Posted on 12/29/2001 5:05:05 PM PST by cantfindagoodscreenname
The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 21, Number 4.
Creation “scientists” have more need than most of us to parade their degrees and qualifications, but it pays to look closely at the institutions that awarded them and the subjects in which they were taken. Those vaunted Ph.D.s tend to be in subjects such as marine engineering or gas kinetics rather than in relevant disciplines like zoology or geology. And often they are earned not at real universities, but at little-known Bible colleges deep in Bush country.
There are, however, a few shining exceptions. Kurt Wise now makes his living at Bryan College (motto “Christ Above All”) located in Dayton, Tennessee, home of the famed Scopes trial. And yet, he originally obtained an authentic degree in geophysics from the University of Chicago, followed by a Ph.D. in geology from Harvard, no less, where he studied under (the name is milked for all it is worth in creationist propaganda) Stephen Jay Gould.
Kurt Wise is a contributor to In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, a compendium edited by John F. Ashton (Ph.D., of course). I recommend this book. It is a revelation. I would not have believed such wishful thinking and self-deception possible. At least some of the authors seem to be sincere, and they don’t water down their beliefs. Much of their fire is aimed at weaker brethren who think God works through evolution, or who clutch at the feeble hope that one “day” in Genesis might mean not twenty-four hours but a hundred million years. These are hard-core “young earth creationists” who believe that the universe and all of life came into existence within one week, less than 10,000 years ago. And Wise—flying valiantly in the face of reason, evidence, and education—is among them. If there were a prize for Virtuoso Believing (it is surely only a matter of time before the Templeton Foundation awards one) Kurt Wise, B.A. (Chicago), Ph.D. (Harvard), would have to be a prime candidate.
Wise stands out among young earth creationists not only for his impeccable education, but because he displays a modicum of scientific honesty and integrity. I have seen a published letter in which he comments on alleged “human bones” in Carboniferous coal deposits. If authenticated as human, these “bones” would blow the theory of evolution out of the water (incidentally giving lie to the canard that evolution is unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific: J. B. S. Haldane, asked by an overzealous Popperian what empirical finding might falsify evolution, famously growled, “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian!”). Most creationists would not go out of their way to debunk a promising story of human remains in the Pennsylvanian Coal Measures. Yet Wise patiently and seriously examined the specimens as a trained paleontologist, and concluded unequivocally that they were “inorganically precipitated iron siderite nodules and not fossil material at all.” Unusually among the motley denizens of the “big tent” of creationism and intelligent design, he seems to accept that God needs no help from false witness.
All the more interesting, then, to read his personal testimony in In Six Days. It is actually quite moving, in a pathetic kind of way. He begins with his childhood ambition. Where other boys wanted to be astronauts or firemen, the young Kurt touchingly dreamed of getting a Ph.D. from Harvard and teaching science at a major university. He achieved the first part of his goal, but became increasingly uneasy as his scientific learning conflicted with his religious faith. When he could bear the strain no longer, he clinched the matter with a Bible and a pair of scissors. He went right through from Genesis 1 to Revelations 22, literally cutting out every verse that would have to go if the scientific worldview were true. At the end of this exercise, there was so little left of his Bible that
. . . try as I might, and even with the benefit of intact margins throughout the pages of Scripture, I found it impossible to pick up the Bible without it being rent in two. I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible. . . . It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science.
See what I mean about pathetic? Most revealing of all is Wise’s concluding paragraph:
Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand.
See what I mean about honest? Understandably enough, creationists who aspire to be taken seriously as scientists don’t go out of their way to admit that Scripture—a local origin myth of a tribe of Middle-Eastern camel-herders—trumps evidence. The great evolutionist John Maynard Smith, who once publicly wiped the floor with Duane P. Gish (up until then a highly regarded creationist debater), did it by going on the offensive right from the outset and challenging him directly: “Do you seriously mean to tell me you believe that all life was created within one week?”
Kurt Wise doesn’t need the challenge; he volunteers that, even if all the evidence in the universe flatly contradicted Scripture, and even if he had reached the point of admitting this to himself, he would still take his stand on Scripture and deny the evidence. This leaves me, as a scientist, speechless. I cannot imagine what it must be like to have a mind capable of such doublethink. It reminds me of Winston Smith in 1984 struggling to believe that two plus two equals five if Big Brother said so. But that was fiction and, anyway, Winston was tortured into submission. Kurt Wise—and presumably others like him who are less candid—has suffered no such physical coercion. But, as I hinted at the end of my previous column, I do wonder whether childhood indoctrination could wreak a sufficiently powerful brainwashing effect to account for this bizarre phenomenon.
