The title of a recent book by Barbara Forrest and Paul Gross says it all: Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design Theory. As these words suggest, those in the pro-evolution camp have often suggested that today's anti-evolutionist proponents of intelligent design theory share a familial resemblance with their earlier young earth creationist compatriots. At the same time, ID proponents centered at Seattle's Discovery Institute bristle at the "creationist" label. Meanwhile, the whole issue takes on an added urgency because ID proponents have increasingly adopted the political behavior once embraced by creationists of yore, meddling in educational battles at the local level and explicitly laying out a First Amendment legal strategy to achieve future successes. Court cases could lie in the near future, and those may hinge on defining "ID." So what gives?

As it turns out, ID is more or less like young earth creationism—and especially like "creation science"—depending on whether you choose to focus on its actual assertions or its strategic behavior. In substantive terms, ID differs quite significantly from the "creation science" movement that preceded it, and in ways that generally make its arguments stronger, or at least less risible. ID doesn't, for instance, deny the validity of radioisotope dating and assert the existence of a young Earth. Neither does it rely on the feverish nonsense of Flood Geology, claiming that a single Noachian deluge laid down the entire fossil record. More generally, whether out of strategic wariness or otherwise, ID proponents tend to shy away from espousing biblically literalist views in their literature and publications (though the religious motivations of many of ID's All Stars are well documented).

So substantively, we have to admit that ID differs significantly from "creation science." Since young earth creationists themselves frequently made arguments about the presence of design in living things, we might even say that ID represents "creation science" stripped of everything but design arguments (as well as various critiques of evolutionary theory). In fact, it has often been noted that ID verges on intellectual vacuity: At least young earth creationists had their own detailed account of how life on earth came into being.

Yet as far as its strategic behavior goes, ID actually appears to represent a kind of natural culmination of the "creation science" movement, which originated in the 1960s and 1970s for specific legal and educational reasons. When compared to "creation science" on a strategic level, it turns out that ID proceeds still further in the direction of PR-oriented pseudoscience and the denial of religious intentions in argument. In fact, we can detect many rudimentary elements of the current ID approach among earlier advocates of "creation science"—though ID has improved and perfected them.

Consider the history of American creationism. As the definitive book on the subject—Ronald Numbers' The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism—makes clear, over the last century the creationist movement showed a marked trend towards the appropriation of scientific trappings and the masking of outwardly religious forms of argumentation (at least in the versions of their theories that they wanted presented in public schools). From first to last, American creationism has been primarily motivated by fundamentalist religiosity. But though even early creationists like William Jennings Bryan—who joined the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1924—sometimes claimed to act scientifically, in the 1960s and 1970s the movement transformed.

With the publication of John C. Whitcomb, Jr. and Henry Morris's The Genesis Flood in 1961, the formation of the Creation Research Society in 1963, and finally Morris's explicit adoption of the term "creation science" in the 1970s, creationism dramatically ramped up its scientific pretensions. Its proponents began to insist that you didn't have to believe in the Bible to see the evidence for creationism, and that students could be taught "creation science" without being preached to.

The approach represented a new strategy from the creationist perspective, and one that arose in response to previous a U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring religious bans on the teaching of evolution in public schools unconstitutional (something the state of Arkansas had tried to do). In the wake of this setback, creationists began to demand "equal time" for their views in science classes, which in turn necessitated a new campaign to present those views as strictly scientific. "'Scientific creationism' was just a sort of an add on to try to get in the public schools," Numbers told me during a recent phone conversation.

But insofar as "creation science" represented a legal strategy, it proved a dramatic failure. Creation science didn't mask its religious content enough, or prove its scientific bonafides in any meaningful way. It didn't really fool anybody who wasn't inclined to believe in it for religious reasons anyway. In the 1987 case Edwards v. Aguillard the U.S. Supreme Court essentially ruled that "creation science" amounted to religion masquerading as science, and therefore couldn't be taught in public school science classes.

But though "creation science" failed, what's intriguing for our current purposes are its tactics: recruit Ph.D.s to outfits like the Creation Research Society and Institution for Creation Research; claim repeatedly to be doing science; and—at least to some extent—keep religion offstage.

All of these attributes also manifest themselves in the intelligent design movement, where they're taken to a much higher level. ID has made significant inroads at major universities, and recruited a wide range of Ph.D.s to serve as fellows at Seattle's Discovery Institute. It claims—repeatedly—to represent a scientific innovation. Finally, when journalists attempt to probe the religious motivations of ID types, they're accused of engaging in ad hominems. ID advocates don't want to be judged on religious grounds, and they do a much better job than "creation scientists" of keeping religion out of their arguments, even if it may lie in their backgrounds and personal belief systems.

In all of these ways, ID represents a strategic upgrade of "creation science." In fact, it turns out that ID's "teach the controversy" program—which advocates instructing public school students in the alleged weaknesses in evolutionary theory, rather than in ID itself—appears to have originated with "creation scientists" as well. Following the Supreme Court's Edwards v. Aguillard decision, the Institute for Creation Research prepared an intriguing evaluation of what should come next. Among other points, the group noted that "school boards and teachers should be strongly encouraged at least to stress the scientific evidences and arguments against evolution in their classes…even if they don't wish to recognize these as evidences and arguments for creationism." As Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education has observed, this comment shows that "teach the controversy" was "pioneered in the wake of Edwards v. Aguillard."

So what can we conclude from this? First, it's incorrect to call ID proponents "creationists" if by that term we mean to suggest that they're members of the young earth creationist movement. That's simply not true; their arguments differ substantially. Granted, if we define "creationism" minus its historical baggage, and simply claim that it means "opposing the theory of evolution for religious reasons," then ID followers certainly fit the mold.

Either way, though, the bigger point is this: Because ID follows the basic strategy of "creation science," it may also suffer from the same weaknesses. Just like "creation science," ID has failed to convince working biologists of its scientific validity. If a case over ID ever reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, we can therefore expect that, just as in Edwards v. Aguillard, countless Nobel Laureates will sign an amicus brief in the case explaining that ID isn't scientifically credible.

