July 23, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

On July 22, 2010 The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story by Peter Schmidt entitled, “Augusta State U. Is Accused of Requiring a Counseling Student to Accept Homosexuality.”
The first line reads, “A graduate student in school counseling is accusing Augusta State University in federal court of violating her constitutional rights by demanding that she work to change her views opposing homosexuality.”
The article seems factual and written with balance. Though the entire article is only 539 words, it had by midnight of that day received 52 comments, totaling 7,375 words. A few were well thought out; most were not. I didn’t spot any in favor of the plaintiff’s position. One (the next day) said that all Christians were not as narrow minded as those fundamentalists that hold such positions as “wives obey thy husbands.” (Which is nowhere in the Bible.) In any case, the very first comment pretty well illustrates the major problem with the popular view of science today:
July 22, 4pm: “If she believes that the earth is flat and the moon is made of green cheese will she pass science? It seems to me that the issue is that she accepts what is shown to be true by the weight of scientific evidence. Where scientific consensus is lacking, she may be more free to assert her individual (or ideological) views.”
It’s hard to get along in the world, let alone make progress, unless we trust general consensus to be true most of the time. It is sad, however, when people assume that general consensus is fact, proven by science. How about assuming consensus, just because objections are not heard? This is not just a testimony to gullibility; it is far worse. It is an indication of how low science has gone in the minds of the public. Search the web. Search your libraries. There are no (as in zero) defendable research articles out there that have identified a homosexual gene. Remember that the people who subscribe to, and are therefore available to comment on articles in, the Journal of Higher Education are presumably higher educators. We should not assume therefore that all higher educators hold their views from true science. They may in fact be blind to it.

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April 11, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

The 2010 movie release of The Clash of the Titans is a far cry from the actual Greek myth upon which it is supposedly based, but one of the most intriguing is its synthesis of modern Christian mythology.
Modern mythology says that God created man because He needed to be worshipped, just as is portrayed in this movie. This is not in the Bible. The movie says that God created us as an act of love. This is in the Bible, but love is defined differently.
Then there’s the part about God having a son with human body. The classic Greek myth had this, but only as the result of promiscuity, not an eternal plan.
But the movie writers could not resist one last reference to Christianity when Zeus and Perseus face off at the end. (I don’t think this is going to ruin the movie for any still eager to see it, since any plot is quite secondary to the action and graphics.) After the defeat of the gods, Zeus says that he let the humans win. He then says in affect to his son that he wanted the worship of mankind, but it wasn’t worth the sacrifice of his son. According to the Bible, God does not attempt to force love or worship from us. That’s a contradiction of terms, as defined in the Bible. But then there’s the sacrifice part. According to the Bible, even if He leaves with us the right to reject Him, God thinks the sacrifice is worth it.

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March 5, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

It’s always refreshing to see a paper like the New York Times publish a piece that makes a point I made in my blog months earlier. Yes, there is strong parallel between the way objections to the global warming belief system is being handled and the handling of objections to Darwinian evolution. People are noticing the parallel and viewpoint discrimination is being addressed in some state legislatures.
Interestingly enough, the author engages in another parallel herself. She positions opposition to the global warming belief system as religious, just as defenders of status-quo evolution position its objectors. This blankets all Darwin skeptics, even though their ranks include prominent agnostics, atheists, and people of other diverse religious positions. There is no reason to assume the same does not also hold for global warming scare objectors.
Notice that no science is ever alluded to in the Times article, only opinions and categorizing of the opponents (read that “name-calling”). Perhaps white evangelical Protestants are more likely to not believe the global warming dogma, because they already see the misconduct of orthodox scientists in squelching the evolution debate. Does this somehow mean the objectors are wrong? What does it matter what reason motivates a person to propose a scientific investigation. What should matter is if the hypotheses and subsequently accumulated evidence passes the rigor of the scientific method.
Why even talk about what some pole says about people’s opinions? Why is the evidence not the issue instead of opinions? The article frames white evangelical Protestants as bad guys because they are more skeptical of the global warming consensus than the general population. (We are given no information about what black evangelical Protestants think, so they may be more or less skeptical than white.) The way the argument is framed obscures the larger truth: Only 36% of the general population buys the idea that there is a human-induced global warming issue. In my math classes that would be considered quite short of a majority. Does the author of this article somehow miss that her politically correct view still represents the minority of Americans?

