18 responses so far ↓

• 1 Elaine Frei // Jun 16, 2007 at 7:38 am

  Well, the link didn’t seem to want to open for me, but probably just as well. I’m currently reading a book called Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul, by Edward Humes, and that’s frustrating me quite enough, thank you.

  It’s a good book so far, recounting the circumstances that led to the decision by a judge in Dover, Pennsylvania that “intelligent design” is a religious belief and not science, and therefore cannot be taught in classrooms in public schools. The case, Kitzmiller v. Dover, did not get appealed to a higher court as far as am aware, so it isn’t precedent anywhere but in the jurisdiction in which it was decided, but in it the judge comes down very much on the side of actual science and really slams pseudoscientific crap like ID and creationism. Not bad work for a Bush appointee.

  One thing that frustrates me about this subject…which I’m a bit of a student of, and have been for years…is that I have never seen the contradiction between believing in a god and accepting the evidence for evolution. And I’m not the only one. There is a very good book, Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution, by Kenneth R. Miller that sets out just that position in great detail. In fact, I’m due for a re-read of that one soon.

  But it isn’t even that these folks (creationism/ID believers) don’t accept evidence on evolution…they don’t like any kind of science. They believe it is “biased” because it doesn’t allow appeals to the supernatural. Which just goes to show that they either don’t understand or are willfully misunderstanding the defintion of science. Even the ID folks, who claim (in public) to be neutral on who or what the “designer” is/was, actually have an agenda, which was revealed in the so-called “Wedge Document”, based on the work of Phillip Johnson (author of the seminal book on ID, Darwin on Trial). It advocates discrediting evolutionary theory and advancing ID as a scientific theory in the public’s mind in order to draw in as many people as possible, and then only later introducing the idea that the “designer” was the God of the Christians.

  In fact, the whole idea of “intelligent design” (sorry, I can’t help putting it in quotations; it just doesn’t seem right without them) was to repackage creationism/creation science in a way that would be acceptable in public school science classrooms after the Supreme Court, in various rulings, prohibited the teaching of creationsim and then creation science in public school science classrooms.

  So, yeah, John, at least in my case you are preaching to the choir. But, as you said, it is frightening that so many people reject science, or at least this portion of it, out of hand. It makes me worry, as well.

• 2 catBonny // Jun 16, 2007 at 10:16 am

  I wish I had something more thoughtful to say, but I have to say that I laughed throughout the whole slide show. I would probably get kicked out of the museum if I went. And, I would really like to have a t-shirt the features Jesus riding on the back of a dinosaur.

• 3 Meg // Jun 16, 2007 at 11:08 am

  Wow…my favorite: “Dinosaur fossils don’t come with tags on them telling us how old they are, where they lived, what they ate, or how they died. We have to figure that out from a few clues we find. But because we never have all the evidence, different scientists can reach very different conclusions, depending on their starting assumptions.”

  So, by this logic, archaeology–a science quite analagous in method and aim to paleontology–is also useless. (What *do* we know about pre-literate societies, anyway?) Why should we put faith in carbon dating when “tags” would be SO much more reliable as evidence?

  It’s amazing that anyone would go to such lengths to appropriate and re-define the very notion of circular reasoning…

  Yikes.

• 4 Rich // Jun 16, 2007 at 4:23 pm

  I’m with you all the way John.

  I’m just finishing up a must-read; Sean Carroll’s The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution

  The evidence from the DNA frontier is absolutely astounding/irrefutable.

  Anti-evolution is not so startling however, considering human history (and the fact that this country is filled with enough morons to get Bush elected President — twice no less!). Aristotle and Ptolomy’s ideas about an earth-centric universe went unchallenged for almost 1500 years! And poor Copernicus and Galileo nearly sacrificed everything to attempt to set the record straight…

  What’s also scary is that about 1/3 of today’s Chiropractors still preach that immunization does not prevent infectious diseases (the original Palmer dude taught that all disease is due to problems with your spine; apparently many of his gullible followers still cling to some of that nonsense).

• 5 Rich // Jun 16, 2007 at 4:31 pm

  Sorry, that should have been Ptolemy!

• 6 Eric Robeck // Jun 16, 2007 at 4:47 pm

  I approach the creationism debate with a somewhat unusual (and unflattering) perspective, as a geologist who started his career as a creationist. True story!

