In this very interesting NYT article entitled Challenged By Creationists, Museums Answer Back, I see a couple of interesting and funny things going on.
1. Evolutionists are having to address the growing tide of disbelief in their belief system.
What’s funny is that they in general view doubters as religious rubes.
Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.
Dr. Allmon, who directs the Paleontological Research Institution, an affiliate of Cornell University, began the training session here in September with statistics from Gallup Polls: 54 percent of Americans do not believe that human beings evolved from earlier species, and although almost half believe that Darwin has been proved right, slightly more disagree."Just telling them they are wrong is not going to be effective," he said.Instead, he told the volunteers that when they encounter religious fundamentalists they should emphasize that science museums live by the rules of science.
Again, the reference to "religious fundamentalists." Why is this belief system so pernicious? Not because people are in the grip of religion, but because science is in the grip of atheistic materialism, unwillling to face obvious contradictions and challenges to their beliefs. They are so busy pleading "but we folllow the rules of *science*" that they don’t seee that they are doing science with one hand while practicing evolutionary faith, ignoring facts, and claiming their faith as science with the other. And the left hand doesn’t talk to the right. And everyone sees it but them.
3. Who is not listening?
There is more than one type of creationist, he said: "thinking creationists who want to know answers, and they are willing to listen, even if they go away unconvinced" and "people who for whatever reason are here to bother you, to trap you, to bludgeon you."
Those were the type of people who confronted Dr. Durkee, a former biology professor at Grinnell College in Iowa. The encounter left her discouraged.
"It is no wonder that many biologists will simply refuse to debate creationists or I.D.ers," she said, using the abbreviation for intelligent design, a cousin of creationism. "It is as if they aren’t listening."
I agree that creationists are sometimes belligerent, and they should not be. But I’m sure they are frustrated with the lack of empathic listening from scientists, and the aparrent lack of self-evaluation in science (assumptions wise) – science is not hearing that their primary assumptions are under scrutiny, and they keep saying "but this is settled" when it is so in their minds only. They need to publicly re-assess their assumptions or risk losing more public credibility. They are not fighting religion or ignorance, but rather, are suffering due to their unyeilding and unquestioning comittment to evolution as fact, which is steadily eroding their credibility with those who come into contact with the facts and fallacies of evolution.
There need to be better, more visible answers to the challenges to the assumptions behind radio dating, the circular reasoning behind strata dating, and answers to creationist claims of a global flood and other stuff. I’m sure the "answers" exist out there, but they aren’t reaching their intended audience.
The NYT article is worth a read.
HT: Christdot
Seeker,
They're probably rejecting it because religious explanation are totally ridiculous, and on logical grounds because your entire argument consists of pointing toward a book written when people thought that eels magically spawned from the mud.
For the millionth time – while you can point out holes in evolution, you refuse to believe that there's anything wrong with your Biblical worldview. "I'm a Christian, and I'm right, and I disagree with evolution, so you're wrong." And when anybody asks you to actually PROVE Intelligent Design, you have no actual evidence to back your claim, other than your assertion that our world is so complicated that God must have created it. Yet, when we're willing to believe your worldview, and proceed to ask you about homosexuality, you withdraw into an evolution argument – "oh well, homosexuality just developed over time in man, because we're sinners."
You absolutely cannot have it BOTH WAYS.
First of all, as it has been said numerous times, ID is not specifically christian, nor is it creation science. Me, I am a much bigger fan of creation science than ID, since ID is very limited in its approach – it only asks the question "does nature look like it got here by chance or design? How could we tell the difference?" That's it! It doesn't say anything about geology, astronomy, or biology like creation science does. So my argument against evolution is not merely the ID one – there are a whole host of other issues that go way beyond ID.
I don't say there are no holes in creation science theories, such as catastrophism (global flood), etc. But evolution has more than an acceptable level of problems – sure, all science needs correction as we go, but macroevolution's problem is that people keep claiming it as irrefutable fact – and THAT is the problem.
I personally don't think that science and historical data can definitively prove either evolution or creation as the explanation for origins – but I think the evolutionary model has serious weaknesses, not just the normal "we're not sure yet" kind. And THAT is what the battle is about – freedom to dissent.
Despite the fact that Creation Science's foundational assumptions about origins are deistic, you can still build scientific theory and experiments based upon it, just like you do upon the assumptions (by definition, not provable) of evolution.
I repeat – the intellectual arrogance and bullying of the pro-evolution establishment is the problem – it disallows dissent, and brands anyone starting with a deist position as "religious fanatic", which would have eliminated many of the greatest scientists of the past, who were more than nominal Christians. The problem is, evolutionary, materialist scientists are still in denial about their arrogance and bullying, their defense of their orthodoxy, their assumptions which they confuse with absolute truth, so we have a long way to go before some intellectual humility gets them beyond denial.
I don't think that either side is interested in listening to the other, nor are they really discussing the same thing. As I've posted on similar threads, faith-based theories are inherently unscientific, or at least unempirically based.
I personally believe in intelligent design by God, and I am totally comfortable with the fact that I will never be able to prove my theory. That's why its my faith, and not my empirical fact.