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November 24, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

“Climate Emails Stoke Debate” is the headline for this subject in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, but it illustrates the even deeper problem that continually threatens science. I refer particularly to the quote by George Rebovich: “Any group with such a single-minded view (whether they are believers in global warming, global warming rejectionists, liberals, conservatives, whatever) bears close watching and a certain amount of skepticism.”
I like his use of the phrase “believers in,” because that is at the heart of the issue. Once a group convinces themselves to believe in some one view, they have a hard time self-policing their integrity. It doesn’t even have to be intentional. Read the whole article. Is it really true that each science journal “evaluates papers solely on scientific merit,” or is it possible that a belief system can stifle opposing data from being published publication? What if you through into the mix that careers and fortunes (grants) are at risk? The climate issue is pretty new. How much more so should we expect this phenomenon with biological and chemical origins?

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November 13, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

The Christian Science Monitor reported that as of November 14 “military investigators’ position thus far that Hasan acted alone and without instruction when he attacked Fort Hood’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center Nov. 5, killing 13 and wounding 29.” Many conservative bloggers and pundits are arguing that Hasan should be considered as, and tried as, a terrorist; and that the whole thing would not have happened but for political correctness blinding us from the symptoms of the impending danger.
That may well be, but I think they are still missing a larger and more important point, one also missed during the Bush administration and also hidden as a result of politically correct word “terrorism.” Ladies and gentlemen, our enemy is not terrorism, and there can be no war on terrorism. Terrorism is a technique. It’s killing and maiming innocent people to demoralize and disorganize them. To say there is a war against terrorism would be like the British among the American revolutionaries saying that they were engaged in a war against fighting behind trees. No one wants to offend Muslims by pointing out that in every attack that we label as “terrorism,” the perpetrators have acted in the name of Allah.
No, that’s not my point either. Most Muslims seem to live peacefully enough, no more willing to believe and act on every word of the Qur’an as God’s word than most Christians do in respect to the Bible. The culprits are that faction known as radical Muslims, but that is still not the carefully hidden truth of the matter.
It is important to know if Hasan acted alone in order to trace down any “sleeper cells” or other yet-to-be-discovered strategies in opposition to the US. But the pursuit is also fueled by an intentional ignorance. People want to believe that we are threatened by an organization or a group of organizations like organized crime. It isn’t. The enemy is not a new kind of mafia. It is an ideology. Let me be more blunt: It is a certain belief about the nature of God—Who He is, what He values, and what He rewards and punishes. Yes, a person can buy into and act upon an ideology, especially a religious one, without being recruited into an “organization.”
Some rightly fear that if this fact is acknowledged by the masses then Christians will come under even more attack as all religious beliefs are rolled together. This may also be, but it still does not reach the depths of the distasteful truth.
In his small but powerful book Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer argues from the very first page, that “what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” The more I think about this, the more I am convinced it is true.
The carefully hidden truth is that everyone has a belief about God, and that (here’s the part most difficult to swallow) that belief drives all persons’ behaviors. It does not just affect the behavior of those people who say they believe IN God. The statement concerns what we think ABOUT God. All of us have a belief ABOUT God, which is driven by what we think about God.. or is it the other way around? It doesn’t matter in this case. Those who think they have freed themselves from God and religion are wrong. What they think about God drives their behavior no less than it does for those who have different conclusions about who and what He is (or it is, depending on their belief system). We all are driven by religious beliefs, and we cannot help but act on them and (even irrationally) defend them against those who would have us compromise them. Some will think I have digressed from the usual topic of this blog. I haven’t.

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June 9, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Sarah Palin has been cleared of all 13 ethics charges brought against her during her bid for the vice-presidency. Many will never hear this fact. Many who do, because of their news sources, will laugh and say, “See! I knew she was innocent!” But I hear and I’m saddened. I would that she were guilty than that this trend were becoming the norm in my country.
It is obvious that the accusations were made to defame during the election. It’s OK with the accusers that she is vindicated after it no longer affects the outcome desired.
It is also obvious that the charges were made to sway a public that cares about ethics. What an irony! Those who made each of the original accusations must have known, surely they must have at least suspected, that the charges they were bringing were untrue. This is not the same as two parties debating an idea for its truth. That should be encouraged. There is something ironic, however, about a group having the power to attack someone’s ethics in an unethical way. At the very least, they simply didn’t care about the truth more than they cared about their cause. This is not a condemnation of a party. It is a condemnation of a people. Oh, God, what is to become of a people who care more about their cause than about the truth?

