Talk:Suppression of alternatives to evolution

In the "Richard Dawkins" article, Mr. Schafly makes a big deal out of the fact that Mr. Dawkins current position at Oxford was an appointment and not the result of a "peer review". If Mr. Dawkins is then disqualified from calling himself a professor as Mr. Schafly contends, then the same logic holds for Creation Science and Intelligent Design. These alternatives to evolution are not being suppressed, they simply haven't passed the "peer review" test that all scientific theories have to go through to be considered seriously. And until the proponents of these alternatives really step up and make a serious effort to even try to pass the test of peer review, they will never be accepted as science.

These alternatives are not only not accepted as science by the scientific community but when the courts have had to decide, they consistently agree that they are not science. Therefore, if a science teacher is teaching these alternatives in a public school, the school almost has to fire that teacher. To do otherwise would create more problems for them than the alternative. Sometimes "freedom is not free". The teacher is free to teach what he wants but has to accept the consequences.

That same science teacher can choose to teach a class independently or publish books or articles about creationism or intelligent design. There are certainly enough of them around. In fact, the Christian/Religion book section at most major bookstores is typically 3 or 4 times the size of the Science section. Is that suppression? Mfa1957 10:23, 14 November 2007 (EST)

What this article will also document is the suppression of attempts to have creation and ID peer-reviewed in secular journals.

But you are simply wrong that they haven't passed peer review. The Journal of Creation is one peer-reviewed journal that publishes creation and ID papers, and there have been some peer-reviewed papers even in secular journals.

The article already mentions that opposition is based on ideology. If it's based on ideology, peer-review is a lost cause.

You are also incorrect to speak as though the "scientific community" is of one mind on this. There are thousands of scientists (i.e., part of the "scientific community") who accept creation and/or ID.

The article does not claim that there is suppression in the publishing field (nor on the Internet). But that does not mean that suppression doesn't exist in other arenas.

Philip J. Rayment 20:33, 14 November 2007 (EST)

If there are thousands of scientists who accept creation science and/or ID, then once again, how can there be suppression? Are they being thrown in jails? I suppose that your claim is that they are being fired or prevented to publish or ridiculed by other scientist. Boo-hoo!! How many evolutionary scientist are on the staff of the Creation Research Society or have jobs at Bob Jones University or are invited to write for the Journal of Creation? None. There is no conspiracy and claims of there being one are just a way to support a weak idea. Mfa1957 09:24, 15 November 2007 (EST)

Many of those thousands of scientists who accept creation and/or ID keep very quiet about it, because they are in fear of losing their jobs.

I made no claims of conspiracies, and in this post explained why I reject that I'm claiming conspiracies.

Expecting evolutionists to be on the staff of explicitly-creationist organisations is not a valid comparison to creationists being on staff at supposedly-impartial, and in many cases government-run, institutions.

Of course, your assertion that it is "weak idea" is nothing more than an unsubstantiated throw-away line.

That you don't seem to care about widespread suppression of an idea and the careers that are being destroyed in the process says heaps about your senses of compassion and justice.

Philip J. Rayment 09:54, 15 November 2007 (EST)

Philip, I think it should be noted that it was the information provided by James Hutton on his theories of geology and geologic time that cause most of the transition from creationism views to non-creationism views. While Darwin caused an uproar by hypothesizing the development of life, it was Hutton that caused science to doubt the claims of the bible based on the timescale in the bible. Before Hutton no one questioned the age of the earth according to the claims of the bible because there was no reason to. Hutton showed his evidence to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1788. Darwin was not born until 1809 and did not present his TOE until 1859, seventy one years after Hutton. By this time many of the scientists in the Europe were no longer what you would consider creationists due to Hutton's influential works.

