What I have noticed about these debates...

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Originally posted by zipzip:
Probability items with associated consequences:

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1)Bible is true and I reject it -- I miss out entirely.
2)Bible is false and I reject it -- Big deal, probably no afterlife anyway.
3)Bible is true and I accept it -- Good, I'm saved.
4)Bible is false and I accept it -- Big deal, probably no afterlife anyway, also most other religions not exclusive.

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From a strictly mercenary, probabilistic, gambler's viewpoint, the smart choice is to bet on the Bible being true. You could be a Christian and still wind up with 1,2, or 4 the same as anybody else. But a person who has rejected Christ's offer of eternal life won't get door #3.

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God talks to Christians through the Bible, through fellowship with other Christians, and through the Holy Spirit (who Christ tells us indwells every Christian and is a source of wisdom).

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[This message has been edited by zipzip, 12-06-2002]

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I have no interest in, not ability to induce, belief in God "just in case".The thing is, I was raised to believe in a Christian God. I gradually came to an Agnostic viewpoint after realizing that EVERYONE who was religious had just as much conviction that they were right as every other person, and they couldn't ALL be right.I don't know if God exists or not, but if so, I would hope that he/she/it would not be so petty as to have required me to follow a dogma which has been altered and administered by humans. I would hope that he/she/it would be glad that I came to the perfectly logical and intellectually-honest answer of the Agnostic, "I don't know."It would seem a sick and cruel God to plunk me into eternal suffering because I did not massage her/his/it's ego, even though I have lived a good life.

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And all this is before even getting to the fact that having led a religious life you don't lose much (4) may be untrue for some e.g Michael Shermer, for one.

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I, too, think that one potentially loses much by leading a religious life. I have known many religious people who are afraid of reading certain books, of seeing certain movies, of listening to certain kinds of music, of eating certain kinds of food, of looking at certain kinds of art, of thinking certain thoughts.I am not talking about porn or anything terribly violent or anything. I am talking about fear of anything that might challenge the way they think about anything.I think that many religions are quite stifling to the intellect and to the experience of life.In the case of women, this is often much more the case. It is specifically stated by the US Southern Baptists that women must be submissive to their men if they are to be good Christians.This screams of oppression and is a move to crush the spirit of women. This is offesnive to anyone who consideres women to be human beings.[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-09-2002]

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Some creatinists are scientifically complete crackpots (I wont comment on their spiritual state).

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...and yet, many of these "crackpots" are still accepted in the Creationist community as legitimate scientists. Why is that?Don't you think that the fact that any "crackpot scientist" is given a voice, and even applauded, by the Creation "science" movement as long as he seems to be consistent with the Bible is the reason for the ridicule from mainstream scientific bodies?

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Schraf

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I don't consider any of the AIG, ICR or CRS creationists as crackpots. In the past I have had some disagreements with them on issues but there are very few areas I disagree with them on currently.

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Those I would label scientific crackpots are the creation groupies that uncritically accept everything they read forever and think that evolutionists are idiots. Some of them have been mislead, others should know better. Most of them do it for the right reason (their faith) but some are seeking to 'prove' creation becasue of a lack of faith I suspect.

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Don't you think that the fact that any "crackpot scientist" is given a voice, and even applauded, by the Creation "science" movement as long as he seems to be consistent with the Bible is the reason for the ridicule from mainstream scientific bodies?

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I really can't think of anyone I would put in that category. No one is perfect but I could not put anyone from AIG,ICR or CRS in that category. On the contrary, I am very impressed with these career creationists.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 12-09-2002]