  My first semester of my undergraduate geology courses I still identified as a young-earth creationist. By the end of the semester, I realized that position was untenable and started to rapidly redefine my beliefs. I went through a period of moderate depression and confusion before I finally arrived at a compromise that accepted the main tenants of Mormonism without the non-scientific baggage. That was 9 years ago, and I have redefined my beliefs many times since then.

  I do not fault the intentions of people who teach this nonsense, but it saddens me that so much time and energy is wasted. The problem is that for most people (even some college degree holders), it is easier to rationalize science to support their religion than the other way around. Let’s face it, the Bible and traditional Christian and Mormon dogmas stack the odds against science. People really don’t want to believe a lie; they just want everything they believe to agree, and to spend the least amount of effort possible reconciling discrepancies.

  Science education is in a sad state in the US. My high school biology classes focused on the human and developmental aspects and for the most part ignored evolution, geology was offered as an elective (which I didn’t take), and critical thinking was not emphasized in any class. So it is no wonder that I “escaped” public education as a creationist. I shudder to think what would have happened had a chosen a different career — say, accounting…

• 7 loyd // Jun 17, 2007 at 12:26 am

  i decided i wanted to embark on an in depth study of creationism. as you are a devout devourer of books, i was hoping you might be able to recommend to me the best work in favor of creationism (not intelligent design - i want some young earth/universe argumentation taken from a pseudo-science perspective).

  for some reason i doubt you’d be able to offer a recommendation. you atheists are so ignorant of the other side.

• 8 John // Jun 17, 2007 at 7:37 am

  Touché, loyd. My brief stint with young earth creationism over 15 years ago was based not on any books I read, but on my literalist understanding of Genesis, especially, the Creation, the Fall, and the Deluge. This was reinforced through lectures by and informal conversations with other young earth Creationists. Influential LDS authors included Bruce R. McConkie, Joseph Fielding Smith, and Cleon Skousen (authoritative for me at the time, but not where I would point people to for serious Creationism scholarship). So, sorry, no books, but I could point you to some apologist websites I check out on occasion (nothing Google can’t get you). Also, my brother, who is currently in a Pentecostal seminary training to be an Army chaplain, has a website entirely devoted to creationism.

  My rationale for creationism was entirely theologically grounded. Once I started looking into the science, my creationism melted away, and I began questioning the doctrine as well. Which is why I can relate to Eric’s comment (my exposure to cosmology and plate tectonics is what killed my young-earth creationism).

• 9 Rich // Jun 17, 2007 at 8:40 am

  Your brother is a Y.E. Creationist? Wow, I bet that makes for some interesting fireworks at family gatherings! :o)

  I understand that even uber-demagoguess Ann Coulter has taken a 4-chapter stab at Evolution in her latest book!

• 10 Elaine Frei // Jun 17, 2007 at 8:56 am

  loyd…For brevity’s sake, I’ll just suggest that you Google Institute for Creation Research and/or Answers in Genesis. Both have online bookstores which offer a variety of books which set out the arguments of creationists. I will warn you, however…make sure you check the references when you read those books. It has been my experience with at least some of the creationist writers that when they quote mainstream scientists’ writings, they tend to not quote the full passage and to quote out of context in order to support points that the quotations don’t in truth support. I find that to be intellectually dishonest, but to each their own, I guess.

  Also, you write about athiests (I’m agnostic, by the way, not atheist) being “ignorant of the other side”. Unfortunately, that goes both ways. If I hear or read one more creationist mentioning how evolution teaches that man “came from monkeys”, I’ll scream. Evolutionary science has never propopsed that; rather, apes and humans are seen to have a common ancestor. Personally, I cannot take seriously anyone who is so ignorant of what science teaches that they would inject that into their argument.

• 11 loyd // Jun 17, 2007 at 9:27 am

  Wow John, I don’t recall ever being a young earth creationist. My parents bought me a set of children’s encyclopedias when I was younger which just started me off with a worldview which included billions of years and evolution. When I later read McConkie and Fielding Smith in highschool, I just had to see them as uneducated men making uneducated speculations. I’m weary of actually delving into creation science. I have the feeling that it will just frustrate me and lead to pulling my own hair out. Just looking at the photos from the museum gave me a headache.

