>There are advocating professions (lawyers, marketers, politicians,
>promoters), and there are objective professions (judges, reporters,
>librarians, scientists). Both get paid by their sponsors for doing
>good work; both are valid and respectable. But they are trained to
>think differently.
On Mon, 26 Feb 1996, Jeff Mullins wrote:
>...we also need to dispel the myth that science is some body of knowledge
>that is separate from the subjectivity and foibles of the people who do
>science. The same can be said of judges, reporters, and librarians....One
>just cannot paint professions and various disciplines of study with a
>broad brush.
I don't think that we can reduce the issue to simply saying that
everyone is culture bound with various degrees of bias. There still
remains different ideals that professions have. The scientist may defend
his conclusions tenaciously, even when the evidence seems to be going
against him. But ultimately his ideal is to weigh all the evidence and
at least try to be objective.
Now consider the following quote from Morris (I have misplaced the
reference, however):
"It is more productive to take the Bible literally and then to interpret
the actual facts of science within its revelatory framework. Since the
Bible cannot be reinterpreted to correlate with evolution, Christians
must diligently proceed to correlate the facts of science with the
Bible."
This compares well with the approach of a defense attorney who says, "I
believe (or at least, I will act as though I believe) that you are
innocent and will present as strong of a case as possible to prove that
to the jury." This represents a completely honorable approach for the
attorney but NOT a scientist.
ICR has two tracks to their publications. One set is based on a
scriptural defense of YEC and another track is based on a scientific
creationist approach. The latter is used in both secular and religious
circles; the former almost exclusively in religious circles. When
secular authors try to argue against the scientific conclusions of the
YECs, they sometimes present quotes like the one above by Morris to
indicate their mindset. Invariably, the YECs cry foul at their use of
these incriminating quotes as though it did not matter whether they had
approached the issue from a scientific or an advocating perspective.
I agree that individual secular scientists sometimes bring their
worldview into a scientific discourse without identifying it as such.
They also often inflate the importance of a particular evolutionary
finding (e.g., fossil intermediates, origin of life experiments). But
overall I find the scientific integrity is maintained more by the
secular extreme than by the religious extreme. As evidence for this,
consider how much "ammunition" the ICR can glean from the scientific
literature to "support" their contentions. Then compare how little
supporting data the non-YEC scientists could get from the the YEC
literature.
Paul A. Adams
Biology Department
University of Michigan-Flint
Flint, Michigan 48502-2186
810-762-3016
padams@umich.edu