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Duane Gish, one of the leading ICR frontmen, is a crackpot.He is one of the worst perpetuators of disinformation the Creationist movement has ever produced.He has been called out over and over and over again about his factual errors, and he very rarely corrects his mistakes. When he has, it has in some cases taken decades for him to do so.Some examples of his drivel:Scientific Creationism and ErrorHe claimed that humans are more closely related to bullfrogs than to chimpanzees. When challenged to provide evidence for this claim, Gish stonewalled and danced around for years.He continued to use the bombadier beetle falsehood in his talks long after he was shown to be incorrect.Telnet Communications - High Speed Internet & Home Phone SolutionsThe following is an excerpt from an expose on Gish which relates his refusal to correct his mistakes:"Lucy is a standard component of Gish's debates. He has been repeating the same story about her since at least 1981. Gish's motive is to show that Lucy was not a transitional form between humans and apes, but just an ape that could not walk upright. After discussing Lucy briefly, he cites scientist Lord Solly Zuckerman, who Gish claims did a thorough and careful 15-year study of the Australopithecines with the conclusion that these creatures did not walk upright (see Debates-Doolittle 1981, Park 1982, Thwaites 1988, Parrish 1991; see also Gish 1982). Gish clearly implies that Zuckerman examined the Lucy skeleton itself. However, Gish has repeatedly been told in many debates over the years that this is false (see Debates-Brace 1982, Miller 1982, Saladin 1988, Thwaites 1988). Zuckerman never saw Lucy, and his conclusion on Australopithecines was made at least three years before Lucy was even discovered (Zuckerman 1970). Furthermore, Zuckerman didn't work with any of the original Australopithecine fossils. His conclusions were based on a cast of one half of the pelvis of a single specimen.In 1982, at a high school in Lion's Head, Ontario, Gish debated Chris McGowan, a zoologist from the University of Toronto. A member of the audience, Jay Ingram, (former host of the national Canadian radio program Quirks and Quarks), heard Gish's Lucy story, which clearly implied that Zuckerman had studied Lucy herself and concluded that she, along with other Australopithecines, did not walk upright. Knowing this was not true, Ingram asked Gish in the question and answer period why he had misled the audience. A show of hands indicated that about 90% of the audience had assumed from what Gish had said that Zuckerman had studied Lucy. Gish became very upset, lost his temper, and railed that he wasn't responsible for people misinterpreting his remarks (Ingram 1992).Gish has never bothered to change his misleading story; in fact, he went on to increase its inaccuracy. In a 1991 debate with biologist Fred Parrish, Gish stated outright that Zuckerman had examined the Lucy skeleton itself: "For 15 years...[Zuckerman] studied fossils of Lucy and fossils of 1-2 million years younger than Lucy [sic]" (see Debates-Parrish 1991)"The following describes Gish's refusal to correct his errors concerning the ancestors of Triceratops:"In Gish's book, Dinosaurs: Those Terrible Lizards (1991 and earlier editions), he claims that Triceratops, a late Cretaceous horned dinosaur, appeared in the fossil record without a trace of any ancestor. Frederick Edwords, in a 1982 debate (see Debates-Edwords) confronted Gish with contrary evidence to his assertion. Gish replied that Triceratops' supposed ancestors are found in the same strata as Triceratops, so they couldn't be part of an evolutionary sequence (Edwords 1982b). This is incorrect, since the ancestors Edwords mentioned are actually found in geologic strata spanning 10-45 million years before Triceratops (Edwords 1982b). On March 20, two months later, Kenneth Miller had a chance to reprove Gish during a Tampa, Florida debate at Jefferson High School. Miller described and showed several transitional forms of dinosaurs leading up to Triceratops, including Monoclonius with its two incipient horns. When Gish objected that the animals occurred too close together in time for one to be ancestral to another, Miller countered by pointing out that they had at least 15 million years to evolve. He then handed Gish some textbook material on Monoclonius that confirmed this, advising him to study it before his next debate (Edwords 1982a). Nevertheless, only 11 days later, in a debate with Michael Alan Park (see Debates-Park 1982), Gish repeated his assertion that Triceratops appears "suddenly in the fossil record, with no transitional forms."To this day, in spite of additional oral and written rebuttals by scientists over the years, Gish continues to claim during debates and lectures that Triceratops has no transitional ancestors and that proposed ancestors do not occur early enough in the fossil record. (Debates: Shermer, 1995; also see Gish, 1994). This falsehood is also repeated in several subsequent books (1985, 1990a, 1995)."It goes on and on and on like this.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
[B]SchrafI'll admitt that that evidence is suggestive that Gish ignored facts. I'd like to hear his side of it. Has he commented on this accusation? Have you looked for it?[/QUOTE]I am glad you do not the ignore the evidence in this case. Considering that one can read the transcripts of his statements and read his books, and SEE that he continued to use misleading or false information years and years after he was corrected, I am not sure why you need "his side" of anything.Either he is a liar for Jesus or supremely incompetant as a scientist/intellectual.Gish's side of the stories are linked to at all the talkorigins pages that discuss him. In fact, there are many, many links to Creationist viewpoints and responses on Talkorigins.I am surprised that you seem to be new to this information, TB. Gish's tactics have been common knowledge for decades.

