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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)
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