[Biff! Wham! Chomp! Crunch!]
Probably well-deserved, but, jeeze, I didn't expect to be taken *quite*
that seriously! As my teenage daughter would say "sorr-EEE!"
For my more substantive thoughts regarding the "Priesthood," see my
subsequent post to the same thread last night. To which I would add:
It seems to me that many of you on the "inside" (not necessarily you,
Denis) don't realize how all this appears to us "outsiders," even those who
are reasonably well-informed. I don't presume to speak for Steve Jones or
Jim Bell, they may totally disagree. It's also possible that I'm paranoid
or just flat-out wrong. But here's how it looks to me:
It looks as though scientists who have an a priori commitment to
evolutionism - whether theistic or naturalistic - have effectively
established a hegemony in secular, and much of Christian, academe. It looks
as though they have entered their laboratories and locked the doors from
the inside. This suspicion is reinforced by several factors:
1. The characterization of intelligent, well-informed critics such as Phil
Johnson as "bomb-throwers," and dismissing their criticisms as irrelevant
since they come from non-scientists. Johnson and others (such as Moreland,
and some of the contributors to this reflector) generally criticize the
*logic* of evolutionary theory, or naturalism as a philosophy, yet their
arguments are "dissed" because they aren't scientists. Am I missing
something? Is there a higher order of thinking available only to
scientists? At any rate, what look to me like valid criticisms of logical
errors, internal inconsistencies, and insufficient or nonexistent evidence
are too often dismissed because the critic isn't a member of the club. To
respond to a logical problem by challenging the critic to come up with a
better theory is simply question-begging. IMO, *No* theory is infinitely
better than one that doesn't make sense. (BTW, this is not meant to defend
*real* bomb-throwers, such as the more militant ICR types.)
2. In my previous post I referred to the influence of the "establishment"
(the Modern Language Association) in the humanities. Many people suspect
the same "sinister forces" are at work in the sciences. There have been
several publicized incidents (such as the Dean Kenyon, Phillip Bishop, and
Henry Schaefer affairs) which *appear* to us outsiders to be attempts to
forcibly silence opposing views. Add to these, the onerous speech codes
that many colleges have adopted, and it doesn't take much of a leap to
envision some sort of informal conspiracy at work.
3. This suspicion is reinforced by the grim determination on the part of
committed evolutionists (Ruse comes to mind, and the ACLU's hired guns) to
exclude from public education, any curriculum which implies that any theory
other than orthodox Darwinism might have intellectual merit. These people
are *really* giving you folks a bad name.
4. Finally, there is the surrealistic assertion that science, by its very
nature, must *assume* that there is no active creator-God, even if there
actually is One. Whatever may be its value as a heuristic assumption, to
the man on the street, even the intelligent, well-read man on the street,
this type of statement has the appearance of the worst kind of sophistry.
The bottom line is that those on the "inside" have some serious explaining
to do to convince outsiders of their own intellectual integrity. And
scientific elitism - excluding everyone but their teammates from the game -
isn't gonna help their credibility.
Chuck