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Many of your so called 'got yas' turn out to be very hollow. You accuse us of misusing extracts from Riley, Ethridge, Patterson and Gould. I have tracked down the original material in many of these instances in our library and I still agree with the creationist use of this material in almost every case.

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Excellent. Post them here and we will discuss if Creationists misrepresented them and also why it is you agree with the use of the material.BTW, I thought we were discussing if the scientists at the ICR, et. al. were crackpots or not, and their continued acceptance within the Creation 'science' movement is perhaps why mainstream science does not respect creation 'science' very much.Shall we move on to Henry Morris?"The entire monstrous complex was revealed to Nimrod at Babel by demonic influences, perhaps by Satan himself . . . Satan himself is the originator of the concept of evolution." (Morris, Troubled Waters of Evolution, 1974, pp 74-75)

deleted to remove double post.[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-16-2002]

Oh, and another thing, TB...Don't you think that a big reason that Creation 'science' isn't taken seriously by real science might be this statment from AiG that all of their 'scientists' must sign?Legitimate scientific organizations do not require people to swear to a conclusion about nature before they have even conduced any research, TB. This is uttely anathema to inquiry.This statement of faith is classic "any evidence which does not fit into the Bible is to be ignored or twisted to fit" dogma....and that's why it isn't even close to being real science.http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/about/faith.asp(I edited to remove items which were not science-related)Statement of FaithI. Priorities1.The scientific aspects of Creation are important, but are secondary in importance to the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as Sovereign, Creator, Redeemer, and Judge.2.The doctrines of the Creator and the Creation cannot ultimately be divorced from the Gospel of Jesus Christ.II. Basics1.The Bible is the written Word of God. It is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout. It is the supreme authority in all matters of faith and conduct. Its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs.2. The final guide to the interpretation of Scripture is Scripture itself.3. The account of origins presented in Genesis is a simple but factual presentation of actual events and therefore provides a reliable framework for scientific research into the question of the origin and history of life, mankind, the Earth, and the universe.4. The various original life forms (?kinds?), including mankind, were made by direct creative acts of God. The living descendants of any of the original kinds (apart from man) may represent more than one species today, reflecting the genetic potential within the original kind. Only limited biological changes (including mutational deterioration) have occurred naturally within each kind since Creation.5. The great flood of Genesis was an actual historic event, worldwide (global) in its extent and effect.6. The special creation of Adam (as one man) and Eve (as one woman), and their subsequent fall into sin, is the basis for the necessity of salvation for mankind.7. Death, both physical and spiritual, entered into this world subsequent to?and as a direct consequence of?man?s sin.Theology10. Those who do not believe in Christ are subject to everlasting conscious punishment, but believers enjoy eternal life with God.left this one in just for fun.IV. GeneralThe following are held by members of the board of Answers in Genesis to be either consistent with Scripture or implied by Scripture.1. Scripture teaches a recent origin for man and the whole Creation.2. The days in Genesis do not correspond to geologic ages, but are six (6) consecutive twenty-four (24) hour days of Creation.3. The Noachian flood was a significant geological event and much (but not all) fossiliferous sediment originated at that time.4. The Gap Theory has no basis in Scripture.5. The view, commonly used to evade the implications or the authority of Biblical teaching, that knowledge and/or truth may be divided into ?secular? and ?religious? is rejected.6. By definition, no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people who do not possess all information.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
[B]I think AIGs article of faith is a 'necessary evil'. There are so many flavours of OEC and YEC that they want to beable to state how many 'real' YECs they have on the books.[/QUOTE]Well, it is completely at odds with the scientific method and is actually akin to the intellectually-stifling atmosphere of several hundred years ago, except that AiG can't throw you in the stockade for publishing non-Biblically consistent work.My point is that IF AiG requires their members to sign this statement, they are by definition not doing science and therfore should not be surprised that mainstreal scientific entities do not take them at all seriously.

