Baidarka

What follows is an e-mail that I received from a Creationist. I challenged her to come up with credentials for the so called scientists that she was quoting. I guess that I should have known that if the tobacco companies could find scientific whores to back up their bankrupt position that creationism could do the same.
Who are these jokers?

I am also including the original posts on the Biblical Archeology Message Board <a href="http://www.bib-arch.org" target="_blank">www.bib-arch.org</a> that started this.



Oh, do you only want biologists? And if you're looking for known names in
the media, there are very few. But there are those with credentials. These
are straight from the website for Institute for Creation Research. By the
way, one of their biggest profs, Duane Gish, is recognized as having a
doctorate in biochemistry, and is respected for his scientific knowledge and
expertise.

Ken Cumming, Ph.D. Biology--He has a B.S. in Biology/Chemistry with honors
from Tufts University, a Masters in Biology from Harvard, and the Ph.D. in
Biology with a major in Ecology and a minor in Biochemistry from Harvard
University. He has been on the faculties at the Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), the University of Wisconsin
at La Crosse, and Western Wisconsin Technological Institute at La Crosse.

Gary Parker, Ed.D. Biology--He has a B.A. in Biology/Chemistry(high honors)
from Wabash College, Crawfordville, IN, a M.S. in Biology/Physiology, and an
Ed.D. in Biology with a cognate in Paleontology from Ball State University.
Dr. Parker earned several academic awards, including admission to Phi Beta
Kappa (the national scholastic honorary), election to the American Society
of Zoologists (for his research on tadpoles), and a fifteen-month fellowship
award from the National Science Foundation. He also wrote five secular books
including: The Structure and Function of the Cell, DNA: The Key to Life,
Mitosis and Meiosis, Heridity, and Life's Basis: Biomolecules. Dr. Parker's
masters thesis concerning amphibian endocrinology was published in Copeia
and a summary of his doctoral dissertation on programmed instruction was
published in the Journal of College Science Teaching.

Bert Thompson, Ph.D. Microbiology--He has a B.S. in Biology from Abilene
Christian University and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Microbiology from Texas A&M.
Dr. Thompson is a former professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine at
Texas A&M, where he also served as Coordinator of the Cooperative Education
Program in Biomedical Science. He is also a member of the American Society
of Microbiology.

David Menton, Ph.D. Cell Biology--He has a B.A. in Biology from Mankato
State University and a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from Brown University. Dr.
Menton is Professor Emeritus of Anatomy at Washington U. School of Medicine.
He was Associate Professor of Anatomy for over 30 years. He received the
"Distinguished Service Teaching Award" in 1991, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997,
named "Teacher of the Year" 1979 and was elected "Professor of the Year" in
1998 by the Class of 2000. He has also been Profiled in 'American Men and
Women of Science - A Biographical Directory of Today's Leaders in Physical,
Biological and Related Sciences' for almost two decades.

Carl B. Fliermans, Ph.D. Microbiology--He has a B.S. in Biology from Asbury
College, a M.S. in Soil Microbiology from the University of Kentucky, a
Ph.D. in Microbiology (Microbiology, Limnology, Ecology) from Indiana
University, and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the National Institutes of
Health, University of Minnesota. Dr. Fliermans is a microbial ecologist with
the Westinghouse Savannah River Company, E. I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. in
South Carolina. He has published over sixty publications including papers in
Protozoology and the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary
Microbiology. Dr. Fliermans is a Legionella bacterium (Legionnaires Disease)
expert and has served as an expert witness in many litigations. His lab was
the first to isolate the bacterium in the natural environment, and he has
twenty publications on Legionella as well. He has been part of grants and
contracts totalling over twenty-two million dollars. Some of this work has
included using microbes to detect land mines for the U.S. Department of
Defense and being program technical director of the U.S. Department of
Energy's "Microbiology of the Deep Subsurface" program. Dr. Fliermans has
also served as a consultant to over ninety universities, companies, and
organizations including Harvard Medical School, EPA, U.S. Department of
Energy, U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, National Institutes of Health, and the
National Science Foundation.