Moreover, although ID has done a much better job of masking the religious elements of its approach, those elements have nevertheless been unearthed by journalists and authors critical of the movement. (See Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design Theory for details.) So even as ID has failed to successfully claim the mantle of science, it's also failed to successfully discard the mantle of religion. Once again, that's a legal liability.

So, in short, even though ID may not be young earth creationism, and may not be "creation science," it nevertheless seems doomed to recapitulate that prior movement's errors and failures. That doesn't necessarily prove that ID is like traditional creationism in any detailed way. Rather, it simply just goes to show that both are forms of religiously inspired anti-evolutionism, and will automatically have a near-impossible row to hoe thanks to the firm place of evolutionary theory in modern biology.
http://www.csicop.org/doubtandabout/id/

Professional evolutionists are whining as they no longer have complete monopoly on their scientific playground.

Evos (I mean the ones really committed to the goo-to-you-via-the-zoo theory, instead of just thoughtlessly accepting it) are nowadays shuffling chairs on the board of Titanic and whistling by the graveyard. We will get this materialist philosophy masquerading as objective science sooner or later.

William Paley lives!

Here's a truism: if evos wouldn't have almost total co-operation by the media on their side, their influence wouldn't be nearly so impressive, even and especially among the science community.

Reminds you of any other group?


Historical lesson of the day: check this article by a noted sociologist/historian Rodney Stark (who's been quoted by Kevin MacDonald) on how the original Darwin party forced their ideology on the public like a veritable Frankfurt School:


Fact, Fable, and Darwin

By Rodney Stark

http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.18132/article_detail.asp[/COLOR]

Excerpt:

"Since then the Darwinian Crusade has tried to focus all attention on the most unqualified and most vulnerable opponents, and when no easy targets present themselves it has invented them. Huxley "made straw men of the 'creationists,'" as his biographer Desmond admitted. Even today it is a rare textbook or any popular treatment of evolution and religion that does not reduce "creationism" to the simplest caricatures."


Petr

"Intelligent Design" is not only pseudo-science, it is anti-science in that the "intelligent design" mindset runs counter to the very attitudes that make scientific discovery possible.

"Intelligent design" arguments boil down to this: we cannot explain a current biological or cosmological phenomenon. Therefore, it must be the work of some supernatural entity. 100 years ago, the ID people invoked the camera eye of vertebrates as "proof" that evolution is impossible. Their standard argument was "what use is 10% of an eye." Now that we understand how eyes work and develop, and how primitive eye spots serve a purpose to the lower organisms that have them, they have more or less abandoned this argument (just as they've abandoned the mammalian ear argument when fossil cynodont reptiles were found with jaw articulations intermediate between reptile jaws and mammal ears). So now they jump out triumphantly and shout, "ah, but you can't explain such and such protein folding" or some other phenomenon in cell biology.

In other words, the strategy is one where they find some currently unexplained phenomenon, and when it is explained, rather than conceding defeat like any sincere person would, they say, "ah, but you haven't explained this!" In other words, ignorance is triumph for them, something to celebrate. While most scientists consider an unexplained phenomenon as a new challenge to be studied and explained, the ID'er revels in the unexplained, because it gives him an excuse to invoke someone waving a magic wand and making it all happen. Since science by definition works to explain the world through material processes and sees invocations of demons and spirits as unscientific, the ID'er is every bit as much "anti-science" as any holy-rolling Bible thumper, albeit more pretentious and dishonest.

The Biblical worldview with its transcendent Creator-God creating "laws of nature" was the necessity for the true science to develop.

Evolutionists like you have an unbelievably smug and ingrateful attitude.


Check out this book by Rodney Stark:


"For the Glory of God : How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0691114366/qid=1093080612/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/002-2988819-7729643?v=glance&s=books

Excerpt:

"Along the way, Stark debunks many commonly accepted ideas. He interprets the sixteenth-century flowering of science not as a sudden revolution that burst religious barriers, but as the normal, gradual, and direct outgrowth of medieval theology. He also shows that the very ideas about God that sustained the rise of science led also to intense witch-hunting by otherwise clear-headed Europeans, including some celebrated scientists."


Spontaneous evolution of all life is not a theory with holes in it, it is a bunch of holes with some scraps of theory around them.


Petr

And here's something else for you anti-religious evos to chew about:

(An awfully long list!)


Scientists of the Christian Faith: A Presentation of the Pioneers, Practitioners and Supporters of Modern Science

Compiled by W. R. Miller

http://www.tektonics.org/sciencemony.htm



Petr

The Biblical worldview with its transcendent Creator-God creating "laws of nature" was the necessity for the true science to develop.

Evolutionists like you have an unbelievably smug and ingrateful attitude.

If that were true, why is it that the ancient Greeks rather than the ancient Israelites laid the foundations of modern science. Ancient Israel contributed almost nothing to mathematics and science, while the pagan Greeks made contributions that are studied to this day (i.e. people still study Archimedes on statics and Euclid's geometry). If the Judaeo-Biblical worldview were conducive to science, one would think that the ancient Israelites would have been light years ahead of the Greeks in these ventures.

To repeat, science is defined as the search for material explanations for natural phenomena. Invoking the supernatural to account for what we cannot explain today runs counter to the very definition of science. If your ID "scientist" were practicing medicine 150 years ago, he would argue that malaria is "proven" to have been caused by demons because nobody had discovered the parasite that caused it yet.

One would think that the greatest breakthroughs in science came from the pious types, if one takes the rhetoric of the "All I need to know is contained in one book" types seriously.

Enjoy the "nihilist's" fruits of labor, thumb-stuck-in-the-book-no-nothings :222

One would think that the greatest breakthroughs in science came from the pious types, if one takes the rhetoric of the "All I need to know is contained in one book" types seriously.

