Evolutionist Zoologist Turned Creationist After Child Was Demon Oppressed

[Many thanks to Elizabeth Liddle, the admins and mods for hosting these discussions.]

Skepticism is a virtue, and gullibility is not. It seems to me many religious organizations throughout history prefer followers who follow blindly. Many churches fostered a culture of gullibility and were often led by sociopaths who preyed upon the gullible. Such experiences left a bad taste in my mouth to this day, and hence I’ve grown to have a high regard and admiration for the skeptical community. For those reasons I’m on more cordial terms with skeptics than most Christians are.

That said, there has always been a persistent, scholarly, skeptical and scientifically inclined minority that hold to a belief in the miraculous, the after life and non-material spiritual forces. Dawkins and others believe that religious belief is perpetuated via culture and parenting, that it could be eradicated through teaching scientific method and changing culture. For sure, it is probably the case that most religion is culturally imposed and thus perpetuated, but not always.

Whether one believes in the miraculous or not, I think the video below is at least a sincere witness of a man who converted from being an evolutionist to being a creationist. Whether the man is right or not is a separate question. I provide a video link for those curious as to why someone from a skeptical background would become a creationist.

Here is the wiki entry this man, Walter Veith:
Walter Veith

Walter Julius Veith (born 1949) is a South African zoologist and a Seventh-day Adventist author and speaker known for his work in nutrition, creationism and Biblical exegesis with the Amazing Discoveries media ministry and on their international television network found in North America on Galaxy 19.

Veith was professor of the zoology department at the University of Cape Town and taught in the medical bioscience department. During this time the department was awarded a Royal Society London grant for zoological research.[1]

After the graduation Veith became an adjunct professor at the University of Stellenbosch and until 1987 gave lectures in zoology.

Early in the 1980s, after his young son fell seriously ill and recovered, he and his wife returned to the Catholic faith. But a few years later he developed doubts about Catholicism and, through the influence of a craftsman who renovated his kitchen, he and his wife joined the Adventist faith.

In his first lectures as an adjunct professor, he had had a student who rejected what she called the lie of evolutionism and instead maintained the truth of the biblical creation story. He soundly put her in her place. Now, his new faith and his own Bible studies led him to adopt this belief, which brought him into conflict with what he was teaching. Because of his lectures on the alleged scientific evidence for biblical creation story he was asked to leave the University of Stellenbosch.[14]

He sold his house in Stellenbosch and obtained a wheat and dairy farm but experienced a catastrophic crop failure during an economic depression in 1988. So he accepted a position as associate professor at the University of the Western Cape in zoology. His serious concerns about the theory of evolution had been resolved by the proviso that he only needed to carry out research.

The mention in wiki of “his young son fell seriously ill and recovered” is a euphemism for Veith’s claim that his son was demon oppressed or possessed.

For any interested to hear how it is possible that someone who is educated could convert, here it is:

74 thoughts on “Evolutionist Zoologist Turned Creationist After Child Was Demon Oppressed

  1. I don’t find it surprising that people can belief in an afterlife, or miraculous interventions, or the reality of spiritual experience. These things
    can’t be readily subjected to falsification tests, and perhaps can be “known” in ways that are not amenable to science.

    But I find it incomprehensible, I confess, that people can take seriously the proposition that the earth was created a few thousand years ago. Not only does the alleged “scientific evidence” not amount to anything that isn’t better explained under the standard scientific model, but the evidence against it is both consilient and overwhelming, and the unsolved problems it leaves, problems that aren’t even problems in the standard scientific model, are often addressed by solutions that create even more problems than they solve, and indeed contradict each other!

    I can understand, I guess, that someone might decide that their were good theological reasons for accepting the story, and simply have faith that somehow there must be an explanation for why the evidence makes it look as though the story is quite wrong. But to think that the evidence supports it – I just don’t get it.

    Sorry, Sal!

