Re: [asa] A graduate student speaks out

Thanks, David for the thoughtful and considered response. My replies
interspersed with original

On Jan 18, 2008 12:59 AM, David Campbell <pleuronaia@gmail.com> wrote:

> > I've said it before and I'll say it again, of all the creationists I've
> met, including Andy McIntosh, none of them I would say were deliberate
> liars. Yes they are willfully self-deluded, because they can't reconcile
> what science tells them with their faith.<
>
> There are occasional young earth arguments for which I am unable to
> find an honest explanation, but delusional seems more appropriate as a
> general characterization (of course, the average person in the pew is
> merely misled.) Nevertheless, they are still in violation of the 9th
> commandment-presenting wishful thinking as legitimately researched
> claims (cf. I Ti 1).

True indeed - self-deception is clearly a form of dishonesty, and one's
faith ought to guide one to seek the truth. And yet clearly what you
describe happens in science a great deal. I think a lot of scientists,
especially when they want to get funding for their research, are almost
certainly guilty of "seeing what they want to see". The classic example
would be cold fusion. A considerable amount of money was wasted at AERE
Harwell attempting to replicate Pons and Fleishmann's claims, which were
released before they had done proper scientific scrutiny. The bigger the
stakes the more likely this kind of wishful thinking goes on. The stakes
don't get much bigger than solving the world's energy needs with an
inexpensive technology. (Well, maybe "proving" that the universe is 6000
years old is an even bigger deal).

A similar thing cropped up recently on various popular science websites. An
inventor found a way to make water burn. A salt water solution was
irradiated with high intensity microwaves, and was found to ignite when a
spark was applied. The inventor is pursuing funding to make the process
more efficient and a source of energy; even releasing a video of a small
turbine being powered from the heat of the flame of the burning water. A
small amount of thought shows that it's impossible to make it energy
positive; the microwaves cause the H2O to break up into hydrogen and oxygen,
and the combustion is simply the recombination of the two. Therefore
impossible to have an energy gain out of a process that ends up where it
started (with H2O).

>
>
> > This was, it turns out a big mistake, and lost me a good deal of
> > credibility, because it seems that you had already sent Anderson a
> > couple of unsolicited emails in your usual vein, which he considered
> > so appalling that he doubted that you were even a Christian! He had
> > considered posting them on his blog, but thought better of it because
> > he considered what you had written to be a disgrace to the service of
> > Christ.
>
> While admitting that Michael is not always the most tactful person in
> the world,

that's the understatement of the year!

> young earth and antievolutionary claims frequently contain
> attacks on anyone who disagrees with them.

I agree completely, but that wasn't the point I was making. Anderson wasn't
attacking me personally, but any attempts to use Michael's excellently
researched information on McIntosh's geological howlers were undermined by
the way Michael had behaved towards Anderson. Now admittedly Anderson had
made some disparaging comments about Michael on his blog, but not in the
same vitriolic manner to which we're all accustomed. Furthermore, Michael
himself had made some pretty disparaging comments about the BCSE ( a
British anti-Creationism website with a high proportion of Dawkins-style
atheists), on either the ASA list or the Christians-in-Science list.

Double standards all round, then, it seems.

> Unless Anderson objects to
> those, too, I think he has a problem. This is why the defense of YEC
> with "are you accusing someone who professes to be a Christian of
> dishonesty" offends me. Yes, I am accusing someone who accuses me of
> dishonesty of dishonesty. If you don't like anyone accusing a
> professing Christian of dishonesty, you should not be happy with
> almost anything from creation science or popular ID.

No, I'm not.

>
>
Iain

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Received on Fri Jan 18 04:01:20 2008