Enjoy the "nihilist's" fruits of labor, thumb-stuck-in-the-book-no-nothings :222

Creationist types like to invoke Isaac Newton as an example of a pious scientist, and indeed Newton was certainly more conventionally religious than Galileo, Leibniz, etc. However, even Newton was by the standards of any church an Arian heretic (i.e. effectively denied the divinity of Christ, arguing that Jesus was last in the lines of prophets rather than God made man).

A huge database of replies to creationist claims:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

Creationist types like to invoke Isaac Newton as an example of a pious scientist, and indeed Newton was certainly more conventionally religious than Galileo, Leibniz, etc. However, even Newton was by the standards of any church an Arian heretic (i.e. effectively denied the divinity of Christ, arguing that Jesus was last in the lines of prophets rather than God made man).

I believe he also dabbled in the occult, particularily Alchemy. During his time I am not sure if this would have been considered acceptable by Christian standards, but it certainly isn't contemporarily. In general, science owes very much to the Hermetic tradition. Many Alchemists throughout history were Christians yet today this seems to be regarded as occultism incompatible with Christianity, something almost akin to satanism.

- "If your ID "scientist" were practicing medicine 150 years ago, he would argue that malaria is "proven" to have been caused by demons because nobody had discovered the parasite that caused it yet."


You jerk. Of course you won't mention any major religious figure from that era (or even any time) that would have actually said such a silly thing - you just created a straw-man smear, something that you God-hating secularists do quite often to bolster your faith.

Just read that book by Rodney Stark - it chronicles many similar hoaxes perpetrated by your kind:

The following are all popular myths, created by malevolent anti-Christians:

- Columbus proved to ignorant chuchmen that Earth was round

- church forbade dissections

- Huxley humiliated bishop Wilberforce in a debate on evolution

et cetera.


Somebody said: "most people think that they are engaged in some deep thinking when they are actually just re-hashing their prejudices"


And as for Greeks: their "science" went to a dead-end. Francis Bacon already saw that for all their philosophizing, they didn't actually accomplish much concrete results from their speculations.

Christianity saved the Classical civilization from itself.


PS:

Here's a genuine laugh riot for you, unlike that malaria-and-demons stuff:

All evolutionists - all the way from ancient Greece until believing Christian Pasteur proved them wrong - firmly believed that little creatures like insects came to be all by themselves from dirt and other substances.

The spontaneous birth of the first cell is just a bit more sophisticated version of the same nonsense.


Petr

- "If your ID "scientist" were practicing medicine 150 years ago, he would argue that malaria is "proven" to have been caused by demons because nobody had discovered the parasite that caused it yet."


You jerk. Of course you won't mention any major religious figure from that era (or even any time) that would have actually said such a silly thing - you just created a straw-man smear, something that you God-hating secularists do quite often to bolster your faith.

Why do you consider blaming malaria on demons to be a "silly thing?" After all, the whole ID approach to science basically says the same thing: we can't explain a particular biological phenomenon right now, so let's explain it by saying God waved a magic wand and put it here. How is that different from saying "we don't know what causes malaria...it must be demons!"

AY:

I fail to see how the theory of "intelligent design" would cease research into genetics, even if it were wholly accepted by the scientific community at large.

One would think that the greatest breakthroughs in science came from the pious types, if one takes the rhetoric of the "All I need to know is contained in one book" types seriously.


Perhaps you should try reading The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories by J. L. Heilbron


http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674005368/completerev0d-20/701-3898203-9935516

The Sun in the Church by J.L. Heilbron is a provocative work of scholarship that challenges long-held views of the relationship between science and Christianity. Heilbron's main point is simple enough: "The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions." Despite the persecution of Galileo, Heilbron notes, the Church actively supported mathematical and astronomical research--often designing cathedrals that could also function as observatories--in order to set the precise date of Easter (a crucial endeavor for maintaining the unity of the Church). Heilbron's fluid, engaging style brings his detailed reconstructions of 16th- and 17th-century Church politics to life. And his argument that scientific knowledge was deemed both morally neutral and politically useful during the Reformation and beyond yields an unusually interesting, complex, and human understanding of Catholicism in the early Modern period. --Michael Joseph Gross

"AY:

I fail to see how the theory of "intelligent design" would cease research into genetics, even if it were wholly accepted by the scientific community at large."


I'll let you in on a little secret, Gus:

Just like Jews shamelessly moan about every teeny weeny little anti-Judaic incident out there as if it were a threat to the entire human civilization as we know it,

(application: "the French anti-Semitism should outrage the entire America/democratic world!")

... so do professional evolutionist propagandists highlight every instance when IDs manage to get their voice heard out of the fog of stiffling censorship, and whine that it is a threat to the entire scientific worldview as we know it.

(application: "you can't practice any real science without entirely accepting the hypothesis of completely unguided goo-to-you-via-the-zoo evolution!")


These parasitical groups (Jews and evolutionary establishment) act as if any threat against specifically at THEM would also have catastrophic consequences on the rest of of the world too, when in reality the world would be a much better place without both of these groups and their influence.



Petr

I'll agree that some in the scientific circle react to anything smacking of the supernatural as a Jew reacts to the cross. But I dont think AY fits into that category, which is why I queried him on the logical connection in his statement.

The original article in the thread is, of course, laughable. It does not address the science but creates a strawman and then lampoons that strawman in a non-scientific context.

Not directed to anyone - let's keep a civilized tone here and not got sucked into a Crusader-Pagan war that damaged another excellent posting board.

Thank you Gus. Always a pleasure to meet a guy who obviously thinks before talks (or types) - even if he/she should end up with some wrong conclusions anyway.


Petr

AY:

I fail to see how the theory of "intelligent design" would cease research into genetics, even if it were wholly accepted by the scientific community at large.

My point is that if the same mindset that motivated "intelligent design" were to permeate all of the sciences, we would be back to the time when demonic posession was used to account for then-unexplained mental illness and evil spirits were invoked to explain infection and fever. The worldview that says, "We can't explain it, so let's invoke the supernatural" is what drives ID and is what drove demonological medicine.

As for the practical implications of ID on genetics and other fields, science addresses two different questions: how things work, and where they came from. By saying somebody waved a magic wand and it was all here, ID excludes all inquiry into the second question.