  2. “Many churches fostered a culture of gullibility and were often led by sociopaths who preyed upon the gullible. Such experiences left a bad taste in my mouth to this day, and hence I’ve grown to have a high regard and admiration for the skeptical community.”

    In all due respect, these two sentences together don’t make a lot of sense to me. I have a problem with the use of the word “hence.”

    Its like saying, “I have seen a lot of gang violence in cities with high urban populations. Hence I enjoy reading cookbooks by Julia Childs.”

  3. I can certainly understand that people have a sincere belief in god and the supernatural. After all, almost every culture has its own origin myths with supernatural underpinnings. Whether this is adaptive or simply a byproduct of having a large brain, I have no idea. But I really do not understand how someone can accept the bible as a literal history. There are just too many inconsistencies in the stories themselves. To say nothing of the massive amounts of evidence against things like a young earth and Noah style global flood.

  4. Wouldn’t it be impressive if he had launched a coherent science of design? One that actually entailed the highly derivative nature of life that happens to be entailed by unintelligent evolution. But no, what we get from Veith is that some highly personal matters tended to push him toward religion (purportedly, the RCC managed to drive out his son’s demon, and yet he ends up believing that the pope is Antichrist–go figure), then he did what creationists usually do, attacked evolution without in the slightest bit building up a science to replace it.

    Whale evolution was his problem? Can he explain the relatedness of whales and hippos? Does he have an explanation–a YEC explanation above all–for the transitional whale fossils? We get anecdotes, we certainly don’t get explanation from him.

    I suppose that paranormal stuff should make a non-“natural” evolution more likely than if it doesn’t exist, nevertheless we pretty much have evidence of evolution not transcending the limits of heredity and change. But that’s still no problem for the paranormal, as it needn’t have anything to do with evolution at all. I mean, you can certainly believe in the after-life and what-not without denying the evidence.

    And please, the whole Adventist misunderstanding of Daniel is a strike against his thinking, not in favor of it. Sorry, Daniel 11 shows that the prophecies do end with Greece, and have mostly to do with Antiochus IV. It has nothing to do with the RCC, and only very selective Euro-centric interpretations can even vaguely pretend to involve the RCC.

    Glen Davidson

  5. Elizabeth: But I find it incomprehensible, I confess, that people can take seriously the proposition that the earth was created a few thousand years ago. Not only does the alleged “scientific evidence” not amount to anything that isn’t better explained under the standard scientific model, but the evidence against it is both consilient and overwhelming, and the unsolved problems it leaves, problems that aren’t even problems in the standard scientific model, are often addressed by solutions that create even more problems than they solve, and indeed contradict each other!

    I can understand, I guess, that someone might decide that their were good theological reasons for accepting the story, and simply have faith that somehow there must be an explanation for why the evidence makes it look as though the story is quite wrong. But to think that the evidence supports it – I just don’t get it.

    Yep. About the only “coherent” explanation — and “coherent” is putting it way too nicely — is to believe god is a trickster who created our universe with all the evidence of immense age as some kind of test of our faith.

    Creating every red-shifted wavelength of starlight in transit to make it appear as if traveling from ancient galaxies? No problem for an omnipotent being. Creating every 10000-year-old granite crystal in situ to contain a specific ratio of K/Ar which makes it apparently million years old? No problem, either,

    Except, why don’t the YECcers have a problem with the wickedness of that? I mean, it would all just be fun and games, ha ha good trick you played there, god … except they think there are souls on the line. What about the innocent people who fail the test of faith? What about the innocent people who are persuaded against a literal reading of the old testament by the 100% old-universe evidence which the trickster has strewn everywhere? Are they going to be denied a fair chance at heaven because they fell for god’s tricks?

    Of course, Seventh Day idiots like Veith don’t have any problem with the entire human being kept out of heaven, with themselves as the only worthy exceptions. They think that’s a feature, not a bug.

