To call someone a “conspiracy theorist” (CT) has become a potent weapon to slur, silence, and to cancel an opponent. “They voted for Trump and are dangerous and threaten the welfare of the nation. They don’t get their news from the NY Times or watch CNN. Instead, they form their opinions from ‘fake news’ outlets.”
Paul Braterman, Professor Emeritus in Chemistry, University of Glasgow, has enlarged the CT group to include creationists, who have already been labeled as “anti-science”:
· But I would argue that the present-day creationist movement is a fully fledged conspiracy theory. It meets all the criteria, offering a complete parallel universe with its own organisations and rules of evidence, and claims that the scientific establishment promoting evolution is an arrogant and morally corrupt elite. This so-called elite supposedly conspires to monopolise academic employment and research grants. https://theconversation.com/why-creationism-bears-all-the-hallmarks-of-a-conspiracy-theory-153831
Admittedly, creationists and ID adherents oppose naturalistic evolution, but why shouldn’t they! Even dedicated evolutionists admit that their necessary evidence is lacking, despite the bold public pronouncements of the evolution establishment that evolution is a proven fact. In Undertaker: Has Science Buried God, John C. Lennox documented many confessions of noted evolutionists regarding the fossil record:
· There is no theoretical reason that would permit us to expect that evolutionary lines would increase in complexity with time; there is also no empirical evidence that this happens.” (John Maynard Smith, E. Szathmary).
· The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, [should] be enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such graduated organic chain. (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species)
· The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as a trade secret of paleontology…The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with the idea that they gradually evolved:
o Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking pretty much the same as when they disappear…
o Sudden appearance. In any local area a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and “fully formed.” (Stephen Jay Gould)
· We are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. (Paleontologist David Raup; Field Museum of Natural History)
· We palaeontologists have said that the history of life supports [the story of gradual adaptive change] knowing all the while it does not.” (Niles Eldredge; American Museum of Natural History)
· I tried in vain to document examples of the kind of slow directional change we all thought ought to be there every since Darwin told us that natural selection should leave precisely such a tell-tale signal…I found instead that once species appear in the fossil record they tend not to change very much at all. Species remain imperturbably, implacably resistant to change as a matter of course – often for millions of years.” (Eldredge)
· All Paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. (S.J.Gould)
· No real evolutionist…uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation. (Mark Ridley)
· I will lay it on the line – there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.” His response when asked why he didn’t include anything about transitional forms in his book, Evolution: “If I knew any, I certainly would have included them.” (Dr. Colin Patterson, British Museum of Natural History)
· It is a mistake to believe that even one fossil species… can be demonstrated to have been ancestral to another.” (Dr. Gareth J. Nelson, American Museum of Natural History)
If macroevolution has taken place, it should be clearly evidenced in the fossil record by a continuous stream of transitions. Instead, the evidence points to stasis. This alone should cause us to question whether creationism is a CT that be silenced. However, Braterman insists that creationism has been promoted by devious means:
· These are common conspiracy theory tactics at play. Creationists go to great lengths to demonise the proponents of evolution, and to undermine the overwhelming evidence in its favour.
However, if this is so, creationists have entirely failed. Instead, it seems that the creationists are barred from the biological sciences at every major university. Hence, creationism has been utterly silenced within these institutions. Casey Luskin has documented many of these cases: https://evolutionnews.org/2014/03/cosmos_with_nei/#sthash.991JKvFw.dpuf
In 2005, Smithsonian spokesman Randall Kremer objected to a private screening of the pro-ID film The Privileged Planet because it drew a “philosophical conclusion.” The Smithsonian made no complaints when Sagan’s original Cosmos in 1980 argued that “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”
A congressional subcommittee staff investigation found that biologist Richard Sternberg experienced retaliation by his co-workers and superiors at the Smithsonian, including transfer to a hostile supervisor, removal of his name placard from his door, deprivation of workspace, subjection to work requirements not imposed on others, restriction of specimen access, and loss of his keys, because he allowed a pro-ID article to be published in a biology journal. The Congressional staff investigation concluded that the “Smithsonian’s top officials permit[ed] the demotion and harassment of [a] scientist skeptical of Darwinian evolution” and “officials explicitly acknowledged in emails their intent to pressure Sternberg to resign because of his role in the publication of the [pro-ID] Meyer paper and his views on evolution.”