Petr -

Yes, when all else fails, call your opponents Jews. Ironic, considering that your side considers the Book of Genesis (a Jewish holy book, in case you didn't know) to be a science textbook.


... so do professional evolutionist propagandists highlight every instance when IDs manage to get their voice heard out of the fog of stiffling censorship, and whine that it is a threat to the entire scientific worldview as we know it.

Should we also give the "demonic possession causes schizophrenia" or "evil spirits cause sleeping sickness" a fair hearing? After all, everyone is entitled to their opinion, right?

Personally, I agree with you that there's no need to be "hysterical" or to "censor" ID. It has tremendous entertainment value. Every biology journal should set up a little corner for people to write articles about ID, just as every medical journal should set up a demonology section for laughs.

Not directed to anyone - let's keep a civilized tone here and not got sucked into a Crusader-Pagan war that damaged another excellent posting board.

Admins destroyed that forum. As long as an "official" position isn't announced here there's little danger of that.

The argument goes in a circle, but the basic argument that the God Squad is unable to face, is that scientific reasoning excludes belief in unsubstantiated dogmas (and all religions are unsubstantiated to the standards of science). That's why all these creationists etc are laughed off as nuts, and not because scientists are anti-religious. It's the same as, in your circles, a person without education trying to pretend to be a lawyer.

Admins destroyed that forum. As long as an "official" position isn't announced here there's little danger of that.

The argument goes in a circle, but the basic argument that the God Squad is unable to face, is that scientific reasoning excludes belief in unsubstantiated dogmas (and all religions are unsubstantiated to the standards of science). That's why all these creationists etc are laughed off as nuts, and not because scientists are anti-religious. It's the same as, in your circles, a person without education trying to pretend to be a lawyer.

Speaking as an administrator, I have no problem with Petr posting his ID material here. I would hope that if he were an Admin he would handle the same issues better than the OD censors have.

I don't find anyone's religious belief or disbelief to be problematic per se on a political messageboard, and I want to keep it that way.

I'm not sure why it is so hard to believe that the universe is not the product of a complex consciousness, or why biological evolution is inconsistent with such a belief. I am a theist and I certainly don't believe we descended linearly from two human beings named Adam and Eve 12,000 years ago. At the same time, I have to chuckle when I read about biochemists desperately trying to work out equations to explain the seemingly ordered prevalence of hydrocarbons. Why get so worked up about it? If there's a God, there's a God. Or, if you like, if there could be a God, there could be a God.

I'm not too hung up on the issue, but the theory of evolution seems to require two things: tremendous amounts of time and a great many transitional species. Both elements appear problematic to the theory.

I'm not so sure why it is so hard to believe that the universe is not the product of a complex consciousness, or why biological evolution is inconsistent with such a belief.

I similarly fail to see why anybody except an Old Testament literalist would be troubled by the existence of biological evolution. There is nothing in biological evolution or modern cosmology that negates the existence of God. It only contradicts a strict Biblical interpretation of Genesis and the de novo creation of every species 6000 years ago.

I also can't figure out why Biblical literalists think that discrediting evolution proves the Book of Genesis correct. Even if there were no biological evolution, why does Genesis have priveleged status as a creation myth? Why not give the Hindu and Buddhist cosmogenies (which are no less believable) or any number of ancient pagan creation myths a fair hearing?

Ah, the literalists. Please do not allow such people to distract you.

My parents were literalists so naturally, we ended up religious fundamentalists, then charismatic Christians. They've followed the trend along with other family members to the inevitable conclusion: Messianic Judaism. :mad:

Admins destroyed that forum. As long as an "official" position isn't announced here there's little danger of that.

No comment. Let's just say I think Intolerance destroyed it. Granted, only a few had the power to be intolerant there. :D


The argument goes in a circle, but the basic argument that the God Squad is unable to face, is that scientific reasoning excludes belief in unsubstantiated dogmas (and all religions are unsubstantiated to the standards of science). That's why all these creationists etc are laughed off as nuts, and not because scientists are anti-religious. It's the same as, in your circles, a person without education trying to pretend to be a lawyer.

No, I understand. I just think evo is a little different. It is not a scientifically provable theory is it? For that matter ID isnt provable either. I think one can and should discredit scientific theories w/ evidence. Recounting the history of some loons a century ago wouldnt appear to do that.

No, I understand. I just think evo is a little different. It is not a scientifically provable theory is it? For that matter ID isnt provable either. I think one can and should discredit scientific theories w/ evidence. Recounting the history of some loons a century ago wouldnt appear to do that.

Well, in a sense science doesn't "prove" anything - it merely builds interpretations and paradigms that are most consistent with observed facts and correlations. We haven't "proved" that fever is caused by infection, we've only shown a correlation between fever and parasites/bacteria/viruses that today we find more plausible and operationally useful than blaming it on demons and evil spirits. The postmodernist (or the religious fanatic) can very well say, "But you haven't proven it, it could just be a spurious correlation, so the disease is caused by demons after all." Similarly, since nobody has invented time travel we can't "prove" the age of the universe and what happened millions of years ago, but we can reasonably reconstruct the past from modern chemistry, biology, and geology.

Of course, nobody gets away with this in medicine, because medical science has practical applications that mean life or death. Evolutionary biology, comology, etc. have relatively few practical applications, so disbelief in evolution or the big bang doesn't get in the way of practical applications, which is why "creationism" is more tolerated in biology and cosmology than demonology is in medicine and psychiatry.

On the other hand, if I owned an oil or mining company I wouldn't hire a "geologist" who believes that all rocks are less than 6000 years old and the outcome of the Noahic flood.

Ok. Good post AY. :)

I thought ID was the doctrine that claims the textbook complexity of the natural world bears the mark of an Intelligent Designer, as opposed to emerging through an unguided, random process. I did not think ID was the doctrine that claims any phenomena that cannot currently be explained by science is the result of supernatural forces. That is a flagrant non-sequitur and I'm not aware of any Christian theologian who defines ID in this way.