  6. And Darwin supposedly turned away from religion when his favorite daughter died.

    As a parent and grandparent I can empathize with becoming unhinged about a sick child. If you haven’t faced it you can’t judge the person.

    I can judge the ideas, though, and Darwin’s story, if true, makes no more sense than this one.

  7. petrushka:
    And Darwin supposedly turned away from religion when his favorite daughter died.

    As a parent and grandparent I can empathize with becoming unhinged about a sick child. If you haven’t faced it you can’t judge the person.

    I can judge the ideas, though, and Darwin’s story, if true, makes no more sense than this one.

    As far as I know, though, Darwin didn’t think that his experience with his daughter’s death, and whatever he concluded from reacting to it, had anything to do with what others thought about God, etc. Certainly he didn’t go off preaching atheism, or any such thing.

    Glen Davidson

  8. The example of Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini is instructive. After the death of his wife and his son, Conan Doyle’s earlier interest turned into an obsession with (Christian) Spiritualism, and made him one of the most gullible humans on the planet (see the Cottingley fairies affair, etc). Conversely, his friend Harry Houdini became a very active opponent of Spiritualism after his mother’s death. To quote Wikipedia,

    Although Houdini insisted that Spiritualist mediums employed trickery (and consistently exposed them as frauds), Doyle became convinced that Houdini himself possessed supernatural powers—a view expressed in Doyle’s The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini was apparently unable to convince Doyle that his feats were simply illusions, leading to a bitter public falling out between the two. A specific incident is recounted in memoirs by Houdini’s friend Bernard M.L. Ernst, in which Houdini performed an impressive trick at his home in the presence of Conan Doyle. Houdini assured Conan Doyle the trick was pure illusion and that he was attempting to prove a point about Doyle not “endorsing phenomena” simply because he had no explanation. According to Ernst, Conan Doyle refused to believe it was a trick.

    Similar motives, opposite results.

  9. Piotr Gasiorowski,

    Keep in mind that Doyle was not only intelligent and educated with an advanced medical degree, he valued the kind of detailed factual observation which allowed him to create the first “realistic” detective fiction. Although the Sherlock Holmes stories edge into the fantastic at times, what Doyle did best was laying out the logical reasoning in solving the cases, using all the careful observation of the crime scenes to rule out the impossible.

    It just goes to show that even the most competent normally-rational humans can be sucked into a fantasy world if they’re trying to prove their loved ones will have life after death.

  10. hotshoe_,

    Sherlock Holmes was of course a selective hypersceptic:

    The idea of a vampire was to me absurd. Such things do not happen in criminal practice in England

    (The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire)

  11. Piotr Gasiorowski:
    hotshoe_,

    Sherlock Holmes was of course a selective hypersceptic:

    (The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire)

    Hmm, I’ll have to read that one. I’ve only read about a quarter of the stories. Now, if you want to discuss Moftiss’ Sherlock, that I’ve got down pat … 🙂

  12. My point is and was that I understand the human tendency to be affected by loss of family members, but it has no place in a rational discussion. Houdini was a rational skeptic because he knew how magic is done. That is why stage magicians are good at judging claims of paranormal activity.

  13. petrushka: Houdini was a rational skeptic because he knew how magic is done. That is why stage magicians are good at judging claims of paranormal activity

    True, but Conan Doyle was apparently convinced that Houdini feigned scepticism in order to keep his paranormal abilities secret. Rational discussion with a conspiracy theorist who really wants his pet fantasy to be true is futile.

  14. I got involved in the ID movement after my father became terminally ill and then passed away in 2003. I was very close to him and there is no question the trauma catalyzed my changes in belief and involvement in various activities. In my case however, it isn’t exactly cut and dry.

    1. I grew in admiration of the skeptic and atheistic and agnostic community. I especially loved the writings of Bertrand Russell. I found myself enjoying the company of skeptics for reasons I didn’t realize till only recently.