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That does not stop a non-member from publishing in the journal however. All it does is stop someone being a member.

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Anyone who is interested in science would not have any respect for a supposed scientific organization which would require such a statment from it's members, and I imagine that they would be very doubtful that they would get a fair evaluation of their work if it contradicted scripture.

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If I were running the society I would also create an 'observer' membership for the 'unsure', OEC and atheist categories.

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But don't you get it, TB? There shouldn't be any difference if what you are doing is science!

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
They are not just doing science Schraf. I'll agree with that. But an organization that does things other than science can also do science.

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Look, TB.The SCIENTISTS who publish for AiG are required to make certain conclusions about nature BEFORE THEY EVER DO ANY RESEARCH. These a priori conclusions are plainly stated as Chritian, religious, theological, INFALLIBLE givens.This means that they are NOT DOING SCIENCE.End of story, period, fini.One of the most important elements of scientific inquiry is that it is tentative. Tentativity means that anything and everything in science is subject to change in the light of evidence.This is NOT THE CASE with AiG. No evidence, ever, can contradict the Bible. This is a watertight dogma, not science.So, whatever the AiG people are doing, even though they want to call it science, and you would dearly like it to be science, it isn't even remotely like science.

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
My previous medical research institute routinely forced me to drop lines of enquiry becasue they weren't 'applied' enough. The CIA keeps its research secret. There are lots of organizations that use science in a restricted way. I will agree that AIG is primarily an evangelical organization. But they do science too.

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They cannot, by definition, be doing science if they reject certain evidence before it is even encountered simply because it contradicts their interpretation of the Bible.Sorry, there is simply no way around that, TB.If they filter all evidence through the a priori assumption that the Bible is factually correct, and they do, they are violating one of the key tenets of scientific inquiry; tentativity.Please explain exactly how something can be scientific if it cannot EVER be shown to be wrong if evidence comes forward which contradicts it.You have simply asserted that AiG does real science.I have explained to you exactly why they cannot possibly be doing science due to the statement of faith.You simply keep repeating your assertion without explaining how the Statement of Faith is compatible with scientific tenets.

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Originally posted by Chara:
Just a little comment here. Perhaps the AiG (whoever that is) is being honest about their bias. I am not saying that others are operating dishonestly (please don't get me wrong). Even tho' the rules of Science are excellent, it is still people who are involved in it. They choose fields to study, they choose how to study it, they come up with the hypotheses, they interpret the data .... I would suggest that every scientist still is influenced by his own biases.

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The problem is, Chara, that AiG (Answers in Genesis), which is one of the major Creation 'science' organizations, promotes it's religiously-based doctrine as being supported by science. They actually claim to do science, even though they do not follow the tenets of science.The only reason this tactic is effective is that your averge person is quite ignorant of what the methods and tenets of science actually are, what the claims of science are, and what the evidence shows. AiG and other organizations exploit this ignorance to mislead people into thinking that there is good scientific evidence that, for instance, a global flood occurred, or that the Earth is only 10,000 years old.If people want to tech that these things happened, or that the Bible it completely inerrant, I have no problem.However, if you want to pretend to do science and then claim that science supports all of these religious views, I do have a problem, particularly if you then say that Creation 'science' should be taught alongside real science in publically-funded science classrooms.They co-opt the respectability of science and the power of the idea that something is scientific. They intend for people to believe that their claims are based upon reliable evidence, yet they have no intention of following the tenets and stringent review process of science.To them, the most important thing is to "bring people into the fold". It doesn't seem to bother them to ignore and distort scientific evidence which is contrary to their interpretation of certain parts of their religious writings as long as people belive them.They are not interested in the discovery of nature. They are interested in convincing people that their version of religion is true.[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-19-2002]

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:

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They don't systematically filter science the way you're thinking.

