religious reasons?

I would certainly amend my statement to "almost always for religious reasons", if anyone could come up with even one exception.

But I don't think that's going to happen.

 

Helen, my name is matthew, new on the baptist board.
Question- May I ask where you are getting you Info on evolution?


Matthew

 

Show me a scientist who doesn't have some religious belief. It is silly to act like creationists are the only ones who are religious. Every scientist is, whether they admit it or not. Even the atheist, because that is a religious belief.

Neal

 

This thread commenced with Helen's demand for a REFERENCE supporting Galatian's contention that no scientist rejects evolution for other than religious reasons. It is an inappropriate request for a reference.

References are useful for documentation. Had Galatian said "Smith says that no scientist accepts young-earth creationism for other than religious reasons", then it would be appropriate to ask him for a reference indicating that Smith actually said that. That would be asking for a reference to data.

But what is actually being claimed here is not directly a piece of data, but the conclusion of an argument. I, at least, in my previous post to this thread, have summarized an argument suggesting (at least) that there can be few or no scientists rejecting evolution for scientific reasons. (I explicitly noted that the proposition I defended was weaker than that which Helen asked Galatian to defend.) In response one might take issue with any of my arguments, but it's silly to continue to insist on a reference. I've made my argument right here! The reference to my argument is a pointer to this forum! Had I said here that 3% of scientists were young-earth creationists and a third of those (1% of all scientists) reject evolution for non-religious reasons, then it would have been appropriate for Helen to have asked for a reference to the survey or study I relied upon for those results. Here, however, we do not rely upon survey or study to conclude that no scientist rejects evolution for non-religious (or, if one prefers, scientific) reasons. We argue that the contrary position is absurd. You might think we argue mistakenly and you might reply to our arguments; butit makes no sense to demand a reference where we've argued this somewhere else!

 

Helen argues that both she and her husband are examples of people rejecting evolution for scientific reasons. Hers is an argument rebutting our claim that no scientist rejects evolution based upon scientific arguments. (I'm not going to stand o ceremony and dispute whether either of the Setterfields is really a scientist.) If what Helen claims is factually correct, then she has raised a forceful counter-argument.

There are two problems with Helen's claim. Firstly I think one should discount personal claims of motivation. It is obvious that when one goes through a "conversion experience", or a major "paradigm shift", if you prefer that term, that during the shift one's thinking is often confused and it is impossible to accurately recollect it later. Of course one can discount Steve Austin's claim that he became a YEC because of the scientific evidence when we learn that he had been earlier publishing creationist material under a pseudonym. I don't think that makes him a liar. It's just that he can't consistently reconstruct his mental processes of going forom evolution to creation. I wouldn't expect him to do much better recounting a conversion in the reverse direction. People have these conversions and supply the reasons later. That is not to say that the supplied reasons cannot be valid reasons, but only that they are not likely to have been the actual reasons.

The second problem with a conversion to young-earth creationism based upon scientific evidence is that there just isn't any such evidence. I don't mean that a person couldn't in good faith THINK that he or she believes in young-earth creationism because of some scientific reason. I have little doubt that such reasons are simply misunderstandings.

In the cases of the Setterfields this is well-illustrated. Helen claims evolution to be scientifically impossible based upon patently misunderstood themes from thermodynamicsx, information theory, genetics, and possibly other branches of science. While it may be true, for example, that Helen rejects evolution because she honestly thinks it is forbidden by some generalized entropy principle, the fact is that there is no such generalized entropy principle. I have no problem conceding that if there were such a genralized entropy principle forbidding evolution, then Helen would be rejecting evolution for scientific reason, and she would serve as counterexample to Galatian's and my claims. The trouble is that her factual claim is just wrong and she can find no argument to back it up, nor any reference save vague allusion from a popular book.

When we say that no one accepts creationism based upon scientific reason, perhaps we should have qualified this as "sound or plausible scientific reason" meaning some reason accepted or regarded plausible by a significant portion of the scientific community even if Helen were the first to connect that reason with the impossible of evolution.

There is such sound or plausible reason in Helen's writings here or on any other forum.

