Christians, cheating?

    Two examples of dodgy media behaviour by evangelical Christians.   Richard Dawkins the atheist is furious at a film he was interviewed for in the US - entitled "Expelled". He was originally told it was called "Crossroads" and was  a debate about creationism versus Darwinism. It turns out to be a film supporting the theory of  intelligent design (ID), a variation on creationism, and complaining that scientists who believe in ID are penalized in academe. "At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front," says Prof. Dawkins. 
       Meanwhile, in another part of the jungle, the BBC sold rights in David Attenborough's Life of Mammals  to a Dutch Evangelical broadcaster, and it turns out that the Dutch edited out all references to evolution.   See for yourself on Youtube. Sir David is not too happy either.

     This is not edifying behaviour. Argument should be open, tactics fair. Believe what you like, even if you defy all evidence. But don't cheat.

Comments

[Tony Francis]

One can only assume from the information presented that Dawkins either made certain statements, or answered questions. Would he have made different statements or answered the questions differently had he known this was a "creationist" work? Anyway, "intelligent design" is not an invention of the fundamentalist Christians. It goes back to a basic question of Greek philosophy: "Can an organized hierarchy, as is observed in nature exist in the absence of intelligence?" It remains a great imponderable, since neither the Greeks nor Dawkins nor anyone else can answer it.

[Stephen Morris]

There is little doubt that scientists who fail to hold the Darwinist line get penalized for doing so. See for example www.rsternberg.net to see what happened to a journal editor (whose own views on Darwinism aren't stated) merely for allowing a pro-ID paper to be published. In a nutshell,

"In sum, it is clear that I was targeted for retaliation and harassment explicitly because I failed in an unstated requirement in my role as editor of a scientific journal: I was supposed to be a gatekeeper turning away unpopular, controversial, or conceptually challenging explanations of puzzling natural phenomena. Instead, I allowed a scientific article to be published critical of neo-Darwinism, and that was considered an unpardonable heresy."

Argument should be open, and tactics fair. I couldn't agree more.

[Ian]

No honour among .......them.

[Barry Henderson]

They know they can't win the arguments with facts, so they have to resort to lying. Patheitc.

[Coel]

Stephen Morris writes: "See for example www.rsternberg.net to see what happened to a journal editor (whose own views on Darwinism aren't stated) merely for allowing a pro-ID paper to be published."

This is the Richard Sternberg affair (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sternberg ).

Contrary to Mr Morris's statement, it is well known that Sternberg is a creationist. And the accusation is not that he "allowed a pro-ID paper to be published", it is that he omitted to follow the journal's usual procedure, enabling this paper to bypass the scrutiny it would normally have received.

[bill]

At least Christians only lying, cheating and manipulating the truth is a step forward from the torture and murder of the Inquisition.
Maybe Christians are slowly evolving?

[Tony B]

This is not the first time Dawkins has been duped by Creationist film makers either. Maybe he should be more careful.

[Stephen Morris]

A point of information to counter Coel's statement: it's news to me that Richard Sternberg is a creationist, as he's on record as denying it (see www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801680.html). I don't know him personally. Maybe he's changed his mind since the affair, as it's hardly an advert for the objectivity and scientific standing of the Darwinist contingent.

[Coel]

A couple of years before the above affair, Richard Sternberg had joined the board of the Baraminology Study Group, a young-earth creationist organisation. See http://creationwiki.org/Baraminology

He now claims that he wasn't actually a creationist, but was a "friendly but critical outsider". Note, however, that it would suit his current complaint to distance himself from creationism. Note also that the BSG website says that "all members . . . are Christians accepting the authority of Bible [. . .] in all areas. Thus, all members accept the taxonomic concept of "created kind" or baramin." Note that there is no such concept in science.

Again, the accusation against him is that with a particular ID paper he failed to follow proper procedures, thus protecting it from the usual scrutiny. Essentially it was his decision alone to accept it, against journal policy of always involving more than one editor. If that is true it seems reasonable to terminate his editorship.

[Coel]

As an addenum, there is statement about the Baraminology Study Group on Sternberg's website http://www.rsternberg.net/BSG.htm

Note that it effectively says that Sternberg is sceptical of the young-earth position (age = 6000 yrs) of most of the BSG. But it does not deny that he is a creationist. So most likely he is an old-earth creationist.

[Stephen Morris]

Well, I'm not going to speculate on what another man believes, and the accusation of misconduct has not been proved as far as I know.