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How is this part of the statement of faith from AiG not blatantly admitting that they filter ideas?: Statement of Faith | Answers in Genesis "By definition, no apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record."This is filtering. They are required to do it. It is part of the doctrine. I really do not understand how this can be viewed in any other way.

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You can find articles in the AIG tech journal that discuss data that goes against our expectations. I admit that they emphasize data that is in their favour. But mainstream science is no different.

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When have the paleontologists apologized for their 'tradesecret', as Gould puts it? We have had 1 or 2 paleontologists admit to 'lamentable' past practices but no real admission by the field as a whole. That was very, very bad science.

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What are you talking about? Trade secret?

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The field most relevant to evolution has been incredibly biased and you are completely blind to it. In the face of vast, entrenched mainstream bias instead you make pronouncements about small creationist societies. Double standard.

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You are really reaching here, TB. Now you are making that old, lame claim that hundreds of thousands of mainstream scientists are all biased in exactly the same way.BTW, we weren't talking about mainstream science's biases. We were talking about if AiG can be considered to do science.You still have not demonstrated how AiG follows any of the tenets of science.

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AIG is doing a lot to measure up to the modern epxectations of scientific professionalism.

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First, they have to get rid of the statement of faith. Until they do they, they are dead in the water. [QUOTE]Last year they published a long list of arguments creationists shold no longer use. Where is the evolutionary list?[/B][/QUOTE]You still don't get it, TB.First of all, the fact that they have a list of "agruments that should no longer be used", and they expect that all of their people will no longer use them, is very strange if they are following scientific tenets at all.Why would bad arguments, unsupported by evidence, survive at all? Could it be because evidence is not as important as doctrine?The fact that you think that science should even have a similar list of "arguments that shouldn't be used" shows your strange understanding of how science works.Unsupported arguments die a natural death in the scientific process, TB. There would never be a need for a "list" of arguments that scientists shouldn't use, because it is anathema to scientific inquiry to stifle thought or ideas in this way. It is only in the dogmatic, "This is what we are all going to think" religious mentality that this kind of thing works.

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Originally posted by Chara:

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Originally posted by schrafinator:
They intend for people to believe that their claims are based upon reliable evidence, yet they have no intention of following the tenets and stringent review process of science.

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To them, the most important thing is to "bring people into the fold". It doesn't seem to bother them to ignore and distort scientific evidence which is contrary to their interpretation of certain parts of their religious writings as long as people belive them.

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They are not interested in the discovery of nature. They are interested in convincing people that their version of religion is true.

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As I so often ask my girls, "Fact or opinion?" Schraf, is what you stated above something that you know is fact (verifiable) or is it your opinion?

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It is implied very strongly in their statements and actions.However, I do think that there are probably some very religious people who believe they are doing God's work in these organizations and in their minds, they are not twisting or ignoring evidence.Duane Gish, I think, is one of these people. He is a true believer. To him, and others like him, anything that counts for Creationism or against evolution is true, and anything that counts against Creationism and for evolution is false. Weight of evidence is unimortant. Evidence alone is often unimportant, depending upon his audience.The truth is, when one reads or listens to the majority of Creationists, particularly YEC, it is very clear that they have a particular religious agenda to push and that, just as the statement of faith that AiG puts out, is secondary to any evidence found in nature.Call me crazy, but this indicates to me that they care much more about pushing their religios views than in discovering anything about nature.[This message has been edited by schrafinator, 12-22-2002]

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Creationists believe that any scientific theory will be ultimately in line with Scripture. This may or may not lead to filtering depending on how it is practiced.

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So, is the Statement of Faith that I cut n pasted here, in which is says that any conclusion reached by anybody which contradicts Scripture is to be considered untrue, intended to filter, in your opinion?Yes, or no?If yes, can you now understand why mainstram science just might not take anything coming out of AiG seriously?