 

I did not believe in evolution before I was a Christian because there was too much indication of "design" in the world around me.

Helen knows that I did believe in an old earth theory, but that was the ONLY part that changed based on Biblical reference.

I could see the design while watching my pet ducks fly across the yard, realizing that there was no possible way for a complex flying machine like a duck to develop by evolutionary techniques.

Of course, I am just a lowly design engineer and not a scientist with a PHD and my only graduate degree is in business not science, so I guess I don't count.

(I would say that I must have done a pretty good job on some of the black boxes in the Tomahawk and Air-Launched Cruise Missiles that were just recently used. Funny, they didn't come about by evolution either.) So, I do seem to have a knack at recognizing "design" when I see it and evolutionary scientists must be either blind in that particular area or maybe the Bible stands true when it says that the truth will be hidden from them.

 

Phillip wrote:

Problem here. It appears that you rejected evolution for scientific mis-reason. Evolution and design are not incompatible, but may be different ways of viewing the same (long-time) process.

Consider naturalistic processes and God's design in another context. I assume that you believe that God is your creator and has some special interest in you. (I would agree with you!) Yet the process of your fertilization using the particular sperm that provided half of your genetic material is the result of many chance events. Your parents had to have intercourse the night and possibly the time that they chose. Of all of the sperm ejaculated, the particular one that did, containing the half of your father's genetic material that makes up half of you had to be the one to fertilize the egg. That depended upon very complicated fluid flow. A single chance movement of one of your parents would have meant that that particular sperm wouldn't have been the lucky one!

Despite your fertilization being largely a product of chance you don't for a moment regard yourself as any less special. So even if evolution were a largely chance process (it is not) there is no reason why you should think God uninvolved in it. If God wants something done it'll get done!

You see design in nature? Fine. Perfectly compatible with evolution.

 

Not long ago, the National Center for Science Education began Project Steve. The idea was to compare creationist lists of scientists who reject evolution, with those who accept it.

In order to qualify, you had to have a doctorate in science or a closely allied field (such as philosophy of science) and you had to have a name derived from "Stephen", such as Steve, Stephany, etc.

There are currently 379 Steves who have doctorates and accept evolution in the count.

In Helen's list, we see about 142 doctorates, and one Steve.

Which is about right; in the US, "Steve" related names are about 1% of the total population, and somewhat less in the rest of the world. There doesn't seem to be a bias toward science among Steves. This indicates that creationists among those with doctorates in science are somewhat less common than the 2% often suggested by creationists.

Of course, all creationists say that they were converted by the evidence. But those who didn't also convert to a YE religious doctrine at the same time are still not evident.

 

Helen

Do you think Atkins, if asked, would also support your claim that "general entropy" does not allow for evolution? If yes, have you actually asked him and if so is there anything you can tell us? If not, do you think you could be using what he said in a matter not intended as Mark explained so well recently?

 

Um, no, I didn't say that. I merely pointed out that a tiny minority of people with doctorates in science think that thermodynamics is a problem for evolution. If you want to draw a conclusion, you're on your own. I didn't make one.

If you ask a scientist why he doesn't think the 2nd Law is a problem for evolution, he'll start talking about evidence. God hasn't commented to us on the 2nd Law. And logic has to match the evidence.

But you probably should be asking yourself why people who know more about thermodynamics than the average person are so much more likely to see no conflict between it and evolution.

Particularly when we can find no case where a "conversion" on the 2nd law isn't accompanied by a conversion to a literalist religion.

 

Helen:

Barbarian observes:
Um, no, I didn't say that. I merely pointed out that a tiny minority of people with doctorates in science think that thermodynamics is a problem for evolution. If you want to draw a conclusion, you're on your own. I didn't make one.

(Helen says she got her hubby to agree with her)

Um, impressive. But as noted above, I didn't say anything about majority making truth. I merely cited the facts. You're resposible for any conclusions.

Barbarian observes:
If you ask a scientist why he doesn't think the 2nd Law is a problem for evolution, he'll start talking about evidence. God hasn't commented to us on the 2nd Law. And logic has to match the evidence.