Whatever the underlying explanation, this example suggests a fascinating, if pessimistic, conclusion about human psychology. It implies that there is no sensible limit to what the human mind is capable of believing, against any amount of contrary evidence. Depending upon how many Kurt Wises are out there, it could mean that we are completely wasting our time arguing the case and presenting the evidence for evolution. We have it on the authority of a man who may well be creationism’s most highly qualified and most intelligent scientist that no evidence, no matter how overwhelming, no matter how all-embracing, no matter how devastatingly convincing, can ever make any difference.
Can you imagine believing that and at the same time accepting a salary, month after month, to teach science? Even at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee? I’m not sure that I could live with myself. And I think I would curse my God for leading me to such a pass.
Richard Dawkins is the Charles Simonyi Professor of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. An evolutionary biologist and prolific author and lecturer, his most recent book is Unweaving the Rainbow.
Many are fearful to abandon the theory of evolution no matter how flawed. To do so would force them to admit that science is an insufficient tool to describe our universe. This is a scary bridge for someone whose whole belief system is that man is self-sufficient and given time and technology will discover the answers to all of life's mysteries.
BTW since humans are the climax community on earth thus far, does it not seem likely that the chimpanzes, dolphins, or something should have at least discovered fire by now? :)
Of course, if evolution is fact, that would also make Jesus the hybrid child of an ape, instead of the son of God, born of a woman, whose entire race was descended from God to begin with... Not a savior, not even a "special creation" just another ape, walking upright.
And to think HE went to the cross believing HE was saving something special... He told all us to call God our FATHER... when all of us are just evolved microbes... and he himself, obviously not quite right.
While I don't understand every aspect of the Bible... I doubt anyone does. Somehow, someday, TRUTH will prevail. I am betting that Jesus was NOT crazy, IS not an apeman, and ACTUALLYy pulled off the salvation act for the entire human race, per His Father's intentions.
Most of the folks who are die hard evolutionists that I have known would not KNOW or believe a miraculous occurance if it bit them in the ass. They are heavy into denial.
To deny that evolution has had its hoaxters with all the "piltdown" mantypes they have assembled over the last 100 years makes me wonder... "Why such a desperate need to try and PROVE there was no creation?" That is, what possible difference does it make? Is the concept of a God who measures and judges the affairs of men and women, such a fearful thing? If there is NOT a God, and NO creation, why would it matter WHAT folks beleived? But if there is, it would matter quite a bit, I think.
Eliminating the existence of a God, through the assumption of evolution, which is STILL considered a theory, and not a fact by MOST educated folks, will NOT eliminate a judgement day, if there IS a God. And if the grave is a "silent end" of our existence, beleiving in a God, is hardly harmful to us... it might even improve our character in that we might govern ourselves better in such a delusion, if indeed it is one.
I see evolutionary theory as the primary tool of socialism, for if there is no God, who can lead each of us in life, as sovereign individuals over our own destinies, then SOCIETY must act as its own GOD over the lives of individuals.... Evolution is the primary foundation, I believe, of socialism, or the elevation of the state to the place of Godhood over people. In that way, it is also dangerous, as it seeks to subvert the freewill and sovereign choices of individuals (allegedly created in God's likeness). Hence, I see evolutionary theory as a key tenet in the subjugation of mankind into classes, the elite and the not-so-elites, who are not as high and mighty, as the "social leadership" is.
Ultimately I have to class (in MY thinking that is) evolution along with the weirdo superstitions of the dark ages, where they believed flies and maggots formed out ex nihlo matter... life coming in the way of "spontaneously generative" mysteries, like alchemy... gold from iron!
My personal observation has always been life only comes from other life... there is NO spontaneous generation of life, unless someone manipulates the building blocks of life from other biological sources that WERE or are still alive... and that with very very few exceptions, EVERY thing begets after its kind, species, flora and fauna.
Were evolutionary principles true, I would honestly expect NEW species to be propagating at an alarming rate... two brained nuclear scientist fish that can talk and such.
It just does not happen. And won't without some form of intelligence or human manipulation of critical dna materials (which again is life from other biological life... and after the kind specified in the dna chains)... And if it did, it would only indicate to me that the formation of new species required "intelligent intervention" on a pretty high level.
Will humans try this kind of stuff... yup, absolutely, because like begets like... and both ADAM and Christ, we are told were God's offspring... so said the apostles. Our curious, creative investigations and studies are "big time" evidence to me that we came from something slightly different in its spiritual and intellectual nature than the horses and amoebas, unless they too are undertaking such studies in the secret compartment of my family member's barn... Horses freeze to death. People, build a fire, kill the animals for coats, and build nuclear generators...
