thestickman

Well, firstly let me slap [:banghead: ]myself for the thread title, my only defence is that i was tired. Thanks for all the replies, and the pan analogy is great thanks. After reading the trueorigins site i too got the feeling i was being lied to, but i had no way of telling with my little knowledge on the topic. It seems that both sides of the fence have spokespersons that lie to prove a point but that creationism seems to have a lot more, simply from my reading [or maybe i just always stumble on the dodgy site]. Anyway, thank you all for replying.
thestickman

Doubting Didymus

It's odd how often those who are 'undecided' on the E/C debate want to allege that each side is as bad as the other, or at least both 'bad', in different ways or in different amounts. In this case, evolutionary biologists are accused of lying. Not lying as MUCH as creationists (thankfully), but still liars.

Stickman. I strongly suspect that you are mistaken. Either you have been speaking with someone who does not know allopatric speciation from genetic drift, or you have been caught by even more creationist lies.

Evolutionary scientists do not lie. In fact, they CAN"T lie, even if they wanted to. How can they, when their work must be submitted to the review of hundreds of horrible peers, each of whom would gleefully take the opportunity to tear another scientists paper to shreds? Peer reviewers in science do that just for fun, at least as often as they do it out of a genuine desire to uphold the standard of the scientific enterprise.

So please, show us where a scientist has deliberately lied, and no time will be wasted in seeing the exposition of said lie, and the destruction of said scientists reputation. These are the safeguards that make science reliable, and the work of creationists inadmissable.

VonEvilstein

Nothing for me to add here, except to congratulate both NailScorva and Didymus on two excellent posts.

The Pan will be employed in many a debate, I expect..

Wyz_sub10

I just want to express shock and disgust that thestickman's physics teacher didn't know what entropy was. WTF??

Albion

You need to be a bit careful here. I notice you were talking about spokesmen rather than research scientists. There are a couple of things to remember here. First, evolutionary biology (and cosmology, astrophysics, geology, and the other subjects in the firing line) does have a strong and extensive research programme, a lot of which is funded by taxpayer dollars. It also has a lot of researchers, many of whom are devout Christians. When creationists talk so glibly about conspiracies, lies, and cover-ups, they're accusing the scientific community of criminal fraud, and they're showing a large degree of lack of confidence in their Christian brethren who are working in these fields of research. As DD said, the public nature of scientific research and the checks and balances caused by scientists trying to replicate work reported by other scientists means that mistakes and misrepresentations tend to be caught. Assuming that deliberate fraud is rare (it's clear that it does exist, but a lot of the reason we know that is because it's detected by other researchers checking their colleagues's work or by whistle-blowers seeing a problem), then the next layer of accusation is directed at the people who communicate science to the public, which is what I think you were talking about.

Science has one major strength here, which is that anybody with access to a computer and to a library or with a couple of hundred dollars a year to spend on supscriptions to Science and Nature can check any of this stuff out for themselves. They can go back to the same sources that the spokesman used, and they can check what those sources really say and they can compare them with what the spokesman said. It's quite useful to do this when you read science articles in newspapers, because a lot of newspapers don't have science correspondents with any particular scientific knowledge; it's quite often the sports reporter or movie critic filling in (my husband has been to a lot of astrophysics meetings where the local paper sent a correspondent to cover the meeting who didn't know what helium was or what sunspots were). Those reporters often make mistakes, but ignorance is different from deception. Spokesmen can certainly be biased (as you can see from following the writings of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould), but that isn't the same as lying, and again, the original work is available for people to check if they have a mind to.