Having both published and refereed numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals myself, what I find really interesting about the Sternberg case is that the paper presumably got through the peer review (reviewers have the option of saying "do not publish this paper", and Sternberg isn't being accused of ignoring their opinions), but was retracted by the journal. That's very irregular. Usually if other scientists disagree with the results of a published paper, they have the opportunity to write a paper of their own in which they present results which contradict what the paper says or, in some cases, re-analyse the original raw data and come to a different conclusion. In this case no-one was given the opportunity to do so. The thing is, in proper science you can usually resolve controversies once and for all by doing an experiment or by finding a data point which is wholly inconsistent with a particular hypothesis. In Darwinism, that's not the case because there are no experiments you can do and nothing that cannot be equally well and much more simply explained by an intelligent agent rather than chance. This is behind my conviction that Darwinism isn't proper science, and should cease to be treated as such.

Darwin himself, I suspect, was a proper scientist. He could see that his theory would stand or fall with the fossil record. By that criterion, it has utterly fallen, and perhaps if he were alive today he would have joined Maxwell, Kelvin and others on the creationist side. But there, I admit, I'm starting to speculate about other men's beliefs...

[Coel]

Dear Mr Morris:

1) You cannot "presume" anything about the refereeing of this paper since (as far as I'm aware) the identity of the referees Sternberg choose and their reports are not public.

2) All of the other editors of this journal considered that this paper was sub-standard for that journal. Sternberg was alone in considering it worthwhile; and Sternberg is known to have (at the least) considerable sympathy with the entirely-religious notions of "baraminology" and "creation biology" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_biology things that have their basis in Genesis, not science.

3) As I've said, one does not need to be able to do direct experiments in order to be scientific. In large areas of science one cannot (e.g. astrophysics, where things are too far away). Despite this, there are experiments that one can perform to test Darwinism, and their results have only strengthened Darwinism.

4) Darwinism has not "fallen" as judged on the fossil record; the fossil record has triumphantly vindicated Darwin, and is entirely in line with expectations from Darwinian evolution. It is considered by scientists as one of the strongest pillars of evidence for Darwinism.

5) I strongly suspect that the only thing behind your "conviction" that Darwinism is "not proper science" is religious faith.

[edmund]

the two don't sound that outragoues to me ( i belive in macro eveolution btw). The first souds more dubious. To be honest the second isn't really dishonest all the time- people reedit films all the time- and it doesn' sound like they turned into creationist propoganda they just eliminated mostly irrelevent creationist bits.

[Tony Francis]

Stephen Morris is correct. I was an editor to a medical-legal journal for a time. Usually, in peer-review, if something is questionable, the author is given the opportunity to "rewrite" the problematic part. Or, the editors have the option to write a short blub saying, in effect: "This is controversial because... this hasn't been proven... papers supporting this position have been questioned....etc." It is irregular for a paper to make it through the peer process and then get nixed before publishing.

[Coel]

Tony writes: "It is irregular for a paper to make it through the peer process and then get nixed before publishing."

The point is that, in the opinion of the majority of the editorial board, the paper had NOT gone through the usual peer-review procedure of that journal.

For a journal to retract a paper is indeed unusual, but it does happen from time to time.

[Coel]

Stephen Morris writes "Usually if other scientists disagree with the results of a published paper, they have the opportunity to write a paper of their own [. . .] In this case no-one was given the opportunity to do so."

Well, that is not really true. The original article is available to anyone who wishes to read it. Here it is: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2177

And here, just for example, is a commentary on it by scientists: http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Meyer.cfm

Methinks the suggestions of censorship are a bit overdone here. The only thing this paper has lost is the stamp of approval of the Biological Society of Washington.

[G. Tingey]

Ooh! SHock horror!

Religious believers (christians in this case) lying!

Do bears defecate in the woods?

In fact, if one examines the recent history of proponents of ID and creationism in the USA, one finds that lying is their standard tactic, especially in the form of distorting quotations.

[Alex]

Yes! Obviously,I agree that the argument must be open & The pressure to cheat is getting stronger among Christians, too. Today I saw this article about the facts and this type of cheating would be repeated and they really can't win the arguments with facts.

[Rash1981 (Dutch)]

Those dodgy Christians again...always with their truths within truths. ON the other hand; ID does allow christian scientists to balance out their religion with their profession...

ps. it was the Dutch evangelical broadcast union which cut out the evolution references, not the Dutch in general. We're still free thinkers here... well some of us... except for our Christian president ofcourse ;)