Something about the creation story rings true... even if it is in someway that I don't understand symbolic, or allegory, or even hebrew prose. There is a "compelling" aspect to it that touches the intellect and the heart.
To me it takes more ridiculous "leaps of faith" to believe in spontaneious generation of life ex nihlo... than it does to accept a creator directed process of some kind or another... and the eternal existence of the creator, is as easy for me to grasp as the seemingly eternal nature of the dandelions in my front driveway... they cannot be killed short of a nuclear holocaust... and even then I doubt it.
Evolution is very hard to swallow. I just don't have that much faith.
If "there is NOT!!!" overwhelming evidence supporting evolution, why did Dr. William Bass believe in it?
Hank
How do I know?
It happenend!
Pobability actually says nothing about how the universe and all there is in it came to be. With an infinite amount of time, eventually, all possibilities can atually happen, even God, so.......
However, evolution probably presents some logical impossibilities, which could not happen in any amount of time.
Hank
Now............show me PROOF of evolution, and I'll make your task doubly impossible by challenging you to PROVE that the fossil record somehow supports the theory of evolution.
(HINT: Don't even try. You can't do it. No one can. They're just too damned stubborn to admit it.)
Nope. Never aborted a baby either, but I know it's a horrible, messy procedure. What was the above supposed to prove? Are you now trying to compound the idiocy in this thread by touting the virtues of "peer review"? Are you going to deny the "politically correct/scientifically correct" nature of such review?
For pete's sake............are you a scientist? If you are, then you know better, just like our friend here who listens to stars for a living (yet tries like all hell to appear to be an expert on "evolutionary theory"; unbelievable).
Does it, now? Really? According to who? To you? You base your "belief" (sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but evolution is VERY much a belief system) on Darwin's study on a tiny island off the coast of Ecuador; where adaptive behavior / small changes in species was instantly extrapolated into a full-blown theory of evolution involving ALL species with zip for evidence, including the fossil record? That the model you're pointing to?
"It is not a belief system."
The mindless acceptance of a "theory" with as many demonstrated "holes" in it such as evolution can only be explained in the context of a "belief system". See above.
"The model is updated and changed as new data comes to light."
Is it, now? So..................the original theory resembles Swiss cheese, so let's see how well we can back-fill the model. IOW, let's bend over backward to see to it that "data" fits the model. Whatever you do, DON'T look at data with fresh eyes.
Great science, doctor. Great science, indeed.
"Does your religion do the same thing? Does it update and change as data comes to light that contradicts long held beliefs such as a world wide flood some 5000 years ago?"
First, show me the contradictions to the story of the world wide flood. You can't. Quite the opposite; there has been more and more archaeological and geologic evidence unearthed..........especially in recent decades............supporting the story of the flood. However, that's not the point.
Hmmmmm........."updating religion". No, star listener, that's a hollow argument. In fact, that isn't an argument at all. A religion IS a belief system. The Bible was written many hundreds-to-thousands of years ago. It is the living word of God. You don't believe that. Fine. I do. The difference between us? I'm honest about it. I admit that I cannot "prove" creation. Unlike you, I would find it ridiculous to attempt to "correct God's Word".
Mankind, throughout his history, has proven to be one big screw-up of a species. We'll screw up anything. We war, we steal, we rape, we plunder, we enslave, we murder...............we do it all. Man's an idiot. Every year, yet another cherished scientific "theory" seems to be dumped into the waste bin as new information, new ideas, new technologies become available. Science changes its point of view more frequently than I change my socks. Take your own field of physics; can you deny what I'm saying is true?
To suggest that we should somehow stamp God's Word with the same fickle nature as our "science" is just silly. To suggest that I should ignore the Word of God over the theory of some guy named Darwin (note: a man, not a god) and the subsequent lemming-like mentality of scientists hell-bent to MAKE their data fit Darwin's theory is worse than silly.
Sorry, my friend. You follow the theory of a man...........a flawed man. I'll stick with God's Word.
...
God, by definition, is the only possible explanation for the ontology of existence itself.
Except, that, the question you ask applies equally to God. Why is there God rather than no God?
Hank
Thanks!
The basic reality is this. You might could at least listen to a theory which required one or even two probabilistic miracles in the whole history of the Earth, but evolution requires an essentially infinite chain of probabilistic miracles. The original requirement of abiogenesis is a probabilistic miracle, and every step to some entirely new kind of complex creature is a probabilistic miracle.