    2. I began to have an increasingly low opinion of the clergy and professional preachers who garner money and power and reputation from their congregations. I saw hypocrisy, bullying, charlatanry and sociopathy, etc. in ways I was blind to before. Additionally, I saw many churches as places where circular reasoning, gullibility, etc. were promoted as virtues. Many churches were not a place where questions and learning were welcomed. They were social clubs. Many congregations were very anti-intellectual. As one Evangelical author quipped in
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scandal_of_the_Evangelical_Mind
    “there is no evangelical mind”.

    3. I found a lot of solace travelling to casinos and using math skills to beat them. I didn’t “beat the odds”, rather the odds were with me when I used my math. I found solace in some of the opulence and architectural beauty of these places. My favaorites were the Bellagio and Venetian in Las Vegas:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1wN2W6IiL0

    4. Through the science of wagering, it became customary to be “intellectually agnostic” but “practically a believer”. That is to say learned to wager in the face of statistical uncertainties, but when a decision was made, a certain degree of faith is taken on a practical level. I then saw religious belief and practice in this light. If the payoff was gigantic, even if the odds of success were remote, it was a good bet. I saw this especially in Video Poker where plays were made toward outcomes that happen only 1 in 40,388 times. Bob Dancer made a million dollars playing on Video Poker machines with such odds (as well as exploiting casino marketing vulnerabilities).
    http://www.amazon.com/Million-Dollar-Video-Poker-Dancer/dp/0929712110

    5. I joined the ID movement because I found the church experience intellectually suffocating, but the ID movement, which was composed of academics rather than preachers and missionaries, I found intellectually stimulating. I enjoyed their rebellion against the status quo.

    The first ID event at George Mason University I organized was attended by professor of biology, Caroline Crocker in 2005. A reporter from Nature was there, and shortly our stories were published in Nature, Dr. Crocker was removed from her teaching posts. Her lifelong career as a scientist was destroyed. Like evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, she’s been permanently blacklisted.

    A few years later I was invited to be Robert Marks student at Baylor, Texas but then his lab was shut down because ID was banned until the Provost (President?) Lilly was fired and replaced by Ken Starr who used to attend my church in Virginia! I went to another school and the student who eventually took the research position was Winston Ewert.

    I therefore see the evolutionary community as an enemy of me and my friends, not so much philosophically, but professionally and academically.

    So Ironically, though I became more friendly with the atheist and skeptic community, the evolutionary community became something of a mortal enemy. Much of my involvement in all this drama had some genesis in the passing of a loved one. No question of that.

  15. So not teaching BS unsupported by evidence with public monies makes people into your enemies.

    We still insist on having decent standards, no matter how much you want your myths to be supported by the state.

    Glen Davidson

  16. ST:

    Nowhere in your discussion is a rational thought.

    There have been several and institutions in my life that have caused me a bunch of unnecessary pain. They are my “mortal enemies” in the sense that I hate them.

    But I have no need to rationalize my emotions or develop conspiracy theories. Things that hurt us are part of reality. I am lucky enough to live in a country where such enemies are mostly accidental and transient. Like tornadoes or earthquakes.

    You think that atheists have the upper hand, but atheists cannot run for public office. with any expectation of winning. Atheists and critics of religion get flack even form media like the New York Time and the New Yorker Magazine.

    I post on the internet because there has never been a place in my “real life” where I felt safe talking about religion Not even in college.

    So I am fairly unsympathetic to whiners who complain about being expelled. I have been on the outside all my life.

  17. You think that atheists have the upper hand, but atheists cannot run for public office. with any expectation of winning. Atheists and critics of religion get flack even form media like the New York Time and the New Yorker Magazine.

    In politics atheists don’t have the upper hand, in the area of academia as it pertains to biology, evolutionists (both atheist and theist) have the upper hand. Evolutionary biologist Sternberg was not some sort of religious crusader, neither was Dean Kenyon or many others.

