[Right Wing Professor]

Do you think it's possible that these scientists were creationists because most of them lived before the theory of evolution was proposed or became established? Duh? Funny there are none born after 1900 there, eh?

[AmericaUnited]

The main point was to destroy that sad, tired, old argument that if you believe in creation and God you are a small minded dolt, that can't think critically, scientifically, blah, blah, blah.

[bondserv]

Do you think it's possible that these scientists were creationists because most of them lived before the theory of evolution was proposed or became established? Duh? Funny there are none born after 1900 there, eh?

The number of scientists that are coming out of the anti-evolutionary closet are growing every day. You criticize their list while the numbers of new credentialed scientists grow under your nose.

The momentum has shifted while we have discussed this issue over the last three years. I know you keep saying we keep saying that, but the evidence for the paradigm shift is so overwhelming even you have to acknowledge it. Not to say you will ever believe it has validity, but the shift has happened all the same.

[rhetor]

Heh? It's far more likely that a scientist born in the 19th century would accept a purely materialist approach to the world than one born in th 20th century. The 19th century was so materilistic in its philosophical outlook that many scientists of the day had problems accepting Clerk Maxwell's notion of a "field." What the heck is a "field?" They accepted it only because they were duly impressed by Maxwell's mathematical finesse and high degree of predictability of his theory of EM. Today's concepts of "quanta" and "wavicles" and "11 dimension, alternative universes" proposed by the QM guys (even if many of them are just plain nonsense) would have been inconceivable to someone like Humboldt, or D'Alembert . . . not to mention any of the notions of "indeterminacy" of Heisenberg, which are so essential to QM. For the 19th century, the universe was not only knowable, it was 100% knowable. The universe was governed by tight, known (or at least "knowable") laws. If we discover the law, and know the relevant position and momentum (e.g.) of a group of particles, we can tell you everything about those particles from the moment they appeared in the universe; and we can also extrapolate, and project with total confidence where those particles will be and what their momentum will be at any time in the future. Heisenberg, et al. showed that this was bunk. Knowledge has a certain measurable "tolerance." The more you know about the position of something, the less you know about its momentum (and vice versa). If you knew 100% about a particle's position, you would know nothing about momentum. No. Believe or not, the 20th century (at least its physics) was much more non-material (I won't say "spiritual"; they're not necessarily the same) than the 19th.

[judywillow]

"Do you think it's possible that these scientists were creationists because most of them lived before the theory of evolution was proposed or became established?"

There were atheists and assholes then too; the difference is decent people didn't associate with them.