Hi Whirlwind,
Whirlwind writes:
why would scientists bother to work towards refining and publicising the ToE? Do Creationists believe that the ToE is the result of scientists wishing to further science, some rogue scientists trying to get attention, or the work of Satan trying to steer us away from the teachings of the Bible (or some other reason)?
There is no consistent answer to this question. For a long time the different creationist groups have been subject to so much infighting that they haven't got a semblance of a coherent explanation for the activities of evolutionary biologists.
The Institute for Creation Research claims that there is a conspiracy for "total mind control". The basic idea is that scientists, who are often funded by the state, after all, wish to have power over people's behaviour and ideas. Religion is therefore an enemy because it challenges scientists' monopoly over knowledge. This is exacerbated by the fact that many scientists are atheists who have a "bitter hatred" for Christianity. Here's a relevant quote from the ICR website (
link) (emphasis added):
ICR writes:
perhaps due to the popularity of the creation message these days, but also to a bitter hatred of Christianity, it seems that many individuals and powerful organizations have aligned themselves in a united front to destroy ICR. Those specifically involved include most of the major humanistic, atheistic, skeptic, and civil liberties groups (you could name most of them) as well as the so-called "intellectual elite" in higher education.
Their goal is total control of education”total mind control. Already, many laws, policies, and programs are in place whose effects will be more pronounced in the days ahead. Evidently they feel powerful enough to move against ICR, perhaps feeling that if ICR falls, Christian education as a whole will be severely weakened.
Others tone this down a bit. Philip Johnson claims that scientists will perpetutate theories that support their ideology irrespective of whether those theories are correct or not. Scientists have a great deal of prestige in the public realm and admitting that they cannot account for the miracle of life would cause them to lose some of that prestige. It is more sensible for scientists to perpetutate the ideology that science can explain everything. Evolutionary theory is a consciously or subconsciously dishonest way of accommodating the miracle of life within a materialist framework that suits the aspirations of scientists for prestige and power.
Here's a quote from a lecture by Johnson (
link):
Johnson writes:
science embraced a religious dogma called "naturalism," or "materialism." Science declared that nature is all there is, and that matter created everything that exists. The scientific community had a common interest in believing this creed because it affirmed that, in principle, there is nothing beyond the understanding and control of science. What went wrong in the wake of the Darwinian triumph was that the authority of science was captured by an ideology, and the evolutionary scientists thereafter believed what they wanted to believe rather than what the fossil data, the genetic data, the embryological data, and the molecular data were showing them.
It is an important part of Johnson's argument that science has been captured by an ideology. He even claims that naturalism is a religious ideology that has been imposed on science. For example, from
this page:
Johnson writes:
Sagan deplored the fact that "only nine percent of Americans accept the central finding of biology that human beings (and all the other species) have slowly evolved from more ancient beings with no divine intervention along the way." To keep the other 91% quiet, organizations like the National Academy of Sciences periodically issue statements about public school teaching which contain vague reassurances that "religion and science are separate realms," or that evolutionary science is consistent with unspecified "religious beliefs."
What these statements mean is that the realms are separate because science discovers facts and religion indulges fantasy. The acceptable religious beliefs they have in mind are of the naturalistic kind that do not include a supernatural creator who might interfere with evolution or try to direct it. A great many of the people who do believe in such a creator have figured this out, and in consequence the reassurances merely insult their intelligence.
So one reason the science educators panic at the first sign of public rebellion is that they fear exposure of the implicit religious content in what they are teaching.
I'm sure there are many more conspiracy theories and other explanations out there - I'll post them if I come across any.
in edit:
I came across an alternative viewpoint. Details are available in an article by Ronald Bailey in "Reason Magazine";
here is the link
The basic idea is that people who promote ID and denigrate evolution know that evolution is correct, but feel that scientists are being irresponsible in making this known in public. They feel that inculcating religious belief is essential to maintaining civilization. Bailey quotes Irving Kristol (a prominent US neoconservative):
Kristol according to Bailey writes:
If there is one indisputable fact about the human condition it is that no community can survive if it is persuaded--or even if it suspects--that its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe....
[Leo] Strauss was an intellectual aristocrat who thought that the truth could make some minds free, but he was convinced that there was an inherent conflict between philosophic truth and political order, and that the popularization and vulgarization of these truths might import unease, turmoil and the release of popular passions hitherto held in check by tradition and religion with utterly unpredictable, but mostly negative, consequences...
There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work...
If God does not exist, and if religion is an illusion that the majority of men cannot live without...let men believe in the lies of religion since they cannot do without them, and let then a handful of sages, who know the truth and can live with it, keep it among themselves. Men are then divided into the wise and the foolish, the philosophers and the common men, and atheism becomes a guarded, esoteric doctrine--for if the illusions of religion were to be discredited, there is no telling with what madness men would be seized, with what uncontrollable anguish
Please note that the above paragraphs were taken from various interviews and writings by Kristol, and I have made no effort to check their accuracy.
Mick
This message has been edited by mick, 11-11-2005 07:38 PM
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