I thought ID was the doctrine that claims the textbook complexity of the natural world bears the mark of an Intelligent Designer, as opposed to emerging through an unguided, random process. I did not think ID was the doctrine that claims any phenomena that cannot currently be explained by science is the result of supernatural forces.That is a flagrant non-sequitur and I'm not aware of any Christian theologian who defines ID in this way.

(boldface emphasis mine)

The two statements are basically two different ways of stating the same thing. "Bears the mark of an intelligent designer" is the conclusion drawn from the statement "we cannot explain the process through modern scientific paradigms."

- "Yes, when all else fails, call your opponents Jews. "


As it happens, the comparison is quite valid here.


Otherwise, you just keep spouting strawmen about sleepin sickness demons and hindu cosmologies. Nothing that I wouldn't have seen for many, many times.


Petr

- "On the other hand, if I owned an oil or mining company I wouldn't hire a "geologist" who believes that all rocks are less than 6000 years old and the outcome of the Noahic flood."


As it happens, I find the the evolutionist explanation for the origins of oil quite hilarious - do you guys really believe that all this crude comes from small composed critters, and that it has all this pressure left in it after billions of years?


(Easy-to-understand source)


"Oil and Evolution"

http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~do_while/sage/v5i1f.htm

Excerpt:

How Petroleum Was Formed

Organic Theory. No one really knows how petroleum was formed. Most scientists believe the organic theory. It says that petroleum was formed through millions of years in great oceans that covered many parts of the earth during prehistoric times. Tiny plants and animals lived in shallow water and along the coasts of seas, just as they do today. As these plants and animals died, their remains settled on the muddy bottoms of the oceans. Here, even smaller forms of life called bacteria caused them to decay.

Fine sand and mud, called sediments, drifted down over the plant and animal matter. As these sediments piled up, their great weight pressed them into hard, compact beds, or layers, of sedimentary rock (See ROCK [Sedimentary Rock]). During this process, bacteria, heat, pressure, and perhaps other natural forces changed the plant and animal remains into oil and natural gas.

Tiny drops of oil and bubbles of gas moved from the mud beds in which they were formed into other sedimentary rocks, usually sandstone or limestone. These porous rocks contain pores, or small openings, through which the oil moved.

Through millions of years, layers of less porous sedimentary rock formed above the rock beds. This rock sealed the oil and gas into underground pools. Later, many of the ancient seas drained away through movements of the earth’s crust, and dry land appeared above the petroleum deposits. 6


The story in a modern encyclopedia (Encarta 98) is so similar that it isn’t worth repeating it.


...

Let’s try to visualize just how much oil is being pumped out of the ground every day. An American football field (including the two end zones) is 360 feet by 160 feet (57,600 square feet). Soccer and rugby fields are about the same size. A barrel of oil is 5.6 cubic feet, so 67.7 million barrels of oil is equivalent to 379,120,000 cubic feet. So, oil sufficient to cover a football field with a layer of oil 6,600 feet high is being pumped out of the ground every day. That’s 5.2 times as tall as the Empire State Building. (European readers might prefer to imagine a soccer field covered with oil 6.7 times as high as the Eiffel Tower.)

The Sinclair refinery near Rawlins, Wyoming produces 60,000 barrels/day. 7 So, in just one year, that one refinery alone produces enough oil to cover a football field with 2,129 feet of petroleum products. Clearly, all that oil didn’t come from dead dinosaurs.

Could it have come from decaying seaweed and plankton on the bottom of a shallow sea? That’s hard to believe, too. There might be that much stuff on the bottom of a shallow sea, but most of it is eaten by scavengers before it is buried. The only way we can imagine for that much organic material to be buried by thousands of feet of sedimentary rock, is for an awful lot of mud to wash into the bottom of a shallow sea very rapidly.

...



Petr

(boldface emphasis mine)

The two statements are basically two different ways of stating the same thing.

How can they convey the same thing, when the first sentence posits an Intelligent Designer to account for the complexity observed in the natural world and the second posits a designer to account for phenomena that cannot currently be explained by science? The complexity of the natural world is not something science is unable to explain.

"Bears the mark of an intelligent designer" is the conclusion drawn from the statement "we cannot explain the process through modern scientific paradigms."

That is merely your characterization of the ID proponents' arguments, AntiYuppie. It is not a conclusion derived from anything I wrote.

- "Yes, when all else fails, call your opponents Jews. "


As it happens, the comparison is quite valid here.


Otherwise, you just keep spouting strawmen about sleepin sickness demons and hindu cosmologies. Nothing that I wouldn't have seen for many, many times.


Petr

Like all fanatics, Petr's strategy is never to respond to the opponent's arguments, but rather to start new ad hominem attacks.

Now kindly reply to the following questions before I waste any more of my time with you:

1) Why does somebody who condemns Jews (and accuses opponents of being "like Jews") consider a Jewish book of myths (Genesis) to be a reliable scientific document? Do you think it's purely coincidental the the most vocal advocates of "Creation Science" are also rabid Christian Zionists? That's what happens when European peoples take Jewish myths seriously and literally: they start believing nonsense like "the Earth is 6000 years old" and "Jews are special people in God's eyes."

2) You know perfectly well that religious fanaticism has created a sect known as "Christian Science," who reject modern medicine and believe that prayer is the only permitted way to treat illness. The strange thing is, I don't need to cite Medieval examples of mental illness attributed to posession or fever to "evil spirits," you have practitioners of the very same beliefs running around loose to this day. The only difference between the "Christian Scientist" in medicine and the "ID scientist" in evolution is that the former has practical implications that cost people lives, while the latter only contribute to ignorance. So please don't pretend that religious fundamentalism doesn't subvert other scientific accomplishments.

3) My question about Hindu mythology is a relevant one, Petr. Even if evolution were completely false, how would that prove your beloved Genesis account to be true? Why is the Book of Genesis the only "alternative" to evolution? What makes Jewish mythology preferable to Hellene, Hindu, Norse, (or any other creation myth) as an alternative to evolution? I never understood why creationists believed the "it's either Genesis or Darwin" dichotomy, unless you assume from the very beginning that Genesis infallible.

