[Taxacom] That never ending subject of creation and science

[John Grehan]

For those interested in such matters, there is a recent web article
concerning the banning of evolution in Turkey
http://www.newsweek.com/erdogan-vs-darwin-turkey-will-pay-price-not-teaching-evolution-its-schools-629990

So I wrote the following comments to the author. I figured why waste the
effort and not impose it upon a wider audience? So here is what I wrote -
for what it is worth or not.

John Grehan

Dear Dr. Williams,

Your recent web article on Turkey banning evolution happened to catch my
eye. I usually do not follow this issue much as over the last several
decades it just seems to go  around in circles. Your article makes what I
regard as sustainable points for the most part at least. Only with respect
to your assertion that  "Science is rational, based on evidence and is open
to change when faced with new evidence. In science, we accept the evidence,
rather than “choose to believe” is there a potential problem.

Perhaps the ideal of science is rational, but in practice science works
through people, and 'evidence' is not a transcendental entity that is the
same for all. So when "we' accept the evidence it depends on the evidence.
I find that there is a strong current for scientists to make choices about
what to believe - that scientists choose to believe in your words. I see
this as a practicing evolutionist. For example, almost all evolutionary
biologist chose to believe that our nearest living relative is the
chimpanzee. They chose this because they chose to believe that DNA sequence
similarity is the final proof of relationship. Never mind that we share
almost nothing uniquely in common with chimpanzees whereas we share almost
30 unique features with orangutans and early hominids (australopiths) also
share specialized orangutan features. Now this is not to say that the
orangutan evidence is cannot be wrong, but at present there is
contradictory evidence, but pretty much all leading scientists in the field
do not even want to recognize that there is a problem with evidence. As at
least one has said - the chimpanzee relationship is a fact. It is beyond
contestation. Religion or science?

And science, or the practice of it, is as much about the suppression of
evidence as it is finding evidence (sort of a Derridean function). Just as
with the orangutan theory where suppression is active and significant,
other scientists have gone on record (in the journal Systematic Biology)
calling for a ban on publication of an opposing evolutionary perspective -
the non Darwinian evolutionary synthesis called panbiogeography. Not only
was the call for the ban made, it was accepted for publication. What does
that say about science? Creationists are often accused of deviousness of
dishonesty, but they are not alone in that.

The one consistent theme that is always missing in the science creation
debate is the nature of science as methodology - a method of discovery of
what is not already known. In that context one might as what is the
methodology of creationism - what new 'facts' has creation science
discovered? That might prove to be interesting. Avoid the science-non
science dichotomy and look at results.

Well, if said this sort of thing many times over the years. But does not
catch on. I must be an eccentric. In my view evolution is often so badly
taught (e.g. pervasive teleology) that is no wonder so many people are
skeptical about it. Anyway, interesting to read your article.