In 2009 the state-funded California Science Center (CSC) museum cancelled the contract of a pro-ID group, American Freedom Alliance (AFA), to show a pro-ID film. The lawsuit was settled in August 2011, with the CSC agreeing to pay AFA $110,000 to avoid a public trial. However, documents disclosed during the course of litigation showed that employees of the CSC, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, joined with other LA-area academics to suppress the expression of ID, most egregiously by pressing CSC decision-makers to hastily cancel AFA’s event.
In 2005, over 120 faculty members at Iowa State University (ISU) signed a petition denouncing ID and calling on “all faculty members to … reject efforts to portray Intelligent Design as science.” These efforts were significant not just because they opposed academic freedom by demanding conformity among faculty to reject ID, but because they focused on creating a hostile environment for pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet, who was denied tenure at ISU in 2006 due to his support for ID. Both public and private statements exposed through public records requests revealed that members of ISU’s department in physics and astronomy voted against Gonzalez’s tenure due to his support for ID.
In 1993, San Francisco State University biology professor Dean Kenyon was forced to stop teaching introductory biology because he was informing students that scientists had doubts about materialist theories of the origin of life.
In a similar case five years later, Minnesota high school teacher Rodney LeVake was removed from teaching biology after expressing skepticism about Darwin’s theory. LeVake, who holds a master’s degree in biology, agreed to teach evolution as required in the district’s curriculum, but said he wanted to “accompany that treatment of evolution with an honest look at the difficulties and inconsistencies of the theory.”
Rogert DeHart, a public high school biology teacher in Washington State, was denied the right to have his students read articles from mainstream science publications that made scientific criticisms of certain pieces of evidence typically offered to support Darwinian theory. One of the forbidden articles was written by noted evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould. Although DeHart complied with this ban, he was later removed from teaching biology.
In Mississippi, chemistry professor Nancy Bryson was asked by Mississippi University for Women to resign as head of the Division of Science and Mathematics after she gave a lecture to honors students called “Critical Thinking on Evolution.” She remarked, “Students at my college got the message very clearly[;] do not ask any questions about Darwinism.”
In 1999, ID theorist William Dembski founded the Polanyi Center at Baylor University to allow scientists and scholars to conduct scientific research into intelligent design. The Center was later shut down largely due to intolerance of ID among Baylor faculty.
In 2005, the president of the University of Idaho instituted a campus-wide classroom speech-code, where “evolution” was “the only curriculum that is appropriate” for science classes. This was done in retaliation towards a professor at the university, Scott Minnich, who at the time was testifying in favor of intelligent design as an expert witness at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial.
Also in 2005, Cornell’s former interim president Hunter Rawlings devoted a State of the University Address “to denounce ‘intelligent design,’ arguing that it has no place in science classrooms and calling on faculty members in a range of disciplines” to similarly attack ID.
In 2005, top biology professors at Ohio State University derailed a doctoral student’s thesis defense by writing a letter claiming “there are no valid scientific data challenging macroevolution” and therefore the student’s teaching about problems with neo-Darwinism was “unethical” and “deliberate miseducation.”
In 2005, pro-ID adjunct biology professor Caroline Crocker lost her job at George Mason University after teaching students about both the evidence for and against evolution in the classroom, and mentioning ID as a possible alternative to Darwinism. While her former employer maintains that it simply chose not to renew her contract, she was specifically told she would be “disciplined” for teaching students about the scientific controversy over evolution.
In 2007, Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, had established an Evolutionary Informatics Lab at Baylor University to study the ability of Darwinian processes to generate new information using computer simulations and evolutionary algorithms. However, after Dr. Marks was interviewed by ID the Future in 2007, he subsequently received a letter from his dean warning that the website was “associated” with “ID,” and he was forced to take the lab’s site down and move the lab itself off campus.
In 2006, a professor of biochemistry and leading biochemistry textbook author at the University of Toronto, Laurence A. Moran, stated that a major public research university “should never have admitted” students who support ID, and should “just flunk the lot of them and make room for smart students.”
In 2011, a biology professor at the University of Waikato stated that “If, for example, a student were to use examples such as the bacterial flagellum to advance an ID view then they should expect to be marked down”
Likewise, that same year Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, stated that “adherence to ID (which, after all, claims to be a nonreligious theory) should be absolute grounds for not hiring a science professor.”