It's rather ironic that you attack evolutionists as "dogmatic" for blocking out "Creation Science," but I do wonder whether Petr, as a hypothetical editor of a creationist journal, would give the Hindu creation myth a fair hearing. Somehow I doubt it.

4) Nobody is "censoring" your ID nonsense Petr, not on this board, and not in the real world. Creationists have their own journals, just as Christian Scientists have their own journals devoted to the efficacy of prayer in curing illness. That medical journals chose not to publish the latter and geology journal chose not to publish papers asserting the world is 6000 years old is a matter of freedom of association. I don't believe in economic free markets, but I do believe in a free market of ideas - so by all means let demonology and creation journals make their case.

5) If Judaeo-Biblical literalism is fully compatible with modern science, why is it that the Biblical Israelites made NO contributions to mathematics or science to speak of while the pagan Greeks laid the foundations fo both?

The worldview that says, "We can't explain it, so let's invoke the supernatural" is what drives ID and is what drove demonological medicine.

I'm not aware of any advocate of Intelligent Design whose position could be characterized this way. ID just says the natural world appears "designed," i.e., that it is too complex to have arisen by physical laws and random genetic mutations. It does not say that whatever science is unable to explain at the present moment must be the work of spirits. For instance, I'm unaware of any supporter of ID who claims that until physicists gain a better understanding of the density and nature of dark matter, spirits must be postulated to explain the density and nature of dark matter.

In addition, if you believe all phenomena can, in principle, be explained by science, then you are adopting a very "unscientific" worldview.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, ID is (as Carl points out) just the view that the universe appears designed. It's not science as far as I can tell (how would one test such a thing?) and has no place in the teaching of science, but in and of itself, it's pretty harmless. "Irreducible complexity" is the name given to the notion that some biological structures are too complex to have evolved, which is what I think AY is getting at. Unfortunately for its proponents, an awful lot of the supposedly irreducible structures' evolutionary histories can be reconstructed.

- "1) Why does somebody who condemns Jews (and accuses opponents of being "like Jews") consider a Jewish book of myths (Genesis) to be a reliable scientific document? Do you think it's purely coincidental the the most vocal advocates of "Creation Science" are also rabid Christian Zionists? That's what happens when European peoples take Jewish myths seriously and literally: they start believing nonsense like "the Earth is 6000 years old" and "Jews are special people in God's eyes."


I am going to answer as honestly and quickly as I can, (being in a hurry), beginning with your point 1:


I do not care about your opinion. I recognize the Word of God when I see it, and Genesis creation story is it. Not from "Jews", and not even from Israelites, but of God.

I do not mind your method of arguing by association of guilt. I am not the type that can be shamed that way into backing away from their fundamental positions.


I also fully subscribe to the "replacement theology" - that the Church of Jesus Christ is the new Israel, owning the promises given to Abraham.

The ones posing as Jews nowadays (Revelation 2:9) have ZERO copyright to the Old Testament - all they have done to it their history has been distorting it through their Talmudic commentaries, which Michael A. Hoffman II nicely describes here from a Christian perspective:

http://www.hoffman-info.com/talmudtruth.html

I can say a hearty "amen" to the paragarph that ends this essay:

"Christianity is the only true religion of the Bible. It was founded by Israelites who adhered to the Torah (Pentateuch) and who recognized in Christ's gospel of salvation through grace, the fulfillment of the Old Testament. It is the followers of Jesus who constitute the holy nation and the royal priesthood (I Peter 2:9)."

Mikey also has some handy material on "that old time religion" of replacement theology, here:

http://www.hoffman-info.com/christian3.html


(And of course I also believe that Ashkenazim are to a very considerable degree of Turko-Slavic origin…)


John Chrysostom here nicely describes how Christian who venerates the Old Testament should all the more abhore the way Jewish commentators abuse it:

http://www.ferrum.edu/dhowell/rel113/antijudaism/chrysostom_supersession.htm


"V. (2) Since there are some who think of the synagogue as a holy place, I must say a few words to them. Why do you reverence that place? Must you not despise it, hold it in abomination, run away from it? They answer that the Law and the books of the prophets are kept there. What is this? Will any place where these books are be a holy place? By no means! This is the reason above all others why I hate the synagogue and abhor it. They have the prophets but not believe them; they read the sacred writings but reject their witness-and this is a mark of men guilty of the greatest outrage. (3) Tell me this. If you were to see a venerable man, illustrious and renowned, dragged off into a tavern or den of robbers; if you were to see him outraged, beaten, and subjected there to the worst violence, would you have held that tavern or den in high esteem because that great and esteemed man had been inside it while undergoing that violent treatment? I think not. Rather, for this very reason you would have hated and abhorred the place. (4) Let that be your judgment about the synagogue, too. For they brought the books of Moses and the prophets along with them into the synagogue, not to honor them but to outrage them with dishonor. When they say that Moses and the prophets knew not Christ and said nothing about his coming, what greater outrage could they do to those holy men than to accuse them of failing to recognize their Master, than to say that those saintly prophets are partners of their impiety? And so it is that we must hate both them and their synagogue all the more because of their offensive treatment of those holy men. (5) Why do I speak about the books and the synagogues? In time of persecution, the public executioners lay hold of the bodies of the martyrs, they scourge them, and tear them to pieces. Does it make the executioners' hands holy because they lay hold of the body of holy men? Heaven forbid! The hands which grasped and held the bodies of the holy ones still stay unholy. Why? Because those executioners did a wicked thing when they laid their hands upon the holy. And will those who handle and outrage the writings of the holy ones be any more venerable for this than those who executed the martyrs? Would that not be the ultimate foolishness? If the maltreated bodies of the martyrs do not sanctify those who maltreated them but even add to their blood-guilt, much less could the Scriptures, if read without belief, ever help those who read without believing. The very act of deliberately choosing to maltreat the Scriptures convicts them of greater godlessness. (6) If they did not have the prophets, they would not deserve such punishment; if they had not read the sacred books, they would not be so unclean and so unholy. But, as it is, they have been stripped of all excuse. They do have the heralds of the truth but, with hostile heart, they set themselves against the prophets and the truth they speak. So it is for this reason that they would be all the more profane and blood-guilty: they have the prophets, but they treat them with hostile hearts."


