Reasons for Creationist Persistence

If it was untrue we'd see the science presented here. This gets said a lot and then if anything (rarely) is presented it turns out to be already refuted junk. Sometimes decades old.If this is "patently untrue" then there are lots of threads that might be appropriate to present the scientific reasons. Are you going to?

I don't have a copy so I'll take your word for it. I don't know that I agree, but that's not really on-topic.

Denton doesn't make any categorical denials such as MJ claims. The words "Christian", "Judaic" and "Muslim" don't even appear on any of the book's last three pages.Here's a couple excerpts from the last page or so that may be what MJ is thinking of: But whether Denton's doubts about evolution were driven by religious beliefs is irrelevant. MJ claims that he has friends and acquantances who have scientific reasons for being skeptical of evolution. It is time for him to produce the people so that they may provide their reasons, or for him to produce their reasons here, or for him to drop the claim. Appeals to anonymous information is a debate tactic to be avoided.--Percy

I just want to say, I'm not comfortable having MJ out his friends by name on a forum, and I hardly think that's necessary. (In all likelihood that's not what you're suggesting.)Ideally they'd show up here themselves under whatever name they saw fit to join in the debate and share their "concerns." While I'm sure MJ could be persuaded to relay their concerns for one or two messages, he'd hardly be in a position to reply to rebuttals, and asking him to play the role of go-between in a debate-by-proxy doesn't strike me as reasonable, either.Obviously, I'm not convinced by his assertions, but I'm willing to believe that these may be assertions that are true but unprovable. If MJ isn't able to convince his buddies to show up here and take part in the debate, I'm not going to accept his claims, but I don't see any reason to browbeat him about it, either.

Hi Ringo. My apologies. I replied to your message 37 and didn't read on to see where you had clarified to specify the type of scientists when I said you hadn't specified.

I don't at all doubt that they do exist, serious practicing scientists who are creationists, perhaps even YECs, and are doing serious scientific research attempting to support their beliefs. Honest and sincere ones, even. The thing is that we will almost never hear about them.The thing with "creation science" is that it operates by different rules than science does and measures success entirely differently. I have a page under construction, based on a discussion in another forum long ago, that compares scientists and creationists; it's at No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/cs_vs_sci.html. Basically, "creation science" measures success by how convincing a claim sounds, not on whether it's the least bit true. The more sensational it sounds, the better. And the creationist who can deliver these sensational convincing-sounding arguments will develop a large creationist following. And he will never be censured by the creationist community for shoddy scholarship or for lying, but rather for any theological irregularities.A scientist is more concerned with learning how nature works and will work harder to verify his data, his results, and the results of other scientists' research upon which he's basing his own research. When he publishes, he will be forthcoming with as much information as he can provide, in part so that other scientists basing their research on his paper will be able to verify his results. A scientist will be censured for shoddy scholarship, shoddy research, and most definitely for lying; his particular theology is of no interest to the scientific community.The reason why we will almost never hear about the honest creationist scientists is because they are playing by the rules of science. When they publish in the creation science literature, they will be more cautious than their showboat brethern and so will not draw as much attention nor as great a following. By the creationist community's own criteria for success, they are not successful. It's the liars and the charlatans who are the glowing successes.So, while creationist scientists undoubtedly do exist, that does not negate the fact that "creation science" and real science are totally incompatible.

I sometimes tend to speak euphemistically. This is what I meant when I said "produce the people". Either they come here and say, "These are my views...", or MJ attempts to replicate their views here (which is usually unsatisfactory, but you takes what you can get), or MJ drops it. Agreed. If he's not interested in supporting his assertion in a way consistent with the Forum Guidelines, then he should drop the point.--Percy

Not only that but they seem to be shut out from most peer reviews.

This gave me a good laugh! Let me see if I can make this a little clearer to you.If someone claims to be a "scientist", then they should be basing their opinions on the data. Can scientists disagree? Sure. Do scientists disagree about evolution? No. Why? Because the evidence for evolution is so overwhelmingly self aparent that anyone who disagrees with it is obviously disregarding such a mountainous pile of evidence as to prove themselves to be non-scientific in nature.If that same person claims to be a Creationist, then they are admitting that they are accepting a single piece of data as more convincing that all other sources of data from all other sciences. As such, they are being inherently unscientific.In other words - as soon as someone looks at the two different data groups, one containing millions and millions of independant sourced and collaberating facts and another one containing a single book which is in and of itself contradictory and says "Hey, that book is more convincing" we can pretty much rule them out as being a scientist.

