Introducing Science into Creationism

Creationists do not bring their technical papers to science journals, but instead place them in their own journals and present them at their own conferences. This is not going to change because they realize they don't meet the traditional standards of science, and so there's no opportunity for scientists and Creationists to engage each other in a scientific venue.But many scientists nonetheless attempt to engage Creationism anyway through all means available, such as books, magazine articles, webpages, websites and discussion boards, speaking at school board meetings and so forth. But these venues are either one-way communication (e.g., books) or fairly adversarial (discussion boards) or both (debates before evangelical audiences).I wonder if perhaps another form of engagement might produce more positive results. Scientists could submit papers to Creationist journals and conferences. The papers wouldn't argue for the evolutionist perspective or against the Creationist perspective, they would simply consider some small issue that is part of the debate. For example, someone could submit a paper on the same radiometric dating issues that Andrew Snelling works on. One possibility for a paper could be one titled something like, "The contribution of original argon to K/Ar dating inaccuracy." It could introduce data similar to Snelling's, but it would correctly explain the context (e.g., the reasons why one doesn't date young layers) and go through the mathematics that yield the amount of error for something millions of years old. Another possible paper could explore the contributions of various types of contamination to dating inaccuracy. Naturally these papers wouldn't be presenting any new data, that wouldn't be necessary, they could just draw upon data from existing papers. And, of course, radiometric dating is just one among many possible topics.The positive results would be that Creationist journals would begin to contain examples of true science. It would raise the bar for Creationist contributors to these journals. It would create a venue for constructive dialog, either through technical letters or through discussion at conferences.Given the amount of time some scientists devote to Creationist topics, the effort seems small and the possible benefits large.--Percy

If Creation Science is to survive then this method of bringing actual science into their realm will necessarily fail. The problem with Creation Science is that it, almost by definition, cannot by scientific. It is like trying to put a square peg into a round hole. By the time the peg actually fits the hole isn't round anymore.Adding actual rigor, a competitive environment, and a hostile peer review process to Creation Science organization would be like poisioning their water. If it succeeded, the first thing that would have to occur would be the total abandonment of every piece of speculative "science" and outright hoaxes that they have built so far. Essentially, Creation Science as we know it would no longer exist. What is interesting to think about is if a new line of thinking would occur and how would it proceed assuming it adhered to the standards of science.My prediction, if this ever were to occur, would be complete resistance by the Creation Science community. Introducing material into their system challanges them to step up to the plate and they know that they cannot hang. These are not stupid people. They have a religious belief and a political method to try to propagate that religious belief or make money (a la Hovind) and they know that. Any attempt to do this would be meet with outright rejection probably in the form of claiming that non-creationist submissions into their journals have some deficiency that they can hide behind.

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FOX has a pretty good system they have cooked up. 10 mil people watch the show on the network, FOX. Then 5 mil, different people, tune into FOX News to get outraged by it. I just hope that those good, God fearing people at FOX continue to battle those morally bankrupt people at FOX.
-- Lewis Black, The Daily Show

Hmmmm. Where's that address for AiG? A rejection letter from them might be worth having, and I can even put letters after my name....

is our great leader doing the "Put it in the Coffee House dodge"?Isn't this an "Is It Science?" type topic?Discussion of this should go to the "Considerations..." topic, link below.Adminnemooseus

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I'm actually proposing something much less agressive. I think it would be worth while submitting scientific papers to Creationist journals and conferences. They should be neutrally written, simply examining an issue of interest to Creationists, like flood deposition characteristics, and letting events take their course. It would obviously be a bad idea to submit papers with abstracts like, "The paper falsifies the possibility of a global flood..." They'd have to be narrowly focused and neutrally expressed: "And thus the paper concludes that the Cowboy County area of the U.S. southwest is not a fruitful area for uncovering evidence of large floods in the recent geological past."--Percy

but the simple truth is creation science is not real science for one very simple reason: In order for a submitted idea to be considered real science the person must be prepared to face the fact that it could be wrong. But wait, in the case of creation science his religion is preventing him from ever admitting that he could be wrong.With creation science, their very first premise is there is a creator and this creator is the christian god. Then, everything else must be molded to fit this initial premise. Does this sound like valid science to you?

But who's going to write those papers? Laymen will be dismissed by the creationist community and academics are not going to waste their time preparing material for noddy journals.This message has been edited by Charles Knight, 24-Mar-2005 02:51 PM

Ah, but Coragyps is a practicing, degreed, non-academic organic chemist who already wastes a great deal of time babbling about these matters on boards like this one! And very few folks on the internet know his real name - the one under which he would submit such an article!I may be emailing a couple of you guys & gals to consult....we don't want Creationist spies learning too much.

I originally typed it into the message box of PNT, but it just seemed such a light topic, not a discussion topic, really, just sort of an idea, that I cut-n-pasted it over to Coffee House. If Short Subjects were still active I would have put it there. If you think the topic has some depth and legs I'd be happy to propose it in PNT.--Percy

Just trying for equal treatment for all. I briefly retired that forum, but it got un-retired. The above needs to be changed.AM