Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Kevbo · 04-29-2003, 06:33 PM

I find it interesting that there are young-earth Bible literalists working for organizations such as AiG and ICR who have some form of scientific degree. How can these people, supposedly trained in critical science, miss such simple observations as the fact that fossils and strata are arranged chronologically and not according to density? Are these people willfully blind or deliberate deceivers?

johngalt · 04-29-2003, 06:43 PM

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I find it interesting that there are young-earth Bible literalists working for organizations such as AiG and ICR who have some form of scientific degree.

I think that this is a central problem of religion. Most of the religions today have changed so much from when they first started. Interpretation is probably the only way religion is still practiced by so many people. The problem is, religion cannot find common ground with science, because it is so objective.

sensate · 04-29-2003, 07:45 PM

Professing a belief in things obviously contrary to reality is a good way to show loyalty to a cult. Creation scientists are being good cult members.

KnightWhoSaysNi · 04-30-2003, 07:03 AM

I think it's cognitive dissonance. Intelligent people are not immune to compartmentalizing their beliefs and outright denial. This can be found not only in religion, but in ideology, values, and other cases where there are strong, dogmatic, and passionate beliefs involved.

See Morton's demon

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Thus was born the realization that there is a dangerous demon on the loose. When I was a YEC, I had a demon that did similar things for me that Maxwell's demon did for thermodynamics. Morton's demon was a demon who sat at the gate of my sensory input apparatus and if and when he saw supportive evidence coming in, he opened the gate. But if he saw contradictory data coming in, he closed the gate. In this way, the demon allowed me to believe that I was right and to avoid any nasty contradictory data. Fortunately, I eventually realized that the demon was there and began to open the gate when he wasn't looking.

However, my conversations have made me aware that each YEC is a victim of my demon. Morton's demon makes it possible for a person to have his own set of private facts which others are not privy to, allowing the YEC to construct a theory which is perfectly supported by the facts which the demon lets through the gate. And since these are the only facts known to the victim, he feels in his heart that he has explained everything. Indeed, the demon makes people feel morally superior and more knowledgeable than others.

The demon makes its victim feel very comfortable as there is no contradictory data in view. The demon is better than a set of rose colored glasses. The demon's victim does not understand why everyone else doesn't fall down and accept the victim's views. After all, the world is thought to be as the victim sees it and the demon doesn't let through the gate the knowledge that others don't see the same thing. Because of this, the victim assumes that everyone else is biased, or holding those views so that they can keep their job, or, in an even more devious attack by my demon, they think that their opponents are actually demon possessed themselves or sons of Satan. This is a devious demon!

He can make people think that the geologic column doesn't exist even if one posts examples on the internet. He can make people believe that radioactive dating doesn't work even if you show them comparisons of tree rings compared to radiocarbon dating. He can make people ignore layer after layer of footprints and burrows in the geologic column (see http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/burrow.jpg ) and believe that burrowing can occur and animals can walk around unimpeded during a global flood. He can make people think that the sun is shrinking, that the stars are all within 6000 light years of the earth, or that God made pictures in that light of events which never happened. He can make people believe that fossils aren't the remains of animals and are 'petrifactions' placed there by the devil. He can make people ignore modern measurements of continental motion, stellar formation, or biological speciation. He can make people believe that 75,000 feet of sediment over an area 200 by 100 miles can be deposited in a few hundred years, and he can make people believe that Noah trained animals to poop into buckets on command. He can make people deny transitional forms which have traits clearly halfway between two groups. This is a dangerous demon.

JonF · 04-30-2003, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Kevbo
I find it interesting that there are young-earth Bible literalists working for organizations such as AiG and ICR who have some form of scientific degree. How can these people, supposedly trained in critical science, miss such simple observations as the fact that fossils and strata are arranged chronologically and not according to density? Are these people willfully blind or deliberate deceivers?

Some are deliberate deceivers, e.g. Jonathan Wells. See Darwinism: Why I Went for a Second Ph.D. .

("Father" is the Reverend Sun Myung Moon).

Andrew Snelling is probably another example: see Will the Real Dr Snelling Please Stand Up?

lpetrich · 04-30-2003, 03:20 PM

From Jonathan Wells; read this and weep:

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According to the standard view, the development of an embryo is programmed by its genes-its DNA. Change the genes, and you can change the embryo, even to the point of making a new species. In the movie "Jurassic Park," genetic engineers extract fragments of dinosaur DNA from fossilized mosquitoes, splice them together with DNA from living frogs, then inject the combination into ostrich eggs which had had their own DNA inactivated. In the movie, the injected DNA then re- programmed the ostrich to produce a dinosaur. Experiments similar to this have actually been performed, though not with dinosaur DNA.