I agree that the scientific community is not of one mind with the concept of creation, mostly because the scientific community does not agree on anything however the amount of scientists in the world that have a basis in biological sciences tend to not support creation according to the bible and most in the scientific community do not agree that ID is a valid scientific hypothesis due to it failings at providing a testable mechanism that differs from the testable mechanisms provided by the theory of evolution. Many IDists often avoid the issue that their claim of an intelligent designer would mean that said designer would have to have some way to manipulate the genomic material of the organisms to create change. Whereas biological scientists have show thousands of testable random mechanisms that cause change of a genome, ID has provided none that link the change with a designer.

Now the Discovery Institute does have an online journal as well as a research center called the Research Institute in WA, both of which I understand accept research that further promotes ID. I tried to find the link to their online journal but I can not seem to find it anymore on their website.

Something that should also be pointed out is what exactly is peer review? From my understanding and experience peer review means that the research is subjected to review by experts in the field the research falls under. This is often mistaken by laypeople to mean research that has been reviewed by other scientists. As a biochemist it would do no good for me to have my research reviewed by an environmental biologist when the research deals with ATP pathways for chemo taxation. Even though an environmental biologist may know what chemo taxation is it in no way means they are an expert, nor have the authority to review research outside of their field of study. I think ID would be better served if they did not try to fall under the biological sciences, because the only people available to peer review them are evolutionary developmental biologists since they are the scientific experts of developmental biology at this time.

On last thing before I head off to work is the question of their research papers not being accepted by peer review journals. I would think they could use their own resources, Discovery Institute for example, to publish their scientific research. I must say however that while this seems simple to me I have yet to see any research articles that are of hard sciencetific experimentation come from any ID researchers. Most if not all of their papers are more about theological debate and of no real scientific application and experimentation. If this would change I am pretty sure that we would see a change of view in the scientific community.--Able806 09:47, 15 November 2007 (EST)

I agree to a fair extent with your first paragraph about Hutton, but with a couple of exceptions:

• Even after Hutton there was not reason to question the biblical timescale, as Hutton put forward a new (anti-biblical) way of viewing the evidence, not contrary evidence.
• Although Hutton managed to destroy belief in the biblical timescale, and thereby set the scene for Darwin, most scientists still held to special creation until Darwin popularised his theory. So while they may not have been young-Earth creationists, they were still creationists.

I'm not disputing that "most" scientists accept evolution, including in the biological sciences, but my point is that the dissenting minority, though small in percentage terms, is still too large to simply be dismissed, as so often happens.

However, I do dispute your comparison between the testability of ID and evolution. ID proponents claim that their idea is testable, and I've seen little argument (despite plenty of claims) that it's not. Furthermore, the case for evolution being testable is grossly overstated. See Falsifiability of evolution.

You may be correct to claim that IDers have not shown genetic changes caused by a designer, but they have shown that a designer is the only reasonable explanation for the genetic design that exists. Incidentally, as a creationist, I'm don't go along with ID in the sense of not identifying the designer, and point out that creationists have been using intelligent-design type arguments for long before there was an Intelligent Design movement.

Your claims about peer review are wrong, in an absolute sense at least, because there are other biologists who are not evolutionists who are capable of peer reviewing. Perhaps not many, and that might limit the possibilities a bit, but it's not out of the question. Nevertheless, I note your implicit acknowledgement that an evolutionist is going to reject an ID paper on the basis of his belief in evolution rather than on the quality of the ID paper.

I don't know a lot about the Discovery Institute, but the Journal of Creation and the Creation Research Society Quarterly are two peer-reviewed journals that cater for creationists (and publish ID-type papers also), so in that sense your suggestion is already happening. The Journal of Creation (which I read, so I'm most familiar with) covers the whole gamut of creationism, including theology, geology, and biology, and it certainly includes original scientific research. Yet where is the "change of view in the scientific community"? On the contrary, what I find so often is that evolutionists reject these peer-review publications as invalid, simply because they are creationist! And keep in mind that funding for creationist and ID research is virtually non-existent, so you shouldn't expect to see too much of it.

Philip J. Rayment 10:21, 15 November 2007 (EST)