Distorting a news report – from an organization you’d been slamming for weeks — with a creative misreading, based on your skimming of the abstract, in order to defend a clearly irrational narrative about the huge problem of religious scientists inserting their faith into science, against even your cited example, was your actual accomplishment.

Though, since a lie is as good as the truth with you, I guess you achieved what you were trying to do. Though I’d imagine any honest reader who mucked through the issues might not agree. I never had any expectation that the NAs would be among those, though “Deen” did seem to be able to grasp the few straws left to that feature of your argument.

I understand your point, and I even understand your desire that people be both rational and make decisions based on informed scientific understandings. Here is the problem though. On some level most understand there is no objective ultimate reason. There is also thus no rational way to view something as mattering more than something else (despite what our ability to rationalizebuild systemscreate meaning and what have you may produce). In fact the more one delves into science the harder it is to escape this conclusion (I’ve presented the idea most religions start from that conclusion). Some see that as a recipe for fatalism, but I don’t necessarily think it has to be. I attempted to draw some idea of that above, but it really takes a book (or several) to do well. When added to human nature what it means is there are often contradictory understandings, “reasons”, and competing priorities. On top of all of that we generally don’t spend half us much time being “rational beings” as we like to pretend. Most of you involved in this seem to be mistaking the creationist types for all religion, or use them as an excuse to hate all religions (even when you don’t even understand a fraction of the varieties they come in). While I don’t have much good to say for the creationists either, it is not because of what they believe, but rather in their insistence that the rest of us believe it too.

In the repulsion towards the creationistfundamental branches what you end up championing is the idea that even knowing the universe is indifferent and there is, ultimately, no objective justification for one course of action or another (and the philosophical underpinnings for that are the most solid of anything I know – we only know the results of what we choose and have no idea if something else would have been “better”. Due to the whole time progression thing there is no way to go back and test different choices…), you proceed to make an incredible jump and profess that objective reason – as seen by scientists – be that reasoning device held most high. Indeed it should trump some 500,000 years (or however long it has actually been that our species has existed) of development in how we arrange ourselves and decide stuff (recreating society from a blank slate, if you will, because somehow we should all just forget about everything that came previously as it was obviously stupid and the result of barbarian understandings. We’ll ignore the fact it got us this far…).

The population at large is just supposed to go along with this because scientists are not only smarter than everyone else but have A) shown themselves to be bastions of ethical purity, B) never made errors in their predictive abilities (let alone serious ones), C) shown themselves to be understanding and compassionate towards their fellow man, D) above all political concerns in their purity, E) shown their inability to be petty and vindictive like all those religious zealots – want me to go on?

This is the recipe to gain respect and trust? Get in everyone’s face, call them names and declare not only their ignorance but tell them they are hopelessly stupid and everything they cherish and hold dear is worthless? Yea, I can see that working really well. I wonder why there is so much resistance.

Hopefully you aren’t like this, but it seems to be a growing type in the profession.

The reality is science is the new kid on the block, a block that is already full of understanding, vested interests, people who are convinced they know better and all the other competing interests of those living out their lives. Most figure anyone who spends so much energy trying to yell that anyone who doesn’t see it their way is stupid and should be silenced is mostly just on a power grab.

Again, I understand the annoyance with the whole creationist thing, but be careful about painting with such a wide brush as to translate it to “all religion”. More than half couldn’t care about such things and have no understandings along those lines…

Part of what happens when you go from “science shows us x” to “we should therefore do y” is you have already decided what it is everyone is supposed to desire and have weighed the alternatives and probabilities. I guess they are too simple to trust with such matters, and those whom know best ought to just decide it all for them.

I just can’t see this attitude ever flying farther than the hallways of academia and maybe a few select labs in private industry.

Feel free to respond, but the blog has moved on, and I am sure we’ll have a chance to arguediscuss it more farther down the road, so this will be my last in this thread.

I get it, though, you’re afraid to lose face. But someone needs to say it: you either have dementia or zero standards or both.

Do you think that someone would have their science polluted by religious faith unawares? Apparently you have such a low opinion of scientists reading abilities that you think they’ll fail to make the distinction I pointed out @224. Though, it’s fairly clear your audience are the sci-jock blog rats who are as gullible as any con man’s easy mark. Those boys will buy anything on faith.

