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Evolutionists Should Accuse Themselves of 'Bad Science' |
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Evolutionists Should Accuse Themselves of 'Bad Science' |
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by Laurence D Smart B.Sc.Agr., Dip.Ed., Grad.Dip.Ed
PO box 175, Kippax, ACT Australia 2615
Email: laurence@unmaskingevolution.com
Webpage: www.unmaskingevolution.com
[Free to print and distribute. Copy must be in full.]
There is a great cry today from evolutionists (especially those of the Skeptics groups) that creation science is not real science, and that it should be banned from schools. Creation scientists are actively persecuted for their beliefs by these people. Wherever possible, legal challenges are made to muzzle the voice of creation scientists.
Using their position of esteem in the community, evolutionary scientists assail creation scientists with a number of charges, giving the impression that creationism is dangerous.
Creation science has been described by Graeme O'Neill, a prominent atheist and critic of creationism, as "an insidious force whose growth threatens the intellectual roots of science". He stated that "the cage that creationism builds around young minds limits curiosity and inquiry to narrow avenues, and constrains the free and creative thought that has characterised Western science since the Renaissance". [Graeme O'Neill in "Creationism: Scientists Respond", Australian Skeptics (WA), 1991. Quoted in CEN Tech. J., Vol. 12, No. 1, 1998 p:15]
Ian Plimer (Professor of Geology at Melbourne University), an opponent in Australia's 'Ark Trial', describes creation science as "bad religion", "bad science", and a "load of codswallop". ["Misleading and deceptive but legally off the hook", Sydney Morning Herald, 3/6/97 p:2]
Does this mean that creation science is a fake? - that creation scientists are just a mob of 'nutters'? What is the real situation?
(A) ACCUSATION: Creation Scientists Operate From Preconceived Ideas
Creation scientists are accused of operating with the preconceived idea that God created the universe and life on Earth. Real science we are told, is devoid of preconceived ideas - it is objective, not subjective, and not dependent on the beliefs of the scientist.
The Evidence:-
"We take the side of science in spite of the latent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." [Richard Lewontin, "Billions and billions of demons", The New York Review, 9 January, 1997 p:31]
(B) ACCUSATION: Creation Scientists Are Biased
Creation scientists are accused of being biased because they always interpret experimental results so that it shows that God created the universe and life on Earth. Real scientists we are told, are not biased - they are open, free to find out the truth, independent of their own beliefs.
The Evidence:-
"Writers on scientific method usually tell us that scientific discoveries are made 'inferentially', that is to say, from putting together many facts. But this is far from being correct. The facts by themselves are never sufficient to lead unequivocally to the really profound discoveries. Facts are always analyzed in terms of the prejudices of the investigator." [Sir Fred Hoyle, "Highlights in Astronomy", W.H. Freeman & Co: San Francisco (USA), 1975 (quoted in CEN, Vol. 20, No. 3, 1998 p:41)]
"Cosmology is unique in science in that it is a very large intellectual edifice based on very few facts. The strong tendency is to replace a need for more facts by conformity ..." [H.C. Arp, et al, "The Extragalactic Universe: an alternative View", Nature, Vol. 346, 1990 p:812]
(C) ACCUSATION: Creation Scientists Are Dogmatic
Creation scientists are accused of being dogmatic because they won't accept that evolution is a possibility. Real scientists we are told, are not dogmatic - they are open, free to accept the truth, even if it contradicts their own beliefs.
The Evidence:-
"The greater problem is that modernist science protects its grand theory of evolution by starting with the basic assumption that God is out of the picture and by sticking to that assumption through every discouragement." [Phillip Johnson, "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds", Intervarsity press: Downers Grove (USA), 1997 p:88-89]
"The only thing that he [William Paley] got wrong - admittedly quite a big thing! - was the explanation itself. He gave the traditional religious answer to the riddle, but he articulated it more clearly and convincingly than anybody had before. The true explanation is utterly different, and it had to wait for one of the most revolutionary thinkers of all time, Charles Darwin". What is the truth? - "Natural selection ... which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life ..." [R. Dawkins, "The Blind Watchmaker" (2nd ed), Penguin: London, 1988 p:4 & 5] (see W. Paley, "Natural Theology on Evidence and Attributes of Deity", 1818; B. Cooper (1997), "Paley's Watchmaker", New Wine Press: Chichester (UK))
(D) ACCUSATION: Creation Science Is Based On Myths And Legends
Creation science is accused of being based on myths and legends (unproven ideas) because its foundation is in Genesis. Real science we are told, is not based on myths - it is firmly founded on absolute fact.
The Evidence:-
"Giving the Darwin lecture to one of the biggest audiences of the week, Durant put forward an audacious theory - that Darwin's evolutionary explanation of the origins of man has been transformed into a modern myth, to the detriment of science and social progress ... Durant concludes that the secular myths of evolution have had "a damaging effect on scientific research", leading to "distortion, to needless controversy, and to the gross misuse of science"." [Dr John Durant (University College, Swansea, Wales) quoted in New Scientist, 11/9/80, p:765]
"Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless." [Prof. Louis Bounoure (Former President of the Biological Society of Strasbourg: Director of the Strasbourg Zoological museum: and later, Director of Research at the French National Centre of Scientific Research) quoted in The Advocate, 8/5/84 p:17]
(E) ACCUSATION: Creation Science Is Just Religion
Creation science is accused of being religion because it is connected to the study of God. Real science we are told, is not concerned with metaphysical things - it is solidly based on reality and absolute fact.
