Under the ironic headline, “Why is critical evaluation of Darwinism not allowed in the public square?” Wintery Knight‘s blog has a bold, typically inaccurate defense of the bullying tactics of ID advocates.
But critical evaluation? Just try to post a comment critical of intelligent design.
Why are ID advocates almost to a person such supreme hypocrites, and unintentional clowns? Is there a law that says one must be a noob to be an ID advocate?
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Update, May 3: Here’s my challenge to you, dear reader: See if you can post a comment at all at Wintery Knight’s rant. Post a copy of your comments here, too, and let’s count to see whether this fellow is just one more supreme, Pharisaical hypocrite, or just an incompetent blogger.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
Here, I’ve left this comment at the Wintery Knight blog:
No profanities. No name calling. Just facts.
I’ll wager they won’t let it through. Here’s where it will show up if they do.
Why do IDists and other creationists work so hard to prevent critical discussion of creationism and intelligent design in the square they control?
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mcoville wrote: “But if at any point in this process if a scientist hypothesizes any biological process that does not include evolution they are bullied out of the system and refused access to peer review journals.”
Those of us who know a bit about evolution react to creationist objections no differently from the way you’d react if someone told you that the Earth is flat.
We also think it’s remarkable that so many people have no inkling of the breadth and depth of the evidence for evolution.
And I suspect you’d say exactly the same thing about the evidence for a round Earth to anyone who claimed that the Earth is flat. So in reality, you’re being very inconsistent in the way you complain about how science reacts to odd claims.
Our perspective, OTOH, is consistent and fair: One standard, one science.
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It’s not that “evolutionists inist that no counter perspective is possible.”
It’s that no counter perspective has been shown to have any scientific merit. And until such a “counter perspective” has been shown to have scientific merit then it will not see the light of day in a peer review published journal.
The people you are defending, Mcoville, want to take a short cut.
And no, I don’t consider the lack of peer reviewed articles from those with a counter perspective to evolution as odd. It simply means that none of those counter perspectives holds any scientific merit. Sorry, you don’t get to wave your hand and say “bias” and then have it magically be.
You can claim bias..you can claim a voice is being silenced but you haven’t proved it. And the fact that there has been no peer reviewed articles showing a counter view to evolution isn’t proof. Quit trying to cheat.
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Well put Ed. It is odd that scientists that insist on Intelligent Design as an alternative have not done published research on it. I did see a video of a research scientist at the creation museum that is doing work on bacteria, I saw the interview that Michael Shermer did and I think her name was Purdom on youtube (I posted it on my blog).
I do not know if she has tried to publish in journals or not or if her research has had any findings yet, but I would hope she would publish if she found something and that she would be allowed to publish.
Unfortunately this is a debate that can not be satisfied until a research journal publishes a paper with a counter perspective to evolution, but if evolutionists insist that no counter perspective is possible we are at a dead end.
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Actually, there are a lot of peer-review articles by outspoken opponents of evolution. None of them make a case against evolution, however. Michael Behe, for example, has more than 40 publications, in good journals. Not one of his publications makes a case against evolution. None of his publications states an alternative hypothesis.
We know there are some good scientists, or formerly good scientists, who hold profoundly anti-Darwin views. The mystery is why they do no research to publish to back their claims. The lack of peer-reviewed articles is odd only from the viewpoint of the mystery of why creationists do not do the research to publish, when clearly they know how to research, and they know how to publish.
Before you make the next mistake, no, it is not accurate that the journals are biased against such papers. In two federal court cases that has been alleged, and both times, in 1981 and in 2006, the creationist side was unable to present any evidence of bias. The courts found that creationists simply did not submit any research articles to publish.
Odd indeed, especially if they have evidence. Not odd at all if their hypotheses don’t work out.
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And you do not consider that the lack of peer review articles, from anyone not a proponent of evolution, as odd?
I never played the victim so stop trying to create a straw man. I am only discussing the topic as a possibility that bulling exists in most, if not all, scientific disciplines. I do understand that sometimes it hard to recognize the existence of a voice that is being silenced, especially if that voice is in opposition to your own.
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You’d be more honest, Mcoville, if you said creationists have never submitted anything for the peer review process. Neither has any person supporting ID.
So really…you can whine about “not getting a fair trial” all you want…but the fact of the matter is that your side isn’t even showing up at the “trial.”
So no..you’re not victims. THe ones trying to be bullies, indeed, is you and your side. You’re the ones trying to get the scientific community to grant you the same status as the theory of evolution without having to do the work.