But you probably should be asking yourself why people who know more about thermodynamics than the average person are so much more likely to see no conflict between it and evolution.

Particularly when we can find no case where a "conversion" on the 2nd law isn't accompanied by a conversion to a literalist religion.

I'd be pleased to hear a documented case wherein a scientist concluded the 2nd Law ruled out evolution who didn't also have a religious conversion.

Tell us about it.

Skepticism. Imagination would be supposing things that aren't necessarily true. Skepticism is waiting until someone presents evidence.

Anecdotes aren't evidence.

 

n writes:

Well, let me see -- if one discounts personal claims of motivation, then no one's personal story has credence according to Kluge. That is an interesting statement to make.</font>[/QUOTE]This is an example of something I just noted on the Vitamin C thread, the inability to parse a whole argument. When I argued that one should discount personal claims of motivation I was writing about personal claims of motivation in a fundamental change of heart, not any and all personal motivations under all circumstances. Both the context of our argument here as well as my explanatory remarks (whih Helen did copy and paste) make that clear.

Absolute rubbish. It makes about as much sense as saying "unless you've had small pax you can't know what's happening to a person who has had small pax."

Of course there is a sense in which I could not know what was going in the mind of someone undergoing a paradigm shift without having undergone a paradigm shift myself. I could not know the emotional turmoil, the deep sense of angst, the lonliness, the blackness, the confusion, of the experience.

None of which is relevant here. What is relevant is not whether I know of the emotional turmoil, the deep sense of angst, the lonliness, the blackness, but rather that I know OF those things in people undergoing paradigm shifts and that I understand how those things, individually and together, tend to make it difficult, if not impossible, for the one experiencing them to make sense of his oor her individual experience.

That is not at all implausible. It is also not relevant. What is relevant is not whether your memory is clear, but (1) whether it is correct and, more importantly (2) if there is sound basis for believing it to be orrect.

Obviously you fail on account of (2). Obviously you were confused during the transition. Obviously your mind, as any human mind would, tried to create a consistent reality for you every step of your transition. Obviously what you remember so clearly is the self-consistent stories your mind told you during your trauma.

This is no disrespect towards you or your mind. Our memories are always created within us by our trying to create a self-consistent story. Did I see that cup of coffee on the edge of my desk when I looked in its direction just before it fell to the floor? I must have, so my memory of that glance at my desk contains an image of that coffee cup. The pencils, paper clips, books and papers beside that coffee cup are a bit fuzzy, and I don't know if I remember them, but the coffee cup memory is plain even though it is no more prominent than those other items, and only beca e significant after the event of my glance.

What I am describing is commonplace. Even the most banal memories are largely retrospective. One cannot imagine that you accurately remember how you changed paradigms any more than it is reasonable to imagine St. Paul remembering the details of his blinding flash of light on the road to Damascus. . Unlike you, St. Paul was wise enough not to pretend to analyze what had hit him. He didn't know. Neither do you, nor can you or couold you.

Did any neutral observer actually recored what was happening to you during those five years? Did someone record your attitudes from day to day, independently of you? And if they did would you even believe them? Would you trust yourself during a time of internal crisis to accurately describe your internal crisis, and also trust a neutral observer to faithfully write down what you had told him or her?

The problem isn't that all of your memories of your paradigm shift experience must be wrong. The problem is that your memories of your paradigm shift are unreliable. This one might be correct. . You might have some subjective reason to believe that this memory is among the most reliable of your paradigm shift experience. Unfortunately no one else can share that subjective reason.

Indeed, from my own quite ordinary experience with other humans and their memories I don't find your claim that you fought the change until the very end at all implausible or particularly doubtful. In fact I'll go out on a limb and believe that it's probably true.

Unfortunately it tells me very little of your experience. You say you resisted the change till the end Duh! Your cessation of resistance (or its diminution to insignificance) defines the end of your paradigm shift experience. Of course you resisted to the very end! That's what happens in a paradigm shift. Your memory of this means absolutely nothing!

