The Evol. Establishment and Their Consensus

I can’ remember the number of times that I’ve heard theistic (Christian) evolutionists accusing the church for having blindly and ignorantly ignored the findings of science, namely evolution. However, I just read an illuminating rebuttal on the subject in the Institute For Creation Research (ICR) journal (May 2009), entitled “Consensus Science: The Rise of the Scientific Elite.”

While the evolution establishment would have us believe that their consensus agreement, regarding evolution, was un-coerced, ICR has another story to tell. Instead, the “consensus” seems to be the product of carefully selected and promoted allies. In addition to this, while we hear much about the alleged safeguards to insure objectivity through critical peer examination and replication of experimentation, ICR exposes it as “an incestuous style of peer review” – the promotion of a in-group worldview by a group of insiders who rigorously hold tight to the reigns. Here are some quotations cited by ICR that should give us some hesitation about this “consensus”:

1. “The tendency to succumb to group-think and the herd-instinct…is perhaps as tempting among scientists as any group.” (Professor John Christy, University of Alabama)

2. “With the explosion of scientific knowledge…the expertise to master even a small corner of the scientific field has made the necessity of collaborating with other scientists a virtual necessity, requiring a good deal of trust among researchers…. The pressures to publish not only increase the risk of mistakes made in haste, but more menacingly, raise the rewards of outright manipulation of data. Critics argue that the scientific community is generally unprepared to recognize such fraud.” (Science writer, William Allman)

3. “Unfortunately, although the ability to replicate results is one of science’s strongest defenses against fraud, few experiments are repeated exactly…As a result, fudged data that conform to prevailing scientific wisdom…can easily slip into print.” (Sharon Begley)

4. “Our [scientists’] ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of the fully rational and objective ‘scientific method’ with individual scientists as logical and interchangeable robots, is self-serving mythology.” (Stephen Jay Gould)

5. “People need to realize that scientists are human beings like everybody else and that their pronouncements may arise from their social prejudices, as any of our pronouncements might. The public should avoid being snowed by he scientist’s line: ‘Don’t think about this for yourself, because it’s all too complicated.’” (Gould)

However, this is just what has happened. The evol. establishment has paraded itself into court on numerous occasions, always insisting – based upon their manufactured consensus – that evolution is the only scientific explanation for the origins of life and demanding a virtual monopoly to teach science. Sadly, the courts have ignored Gould’s warning and have granted them just about everything that they’ve demanded.

The question that we must ask is this: “Is science best served – and has it historically been best served – by an enforced monopoly or by safeguarding a free and competitive marketplace?”