ecco

I wonder how the faculty of Arizona State University feels about the author of The Wedge posting this nonsense on their server. I also wonder if anyone else posted a rebuttal page.

theyeti

So that was you? I read about your sad story from a link somewhere on the talkorigins archive. It's apparently saved from an email conversation you had with someone. I must say that this is one of the most despicable examples of creationist behavior I've ever heard of. I admire you for keeping your cool. Don't let the bastards get to you.

theyeti

Richiyaado

[ August 28, 2002: Message edited by: Richiyaado ]</p>

The Lone Ranger

theyeti:

Yeah, that might well have been me. On the other hand, I've heard similar stories from several other people; apparently, this is a fairly common tactic for Creationists -- lure some unsuspecting dupe of a scientist into a "debate", and try to make him or her look like a fool when (s)he can't deal with your total contempt for logic and evidence.

In my experience, the YECs do this sort of thing all the time. After all, most of their "evidence" consists of out-of-context quotations, misrepresentations of scientific studies, and outright lies.

One of my sisters married into a Fundamentalist Baptist family, and shortly thereafter turned into a dyed-in-the-wool Bible thumper. She's fond of going around telling everyone who will sit still for more than a second or two that if you don't believe exactly as she does, you're doomed to spend eternity in Hell. I can't imagine the sort of cognitive dissonance such a mindset must engender. On the one hand, she's my sister, and she thinks of me as a decent fellow and a good brother; on the other hand, she believes that anyone who fails to share her religious beliefs is a tool of Satan -- especially someone who goes around teaching the "lie of evilution". I've never made any pretense whatsoever of sharing her belief -- at one Christmas gathering, she showed up wearing a sweatshirt which declared that if you weren't with God, then you were with Satan and would burn in Hell for all eternity -- I pointed out to her that I found the shirt offensive, since I most certainly was not a Christian.

On such occasions, you can see an instant of confusion wash over her face, and then she apparently forgets all about it. Apparently, she has solved the dilemma by convincing herself that I really am a Christian at heart, even if I don't know it myself. Whatever.

She sometimes lectures my nieces and nephews on the "sin" of believing in "evilution," but never when I'm around; surely, she must know that I'd destroy her in any such debate. (At our last Christmas gathering, I found out from my other sister that she had been harassing one of my nephews because he'd made an offhand comment about evolution -- but she'd shut up the instant I walked in the door. As Dianna rather bluntly put it, she apparently feels its easier to try to intimidate a 16-year-old than to discuss the subject with someone who actually knows something about it.)

Where was I? Oh yes. Not long after the "debate" at the local Christian school, I receieved an anonymous letter telling me that a noted "Creation Scientist" would be speaking nearby, and that I should go to the talk, to be "enlightened." It wasn't hard to guess who sent the letter.

The talk, unsurprisingly, consisted of misrepresentations, out-of-context quotes, and outright lies. The speaker (whose name escapes me, unfortunately) repeatedly made the claim that Creation Science was real science, and was supported by all the evidence. When the Q&A time came, I raised my hand and stood up when he called on me. I asked him what I thought would be a devastating question: "Since you claim that you're doing real science, and since all scientific hypotheses must be falsifiable, my question is this -- in what way could your 'theory' be falsified?" (After all, he had been claiming all along that "Evilution" had been falsified, and was therefore not legitimate science.) He replied that what he and his Creation Science colleagues were doing was a new and better kind of science. He then began talking very loudly (he had a microphone; I didn't) about the "Evilutionist conspiracy", deliberately drowning out my attempted reply -- even though I stood there for a minute or so, waving my arm to try to get his attention.


***

Anyway, the IDers are typically much more subtle than the YECers, which makes them much more dangerous, in my opinion. To the uninitiated, their claims can sound very convincing indeed. I agree that those of us in the scientific community have a duty to stand up to them, and I try to do so, even though it's darned frustrating at times.

I've often heard my colleagues complain about the abysmal quality of scientific knowledge that our incoming freshmen possess (for the Biology majors, we often have to spend the first year or so getting them to unlearn all the lies they've been taught about evolution). It seems to me perfectly obvious that one of the biggest reasons that the students are so poorly-educated in because we don't make more of an effort to counter the misinformation that they're constantly exposed to in the churches and the media.

Cheers,

Michael

RufusAtticus

I checked up on that and found that the "The Wedge" is not posted by an ID supporter, but an evolutionary-biologist-turn-science-historian. He reasearches anti-evolution movements, including how the modern versions compare to ones contemprary with Darwin.

Here's his main website: <a href="http://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/" target="_blank">http://www.public.asu.edu/~jmlynch/</a>

Here's one of his classes:URL=http://jmlynch.dhs.org/classes/origins/]http://jmlynch.dhs.org/classes/origins/[/URL]

-RvFvS

[ February 04, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>