In January 2011, the University of Kentucky (UK) paid over $100,000 to settle astronomer Martin Gaskell’s lawsuit claiming that he was wrongfully denied employment because of UK’s perception that he doubted Darwinism. UK faculty admitted that Gaskell was the most qualified applicant for the position, but they hired a much less qualified candidate out of concerns about statements Gaskell had made that were critical of Darwinian evolution.
In June 2011, the journal Applied Mathematics Letters paid $10,000 and publicly apologized to avoid litigation after it wrongfully withdrew mathematician Granville Sewell’s paper critiquing neo-Darwinism.
In 2009, David Coppedge was demoted and punished for sharing pro-ID videos with co-workers at Jet Propulsion Lab. Later, his employment was terminated.
In 2012, Springer-Verlag illegally breached a contract to publish the proceedings of an ID-friendly research conference at Cornell University after a pressure campaign was mounted by pro-Darwin activists to have the book scuttled.
In 2013, Ball State University (BSU) President Jo Ann Gora issued a speech code declaring that “intelligent design is not appropriate content for science courses” at BSU, after atheist activists from the Freedom from Religion Foundation charged that a “Boundaries of Science” course taught by a well-liked physics professor (Eric Hedin) was violating the Constitution by favorably discussing intelligent design.
Also in 2013, atheist activists forced Amarillo College to cancel an intelligent design course after they threatened disruption if it went forward. In 2005, Smithsonian spokesman Randall Kremer objected to a private screening of the pro-ID film The Privileged Planet because it drew a “philosophical conclusion.” The Smithsonian made no complaints when Sagan’s original Cosmos in 1980 argued that “The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.”
A congressional subcommittee staff investigation found that biologist Richard Sternberg experienced retaliation by his co-workers and superiors at the Smithsonian, including transfer to a hostile supervisor, removal of his name placard from his door, deprivation of workspace, subjection to work requirements not imposed on others, restriction of specimen access, and loss of his keys, because he allowed a pro-ID article to be published in a biology journal. The Congressional staff investigation concluded that the “Smithsonian’s top officials permit[ed] the demotion and harassment of [a] scientist skeptical of Darwinian evolution” and “officials explicitly acknowledged in emails their intent to pressure Sternberg to resign because of his role in the publication of the [pro-ID] Meyer paper and his views on evolution.”
In 2009 the state-funded California Science Center (CSC) museum cancelled the contract of a pro-ID group, American Freedom Alliance (AFA), to show a pro-ID film. The lawsuit was settled in August 2011, with the CSC agreeing to pay AFA $110,000 to avoid a public trial. However, documents disclosed during the course of litigation showed that employees of the CSC, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, joined with other LA-area academics to suppress the expression of ID, most egregiously by pressing CSC decision-makers to hastily cancel AFA’s event.
In 2005, over 120 faculty members at Iowa State University (ISU) signed a petition denouncing ID and calling on “all faculty members to … reject efforts to portray Intelligent Design as science.” These efforts were significant not just because they opposed academic freedom by demanding conformity among faculty to reject ID, but because they focused on creating a hostile environment for pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet, who was denied tenure at ISU in 2006 due to his support for ID. Both public and private statements exposed through public records requests revealed that members of ISU’s department in physics and astronomy voted against Gonzalez’s tenure due to his support for ID.
In 1993, San Francisco State University biology professor Dean Kenyon was forced to stop teaching introductory biology because he was informing students that scientists had doubts about materialist theories of the origin of life.
In a similar case five years later, Minnesota high school teacher Rodney LeVake was removed from teaching biology after expressing skepticism about Darwin’s theory. LeVake, who holds a master’s degree in biology, agreed to teach evolution as required in the district’s curriculum, but said he wanted to “accompany that treatment of evolution with an honest look at the difficulties and inconsistencies of the theory.”
Rogert DeHart, a public high school biology teacher in Washington State, was denied the right to have his students read articles from mainstream science publications that made scientific criticisms of certain pieces of evidence typically offered to support Darwinian theory. One of the forbidden articles was written by noted evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould. Although DeHart complied with this ban, he was later removed from teaching biology.
In Mississippi, chemistry professor Nancy Bryson was asked by Mississippi University for Women to resign as head of the Division of Science and Mathematics after she gave a lecture to honors students called “Critical Thinking on Evolution.” She remarked, “Students at my college got the message very clearly[;] do not ask any questions about Darwinism.”
In 1999, ID theorist William Dembski founded the Polanyi Center at Baylor University to allow scientists and scholars to conduct scientific research into intelligent design. The Center was later shut down largely due to intolerance of ID among Baylor faculty.