I also do not consider the Genesis to be "a scientific document" in the banal modern sense of the word. I think it only gives the basic outline that declares that this world is a creation, not having existed forever. Of course you keep ignoring the fact that creationists also come in many shades - "Old-earthers", "young-earthers" and so on. You keep strawmanning us as if we were just the same monotonic bunch of mindwashed zombies.

(I tend to subscribe more and more into the young-earth variety, not having really made my mind up…)


Petr

2) You know perfectly well that religious fanaticism has created a sect known as "Christian Science," who reject modern medicine and believe that prayer is the only permitted way to treat illness.


You keep bringing up irrelevancies.

In fact, "Christian Science" was born out of religious LIBERALISM rather than true fundamentalism it replaced in America during the late 19th century:


"Mrs. Eddy was chronically sick growing up, with many ailments including paralysis, hysteria, seizures and convulsions. At 22, she married her first of three husbands, George Glover, who died within 6 months from yellow fever. Following Glover's death, she began to be involved in mesmerism (hypnosis) and the occult practices of spiritualism and clairvoyance (Ruth Tucker, Another Gospel, p. 152). Still ill, she married Daniel Patterson in 1853, a dentist and homeopathic practitioner. It was during this time she met mental healer Phineas P. Quimby (1802-1866), whose influence would shape her belief of Christian Science. Quimby believed that illness and disease could be cured through positive thoughts and healthy attitudes, by changing one's beliefs about the illness. She claimed that Quimby cured her; she suddenly improved, but later the symptoms returned (Another Gospel, p. 155).

After Quimby's death in 1866, Mrs. Eddy determined to carry on his work. She had developed a "psychic dependence" on Quimby, drawing on his spiritual presence, claiming even visitations by his apparition. Eddy "reached the scientific certainty that all causation rests with the Mind, and that every effect is a mental phenomena."

Religious liberalism:

"Mary Baker Eddy claimed the Bible was her "only textbook" and "only authority." Yet she also said the Bible has thousands of errors -- 30,000 in the Old Testament and 300,000 in the New Testament. Christian Scientists believe that Mrs. Eddy's discovery of Divine Science is the "final revelation" from God."

http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Cults/science.htm


This is more like 1960's style of guru religiosity. You just show your theological ignorance by lumping CS together with "that old time religion"


Or otherwise, this "point" of yours is just tedious atheist whining about why there are so many different kinds of religions and why they make people so "fanatic".

(It is the "fanatics" that do all the worthwhile things in this world)


Petr

- "3) My question about Hindu mythology is a relevant one, Petr. Even if evolution were completely false, how would that prove your beloved Genesis account to be true? Why is the Book of Genesis the only "alternative" to evolution? What makes Jewish mythology preferable to Hellene, Hindu, Norse, (or any other creation myth) as an alternative to evolution? I never understood why creationists believed the "it's either Genesis or Darwin" dichotomy, unless you assume from the very beginning that Genesis infallible.

It's rather ironic that you attack evolutionists as "dogmatic" for blocking out "Creation Science," but I do wonder whether Petr, as a hypothetical editor of a creationist journal, would give the Hindu creation myth a fair hearing. Somehow I doubt it."


I've heard this lame method of argumentation so many times, and I wonder why it makes such an impression to you unbelievers.

First of all; why should us "evolution skeptics" have to prove anything at all?

As I've seen Holocaust skeptics saying, skeptics don't have to "prove" anything. All they have to do is prove that the hypothesis at hand is contradictary and inconsistent with the observable empirical evidence.

All we hard-core creationists want FIRST is to prove that spontaneous evolution of all life is an untenable hypothesis.

THEN, we can present some of our own views to people. Whether they convince anyone, is in the hand of the Holy Spirit.

Step by step.


(Many "milder" anti-evos are kind of agnostic: they are just sincerely convinced that Darwinian evolution doesn't hold water. They do not necessarily want to replace it with anything.

Once again you caricature all opponents of Darwin the Infallible as one set of mindless fanatics.)


By all means! We serious creationists are NOT afraid to review Hindu creation myths - if some Hindu would only bother to present it. Since no educated Indian actually bothers to defend their holy texts in the scientific sense, we can safely conclude that they are not worth the effort.

Same goes for Greek, Norse and other mythologies. If their proponents cannot even themselves find the spirit of motivation to defend their views scientifically, why should we bother?


(In fact, Hinduism is thoroughly evolutionist with its progressive incarnation, and it doesn't have the slightest problem in accepting evolution theory.

The entire universe is just an illusion of senses, "maya" to Hindus, and their myths are just meant to be allegorical.)


Petr

- "4) Nobody is "censoring" your ID nonsense Petr, not on this board, and not in the real world. Creationists have their own journals, just as Christian Scientists have their own journals devoted to the efficacy of prayer in curing illness."


Seriously, you are just like some lemming arguing how America is "a land of freedom".

You have a way too idealistic idea on how the science community operates.

Sure, we do have some journals of our own. So do White nationalists.

Nevertheless, we both are nowadays strictly restrained from joining the "respectable society" - and what's more important, from spreading our message to the masses.

If you can't see the similarity, you must be willfully blind.


And here are just two examples of some heavy-weight evolutionist censorship - one aimed against hard-core Young-Earth creationist MRI scanner inventor Raymond Damadian, and one against just moderately anti-Darwinian, non-religious astronomer Fred Hoyle:



Weblog: Did Nobel Committee Ignore MRI Creator Because of Creationism?

