Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site utastro.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!godot!harvard!seismo!ut-sally!utastro!bill From: bill@utastro.UUCP (William H. Jefferys) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: Honesty Message-ID: <968@utastro.UUCP> Date: Sat, 5-Jan-85 12:15:16 EST Article-I.D.: utastro.968 Posted: Sat Jan 5 12:15:16 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 11-Jan-85 05:14:09 EST Distribution: net Organization: UTexas Astronomy Dept., Austin, Texas Lines: 62 I want to thank Greg Kuperberg and Mike Huybensz for their thoughtful comments on my rebuttal to SOR Pamphlet #4. I had intended to comment on the honesty issue after #5, but Greg's article prompts me to do so now. For Science to be viable, Scientists must be absolutely honest and open in their work. As Greg points out, Creationists by and large have been neither honest nor open in their public communications, and indeed this is one way that Creationism can be distinguished from science. For all their human foibles, scientists present their findings to the open marketplace of ideas for testing, and by and large, when their precious ideas are found wanting, they abandon them. Not always without reluctance! Moreover, a cardinal sin to a scientist is falsification of data. In contrast, Creationists are still pushing ideas that were found wanting a century ago, and for which there is today absolutely no credible evidence. Indeed, as the incident of Gish and the Bullfrog Blood illustrates, they are not above inventing data out of whole cloth if that serves their temporary purpose. Scientists who do this lose their jobs and reputations. Creationists who do this are defended by their fellows. That is because the Creationist program is not scientific, but religious. As I pointed out in a recent article, some Creationists are beginning to recognize these facts. According to Robert Schadewald, Richard Elmendorf (who is also a Geocentrist) and Russell Arndts have abandoned the "creationism is science" apologetic, and according to Stan Weinberg, Robert Kofahl has done the same and is now pushing for a "civil rights" strategy. At the recent Bible-Science conference, Elmendorf stated explicitly that the "creationism is science" strategy isn't fooling anyone: Everyone knows that Creationism isn't science, and Creationists are going to have to resort to other tactics to get their way. As for Ray Miller, it is not clear to me at this point whether he is dishonest or merely incompetent to discuss these issues. The fact that he has misquoted and quoted out of context a number of scientists is not in itself proof of dishonesty. It may well be that he is merely repeating the misquotations of others, and has not read the originals. In fact, I am inclined to believe that this is probably true, since many of his quotations are found in the Creationist literature pretty much as he gave them . Counting against him is the fact that in his articles he has repeated many bogus arguments that had previously been thoroughly rebutted in this newsgroup, a fact of which he must surely been aware. But still, it is possible that he missed some of them (I understand that he spent his summer looking for human tracks among dinosaur tracks), or that he may simply not have understood the rebuttals. Ray is soon to arrive at his moment of truth, as it were. The articles that people have written here in rebuttal to his pamphlets have destroyed the underpinnings of his arguments so completely, in my opinion, that he will not, if he is honest, be able to submit them for publication. Remember, his intended audience is College-level students. For him to publish his pamphlets in anything remotely resembling their present form would be an act of the gravest irresponsibility. So we will be able to see the kind of stuff that Ray is made of. I personally hope that he will see the error of his ways and abandon this ill-conceived project; if he does not, then he will stand before the readers of this interest group convicted by his own actions. -- "Men never do evil so cheerfully and so completely as when they do so from religious conviction." -- Blaise Pascal Bill Jefferys 8-% Astronomy Dept, University of Texas, Austin TX 78712 (USnail) {allegra,ihnp4}!{ut-sally,noao}!utastro!bill (uucp) bill%utastro.UTEXAS@ut-sally.ARPA (ARPANET)