Reflectorites<br>
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Steve Jones: <br>
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>A welcome to Ami to the Reflector. Perhaps he >can tell us a bit more<br>
>about himself?<br>
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Thanks for the welcome. I have been here for a couple of years though, and posted a few times. While my name may appear foreign, and in that case masculine·think Amy but with an ĪIā. My last name is my husbandās, who is from Russia. I have some schooling in biology, so I have just slightly more than the laymanās knowledge of evolution. It is a subject of great interest to me, so Iāve tried to keep up in these years Iāve been a housewife.<br>
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>One of Ami\'s problems might be posting in HTML >format. He could try <br>
>using text format.<br>
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We have moved twice in the last few months, and I encountered problems with this little laptop and web based server·I pressed return for another paragraph and apparently the cursor was outside the text field on the send button. But thanks ö I am using my word processor now while writing.<br>
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>Palevitz wrongly conflates \"intelligent design >theory\" with \"scientific <br>
>creationism\". Dembski makes it quote clear the >ID and SC are two entirely <br>
>different things:<br>
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It would appear that in most things we agree. However, I would like to discuss one thing you said:<br>
<br>
>AK>It should not be dismissed by the scientific >establishment purely <br>
>>because theists will use it as evidence that >God exists.<br>
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>Agreed again. But it is precisely because they >*are* \"the scientific <br>
>establishment\" that design is \"dismissed ... >because theists will use it as <br>
>evidence that God exists\"!<br>
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>\"Naturalistic evolution is not merely a >scientific theory; it is the official <br>
>creation story of modern culture. The scientific >priesthood that has <br>
>authority to interpret the official creation >story gains immense cultural <br>
>influence thereby, which it might lose if the >story were called into question. <br>
>The experts therefore have a vested interest in >protecting the story, and in <br>
>imposing rules of reasoning that make it >invulnerable. When critics ask, `Is <br>
>your theory really true?\' we should not be >satisfied to be answered that `it <br>
>is good science, as we define science.\'\" >(Johnson P.E., \"Darwin on Trial\", <br>
>1993, p159).<br>
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I am of the opinion that the scientific ćpriesthoodä is not like a conspiracy or anything of that sort. But it is a group of people who learned while they were young and impressionable that evolution was a completely natural process and needed no intellegent intervention. They took on faith the answer to many problems facing naturalistic evolution: Science will eventually find the naturalistic answers to these questions. More knowledge will prove our theory. <br>
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It has been a question of faith on both sides. And both sides have their dogma which cannot be contradicted by any new discovery or insight. Perhaps the devil planted it. Or if we interpret the theory just this way, and the data in just this manner, perhaps we can still have the planets following perfect circles. None of these people are evil, and want to suppress truth. They just feel they know the truth and naturally ignore, gloss over, or sometimes attack evidence which goes against the wisdom they learned in their youth. Unfortunately, the battle lines were drawn in the wrong place.<br>
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Occamās Razor will become a double edged sword cutting away these imaginary creations MikeBGene spoke about so well. The younger crowd of students who have become skeptical of sweeping dogmatic statements made by their teachers will sift through the data more openly. I have faith that we will someday find out what happened. ;)<br>
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Ami Chopine<br>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Jan 31 2000 - 13:25:27 EST