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May 7, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Recently you have probably heard the swine flu described in terms of deaths in Mexico, followed closely by words like “pandemic” and “quarantine.” Last time I heard, those deaths were in two digits. Any deaths are of course tragic, but for years the average lives lost to flu in the United States alone exceed 36,000. The world’s experience with swine flu hardly qualifies as a “pandemic.” As a matter of fact, people do not normally get swine flu. What people do normally get, however, is hype from the media. They got to keep you watching!
The part that amazes me is that it works. We do not get our medical information from science; we get it from popular media. Unfortunately we don’t even get most of what we call science from science. We believe and make our judgments based on a kind of “politically correct” science. By “politically correct,” I mean facts filtered and presented to the masses based on some group’s agenda. It is emotionally charged for some predetermined conclusion or action. I’m not even sure there is such thing as unbiased science, but I am sure we can do better. Does it matter? How about spending billions on finding a cure for a disease that is behaviorally correctable, while the number one killer, heart disease, receives about one eighth the funding?
Is there an agenda behind most of what we hear on global warming? I’ve seen the markers in Alaska where the glaciers once reached. No one doubts that the world is warmer than it was 200 years ago, but that was during what is now known as the “little ice age.” The earth’s temperature has fluctuated warmer and cooler as far as we can tell for all of recorded history–long before industrial pollution was invented. The cause of climate change is, to say the least, controversial. The leap that man is responsible is vanity. That we are thus able to fix it is arrogance. “You really can’t settle the issue by more heated debate…You need experimental data.”
But it sells newspapers, and it justifies research grants. It doesn’t boost either to point out that 95% of greenhouse gas is water vapor, or that CO2 is harmless to animals and essential for plants.
All my ranting so far is really about one thing: Our lives are so filled with other things, and we are so dependent on the digestion of ideas by other people, that we are suckers for someone else’s agenda. Could it be true of other “science”? Are the masses buying evolution because the evidence is so irrefutable, or could it be that the fit with secularism and research grants is not coincidental? After all, we must discover our self-made roots and whether other life has evolved out there. It’s too coincidental not to be questioned.

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March 22, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Last week an official letter was sent by the ACLU and others to leaders in the Obama administration protesting the denial of academic freedom for certain persons seeking admission into the United States. The apparent reason for denial of these persons’ visas was outspoken ideological differences with our government. I am not here concerned with whether these people should be allowed into the United States nor do I necessarily take issue with the missions and approaches of all the organizations that signed the letter. I would however, like to recommend that the ACLU read again this letter that they have posted on their website the next time they wish to object to a teacher who simply presents ideological or scientific criticisms to Darwinian evolution theory. To make it easier for them, I have copied the entire text below, highlighting phrases and whole sentences that could as easily fit the
mistreatment of Darwin critics; whom apparently the ACLU finds more threatening to our civil liberties than political dissidents.

March 18, 2009

Dear Attorney General Holder and Secretaries Clinton and Napolitano:

Over the last eight years, the Departments of State and Homeland Security revivedthe practice of “ideological exclusion,” refusing visas to foreign scholars, writers, artists, and activistsnot on the basis of their actions but on the basis of their ideas, political views, and associations. As a result of this practice, dozens of prominent intellectuals were barred from assuming teaching posts at U.S. universities, fulfilling

speaking engagements with U.S. audiences, and attending academic conferences. Many of those barred from the United States were vocal critics of U.S. foreign policy.

We are writing to urge you to end this practice. While the government plainly has an interest in excluding
foreign nationals who present a threat to national security,no legitimate interest is served by the exclusion
of foreign nationalson ideological grounds.

To the contrary,ideological exclusion impoverishes academic and political debate inside the United States. It sends the message to the world that our country is more interested in silencing than engaging its critics.It undermines our ability to support political dissidents in other countries. And it deprives Americans of a right protected by the First

Amendment.See Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753 (1972).No legitimate interest is served by the government’s use of the immigrationlaws as instruments of censorship.

In fact, ideological exclusion is a practice that history had discredited long before the Bush administration. During the Cold War, the United States used the ideological exclusion provisions of the McCarran-Walter Act to bar, among others, Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Italian playwright Dario Fo, British novelist Doris Lessing, and Canadian

writer and environmentalist Farley Mowat. Those exclusions came to be seen as an embarrassment to the country, and virtually no one proposes now that those exclusions served the national interest. History will judge the ideological exclusions of the last eight years in the same way. Such exclusions are ineffective as a matter of security policy and they are inconsistent with the ideals that make this country worth defending.