In 2005, the president of the University of Idaho instituted a campus-wide classroom speech-code, where “evolution” was “the only curriculum that is appropriate” for science classes. This was done in retaliation towards a professor at the university, Scott Minnich, who at the time was testifying in favor of intelligent design as an expert witness at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial.
Also in 2005, Cornell’s former interim president Hunter Rawlings devoted a State of the University Address “to denounce ‘intelligent design,’ arguing that it has no place in science classrooms and calling on faculty members in a range of disciplines” to similarly attack ID.
In 2005, top biology professors at Ohio State University derailed a doctoral student’s thesis defense by writing a letter claiming “there are no valid scientific data challenging macroevolution” and therefore the student’s teaching about problems with neo-Darwinism was “unethical” and “deliberate miseducation.”
In 2005, pro-ID adjunct biology professor Caroline Crocker lost her job at George Mason University after teaching students about both the evidence for and against evolution in the classroom, and mentioning ID as a possible alternative to Darwinism. While her former employer maintains that it simply chose not to renew her contract, she was specifically told she would be “disciplined” for teaching students about the scientific controversy over evolution.
In 2007, Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, had established an Evolutionary Informatics Lab at Baylor University to study the ability of Darwinian processes to generate new information using computer simulations and evolutionary algorithms. However, after Dr. Marks was interviewed by ID the Future in 2007, he subsequently received a letter from his dean warning that the website was “associated” with “ID,” and he was forced to take the lab’s site down and move the lab itself off campus.
In 2006, a professor of biochemistry and leading biochemistry textbook author at the University of Toronto, Laurence A. Moran, stated that a major public research university “should never have admitted” students who support ID, and should “just flunk the lot of them and make room for smart students.”
In 2011, a biology professor at the University of Waikato stated that “If, for example, a student were to use examples such as the bacterial flagellum to advance an ID view then they should expect to be marked down”
Likewise, that same year Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, stated that “adherence to ID (which, after all, claims to be a nonreligious theory) should be absolute grounds for not hiring a science professor.”
In January 2011, the University of Kentucky (UK) paid over $100,000 to settle astronomer Martin Gaskell’s lawsuit claiming that he was wrongfully denied employment because of UK’s perception that he doubted Darwinism. UK faculty admitted that Gaskell was the most qualified applicant for the position, but they hired a much less qualified candidate out of concerns about statements Gaskell had made that were critical of Darwinian evolution.
In June 2011, the journal Applied Mathematics Letters paid $10,000 and publicly apologized to avoid litigation after it wrongfully withdrew mathematician Granville Sewell’s paper critiquing neo-Darwinism.
In 2009, David Coppedge was demoted and punished for sharing pro-ID videos with co-workers at Jet Propulsion Lab. Later, his employment was terminated.
In 2012, Springer-Verlag illegally breached a contract to publish the proceedings of an ID-friendly research conference at Cornell University after a pressure campaign was mounted by pro-Darwin activists to have the book scuttled.
In 2013, Ball State University (BSU) President Jo Ann Gora issued a speech code declaring that “intelligent design is not appropriate content for science courses” at BSU, after atheist activists from the Freedom from Religion Foundation charged that a “Boundaries of Science” course taught by a well-liked physics professor (Eric Hedin) was violating the Constitution by favorably discussing intelligent design.
Also in 2013, atheist activists forced Amarillo College to cancel an intelligent design course after they threatened disruption if it went forward.
Who then are the victims of CTs, refusing to regard the evidence? In Heretic: One Scientist’s Journey from Darwin to Design, award-winning Finnish biotechnologist, Matti Leisola, has observed that even his colleagues are often close-minded:
· Over and over again I have encountered materialist fanaticism from people who are not ready to give up their views in the face of contrary evidence. Actually, they usually are not even interested in considering the evidence.
Is the Infinite-Eternal-God hypothesis any less likely than the idea that everything sprang uncaused into existence out of nothing? Is there any evidence that disqualifies this hypothesis? Certainly not!
This raises a basic question: “Are there valid criteria to distinguish the CTs from the facts and evidences?” Are there any undisputable sources of news and scholarship that can pronounce judgment on such questions, or should we retain a degree of skepticism? Knowing that the majority and even professional associations have often fallen prey to their own biases, labeling a belief as a “CT,” especially for the purpose of silencing and canceling, should only be done with the greatest caution.
No comments:
Post a Comment