Ian G. Macreadie, Ph.D. Molecular Biology--He received a B.Sc.(Hons.) and a
Ph.D. from Monash University in Australia. His fields were genetics,
biochemistry and molecular biology. He completed his Post Doc training at
Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, Texas. Dr. Macreadie is a Principal
Research Scientist of CSIRO Health Sciences and Nutrition and an Adjunct
Professor of RMIT University. He has played key roles in identifying the
structure and function of several mitochondrial genes. After joining
Bimolecular Research Institute of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and
Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), he developed a novel yeast
expression system that led to the production of an IBDV vaccine. He used
yeast systems to produce biologically relevant proteins of human AIDS and
major infectious cellular pathogens such as malaria and P. carini. These
systems are being used to rapidly screen for new classes of drugs. Major
links have been established with key international groups with similar
objectives. He is author of over 70 research publications and five patents.
His awards include a 1990 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award, 1996 Frank Fenner
Research Award. Dr. Macreadie was also a co-recipient of the 1997 CSIRO
Chairman's Medal for their outstanding contributions to our knowledge of the
structure and biology of the Birnaviridae family of double-stranded RNA
viruses, leading to the development of a prototype recombinant vaccine
against infectious bursal disease of poultry. He was also Honorary Secretary
of the Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from
1997-2000.

OH, I'm sorry, you said only three. Got carried away.

Tanya

This is the original post with my answer followed by Tany's( the Creationist)

Can someone please tell me where in the U.S. I can get a degree in Archaeology without having to study evolution????

Posted by: Baidarka
I can sympathize with your predicament I once wanted to learn to be an ocean navigator but all the courses that were available insisted that I subscribe to the fallacious round earth theory, as a committed flat earth believer I found this untenable after all the earth is flat and a good navigator should not have to break faith with the 4 cornered earth that was good enough for our ancestors. Then I wanted to be a Meteorologist but the teachers kept insisting that lightning was caused by "electromagnetic atmospheric disturbances". As a committed believer in the Norse God Thor, the great thunderer, I was highly offended and quit the class. Finally I wanted to be an astronomer. Would you believe the gall of those ridiculous ivory tower professors, Astronomy, with out the signs of the zodiac, without the Greek Gods? What kind of astronomy is that? What ever happened to predicting the rise and fall of kings? What ever happened to for seeing the future? Needless to say I quit that course too.
It is a hard life for the committed believer, please don't confuse us with the facts.
Remember what Ad Reinhart said "Art critics are to Artists as ornithologists are to the Birds". I would like to paraphrase.
Archaeology is to evolution as rocks are to the Bible. Take that you Ungodly evolutionists.
I think that I did see an ad for a correspondence Archaeology course on the back of a book of matches. I think it said something about being "evolution free". If I start smoking wacky weed again I'll keep an eye out for this ad and I'll be sure to forward it to you.

Posted by: Tanya
Unfortunately, nowhere. But I agree with the one reply that states it's ok to study it, you don't have to believe it. I'm in the same situation, and I purposefully decided to attend a secular university precisely because I was going to be taught evolution. As the one ass who replied to you was trying to point out (I believe it was Harry, who obviously has no empathy with people of faith and doesn't understand why this is an important issue), evolution IS archaeology. Even the field of Biblical Archaeology is not free from it, as I naively thought. But you'll never succeed in this field unless you understand what it teaches and believes, and you'll never be absolutely secure in what YOU believe unless you fully understand the opposition. Again, I'm in the same boat. It can be unnerving, but don't rely on your own strength to make it through with your faith intact. Good luck, and God bless.
Tanya

Valentine Pontifex

Gish is respected for his scientific knowledge and expertise?????????????????????????????????

Oh bullfrog!

RufusAtticus

If she pulled these from the ICR website, then they are not scientists. ICR "fellows" sign a statement of faith with restricts their objectivity. Essentially, they agree on the answer then make up the evidence.

Ken Cumming, Ph.D. Biology

Biology is a broad field. His degree, especially if it is old, doesn't necessarily make him any sort of authority on evolution.