On the other hand, the creationist sites are dedicated to upholding the supremacy and inerrancy of the Bible. This is the statement given by AnswersinGenesis, showing where its intrest really lies; ICR says it's "a Christ focused Creation ministry where science and the Bible are fully integrated" and these are the principles it operates by, showing its religious rather than scientific priorities rather clearly. The TrueOrigins site is concerned with challenging the atheist-materialist philosophical worldview that it accuses evolutionary scientists of supporting. So is the Discovery Institute. In every case, these creationist sites are not about science; their primary focus is to promote a Christ-centred message, and for the young-earth creationist sites, that includes biblical inerrancy. The research programmes supported by these creationist groups are rare to nonexistent; mostly they concentrate on picking holes in the work done by scientists rather than carrying out extensive research of their own. TalkOrigins, NoAnswersinGenesis, and other evolution-supporting sites are supporting the science because that's their major concern. They aren't atheist sites, they're science sites. They care about science, the creation ministries don't. Their articles tend to be written by active researchers. So when it comes to lying about science, especially given that any of us can go back to the original sources and check them out, it's massively unlikely that the science-based sites will be the culprits.

thestickman

Yeah, Albion, I think you are closest to what I am talking about. My choice of words was probably bad they are not lying, but misquoting or misinterpreting or misreporting. I am not really accustomed to talking on forums like this, I usually only debate these things with my friends but I wanted a straight answer on the 2LOT, which I got. I will choose my words more carefully and keep my opinion out of posts from now on [ ]. And Wyz_sub10, when I asked my teacher if evolution contridicted the Second Law of Thermodynamics he didn't know. And when I asked what entropy was, he just vaguly said it was to do with heat transfer. But maybe it was just a bad day for him?
thestickman

long winded fool

Few spokespersons of either side of the debate deliberately lie. Where scientists have their reputations and their peers as a kind of "checks and balances" system, creationists also have their reputations and peers and have a religion which tells them lying is a sin as theirs. They both, however, are often mistaken. When someone who subscribes to one side feels they're right and someone disagrees and they're unable to convince them otherwise, they sometimes think he must be lying to disagree in the face of such "obvious" evidence. Who is more in error is the real question, but that doesn't mean that the side which makes fewer errors is always absolutely correct. Both sides are, in all likelyhood, mistaken about many things. It is logical to give the side which makes the least number of mistakes more attention than the other.

Doubting Didymus

Long winded fool:

No, the question is not who makes more errors. In fact, I can confidently say that evolution-accepting scientists make more errors.

(This is because evolution accepting scientists are a huge professional group that make up a significant slice of the workforce and who collectively run countless experiments each and every day while creationists are a small cultish group of organisms resembling crotch crabs that wouldn't know a controlled experiment in they were the subject of one. "Do idiots really feel pain? Nature p56".)

The real difference is about process. Scientists mistakes are always corrected. Experiments are always repeated by other scientists. Papers are always checked vigorously before submission by impartial reveiwers. Creationist mistakes, on the other hand, are known to persist for DECADES. Have a look for information on Gish and the bullfrog proteins for an example.

long winded fool

Evolutionist mistakes can persist for decades as well. Have you heard of embryonic recapitulation? The theory that the embryo recapitulates all the forms of life that it has evolved from? (amoeba, fish, egg laying animal, mammal, primate, human, or something to this effect) This theory lasted almost a hundred years. What about punctuated equlibrium? Many evolutionists still hold to this theory. You seem to think that there are no creationist scientists. Obviously you are wrong here, though you're entitled to your opinion that there are no good creationist scientists. And they're entitled to their opinion that there are no good evolutionist scientists. I can also point out evolutionists who ignore facts and cling to mistakes just because they feel their reputation and intelligence hangs in the balance. If these small groups of "left-field" evolutionists don't reflect on the actual theory of evolution, then logically the cultish creationist "crotch crabs" don't reflect on actual creationism. (no alliteration intended)

Albion

Since when is it a mistake that embryos show more primitive forms of life as they develop? Are you saying that human embryos don't have the pouches that develop into gills in fish and that they don't have tails?


Any particular reason why they shouldn't?


There are people with degrees in science who are creationits. "Scientists" usually refers to people in active research. There is very little active research in creationist circles; most of what they do involves discrediting evolutionary science, not promoting research of their own. Given that their stated aim is biblical rather than scientific, that's hardly surprising.


Yes, in a free country they're entitled to whatever opinions they care to hold. If they think the 72 Nobel laureates who were signatories of the amicus brief in Edwards v Aguillard aren't good scientists, I guess that's their business. Hard to take them seriously if they do think it, but they're certainly entitled to.


Feel free to do so.