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Friday, May 15, 2009

"Theistic evolutionists": What they can expect after they have surrendered

Here is a true story about "theistic evolution," by Carol Iannone:

[Theistic evolution, as normally propounded today = accept on faith that God dun it and holler yer guts fer Jesus to feel good - because the evidence suggests there is no God].

Why any theist should do that today is incomprehensible to me, because the evidence is all in the theists' camp. But tax-supported, tenured professors can say anything they want, and they certainly do.

Here is an instructive story about their true fate:
After eviscerating two new books that attempt to show that Darwinism is compatible with religion, Jerry Coyne, professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, admits that they are not, and that declarations to the contrary have been "a dirty little secret in scientific circles. It is in our personal and professional interest to proclaim that science and religion are perfectly harmonious."

The reason for this unedifying dissembling:

"After all, we want our grants funded by the government, and our schoolchildren exposed to real science instead of creationism. Liberal religious people have been important allies in our struggle against creationism, and it is not pleasant to alienate them by declaring how we feel. This is why, as a tactical matter, groups such as the National Academy of Sciences claim that religion and science do not conflict. But their main evidence — the existence of religious scientists — is wearing thin as scientists grow ever more vociferous about their lack of faith."

Once again, William Jennings Bryan has been proven right.
Add this one to the Theistic Evolutionists As Useful Idiots file.

Re Bryan: What you don't hear about Bryan's case at the Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925 from the blowhard columnists who defend Darwinism is this: The science textbooks, including the one at issue in the trial, routinely fronted eugenics* as normal science.

Eugenics was closely linked to the idea that humans and apes had common ancestry (so we are all just apes, right, and so we kill each other for our own ultimate evolutionary good).

Bryan thought, based on his experience as US Secretary of State in the World War I era, that major social conflicts would follow from such an idea taking root, and that therefore it should not be taught in publicly funded schools.

Why should the public fund the teaching of an idea that would likely lead to disastrous social conflict?

His method - outlawing teaching it - could be contested. But not, I think, the outcome of the teaching.

Go here for more.

*My view for what it is worth: Eugenics is not a science at all! It is not possible to say in advance who is more fit and who is less fit over time. No one can predict the effect of unknown future stresses.

You can, if you wish, consult either the eugenicist or Madam Rosa the Psychic for information about future fitness (she does health, as well as romance and business matters, I gather, and so does the evolutionary psychologist - the eugenicist's heir).

I wouldn't spend a dime on either of them, myself, but with all its faults, this is still a somewhat free country, so ...

The evil that eugenicists did was not merely their pretense to knowledge that cannot, in principle, really exist, but their legal power to get people compusorily sterilized or euthanized.

Madam Rosa merely preys on silly people, lured on by her own delusions of grandeur. So,while I find these "psychic" shops a nuisance, that's all they are. A nuisance, not a catastrophe.

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Live bearing fish: No Darwinian story of evolutionary transformation

From David Tyler's recent post on live bearing fish:
Evolutionists are very reluctant to acknowledge when their predictions are falsified. Instead, they have cultivated the ability to say the new finds have broadened their thinking and that it places their understanding "on a much firmer footing". Indeed, the new finds "may prove to have far-reaching implications for our understanding of early vertebrate evolution". The reality is that these new finds do not confirm evolutionary predictions. Instead, there are now modified evolutionary predictions (as yet untested) that attempt to accommodate the data within an evolutionary framework. This is the well-documented behaviour of Kuhnian "normal" science.

I am reminded of a conversation with a friend of mine whose PhD was in fish development. He came to the conclusion that fish do not provide a Darwinian story of evolutionary transformation. These recent finds seem to confirm his assessment.
By "Kuhnian 'normal' science", Tyler means continuing to front a theory that does nt really work any more because it is the only existing theory.

Go here for more.

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