Reasons for Creationist Persistence

It's the PT Barnum principle at work.

I've known it to go both ways, I guess, but I agree - it's improper to make sweeping assertions about the educational character of home schooled individuals.Certainly some parents choose to homeschool in order to religiously indoctrinate their children against inconvenient facts. Other parents choose to do so because they feel they're more qualified to instruct their child than the teachers at their school, or they want to shield their child from the destructive environment of an unsafe school. Some such students do well. Some are woefully unprepared. Absent data I think it's reckless to make sweeping accusations. Ah, yes. The elusive creationist biologist. It'd be nice if we could ever get one here, particularly one who wasn't clearly suffering from senility. (I'm not calling you senile, I was referring to John Davison.)Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Look, you can be a scientist in your day job and a creationist in private.But it's inconsistent. It's like being a nurse for an abortionist as your day job, and then every day, after work, you go out in front of the clinic, pick up a sign, and join the protesters.Your private life works against your public life. I don't understand why anybody would subject themselves to that kind of psychic torsion.Heck - do we even mean the same thing when we say "creationist"? If you just mean "people who believe God created the universe", those people aren't best described as "creationist." Creationists are people who reject evolution as the scientific explanation for the history of life on Earth, and instead substitute a literal reading of Genesis to explain the age of the Earth and the origin of new species.That view can't be reconciled with the biological sciences in any way. You're asking us to believe that people are working in fields like genetics, biochemistry, and paleontology, and producing successful research results, all the while rejecting the fundamental physical principles that underly those fields.That's ridiculous. I suspect this is simply a confusion about what "creationist" means. You're just using it to refer to people who believe in a creative God, right?

... and that you can circumvent that limitation by slavish devotion to a holy scripture held to be inerrant in all things?Your inconsistency is showing. If you want to embrace uncertainty and tentativity, as befits a scientist, then evolution, the scientific model based on the best evidence available, is the way to go. Embracing the religious dogma of creationism, which asserts a monopoly on eternal truths (that need not be verified - "just trust us" says the creationist), is not consistent with the ethods you've described above. They don't. You can't successfully prosecute science by ignoring evidence, misrepresenting those who disagree with you, making assertions supported by no evidence, and circumventing peer-review.Yet these are the only ways creationism can be supported. I suspect many of your "friends", particularly the biologists, would be quite dismayed to learn that you're smearing them all across this forum, asserting that they hold such counterfactual ideas such as1) the idea that mainstream scientists, particularly biologists, are all members of a grand conspiracy to fabricate vast amounts of fraudulent data in order to suborn Biblical "truths";
2) the idea that a 2000-year-old holy book written by shepherds and moneychangers is somehow more authoritative on biology than biologists, considering that it asserts, among other things, that locusts have only 4 legs, that goats are born with spotted coloration because their parents ate and drank near spotted reeds, and that a man can ride around inside a whale for three days and nights;
3) that representatives of all known animal species can fit in a space the size of three boxcars and be used to repopulate the Earth - in only decades - after a deluge that extinguished all other life on Earth, and that the descendants of 8 people would, after only 5-6 generations, be sufficient in number to have populated all the civilizations of the ancient world.I could go on, but I still think we're experiencing disagreement about who constitutes a "creationist." As I've said, that term is best used only to refer to people who reject the scientific, evidentiary consensus on the history of life on Earth (which has nothing to do with God or religion) in favor of a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible that asserts, among other things, an Earth that is only 6-10 thousand years old, and that all known species were created ex nihilo by God almost identical to the way they appear to us now.No adherent to those beliefs could possibly be a successful scientist, except so far as they check those beliefs at the laboratory door. It's impossible to produce legitimate science chained, as creationists are, to an unyielding, counterfactual ideology.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

The Salem Hypothesis rears its head again!

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The "Salem Hypothesis" (named after Bruce Salem) is a name for a correlation that has been observed amongst scientists, between subscribing to creationism and working in an engineering discipline.

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Creationists say that.If that's not what you meant, then like I said, we're just having a misunderstanding about what you mean by "creationist." Creationists hold the views that I listed. If that's not what you meant, then you didn't really mean "creationist."If you just meant people who believe that God created the universe, but have no disagreement with the explanation that natural selection and random mutation are the source of variation and adaptation within species as well as new species altogether, then you didn't mean to say "creationist" - you meant "theistic evolutionist."It's not a big deal. People show up here all the time saying "I believe God created life and used evolution to do it; I must be a creationist." But that's not what "creationist" means at all. Are you? These are the beliefs that constitute creationism - that creationists share. (I should know; I was one.)If those weren't the beliefs you were referring to, then you weren't talking about creationists. The people you're talking about are theistic evolutionists, misidentified.