The question of whether Barry Setterfield is or isn't a scientist is not part of this thread. Although I regard his claims to be a scientist as dubious I have indicated that I do not wish to stand upon ceremony in that matter. In other words, for the sake of argument what I have written in previous posts to this thread assume Setterfield to be a scientist.

I have argued that his alleged conversion to YECism based upon scientific arguments is implausible, but have not argued in this thread that he is not a scientist.

I do not intend here to argue that he is not a scientist. I do, however, as an aside, want ot make it clear that Helen's reasons for affirmatively regarding Setterfield to be a scientist are without value. A person's status as a scientist is not determined by his own (or his spouse's) self-description as a scientist or by claims that it has been his main line of work for 30 years. Nor is it at all relevant that some people have paid for his work.

To be a scientist is to be a member of a profession, and to do the things that members of that profession, as members of that profession do. What are those things that scientists do? I do not thik we can give an exhaustive list, and no one does all of the things on a list that I would give. Nevertheless we may say that all scientists conduct research, understood by peers to be sc ientific research, and communicate the same to their peers through publication channels recognized by those peers.

Now Setterfield has indeed conducted research of a sort. Is any of it regarded as up to scientific standards by his scientific peers? (as a group--undoubtedly he can find someone in the world who will find it up to standard.) As it happens the research he has done would, if he were a scientist, make him and me scientific peers! And I am quite competent to judge what he has written. I find it not up to standard. I've given some of the reasons here on this forum (not this thread!). I note that the one time he tried to publish a paper in the usual channels of scientific communi cation it war rejected on its merrits. Rightly or wrongly Setterfield's peers do not regard his work as up to standard. You might not like that assessment, or disagree with it, but it is an objective assessment. Anyone examining scientists' replies to Setterfield, or even looking at his publication statistics, could see that he is not regarded as a scientist by peers, nor has he published in the ordinary literature by means of which scientists communicate with their peers.

Astoundingly, virtually all of the remarks substantively criticizing Setterfield's work have regarded it as not even wrong.

(Even Alan Montgomery, in his condemnation of Aardasma's review of Setterfield's use of statistics damns Setterfield with his faint praise. Note that in rejecting Aardasma's use of weighted least squares fitting of c time-series databecause Aardasma's treatment fulfils only two of the three criteria proposed by Montgomery, Montgomery implicitly condemns even more strongly Setterfield's unweighted least squares fitting which fulfils only one of Montgomery's criteria.)

 

Helen wrote:

That would be interesting if, attached to each name, was one or more references to scientific publications explaining what those authors thought evolution and thermodynamics were incompatible. As a list it's about as interesting as a list of the names of scientists who think aliens have landed somewhere in New Mexico.

No, quite the contrary. No one versed in information theory rejects the concept of meaningful information as being from stochastic information. It's just that information theory, as it is understood and practiced, does not talk about those distinctions. It is not about the meaningful aspects of information.

That's right. We don't know everything about evolution. However, that is not relevant in this context. You said that genetics either makes evolution implausible or mitigates against it. What we do not know does neither. To succeed here you have to argue that something we know about genetics prevents the evolution of whatever type you think it forbids.

By the same token Helen is welcome to add to the above the fact of the tooth fairy.

That is a good example of Helen's inability to parse and hold several ideas in her head at once. As has been noted many times in the past, "natural selection" is used in two senses, which causes absolutely no conbfusion among scientists who can immediately and easily tell which sense was intended. Helen has used "natural selection" in one of its senses, the pruning of deleterious mutations through death without reproductin (or with diminished reproduction). The term "natural selection is also used, however, to mean the previous definition plus the creation of new genotypes (resulting in new phenotypes) through mutation. Obviously it is the fuller second usage which is thought to be responsible for much of evolution. The farce here is that Helen hasn't learned or figured out that Natural selection has a meaning wider than that which she has decided to allow, nor has she figured out how to tell which usage an author is using in any given context. Perhaps we would not be surprised if one of Helen'sa biology students made that mistake, but Helen?