I think you are absolutely dead-on Crash. I deal with and have dealt with many YEC's over the years (and also having been one, but very long ago). It seems to be a recent phenomena, perhaps Discovery Institute inspired, to claim to be secular creationists.The student I had so many problems this semester with is a great example. She loves to use very broad and very vague terminology that implies that there is an large, ongoing research program that has nothing to do with religion but happens to support the conclusions of YEC. When pressed for details none come up. When pressed further I get the Law of Biogenesis with a dismissal (no lie, literally "I think it is funny that creation scientists know more about science than you people who claim to be scientists") but no actual points.This same student often mentions holes in the ToE, scientific mysteries that imply creation but are just left unanswered because the scientists would have to admit God but cannot because they would be fired, etc. But again no details. It goes to the level of fraud (not just on what she has been told but on her part) because she continuously implies that she knows of these facts but all I can get are "You wouldn't believe it anyway", "You need to research it yourself" etc. As if she is holding in her head this huge amount of knowledge that I am somehow denied. About my own field!But what is funny (sorry for the venting, makes me feel better and is related to the topic) is that she also told me she could not do the research paper she wanted because I required peer-reviewed sources (for a freakin' historical geology course, damn I am a jackass). I said she could totally do that topic, just get the sources. She countered (get ready to laugh) by saying that it was unfair because I define peer review to mean only those sources that agree with me. I decided that ICR articles were not peer reviewed so stacked the deck against her! It was truly amazing. I had no idea, none at all, that a lowly assistant prof from Sitka Alaska had the power to decide what was peer-reviewed and what was not. So beware scientists and future scientists out there: unless you agree with me I just might make your pubs non-peer reviewed!

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Doctor Bashir: "Of all the stories you told me, which were true and which weren't?"
Elim Garak: "My dear Doctor, they're all true"
Doctor Bashir: "Even the lies?"
Elim Garak: "Especially the lies"

See, the problem is that those two emphasized things up there don't go together. Serious scientific research is not done to support someone's beliefs. That's what's known as crap science, junk science, or even lies. Precisely why it isn't science! It measures success based on whether or not your results, when highly skewed, could be taken by a very biased mind to support some form of creation by some Being intelligent enough to be God. Err... that's even worse!Well, I could go on, but it seems you hit the nail on the head Thanks, d,
Jon

They are perfectly eligible to undergo the peer-review process.This may lead to their papers being rejected, if they happen to be complete bollocks.

Jon: A number of good points have been made. I'd add that one thing keeping creationists going is the sheer inability to imagine changing their views. They just can't imagine keeping their faith and accepting evolutionary theory at the same time.It's possible to do this, of course. Millions of people do it every day. But they can't imagine it because they've been told time and again that it is not possible. They've been told that they would betray everything they value if they even attempt it. Their teachers have raised the stakes of accommodating science beyond all sense of proportion.This conditioning is the result of polarisation. It's the kind of polarisation that sets in whenever you have a long-running Hatfield-McCoy feud. (Scientists don't see the situation like this, but creationists do.) Too many grudges exist from previous battles to allow compromise to be allowed. Too many wounds administered in previous rounds still throb.Even so, the creationist position is eroding dramatically. With each generation the old wounds fade. For the young, plate tectonics is common knowledge and Scopes is history. The shock of the new has passed. The young are free to reconsider, to entertain new ideas and find more fertile ground. Time is on their side.The erosion of outmoded beliefs will continue. There will never a single day when we see the Berlin Wall fall. But the YEC position has retreated from an enormous amount of ground in only one generation. It is becoming increasingly obvious to all that it has the weight of all the sciences against it, every one. Its narrow focus on 'Darwinism' in the face of this flood is not only inadequate, it's downright quaint.In coming decades creationism will wane in importance and finally vanish as a factor in any serious public debate about science education. There will never be a day when people wake up and say 'Hey, it's gone!' They will just talk of other things.The descendants of today's YECs will be, in the main, religious people. They will just look back with amusement and a touch of embarassment at the quaint views espoused by their grandparents. Religious people today already take this attitude with once-prevalent pronouncements that defended slavery, opposed vaccines, and promoted Prohibition. The same thing will happen with YEC literalism. The descendants of today's fundamentalists will see evolution denial as one of those old-timey, misguided, back-in-the-day features of their religious history that no one owns anymore.Edited by Archer Opterix, : clarity.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

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Not only that but they seem to be shut out from most peer reviews.

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Really?Can you list the last dozen or so Creation science papers that were submitted for publication to mainstream scientific journals?Further, you do know that most mainstream science papers are rejected for publication the first time they are submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, don't you?

I am going to slightly disagree with your position. I don't see it as erosion at all but rather, for lack of a more appropriate word, "evolution" of the basic plague that is religiosity. The world is not much less religious than it ever has been IMO. The culture of academia, and in some instance politics, has simply invented mechanisms to temper the influence religion has upon them because of the practical failures it has wrought.The marketplace of ideas is wholly capitalistic. Good ideas like good products may never gain traction because the measure is less driven by quality than it is by trend. Where you see erosion, I see ideas that failed because they were like defective products. Prohibition did not fail because people saw the absurdity of the religious ideal. Prohibition failed because it was entirely impractical given reality.The problem I see with religious persistence is that the current targets become much more abstract the more real life practicalities force religious influence out of the basic conversation. This is no longer a fight to keep religion out of public schools or public office. It is a fight to religion out of the basic definition of empiricism that underlies anything useful that we do. My fear is that this new strategy will not fail enough to go the way Prohibition did. There is nothing necessarily preventing practical science from occuring while at the same time our notion of empiricism is reduced to tautology.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)