should conceive when they came to drink.
39 And the flocks conceived before the rods, and brought forth cattle ringstraked, speckled, and spotted.
40 And Jacob did separate the lambs, and set the faces of the flocks toward the ringstraked, and all the brown in the flock of Laban; and he put his own flocks by themselves, and put them not unto Laban's cattle.
41 And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods.
42 But when the cattle were feeble, he put them not in: so the feebler were Laban's, and the stronger Jacob's.
This sure sounds like the theory of survival of the fittest.
-PJ
On this basis, Dr. Bill Frist, cardiac surgeon and Senate Majority Leader, is unfit to practice medicine.
The grateful recipients of his heart transplant surgies might disagree...
The correct answer is:
"Scientifically speaking, we don't know."