Gee, it's a real pity that members of that long list of educated and credentialed scientists who think evolution and thermodynamics incompatible haven't saturated the scientific literal with articles containing the reasons why evolution is impossible, while it's left to a poor, uncredentialed retired school teacher to give incorrect descriptions of some of those "evidences."

Oh, I am most certainly not the first! I am one in a very long line, actually! And when you have to resort to "sound or plausible scientific reason" despite the evidence offering that reason, I can see that you are retreating into "If I or some group of scientists who meet my qualifications and are of my choosing don't agree, then the reason is not sound or plausible."</font>[/QUOTE]The question here is whether there exist a sound scientific argument against evolution, not whether I can find some infallible procedure for locating one. The fact is that you have not elucidated any such animal that has been thought by competent scientists to be valid and correctly stated. Infact your history on this and other boards demonstrates the opposite, at least for you. It’s not that your arguments from thermodynamics, information theory are wrong. It’s that they so totally miss the mark amd reveal you not to have studied either of those disciplines to the point where explanation would do any good. (We bry anyway.)

You are confusing two kinds of “reasons”, inductive and deductive. Data are a type of inductive “reason”, as one may be led to an inductive conculsuin by them. However, here we are talking about alleged “reasons” why evolution is impossible. That type of “reason” is an argument. For example, when you say that evolution is impossible because of the generalized entropy principle, you are giving a reason of the second type. “The generalized entropy principle” is not a datum! It is an argument. Were it a sound argument you would have provided a correct scientific reason for the impossibility of evolution.

No, you have never here discussed “data” telling us that evolution is impossible. Such data could conceivably exist: Dog fossils in the Cambrian, etc. But you seldom if ever discuss any data that refute evolution. You rely upon reasons of the other type, of deductive reasons. It’s OK to do so, but you should not confuse them with data.

For example, Barry Setterfield claims that the data of speed of light measurements over time indicate that light speed has changed. He also thinks that astronomical data indicate that red shifts are quantized. These are interpretations following from data. (It is not my purpose here to discuss whether he is correct or not.) He can say that the data are the reasons for his conclusion.

Barry Setterfield has also created a rather elaborate theoretical framework to explain those data. Why do we observe a decreasing speed of light? The data don’t tell us, but Setterfield supposes that the vacuum energy density is increasing with time and argues that this would result in decreases of observed speed of light. Note that increasing vacuum energy density is not data. We never observed it. It’s perfectly OK for him to use non-data reasons, but you should never be confused into thinking that his theory or his model follows from the data. That would be an extreme Baconian position rejected by virtually all scientists, and also, based upon his own work, by Barry Setterfield.

I doubt it. I, and most of the “evolutionists” here try to quote in context. When I read a phrase as jarring as “arguments do not need to be plausible” or the like I stop to understand what the author meant.

We are not like the creationists quoting Colin Patterson in a way suggesting that he questioned the use of evolution. Apparently he really did ask his audience, expecting no positive response, whether any of them could find any case in which evolution had been useful.

Of course the context concerned organization of once living things into clades, which can be done with and without taking into account evolutionary relationships. The results turn out pretty much the same either way, hence the question about the use of evolution. Patterson was saying that one could infer the same hierarchical relationships between living things obtained by consideration of evolutionary relationships by other means! (That is, one could categorize once living things in the same way as would be done based upon their evolutionary relationships by other means. The only known way to understand those relationships is within evolution, but Patterson was talking about categorization, ) Creationists have regularly and mendaciously used the Patterson quote sans context to suggest a wider meaning.

You haven’t shown that he embraced creationism for scientific reasons. Even if we concede that Kenyon regarded Wilder-Smith’s book as convincing Kenyon that evolution had really big problems, and that the reasons were valid scientific ones, that is not at all the same as convincing anyone that creationism was true by scientific methods.

I know that you think that creation/evolution is an exclusive or situation where exactly one must be true. You’re wrong (God could have created a world that evolved, for example, so both could in principle be true), but let’s accept Helen’s dualism for the sake of argument. Nevertheless, whatever Wilder-Smith wrote to convince Kenyon of the problems of evolution was just that. Kenyon might have come out of his reading thinking that he wasn’t as certain that evolution had occurred as before, or that he now thought he understood less about evolution than he had thought he understood before. But what we are talking about is valid scientific reasons for accepting creationism. What you have described is, at most, a case of an individual coming to doubt evolution based upon scientific reasons.