It's mostly a joke. (You know, like Godwin's Law.) Sorry it went over your head. Although you might have read a little further:

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It is used in circles where the debate between evolution and creation is occurring, often humorously...

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Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Insufficiently specific. All scientists are skeptical of evolution, as all scientists are skeptical of all models, waiting until evidence has been presented before accepting the hypothesis.That's what skepticism is, after all - waiting for evidence before you make up your mind. All evolutionists are skeptical of evolution, under that definition. Well, wait now. You said that your friends didn't believe in the 6000-year-old Earth or the Noaic flood. You certainly whined pretty loudly and accused me of putting words in your mouth when I told you that's what creationists believed.Now you're telling me that, indeed, your friends believe in the 6000-year-old Earth and the Noaic flood? Then what the hell were you complaining so loudly about? The fact that I was right? Jeez.

Unless you work with round things, that is. In that case you might find the Bible's contention that pi = 3.0 somewhat troublesome.

That could mean almost anything. What do they doubt, specifically?It's not like all evolutionists are in lock-step agreement about every single aspect of evolutionary science. Presumably, some evolutionists are "doubtful" about the positions of other evolutionists. I see no reason why just having unspecified "doubts" makes them "creationists." But you did take that position. You asserted, just now, that some of your friends were young-Earth creationists. I asserted that some of your friends were young-Earth creationists, and you complained that I was misrepresenting you.What gives? You seem indignant just because I was accurate in understanding what you meant. Is it just that you didn't know what "young-Earth creationism" was until I described the beliefs of YEC's? If your skepticism was scientific, you wouldn't call yourself "creationists." (You can take that one of two ways.)I never said those were your positions. You never claimed to be a YEC, as far as I know. But those are the positions of young-Earth creationists, which is why I wondered if you really meant to suggest that you knew biologists who were young-Earth creationists. Nobody's ever heard of such a thing. A lot of them are. I don't see the relevance of that. I don't even see how it's an attack.

Well, wait a minute. That's not what you said before.I worked in the biological sciences; I was a research assistant with the USDA. Despite my enthusiasm for biology, I wouldn't describe myself as a "biologist" or even as a scientist just because I planted some corn and innoculated it with insects (and took readings, etc), for a couple of different reasons:1) I don't have a terminal degree in the biological sciences;
2) I don't develop, lead, interpret, or publish research (I just take orders from those who do)
3) I've published no articles in peer-reviewed journals of any kind.Are we talking about "people who work in the biological sciences", or are we talking about biologists? Medical doctors aren't biologists. Chemists aren't biologists. Engineers, even medical or agricultural ones, aren't biologists. (Genetic engineers might be, depending on their training.)

No, you're really not. Just like a "Socialist" isn't just somebody who likes to hang out with their friends. Just like a "Skinhead" isn't just somebody who likes a good clean shave.

I think you're confused.Yes, you did take the position that some of your friends were YEC.No you did not take the position that you are a YEC, as far as I can tell. Are there? I've only ever encountered people who doubted the fundamental accuracy of the ToE for religious reasons or for reasons of not knowing what the evidence was.I've never encountered any scientific objections to evolution. That there are none is the reason for evolution's acceptance by a very broad consensus of scientists.

I'm not sure I understand the rebuttal. The Bible makes a claim about the relationship of the diameter of a circle to its circumference; the claim that it makes is that it is exactly 1 to 3.It's not my fault that the Bible claims its value of pi to be more accurate than it actually is. (Insufficient inaccuracy?)For a book held to have been authored by God and therefore inerrant in every detail, I would expect a far greater precision. If it was accurate to, say, the ten-thousandth place, I'd see no reason to complain.

I don't see it as a big problem. It's a problem because people insist on muddying the term to create a deceptive appearance of compromise. "See?" such people say. "You can still be a creationist and accept evolution."Well, no, you really can't. Rejecting science because it conflicts with religious dogma is a crucial part of being a creationist.There's no problem with defining the term, just like there's little issue defining "socialist" and "skinhead." These are terms that apply to specific groups with a specific ideology. You're just inventing history. The earliest use of the term "creationist" in this context in English was 1929, used by Harold Clark to refer to his former instructor George McCready Price, who held that a Noahic flood has produced the geologic conditions that evolutionists had mistaken for an old Earth with a history of evolution.So, indeed, "creationist" has always referred to those who maintained the literal historicity of Genesis. (Prior to this time it referred to a particular position on the nature of souls.) It has no history of usage as a general term for theists.