In this context that is a distinction without a difference and it’s desperation on your part.

Creationism is a religious belief which I showed can and occasionally does threaten real science. When mistakes are published in the literature, even unintentional one’s, they can spread like a virus and become entrenched. This is a real problem for scientists and the public. For examples, mouse studies that showed vaccines cause autism or that electrons have orbits are famous ones that still persist in the public’s mind but have been widely rejected by among scientists.

The laws of physics are not dependent on our species. qbsmd

I think it was put most beautifully here:

Eighteen years ago I was responsible for a remark which has often been quoted:

It is one thing for the human mind to extract from the phenomena of nature the laws which it has itself put into them; it may be a far harder thing to extract laws over which it has had no control. It is even possible that laws which have not their origin in the mind may be irrational, and we can never succeed in formulating them.

This seems to be coming true, though not in the way that then suggested itself. I had in mind the phenomena of quanta and atomic physics, which at that time completely baffled our efforts to formulate a rational system of law. It was already apparent that the principal laws of molar physics were man-made – the result of the sensory and intellectual equipment through which we derive our observational knowledge – and were not laws of governance of the objective universe. The suggestion was that in quantum theory we for the first time came up against the true laws of governance for the objective universe. If so, the task was presumably much more difficult than merely rediscovering our own frame of thought.

Since then microscopic physics has made great progress, and its laws have turned out to be comprehensible to the mind; but, as I have endeavored to show, it also turns out that they have been imposed by the mind— by our forms of thought – in the same way the molar laws were imposed….

A. S. Eddington The Physical Universe ; Tarner Lectures, 1938

Is there no bottom to your dishonesty?

“Coyne and you have yet to produce a single instance where a scientist has inserted religion into their formal work”

McCarthy, in typical fashion, asserted that there was not once instance of creationism or ID slipping into a real science journal…”

Because I don’t see one.

Truth be told, McCarthy, in typical fashion, asserted that there was not once instance of creationism or ID slipping into a real science journal, therefore religion doesn’t pose a threat to how science is done.

This is what I said: 40. Anthony McCarthy Says:
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:05 pm
…. Coyne and you have yet to produce a single instance where a scientist has inserted religion into their formal work. If you have the evidence to back up your implied charge it’s your duty to publicize it immediately

No black and white statement that “there was not once (sic) instance of creationism or ID slipping into a real science journal”, a challenge to show that there had been one. The rest of it was quibbling about the facts of the case, not that an incident hadn’t happened. As to whether or not the instance he cited met the challenge, I’d go with what gillt cited, which I quoted from at the time:

61. Anthony McCarthy Says:
July 3rd, 2009 at 5:29 pm

A pair of creationists, who have seemingly legitimate scientific credentials, attempted to publish some creationist assertions in a peer-reviewed journal. Their effort was nearly successful, mostly because they hid their pseudoscience in the middle of the article, surrounded by legitimate scientific discussion of unrelated topics.

As anyone can see it was a challenge for them to produce the evidence Jerry Coyne, “Deen” et al would need to back up the irrational charge that there was a crisis due to religion impinging on the actual formal substance of science. All I asked was the proof that religion had been introduced into science papers or other formal publications of science. Gillt came up with exactly one of an attempt which made it past some obviously (self admittedly, actually) inadequate reviewers and that it made it into pre publication online, where it was caught by others who read it and the actual attempt quashed BEFORE IT MADE IT INTO THE ACTUAL PUBLICATION. Gillt, as is his habit, tried to twist it every which way to make it into the smoking gun that justified the stands of Coyne, Deen, gillt and other, assorted, NA s

If you care enough, you might want to read down the thread to see that, unlike gillt, I actually bothered to read the article that GILLT! cited to refute me, he seemed to be quite unfamiliar with what it said, though I do think he skimmed the abstract. I especially liked how he tried to get out of the article, itself, refuting his characterization of the issue. Please not that I had gone further and read what PZ posted on the incident and the Guardian, which practically cribbed PZ on the issue. I also, apparently, got a kick out of gillt having to cite the NCSE, an organization he and the other NA s had been trashing here for weeks as being a hotbed of “accomodationism”.

That was fun, you want to make any other dishonest and/ or exaggerated charges against me, gillt?