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Nick, you need to step back from defending evolution for a moment. I never called evolution a hypothesis, I said “if anyone poses a hypothesis that does not include evolution, that scientist is labeled a creationist and dismissed”, and I stand by that.
Scientists proclaim a hypothesis from the results of experiments and then test that hypothesis, sometimes they are proven correct and sometimes they are wrong. If they are wrong it stops there and they move on, but if they are correct their hypothesis moves on to be peer reviewed, which may then prove it wrong.
But if at any point in this process if a scientist hypothesizes any biological process that does not include evolution they are bullied out of the system and refused access to peer review journals.
One more time for emphasis, I am not claiming knowledge of any peer reviewed intelligent design articles or that evolution is false. I am only speaking about the fact that much like theoretical physicists and the string theory (which destroys the credibility of the word theory and scientists should be up in arms about it but that is a discussion for a different day), if a scientist wants funding and to be published they are bullied into including evolution in any biology work they do.
For one moment stop defending evolution, I am not attacking your theory, and lets look at the heart of the topic discussed. Bulling exists in the scientific community and not just from evolutionists. Many fields of science have their elite theories that run the show and if anyone steps away from the “accepted” theories they are branded pseudo-scientists and casted out for their “heretical” ideas. This is not to say that the “accepted” theories are not right, but it hinders science when new ideas that go against the norm are squashed before they get a chance at a “fair trial”.
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The point you are making is that there has been no legitimate scientific critique of the theory of evolution.
None has been posited, none has been put up for review. None whatsoever. Until someone comes up with a scientific critique of the theory of evolution and does the work to prove it there’s no reason to pretend that any such scientific critique of the theory of evolution exists. Sorry, something in science isn’t given status just because someone utters the words.
And yes..at times science does get things wrong. But you seem to want to extrapolate that from “yes science sometimes does get things wrong” into somehow saying “that must mean science is wrong when it comes to evolution.”
And let me remind you..evolution isn’t an hypothesis..it’s a theory. Just like gravity.
So we didn’t prove your point…you proved ours. You’re claiming “bullying” and yet have no proof that any such “bullying” took place. You’re claiming that there is a scientific critique when you offer no such evidence. You want us to assume that because you say there is a scientific critique that must mean that there is a scientific critique. In other words..you want to make the claim but you don’t want to have to do the work to prove that claim. You want to take the lazy way out.
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The topic of the post has nothing to do with legitimate scientific critiques against evolution, we where discussing the treatment of any scientist that does not toe the company line. Wither someone’s scientific claim turns out to be right or not should not be cause for mistreatment or segregation of that person.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but is not science prone to making false hypothesis? It is not until experimentation is done that someones hypothesis is proven legitimate. The issue I am addressing with this post is that if anyone poses a hypothesis that does not include evolution, that scientist is labeled a creationist and dismissed. That is textbook bullying.
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Now you prove ours–state 3 legitimate scientific critiques against evolution.
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Thank you all for proving my point.
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Well the better question, Ray, actually is if any scientist makes a claim against evolution that isn’t based on actual science a scientist any longer.
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mcoville wrote:
“Would you not agree that any scientist that makes a claim against evolution is then branded as a “creationist”?”
When has anyone who made a claim against evolution not been a creationist?
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Mcoville, Intelligent Design is not science. Nothing about it is science. There is no actual scientific critique of the theory of evolution.
One teaches science in science classrooms. What problem do you have with that?
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Fred Hoyle was never called a creationist even in the most stupidly dogmatic phase of his strange denial of Darwin’s work. Stephen Jay Gould was called a creationist for punctuated equilibria, but only by creationists who hoped he was one of their own.
All of the headline scientists at the Disco Tute ARE creationists, with the possible exception of David Berlinsky.
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wither a scientific claim is true or not is not the debate, lets look at the claim to lack of criticism of the theory of evolution. You obviously oppose the idea put forth by Wintery Knight, at least defend your idea or give information to rebut his claims, but try not to go after some strawman character.
Would you not agree that any scientist that makes a claim against evolution is then branded as a “creationist”? If you want to have fun with this, go to wikipedia and do a search for any of the headline scientists from the Discovery Institute, or AiG, and see how they are labeled.
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mcoville – There is no censorship on the subject of evaluation of evolution. Especially critical evaluation. The problem is quite opposite, in fact. The process of science is to test and evaluate hypotheses and theories. The process of Intelligent Design is to make claims that are not supported by evidence or testing.
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So it’s ok to deny critical evaluation of evolution in schools because some ID advocates are hypocrites? I think there is a term for that kind of response…. ad hominem.
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Sisson has a BS in architectural engineering? Of course he is qualified to know that science disproves evolution!
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