 

I just took a look at the thread. I don't see where I said that.

Evidence is required.

Not if you want to convince others.

I'm skeptical. BTW, it could easily be that they misled you, or even misled themselves as to their motives. "Be careful not to fool yourself, and you're the easiest one to fool." - Feynmann

Good heavens. I said that? Where?

I don't think you're despicable, Helen. In fact, I find much in you that is admirable.

Nothing but evidence.

You too, Helen.

 

Helen wrote:

Partly right. I have misunderstood the material and I have responded indicating your mistake.

But if you are referring to Atkins, then the work you cite can in no way be considered authoritative material. You quoted a popular book written for people like yourself who cannot or will not learn thermodynamics rigorously and in all of its glory. It's a POPULARIZATION, perhaps a good popularization, but a popularization nevertheless. Your knowledge of thermodynamics, based as it is on Atkins', and perhaps others' popularizations, is but a popular understanding. It is therefore incomplete and you should expect it to be somewhat inaccurate and ought to be willing to accept correction from those who know the subject better than you.

No, you were topld that personal CONVERSION experiences--or in secular terms change of paradigm experiences, are not reliably remembered by those undergoing them. That's almost too obvious to elaborate upon. When one undergoes a fundamental paradigm shift one literally does not know what to think or how to think. Of course one's memories of the experience are likely distorted and therefore unreliable.

Well, that wasn't my objection, but I agree with it nevertheless. I am under no illusions about the stories about myself and my aquaintances that I tell being actual history "wie es war" (as it was). I don't assume that anyone who writes an autobiography tells his or her life story as it really was either. Rather I understand such stories as reports of one's perspective, clues, to be sure, to what is really happening, but always always always distorted.

Liar==no. Ignorant==yes. Stupid==well, here yes. The problem with your account of your own memories or experiences isn't that you deliberately misrepresent them. Hence I do not think you are a liar, nor do I think anyoje else here is caling you a liar or thinks that you are a liar.

The problem is that your memories, like my memories and everyone else's memories, are unreliable, especially when we remember a crisis. Haven't you read anything about the psychology of memory? Memories are mostly made up. We remember bits and pieces and try to construct a coherent story with them. It's like reconstructing a dream. Most of the time our reconstructed memories work just fine. Perhaps you remember stopping for a pedestrian at a local intersection last time you returned from shoppiong. You remember that the light was green in your direction, but you don't really remember that because you weren't looking at trhe light because you saw that pedestrian and had to worry about hitting the breaks to avoid hitting hij. But you remember the light being green because you're a good driver and it makes no sense that that pedestrian would have been there with you so close moving if the light was red against you. YUou're a good driver so you remember driving well, and you fill in whatever background memories are necessary for yourmemory to be consistent with your being a good driver.

The pedestrian, on the other hand, remembers a green light in his favor. But he too didn't really see that green light. He remembers it being green because he's a careful fellow and would never dash out into traffic without the light. He remembers a green light just as you slammed on your breaks to avoid hitting him and he accelerated to avoid the same. But he wasn't really looking at the light, and his memory of the green light in his direction is as worthless as your memory of the green light in yours.

Which one of you is right? I don't know. I do know, however, that neither of your memories is likely to be reliable. You were both in crisis where something in your surroundings didn't make sense. Your brain created a sensible memory for you.

It is like that for most, if not all of us in crisis. Something does not make sense. Our minds create memories that make sense, perhaps making us look more heroic. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It is human nature. God gave us minds that can cope with crisis in part by creating sensible (to the one in crisis) memories. They get us through the day. But that doesn't mean that they are reliable or that they should be believed by anyone else.

I am surprised that you are ignorant about this aspect of human menory, though it is evident that you are ignorant of it. Stupid? Probably not. Maybe. Who cares?

Now who is calling who stupid???