To believe in something like that amounts to the same thing as claiming not to believe in mathematics and probability theory; nobody making such a claim should be taken seriously.
They tried for several decades to produce just one such probabilistic miracle using every possible kind of laboratory device and could not do it. Fruit flies produce new generations every few DAYS, and they conducted experiments involving subjecting fruit flies to everything known to cause mutations and then recombining the mutations, and they did this for decades, and all they ever got was what the breeders told Chuck Darwin was all he'd ever get via any such process, which was sterile freaks and individuals which returned, boomarang-like, to the norm for a fruit fly. All they ever got was fruit flies.
A number of the scientists involved in these studies in the early part of the 20'th century abandoned evolutionism as a result, including the famous case of Goldschmidt who went on to devise his "hopeful monster" theory and claimed he was being subjected to the kind of "two minute hates" mentioned in Orwell's book at scientific meetings.
Ultimately, evolutionists are like the southerners of which Clark Gable says "All they have left is arrogance." That and name-calling talents are basically the only stock in trade of the little evo clique on FR, the talk.origins crew and other evo groups on the net.
Well anytime any Catholic decides to be honest about it, we can disprove transubstantiation, very simply. Blood and whine are totally different things, and it is very easy to distinguish between them.
The simplest way would be to take a sample of the tranformed wine and test it, to see if it is blood. Or, a blood alcohol level test could be made of the priest before and after communion. Since he is drinking blood and not wine, the alcohol level should not go up, but, we know it will.
Of course, no Catholic will allow that, because they know what the results will be.
It may be this dishonesty that makes some people want to "bash" (a Catholic's word for honest questions) Catholics.
If by "universe" you mean, "material existense," science, and it's tools, and it's language are the only means we have for describing and understanding it. When the Bible, which does not pretend to be a book of science, discusses the material universe, it does so in the "scientific" terms, that is, terms of measurement, weight, velocity, distance, etc. We have no other terms of means for discussing or understanding the material world, because those are the material terms.
As for evolution, it is neither science, or, technically speaking, a theory. Evolution is a hypothesis, no so much about origins, as is supposed, as methods of development. It is not science for two reasons, first because there is no way to test the hypothesis or verify that the principles it espouses work. This is why it remains and will always remain an hypothesis, because a theory is a hypothesis that has been experimentally tested and verified.
The other reason evolution is not science is because the pricniples derived from real science can be applied in some practical way. (This application is generally called technology.) There is no technology to be derived from the discoveries of evolution.
For these reasons, the whole question of evolution is much less important than creationists and government educators have made it.
Hank
OK,OK, Caaaaalmmm down. I respect you for slogging through it, apparently with the heart of an honest truth seeker, since you express frustration at not being able to make sense of it. Without the Holy Spirit's illumenation, none can. I will try to explain....
If you read on in to chapter two of Genesis, you realize that the text does not speak of the seventh day ending. There is no "and the evening and the morning were day seven". The implication is that the seventh day, where God has rested from His creative works, is still ongoing.
My main point here is that the Hebrew word "Yom" used for DAY is a very vague and broad word, much like our english word day. We can use the word for an age as in "the day of the dinosaurs". So did the Hebrews.
The phrase "morning to evening" means a 24 hour literal day, but the phrase "evening and the morning" often DOES NOT refer to a literal 24 hour day. In the book of DANIEL (8:26), he is told to seal up the book of the vision "of the evening and the morning". Many translations make this a plural, because it is clear that the vision refers to a period of several years at the end of the age, but it is singular in the original text.
Perhaps you make reference to an injunction to keep the Sabbath because God created the earth in six days and on the seventh He rested- don't want to use quotation marks because I am doing it from memory. Let me point out that the same thing is referred to when the Israelites are commanded to let the ground rest every seventh year. This is refered to as a Sabbath for the land I think, though it is not a literal 24 hour period. Only the 1 in 7 proportion is consistent. The times involved vary for men, the Earth, and the Creator.
As a dedicated man of science, you of course know that absolute proof is never achieved in the physical sciences. At any moment in history, there's at best a very large preponderance of evidence for one theory over any competitors. And with that, I offer 29 Evidences for Macroevolution. Refute as many as you can; take your time. Babylon once poked a hole in one of them where the author, Doug Theobald, overreached a bit. Can you find it?
I'd also be interested in hearing the nature of the "scientific training" you earlier juxtaposed with RadioAstronomer's background. Are you a Doctor of Barstool Balancing?
There is a difference in the statement: "Biology hasn't provided a mechanism for XXX yet," and the statement: "Bioloby cannot provide a mechanims for XXX."
How would you decide if a paper deserves publication?
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