  Elaine, I was just playin with my comment about atheists. As a former theist turned atheist turned agnostic turned theist, I was just having some sarcastic fun… unfortunately sarcasm doesn’t always communicate well in print.

• 12 Elaine Frei // Jun 17, 2007 at 10:38 am

  Oh, okay. Got you, loyd.

  You’re right that you can never quite tell on the internet. And I find that quite frustrating, since I tend toward the sarcastic by nature. I’ve been misunderstood so many times online that I’ve gotten to the point where I consciously avoid using sarcasm more than I would like. That’s one of the reasons I like smilies so much…they can sometimes kind of substitute for vocal tone, facial expressions, and body langauge.

• 13 Miko // Jun 17, 2007 at 4:36 pm

  arg! beaten again. I ran into this article about a visit to the museum by the author. He gives what I consider to be a pretty fair discussion of the whole thing. And by “pretty fair”, he never says “This is not science, and it deserves not one iota of our respect” but by the end of the article, you wonder why he didn’t. Days later, I was linked to this Flikr slideshow about a visit (different from John’s, though still just as creepy & scary). I’ve spent a few days (off-and-on while I wasn’t driving family around) perusing the AiG website (check out the creepifying cartoon After Eden, almost as good asUmbert the Unborn; the Right Wing: removing the “funny” from the “Funny Pages” nationwide!).

  One thing that stood out to me at the AiG page was an article about how to witness to people without using the Bible (the answer: don’t). The author basically says that people who ask you to prove the drivel touted as fact in the Museum without appealing to the Bible are trying to rob you of your most powerful weapon because they know that it is!!! As opposed to trying to have a rational conversation. If you tell me to discuss just about any non-religious matter without appealing to a particular book (say, oh, I don’t know, maybe…the Origin of Species?), I could probably do it. I’ve actually never read that particular one and still believe in evolution. No, I don’t believe in it, I believe it. Ugh, they’ve got me talking like them.

  Check out the stuff about the flood, it’s amazing. Learn! how everything you’ve heard about the Grand Canyon is wrong (except the part about how a big guy who doesn’t exist created it instantly; this big guy just didn’t use a cow). Be amazed! at how Noah really could fit all the animals in & take care of them. Be astounded! by the ability of a 650-year old man to build.

  I went to the Griffith Observatory with my family the other day & saw the planetarium show. Having just read all about how the universe is only 6 000 years old, it was refreshing to hear a scientific explanation. The narrator said, however, that we’re learning new stuff every day. We don’t know everything. We can’t wait to find out what we don’t know. Somehow that seems to sum it up: if you think you know everything, you’re wrong. But if you’re willing to question what you do know, you have an opportunity to learn.

  As John said, private beliefs are one thing, when you start to undermine scientific thought, teaching, and funding, no more Ms. Nice Atheist.

• 14 John // Jun 18, 2007 at 9:36 pm

  Curse you, Elaine and Rich, for the book recommendations…I’m like Sisyphus, except with a stack of books that never gets smaller.

  Wait–is that punishment or pleasure?

• 15 Zach A // Jun 29, 2007 at 3:35 pm

  The one thing that pleasantly (if that word is appropriate here) surprised me about the museum is that they seem to have at least partly given up trying to directly attack the scientific evidence itself, and are instead presenting it more accurately as a clash of initial suppositions. (I.e. start with empirical ones, you get modern science; start with Judeo-Christian ones, you get creationism.) I think this is a small victory.

• 16 Miko // Jun 29, 2007 at 4:38 pm

  Zach: for whom is this a victory? Starting with different suppositions has its place, but I’m not sure that “the answer to everything is The Great Flood” is a step forward…

• 17 Zach A // Jul 2, 2007 at 10:23 am

  Miko, what I mean is that it’s a victory for them to have to a significant degree (even if not completely) given up the futile strategy of trying to cast doubt on the scientific evidence itself.

  The position they now seem to be taking (essentially, “it doesn’t matter what the scientific evidence is, we’ll interpret it creationistically because that’s our foundational presupposition”) is a very sorry one indeed, a last resort, which to me means we’re making progress.

• 18 Miko // Jul 2, 2007 at 12:36 pm

  gotcha. Thank you

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