The undersigned organizations are eager to see the new administration commit itself to these ideals. Accordingly, we respectfully ask (1)
that you evaluate applicants for admission to the United States on the basis of their actions rather than their political beliefs and associations; (2) that, as to foreign scholars, writers, artists, and activists who are deemed inadmissible under the Immigration and Nationality Act, you exercise your discretion to waive inadmissibility except where articulable national security interests unrelated to the applicant’s political beliefs or associations make waiver inappropriate; and (3) that you immediately revisit the specific cases listed below:

• Iñaki Egaña. Mr. Egaña is a respected historian and writer from the Basque region of Spain. In March 2006, Mr. Egaña traveled to the United States to conduct research for a book about Basque author Mario Salegi, who was a target of McCarthyism during the 1950s. Upon disembarking the plane, however, Mr. Egaña and his children were interrogated, detained for 24 hours, and forced to return to Madrid. The government has provided no explanation for Mr. Egaña’s exclusion.

• Haluk Gerger. Professor Gerger is a Turkish sociologist and journalist. He was jailed by Turkey in the 1990s for his writing about Turkey’s Kurds. Twice during that time, in its 1994 and 1995 Country Reports on Human Rights, the U.S. State Department cited Professor Gerger’s treatment as an example of the misuse of antiterrorism legislation to stifle freedom of expression. In 1999, when Professor Gerger was on trial again for his writings, the U.S. issued Professor Gerger and his wife 10-year, multiple entry visas. In October 2002, however, when Professor

Gerger and his wife arrived at Newark airport, border officials informed them that the State Department had cancelled their visas. The governmenthas provided no explanation for Professor Gerger’s exclusion.

• Adam Habib. Professor Habib, a South African national, is a prominent human rights activist and public intellectual. Although he earned his PhD in the United States, when he attempted to visit the United States in October 2006 for professional meetings, he was interrogated for seven hours at the border and then told that his visa had been revoked. After U.S. organizations filed suit to challenge his exclusion, the government notified Professor Habib that he had been denied entry on terrorism-related grounds. It still has not has not informed him, however, of the specific legal or factual basis for its decision. The evidence strongly suggests that Professor Habib has been excluded not because of any

connection to terrorism but because of his political activism.

• Riyadh Lafta. Dr. Lafta, an Iraqi national, is Professor of Medicine at Baghdad’s Mustansiriyah University. In the fall of 2006, Dr. Lafta applied for a U.S. visa in order to attend a speaking engagement at the University of Washington that was to take place in April 2007. His visa application was denied. Although the government stated that the denial was the result of a “miscommunication,” the circumstances strongly suggest that Dr. Lafta was refused a visa because f conclusions he had drawn in a 2006 article regarding the number of civilian casualties in Iraq.

• Tariq Ramadan. Professor Ramadan, a Swiss national, is a professor at the University of Oxford and, in the words of Time magazine, “the leading Islamic thinker among Europe’s second- and third-generation Muslim immigrants.” In 2004, he was offered a teaching position at the University of Notre Dame; only days before he was to begin teaching, however, he was told that his visa had been revoked under a provision that renders inadmissible anyone who has “endorse[d] or espouse[d]” terrorism. After U.S. groups filed suit, the government abandoned the accusation that Professor Ramadan had endorsed terrorism. It continues to exclude him now, however, under the INA’s “material support” provisions. We believe that the material support provisions do not apply to Professor Ramadan, and the evidence strongly suggests that he has been excluded not because of his donations but because of his vocal criticism of U.S. foreign policy.

• Rafael de Jesus Gallego Romero. Father Gallego is a parish priest from the village of Tiquisio in North-Central Colombia, where he ministers to miners and peasants, facilitates community support initiatives, and runs a local radio station. Father Gallego is also a vocal critic of government-supported paramilitary units acting on behalf of multinational mining corporations. In the fall of 2008, Father Gallego received invitations to travel to the United States to address universities, activist organizations, community radio stations, and churches. The U.S. government simply failed to adjudicate the visa. Father Gallego eventually learned from the Provincial Jesuit, who has ties to the American Embassy, that his visa was going to be denied “for national security reasons,” buthe has never received a formal notification that his visa was adjudicated, let alone an

explanation of the grounds on which it was denied.

