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5 March, 2012

When Scientists Are Censors: Evolution

We read:

"Evolutionary biologists were horrified by the news that a scholarly press was going to publish a work in favor of intelligent design. But a spokesman for the publishing house confirmed to Inside Higher Ed Wednesday that the book’s publication is on hold as it is subjected to further peer review.

Earlier this week, the Panda’s Thumb, a blog about evolutionary theory, posted an item about a forthcoming book from Springer called Biological Information: New Perspectives. The blog-poster and other commenters said the book was a compilation of articles by creationists and intelligent-design proponents and Springer had no business publishing such “creationist pseudoscience.”

Of all the scientific fields, evolutionary biology has become fiefdom where academic freedom is dead and detractors are thrown out and publicly lambasted. And they protect their mandatory orthodoxy with vigor. It’s no wonder so many people refuse to buy into it.

Source

As an atheist I obviously don't believe in creation. But I have also looked closely at evolutionary theory and find many holes in it. There are both logical and factual holes in it.

The logical hole is that "fittest" is not explained independently of "survival", so "survival of the fittest" is a circular and hence meaningless statement.

The factual hole is that all observed mutations seem to be destructive yet we are told that we are the product of an amazing cascade of beneficial mutations. How come even a minor version of such a cascade has never been observed in any organism?

There may be some truth in the theory of evolution but as it stands it is not a theory that makes sense or fits the facts. And when a true scientist finds that no theory fits the facts he says simply: "I don't know" -- which is what I say. I don't know how we all got here and I can face that with perfect calm. There is an infinity of things that we don't know and I don't need to make up things in a pretence that I know more than I do.

So you can see why evolutionists are so incredibly defensive about their theory. They know its holes but fear those holes becoming generally known. If they had more confidence in their theory they would greet challenges to it with amusement and patient explanation -- not censorship.

But what is going on of course is religious. The theory is used in an effort to discredit religion. But if the evolutionists were intellectually capable atheists, they would study Carnap. He has a far better argument against religion than putting up a theory that is full of holes. But analytical philosophy does require some brains so many atheists might not be up to reading Carnap.

Belief in evolution is nearly as religious as belief in creation. Those who proclaim it as an unquestionable truth are modern-day Torquemadas (a leader of the Spanish Inquisition)




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