Compiled by Ted Olsen | posted 10/10/2003


Not everybody on the Nobel Committee loves Raymond Damadian
While today's Nobel Peace Prize announcement will no doubt reignite discussion over whether Islam is a religion of peace, and may cause some to ask what happened to the buzz that Pope John Paul II would win, others are still discussing the controversy over this year's Nobel Prize in medicine.

The Nobel Committee on Monday announced that the prize would be awarded to Paul C. Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield, for their discoveries concerning magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI scans.

But when you ask Google who invented the MRI, the most common answer is Raymond V. Damadian. What's up? The controversy has been percolating, and The Wall Street Journal reported last year that "a ferocious battle in the scientific community over who gets credit" probably held up an MRI-related Nobel for years.

A full-page ad in yesterday's The Washington Post said the Nobel committee was "attempting to rewrite history" and "did one thing it has no right to do: It ignored the truth."

Likewise, Damadian told Newsday, "I can't escape the fact that I started it all. … My concern is the distortion by the Nobel Committee to write me out of the history of the MRI. Every history book from now on will say the MRI is Lauterbur and Mansfield."

"I know that had I never been born, there would be no MRI today," he told The Washington Post.

Many scientists agree, but some suggest that Damadian's self-promotion may have hurt him. He's "sometimes flamboyant," NPR science correspondent Richard Knox told All Things Considered yesterday.

But Knox, along with Reason magazine's Ronald Bailey, suggested another reason Damadian may have been disregarded: He's a devout Christian (see this 1997 profile in Christianity Today sister publication Christian Reader) who believes in creationism. In fact, he's on the Technical Advisory Board for the Institute for Creation Research, and on the reference board for Answers in Genesis's upcoming Creation Museum.

"He's identified by many web sites as a prominent creation scientist," Knox said. "I have no first-hand knowledge of his beliefs, but it's fair to say that most scientists are not creationists and tend to look askance at scientists who believe that way, but it's really impossible to know if the Nobel Committee took that into account."

Bailey similarly writes, "I have no inside information, but I wonder if the committee was swayed by the fact that Damadian, although a brilliant inventor, is apparently a creation science nut. In ironic contrast, Lauterbur's current research is on the chemical origins of life."

The Nobel Committee, meanwhile, says it doesn't talk about why certain people don't receive the prizes. It only talks about why winners do.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/140/51.0.html


And

(Excerpt)

"Big-bang’ critic dies "

...

Alas, Hoyle paid for his outright questioning of the materialist paradigm. In the 1950s, Hoyle had some ingenious ideas about stellar fusion, and predicted that the Carbon-12 nucleus would have a certain energy level (called a resonance) to enable helium to undergo fusion.8 His co-worker William Fowler eventually won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1983 (with Subramanyan Chandrasekhar), but for some reason Hoyle’s original contribution was overlooked, and many were surprised that such a notable astronomer missed out. Fowler himself in an autobiographical sketch affirmed Hoyle’s immense contribution:

‘Fred Hoyle was the second great influence in my life. The grand concept of nucleosynthesis in stars was first definitely established by Hoyle in 1946.’

...

http://www.answersingenesis.org/news/hoyle.asp


Petr

- "5) If Judaeo-Biblical literalism is fully compatible with modern science, why is it that the Biblical Israelites made NO contributions to mathematics or science to speak of while the pagan Greeks laid the foundations fo both?"


Well, God knows. Perhaps because Israel was more than once overrun militarily and their land savagely devastated, and because corruptive Talmudic influences began already after the Babylonian exile, so that the religion of Israel was quite a mess already in the time fo Jesus Christ.

(By the way, even Kevin MacDonald says that Jewish education system was trimmed to produce high-IQ intellectuals. When secularisation came, it was easy for them to spread into the scientific field.)


No need for overt jealousy. God may have well, in His wisdom, allowed pagan Greeks to make some genuine discoveries themselves, that they might be exploited by the Church in later times.

As you can see from Paul's address at Greeks in Athens, there wass no need for overt hostility between the true religion of Israel and Greek heritage:


"With quiet respect, Paul managed to get them to listen:

"So Paul, standing in the middle of the Areopagus, said: "Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. And He made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after Him and find him. Yet He is not far from each one of us, for 'In Him we live and move and have our being'" (Acts 17:22-28 RSV)

Paul then referred to some of their own writers who managed to realize that the Creator exists:

"as even some of your poets have said, 'For we are indeed his offspring.' Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom He has appointed, and of this He has given assurance to all men by raising Him from the dead." (Acts 17:28-31 RSV)

http://www.keyway.ca/htm2002/paulathn.htm


Petr

No need for overt jealousy. God may have well, in His wisdom, allowed pagan Greeks to make some genuine discoveries themselves, that they might be exploited by the Church in later times.

What an impressive "god". Though the alleged author of our universe, his only relationship to history is to interfere with it.

Should we assume that he planned for this interference from the beginning?

Wintermute

It is the "fanatics" that do all the worthwhile things in this world

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/fig1.gif

WM

Fanaticism makes the world go round, my dear Winnie the Pooh.


Petr

First of all; why should us "evolution skeptics" have to prove anything at all?
Because the alternative(s) to evolutionary origins and the inescapable implications thereof have [much] less ostensible foundation in experience.

As I've seen Holocaust skeptics saying, skeptics don't have to "prove" anything. All they have to do is prove that the hypothesis at hand is contradictary (sic) and inconsistent with the observable empirical evidence.
They have to show that the "hypothesis at hand" is less consistent than an alternative. Science deals in *best* theories rather than perfect ones. The best theory among theories stands despite imperfections, even where a poor theory is merely confronted with what are effectively non-theories or pseudo-theories.

All we hard-core creationists want FIRST is to prove that spontaneous evolution of all life is an untenable hypothesis.
*Scientists*, on the other hand, properly wish to discover that theory which is most consistent with the empirical evidence.

THEN, we can present some of our own views to people. Whether they convince anyone, is in the hand of the Holy Spirit.
Written as does a rank apologist, hypocritically inconsiderate of truth measured in terms of that consistency which he, himself, has endorsed.