• Dora María Téllez. Professor Téllez was a leading figure in Nicaragua’s revolution against the brutal Somoza regime, and has served in her country as a government minister, political activist, and professor. She has also been a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy. In 2004, she was appointed Robert F. Kennedy visiting professor in Latin American Studies at Harvard’s Divinity School and Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. When Professor Téllez attempted to enroll at a language class in California in preparation for that post, however,< class="MsoNormal" style="text-autospace: none; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">her student visa was denied on the ground that she had previously engaged in terrorist acts, despite the fact that she had been granted visas to enter the United States in the past.

Ideological exclusion compromises the vitality of academic and political debate in the United States at a time when that debate is exceptionally important. The practice was misguided during the Cold War and it is misguided now. We strongly urge you to end the practice and to immediately revisit the cases noted above.

Sincerely,

(Among others)

American Civil Liberties Union

American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California

American Federation of Teachers

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January 29, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Mark,
I have never brought up meanness or rudeness, much less suggested they were evidence for anything. I have used the phrase “God did it” as a comparison with “evolution did it,” not as a summary of my position. And I am sorry if you are insulted by the principles of culture (which equally apply to my own). We can come back to that later. For now, allow me to hit that less directly with comment about evidence and mechanisms:
In the first few sentences of your last email, and throughout, you present all evidence as either for or against evolution. You are not accepting evidence as possibly being for or against any other position. Therefore, if you see evidence supporting evolution, then it is positive evidence; if it does not support evolution, then it is negative evidence. You cannot see positive evidence for design, as long as you look only from the position of Darwinian evolution. My argument to you about design in the Cambrian Explosion was not presented as negative evidence for design. That there are no interim forms in one layer (a negative observation) is only part of the argument. That there is fantastic order in the immediate next (a positive observation) is the other part. Together they are evidence. One without the other is meaningless. Also, notice that in my argument I did not say that the evidence negates or even counters evolutionary theory. I merely argued that design was the better explanation of the two for the evidence. I am not trying to disprove evolution; I am trying to demonstrate that ID has a legitimate (scientific) place in the discussion of origins.
Sometimes evidence may be for one theory AND for another. For example, similarities between body parts in one vertebrate and those in another supports the idea that they may had a common ancestor, because they could have been passed on to both from a common ancestor. On the other hand it is evidence for design, because the parts may have similarities due to a common designer. On the other hand, the human eye is strikingly similar to that of the octopus, but no one argues for their common decent, because of their distinct body plans (something that is there). The conclusion is that similar parts do not necessarily support common origin, but this has no implications against design theory. You can say this is evidence for design, or you can say it is against evolution, depending on your frame of reference. In either case I believe it fits your definition of positive evidence, because it is about what is there, not what is not there.
As for a mechanism: In the equation “chance plus natural selection,” “natural selection” is only an eliminating factor, a filter, a terminator. All generative power must be in “chance.” Your response to my comments on nylonase was to say, actually to my surprise, that you believe change plus natural selection actually is a sufficient mechanism to explain the existence of life in its many forms. This implies to me that you do not see any reason to continue to investigate cause-and-effect for this molecule, that this molecule of thousands of atoms just happened by chance. Worse still, that a DNA pattern happened by chance that happened to work for giving instruction to produce just the right molecule to work in this specified new environment. That is not consistent with the scientific curiosity needed to drive discovery of new knowledge. It is however consistent with the reductionism that divorces one field of knowledge from another. It is consistent with not recognizing mathematics as having any bearing on other forms of science.
Just as a person can mentally disassociate science and philosophy, so evolutionists seem to disassociate chance and probability. A probability of .05 (one in 20) is considered robust among data across the sciences, but never applied to the probability of chance resulting in a desirable molecule. Discovering that organic molecules are produced exclusively by an independent set of molecular instructions has only made the probability more remote. The mathematic improbability of evolution by chance was clearly pointed out at the Wistar Institute conference of1966, and has been ignored by evolutionists ever since.
“Given enough time” is an insufficient answer when probabilities are so low. The ratio of documented useful mutations is so minuscule in comparison with documented harmful mutations in any given organism that any attempt to compute a ratio is purely speculative. The higher chances are that something can go wrong, the lower the probability that something by chance could go right, regardless of time. If I drop a drop of India ink into a tank of still water, how long will it take to spread into letters of a word—any word, any language? There comes a time when it either happens or it will never happen. The laws of thermodynamics tell us that beyond initial contact with the water the molecules continually disperse to less and less order. Adding reproductive power does not help the equation, if you can’t get a word that has enough meaning to warrant reproduction. Add to that that the reproductive power itself has to be reproduced without harm by mutation. Fortunately for us, natural selection works well as a means for terminating mutations. There can be no “unequivocal” evidence for evolution through chance plus natural selection. Chance plus natural selection is an idea to explain what exists, just as design is. It does not trump design as a mechanism.
I hope you have a Merry Christmas,
Don Mc