The Evidence:-
"Evolution is not a conclusion drawn from observations. It is an ideology to which observations are applied when convenient and ignored when not." [Professor Maciej Giertych (M.A., Ph.D., D.Sc.) head of the Genetics Department, Polish Academy of Science, at the Institute of Dendrology, Kornik, Poland - in CEN, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1995 p:48]
Ideologies are a belief system, just like religion. Evolutionists' ideologies are based on evolutionism and scientism.
(F) ACCUSATION: Creation Science Is Pseudo-Science
Creation science is accused of being pseudo-science because it is connected to the study of God, which is regarded as speculation. Real science we are told, is not concerned with speculative things - it is concerned only with discovering the facts of reality.
The Evidence:-
"... presents an insider's critique of the scientific world-view based upon the sharp but oft-overlooked distinction between scientific truth and scientific faith ... demonstrates that major tenets promulgated in the name of Science are not in fact scientific truths but rather scientific speculations - for which there is no evidence at all." [In W. Smith, "Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientific Belief", Tan Books & Pub: Rockford (USA), 1984 p:168]
"[M]uch of contemporary cosmology deals with things like inflation and the big bang that have not been directly observed, and probably never will be. Andrej Pacholczyk of the University of Arizona in Tuscon views cosmology as "noncorrespondence science" - based on almost pure speculation." [Margaret Wertheim, "God of the Quantum Vacuum", in New Scientist, Vol. 156, No. 2102, 1997 p:28-31]
"Many ordinary people, reading the works of a single popularizer, believe that the riddle of human origins has been solved. In no case is this true, and all the ideas in print today - including our own - are more or less naked speculation" [John Gribbin & Jeremy Chaerfas, "The Monkey Puzzle", Bodley Head: London, 1982 p:160]
(G) ACCUSATION: Creation Science Will Stifle Creative Scientific Research
On the contrary, the era that started (and fostered) the scientific age contained some of the world's most famous scientists, many whom were bible-believing creationists. For example: Newton, Faraday, and Pasteur. (See my Unmasking Evolution lecture #29 "100 Famous Bible-Believing Scientists")
The Evidence:-
Dr Loren Eiseley (1907-1977), a professor of anthropology, a science history writer and evolutionist, concluded that the birth of modern science was mainly due to the creationist convictions of its founders."[I]t is the Christian world which finally gave birth in a clear articulated fashion to the experimental method of science itself ...It began its discoveries and made use of its method in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a Creator who did not act upon whim nor inference with the forces He had set in operation. The experimental method succeeded beyond man's wildest dreams but the faith that brought it into being owes something to the Christian conception of the nature of God. It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption." [Loren Eiseley, "Darwin's Centenary: Evolution and the Men who Discovered it", Doubleday: New York, 1961 p:62]
(H) ACCUSATION: Creation Science Will Take Us Back To The Dark Ages
(See my Unmasking Evolution lecture #37 "Will Creation Scientists take us Back to the Dark Ages?")
SO IS IT EVOLUTION THAT IS REALLY THE PROBLEM?
The professional scientists have this to say:-
Dr Andre Eggen (French geneticist)
"Most of the time, evolution will inhibit the study of real science. People begin with something they want to reinforce continually, namely evolution, and so all observations on the cell, for example, will be squashed into serving this end." [CEN, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1998 p:18]
Dr Brian Stone (Australian Professor of Mechanical Engineering)
"If you define science as repeatable, reliable, observational fact, it's obvious that evolution doesn't really qualify as science. People make these huge jumps; they see these tiny changes happening today, and so they conclude that all life forms have arisen from chemicals by a continuous process over millions of years. That's not science, that's belief." [CEN, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1998 p:52]
Dr Eric Norman B.S., B.A., M.S., Ph.D. (Former assistant professor in research and experimental medicine, University of Cincinnati, Ohio)
"Evolution is just unscientific. It violates the laws of chemistry including the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the laws of probability, and information theory." [CEN, Vol. 17, No. 3, 1995 p:29]
David Lane M.Sc., (Entomologist)
"Biological design is described by evolutionists as having resulted from Natural Selection operating through random, chance events. David Lane (M.Sc.), an entomologist describes this in an opening address to the staff and students at the University of Melbourne in October 1992, as "anti-science and a philosophical absurdity". [David Lane, "Caged Minds? Creation, Modern Science and Christianity", cited in CEN Tech. J., Vol. 12, No. 1, 1998 p:17]
WHY THEN THE ATTACKS ON CREATION SCIENTISTS?
Evolutionists continue their attack on creation scientists, despite the hypocrisy of their own position. The bases for these attacks are two-fold. The aim is to:-
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