Jaccuse. When I first encountered Creationist thinking, I simply assumed that these were some deluded people who simply did not know enough biology or physics, or held assumptions about the world that were patently false. I still think that about most consumers of creationist material. However, I have changed my opinion about the producers of creationist material. There are teams of people who trawl the scientific press releases on a daily basis, looking for stories which can be presented in a way which can be seen to support creationism, and undermine evolution - and science in general. Many of these clearly understand the scientific process, and understand biology. However, they frame their arguments in a way that they know no scientist ever would, and use arguments in their summary pieces that they know to be fraudulent, or discredited. Every person here who is a scientist knows exactly what I am talking about, Every person here who is a creationist either doesnt know it, or chooses not to see it. I have listened to Ken Ham and John Mackay explain what they are doing and why. It seems to me that they diagnose that the world has become an irreligious place, and attribute that to the fact that science appears to offer a description of the world, in which there is no place for God. Their prescription for this is to attempt to fight science on its own territory and provide evidence for the biblical view which has a superficial veneer of science. For those people not schooled in science, this veneer is often convincing, and they are not able to discern the difference between valid scientific arguments and arguments dressed up as science. Again, every scientist here will know exactly what I am talking about, and every creationist here will deny this is the case. However, creationism does not do science; it does not undertake serious sceintific research which attempts to communicate with the main body of science. In order to produce those arguments, to produce the material to convince the faithful followers of creationism, someone has to understand the real science, published in real scientific journals, and to subvert it to create arguments to convert what is basically evidence AGAINST creationism, into evidence FOR creationism. This is a purely cynical exercise, and is carried out by people who know exactly what they are doing. Scientific definitions such as information and macroevolution are changed or deliberately mis-represented. Artefacts such as Polystrate Fossils, or Unconformities are presented as if there were no explanation for them; quotations from scientists which challenge the mainstream view are presented as if there is an ongoing crisis in whatever scientific field is being attacked; known - and explained - data anomalies such as the radioactive dating of molluscs, or the non-appearance or the appearance of multiple rings per years in dendrochronology are mis-represented so as to make it seem that entire swathes of scientific methodologies are just plain wrong. The prople who are doing this know full well that there are good scientific reasons against these arguments and the evidence that they are offering. They also know that any person writing a scientific paper has a fundamental duty NOT to write a one-sided argument; they are required to look at plausible alternate hypotheses, and evaluate them, before they reach a conclusion. In creationist science literature, I see none of that. I never see anyone say: there are two explanations for fossils on mountain tops - one is that they were deposited by a global flood, the other is that they were deposited underwater, and the mountains uplifted via plate tectonics, then go on to explore the merits and de-merits of both theories. Instead what we get is a lot of specious straw-man arguments against the scientific view, such as The grand canyon has 8 different layers of fossilised sea creatures- that means the sea bed must have risen, then fallen, then risen 8 times like a jack in a box, when the person putting forward that argument knows full well as a geologist that the mainstream geological explanation for the Grand Canyon layering is that it was formed at the margins of a continent over about 500 million years, as the sea level rose and fell over that time. All of this means that the people presenting specious arguments, cherrypicking information and data, selectively choosing material to present in such a way are disingenuous, and deliberately presenting information so as to mislead. Lets not beat around the bush here: they are deceitful and they are mendacious. They might well be doing this out of a commitment to a fath that they see as important, and they might well be worried by what they see as a decline in values; they might be doing it for what they see as the best moral reasons possible. However that does not alter the fact that they have become liars and cheats, and what they are doing is basically immoral. Anyone who falls into this category, anyone reading this who is producing this tripe, as fodder for those who know no better, needs to look deep into their souls and ask themselves whether their god actually approves of what they are doing, and whether, at the end, their god can find it in his heart to forgive them. Hed better, because I cant.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 10:12:59 +0000
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