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January 14, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Don

There is a mechanism known for the nylonase gene, and it is not Lamarckian. There is abundant evidence that Lamarck was wrong about his mechanism. And, contrary to your bald-faced assertion, chance + natural selection adequately explains the observations. If you have another explanation that involves deities twiddling with organisms in effluent ponds, what is the evidence for it? If you can’t provide evidence for it, then why should we accept it when a perfectly reasonable natural explanation is already in hand?

Coal in Spirit Lake? More AnswersinGenesis claptrap? Please. The TalkOrigins FAQ is down right now with server difficulties, but in a few days check this link

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mtsthelens.html

and let me know if an open-eyed look at actual evidence, rather than hopeful squinting at evidence, changes anything for you.

Furthermore, I don’t believe (and I hope that you don’t either) that God is useless in all contexts. But in the context of science, a God who meddles invisibly in daily activities is simply not a testable concept. You may think that your Maker’s “opinion” of you “matters”, but you have no objective evidence for that notion. Other religious viewpoints have other takes on that argument; none of them have objective evidence for any of it. So it is irrelevant. It may matter to you, but it doesn’t change anything about how science has to operate in the material world, without reference to vague notions of your importance to some invisible and untestable deity.

Again, this goes back to EVIDENCE. Science works with objective evidence. No evidence, no science. Provide the evidence, as I have pleaded with you to do every time, and science can be applied. Without new evidence, you provide science with nothing. So it is as if you are standing on the air hose, if air is analogous to evidence. If you truly believe that creationism is useful NOW (not in the past), provide some new air. Please. The “coal in Spirit Lake” example above is not new; it is just the latest incarnation of attempts to justify the BELIEF that the earth is a few thousand years old. Conclusion-first is not the way science operates. Even if this was true, and proved that coal can form rapidly, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence for an old earth would still have to be negated with relevant and objective and massive new evidence. Old-earth is an old argument, and it is both tired and wrong. Give us new evidence that doesn’t resemble old conclusion-first canards, please. Please.

As for why scientists have a strong reaction to creationism, there are plenty of reasons, and they might be different for different scientists. I can think of at least three quite readily.

One is, as noted above, we’re simply tired of beating down the some old dead horses. People who are tired get testy. If it’s science, give us scientific evidence for it. Until then, quit bringing up the same old conclusion-first attempts to justify your religious views.

Another is that the attempts so far to introduce creationism (and its bastard son ID) into scientific curricula are basically attempts to RE-DEFINE science by people who are not scientists. Engineers would get testy if non-engineers re-defined their enterprise. Plumbers would get testy if non-plumbers attempted to re-define plumbing. Sociologists would get testy if non-sociologists attempted to re-define sociology. Etc.

Another is the blatant dishonesty of the creationist/ID proponents. All of the attempts to introduce creationism/ID into science curricula are transparent attempts to introduce religious doctrines into science curricula. These attempts do not come from scientists, they come from folks with a religious agenda who are dishonest about that religious agenda. See “Wedge Strategy” for evidence of this dishonesty, if you really need it. Dishonesty rightfully breeds contempt.

So I don’t accept that the sole motive is that people “don’t want it to matter.” They don’t want it because it’s WRONG (scientifically), because it is coming from a decidely NON-SCIENTIFIC community, and because it is coming from folks who are being DISHONEST about their motives. There are certainly more motives, but let’s start with those three.

Scientific dialog is protected now; it doesn’t need an injection of dishonesty to get better. Science education needs to be focused on the science, not on some conclusion-first notion that aims to protect a particular religious doctrine.

Hope this helps

Mark

“If the cultivation of understanding consists in one thing more than
another, it is surely in learning the grounds of one’s own opinions.”
- J. S. Mill

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