Bert Thompson, Ph.D. Microbiology
David Menton, Ph.D. Cell Biology
Carl B. Fliermans, Ph.D. Microbiology
Ian G. Macreadie, Ph.D. Molecular Biology

These field are not really related to the study of evolution.

Ask her if she can find a former or current population or evolutionary biologist who considers special creation as an explaination for the diversity of life.

~~RvFvS~~

lpetrich

Some creationists have been known to exaggerate their credentials, bragging about the "degrees" they had gotten from such notable diploma mills as "Patriot University". See <a href="http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear" target="_blank">No Answers in Genesis</a> for details of the thesis that Kent Hovind had submitted to Patriot U.

So it might be interesting to track these gentlemen down to see what their credentials are -- and what they had really done in the biological sciences. And whether they have ever submitted any papers to any reputable journals arguing for special creation.

And even so, biology is a big field, and one can always work on fields only tangentially related to evolution, though even in such fields, discussions of evolution may be hard to avoid.

But a creationist can easily wave away the more accessible examples of evolution as something that only happens within separate "created kinds". Though creationists are vague about how to recognize a "created kind".

Daydreamer

Sorry if this sounds cynical, but this doesn't surprise me one bit - its exactly the area one would expect creationists to stick to for a number of reasons:

-Its easier for them to find examples of 'irriducible complexity' to justify their faith because of the nature of proteins and similar molecules.

-Because Darwinian Theory was originally developed to explain phylogenic diversity in the mid eighteenth century, and because modern molecular biology is a product of the mid ninteenth century, molecular/micro/cellular bio (outside genetics) has seen the least application of evolutionary theory out of any Biology subset.

-Because soft tissue is almost never preserved for very long, and because objects as small as cells leave few to no archeological imprints around the bone, there is no historic record to parallel the Fossil Record.

Molecular Biology - The Final Frontier

lpetrich

You're off by a century; the the n-00's are the (n+1)'th century, not the n'th century.

Darwin was mid-19th-cy.; molecular biology was mid-20th-cy. Also, genetics has been an important part of molecular biology, and study of evolution on the molecular scale has become remarkably well-developed.

nogods4me

<a href="http://www.christiananswers.net/creation/people/cumming-k.html" target="_blank">Here</a> is Ken Cummings Bio.

[Edited by scigirl to fix link]

[ May 31, 2002: Message edited by: scigirl ]</p>

Vorkosigan

<a href="http://www.ideacenter.org/scidoubtevol.htm" target="_blank">http://www.ideacenter.org/scidoubtevol.htm</a>

This site purports to hold a huge list. I have no idea how many of these are actually supporters of ID, but you can take a look yourself.

Vorkosigan

DonaldW112

Here is a little info on the some of the above people:

Bert Thompson has no scientific publications that I could find. He is listed on a number of web sites as a scientist who supports creationism. He is also a Gospel preacher and co-editor of Reason and Revelation. He has a number of online articles concerning the existance of god. He is also involved in or running <a href="http://www.apolgeticspress.org" target="_blank">www.apolgeticspress.org</a> Which publishes a number of tracts on the bible, etc.

Ian Macreadie has 50+ publications in the peer reviewed literature (none on evolution). He is with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia. Most of his papers are on yeast models of infectious diseases.

Carl Fliermans has 25+ publications in the field of thermophilic bacteria. It is not clear where he is right now. He is listed on many web sites as a scientist who supports creationism.

Duane Gish's last scientific paper was in 1975 not counting the letter to the editor that appeared in 2000 in science regarding the teaching of evolution in the classroom.

David Menton has 24+ publications from 1968-1995 and he was or is at the Washington University school of medicine.

I found Ian Macreadie's email address maybe I can get him to stop by or answer a few questions?

pangloss

Menton's work focused on wound healing. I had an email exchange with him a few years ago on one of his "technical and in-depth" anti-evolution articles (it was about 3 paragraphs long and had no references 0 technical and in-depth?).

Basically, after the second exchange, he said that we all have presuppositions and that his are better than mine, so he is right and that he didn't want to talk with me anymore...