In every case, if any development occurred at all it followed the pattern of the egg, not the injected foreign DNA. While I was at Berkeley I performed experiments on frog embryos. My experiments focused on a reorganization of the egg cytoplasm after fertilization which causes the embryo to elongate into a tadpole; if I blocked the reorganization, the result was a ball of belly cells; if I induced a second reorganization after the first, I could produce a two-headed tadpole. Yet this reorganization had nothing to do with the egg's DNA, and proceeded quite well even in its absence (though the embryo eventually needed its DNA to supply it with additional proteins).

So DNA does not program the development of the embryo. As an analogy, consider a house: the builder needs materials (such as pieces of lumber cut to the right lengths, cement, nails, piping, wiring, etc.), but he also needs a floor plan (since any given pile of materials could be assembled into several different houses) and he needs a set of assembly instructions (since assembling the roof before the foundation and walls would pose a serious problem). In a developing organism, the DNA contains templates for producing proteins-the building materials.

To a very limited extent, it also contains information about the order in which those proteins should be produced-assembly instructions. But it does not contain the basic floor plan. The floor plan and many of the assembly instructions reside elsewhere (nobody yet knows where). Since development of the embryo is not programmed by the DNA, the Darwinian view of evolution as the differential survival of DNA mutations misses the point. At most, Darwin's theory may explain "microevolution" within established lineages-such as minor differences among closely related species of salamanders. But it cannot account for "macroevolution," - the large-scale differences between shellfish and insects, or between birds and mammals. Darwin's theory is incompatible not only with the evidence from embryology, but also with the evidence from the fossil record. According to Darwinism, all creatures are descended from a common ancestor. Yet the oldest fossils show that almost all of the major groups of organisms appeared at around the same time, fully formed and recognizably similar to their modern counterparts. Darwin's theory predicts a "branching tree" pattern in the fossil record, yet that pattern is nowhere to be found. The fossils provide no evidence that all creatures are descended from a common ancestor. So the two major claims of Darwinism-that all living things are descended from a common ancestor and that their differences are due to random variations and survival of the fittest- are unsupported by evidence.

lpetrich · 04-30-2003, 03:35 PM

"Read this and weep" is on account of JW's grotesque misunderstandings.

The most that his embryo experiments demonstrate is that there is some sort of pre-fertilization patterning of egg cells.

Darwinism does not depend on any particular mechanism of heredity; it can work with any possible mechanism.

And his denial of a "branching pattern" of fossils is very clearly contradicted by the patterns one sees in some of the better-preserved fossils, like horse fossils.

The "appearing at the same time" is presumably the base of the Cambrian; it is only for marine invertebrates -- which often look very different from present-day ones. This seeming simultaneous appearance could be the result of some ecological influence that stimulated the multiple invention of easily-fossilized hard parts.

04-29-2003, 06:33 PM	#1
Kevbo Regular Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: NY Posts: 212	Young-earth Bible literalists with degrees in the sciences... are they blind? I find it interesting that there are young-earth Bible literalists working for organizations such as AiG and ICR who have some form of scientific degree. How can these people, supposedly trained in critical science, miss such simple observations as the fact that fossils and strata are arranged chronologically and not according to density? Are these people willfully blind or deliberate deceivers?

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04-29-2003, 07:45 PM	#3
sensate Regular Member Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: midwest Posts: 438	Professing a belief in things obviously contrary to reality is a good way to show loyalty to a cult. Creation scientists are being good cult members.

04-30-2003, 03:35 PM	#7
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	"Read this and weep" is on account of JW's grotesque misunderstandings. The most that his embryo experiments demonstrate is that there is some sort of pre-fertilization patterning of egg cells. Darwinism does not depend on any particular mechanism of heredity; it can work with any possible mechanism. And his denial of a "branching pattern" of fossils is very clearly contradicted by the patterns one sees in some of the better-preserved fossils, like horse fossils. The "appearing at the same time" is presumably the base of the Cambrian; it is only for marine invertebrates -- which often look very different from present-day ones. This seeming simultaneous appearance could be the result of some ecological influence that stimulated the multiple invention of easily-fossilized hard parts.

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