    While in graduate school, attempts were made to contact professors or admins at my school to get me expelled, and I wasn’t even studying biology! That had little to do with my academic ability, it was just pure nastiness.

    As far a my rationalizing my dislike of evolutionary biology, I was an evolutionist once upon a time. I probably would have just kept my dissent private until I saw how others and myself were being treated. Whether ID is true or false is a separate issue than due process. Someone like Sternberg has the right to be wrong on historical ideas that have little or no operational consequence. Things like engineering failures, medical malpractice — those have operational consequences. Arguments about phylogeny vs. evolutionary convergence vs. “we don’t know” — those are not worthy of someone’s career.

  18. In politics atheists don’t have the upper hand, in the area of academia as it pertains to biology, evolutionists (both atheist and theist) have the upper hand. Evolutionary biologist Sternberg was not some sort of religious crusader, neither was Dean Kenyon or many others.

    You mean, science has the upper hand in, of all things, science?

    I’m sure that forcing theology into science would fix that.

    While in graduate school, attempts were made to contact professors or admins at my school to get me expelled, and I wasn’t even studying biology! That had little to do with my academic ability, it was just pure nastiness.

    Wow, there are nasty people around. Who couldn’t get their own nastiness imposed when they tried. Poor St.

    As far a my rationalizing my dislike of evolutionary biology, I was an evolutionist once upon a time.

    And you still could be, if you were thinking consistently.

    I probably would have just kept my dissent private until I saw how others and myself were being treated.

    First off, you haven’t been treated ill, so can the martyr schtick. Secondly, I don’t doubt that Sternberg and Crocker are treated like the science pariahs that they deserve to be, but that’s no worse than other crackpots are treated. When you speak up for von Daniken’s rot to be accorded “consideration,” I’ll at least see you as consistent. Still very wrong, but at least not only sticking up for one form of pseudoscience, rather, at least claiming in principle that all rot should be accorded the status of evidence-based science. As it is, you’re just claiming that religiously-inspired tripe should be treated as science, when it produces no (sound) evidence for its claims.

    Whether ID is true or false is a separate issue than due process.

    And science isn’t a mattter of due process. Do you know anything correctly?

    Someone like Sternberg has the right to be wrong on historical ideas that have little or no operational consequence.

    That the human body evolved, without any apparent input of intelligence, is hardly of little or no operational consequence.

    Things like engineering failures, medical malpractice — those have operational consequences. Arguments about phylogeny vs. evolutionary convergence vs. “we don’t know” — those are not worthy of someone’s career.

    So the truth doesn’t matter to you, hence it shouldn’t matter to science.

    Well, it does. The mere fact that it’s the same type of genetic evidence that Darwin’s Finches evolved from a common ancestor that tells us that Cambrian phyla evolved from a common ancestor informs us that there is very much an integrity issue involved. IDists/creationists deny the principle that the same kind of evidence supports the same kind of conclusion–barring some strong evidence to the contrary (no, ID certainly hasn’t provided same)–meaning that they’re essentially opposed to the consistency that gives us science. It is a travesty of thought, the antithesis of honest science teaching, to pretend that ID/creationism has any claim to be represented in science at all.

    In the same way, Von Daniken’s rot isn’t (strictly) a matter of life and death, either. It is a matter of academic integrity, which you and your ilk oppose, tacitly at least.

    Glen Davidson

  19. stcordova: The first ID event at George Mason University I organized was attended by professor of biology, Caroline Crocker in 2005. A reporter from Nature was there, and shortly our stories were published in Nature, Dr. Crocker was removed from her teaching posts. Her lifelong career as a scientist was destroyed.

    Too bad that your bias prevents you from recognizing what really happened in the case of your “friend” Crocker. Too bad you haven’t chosen to present the facts, but only IDist propaganda.

    She wasn’t “removed” from her post. (Shitty subtext of being escorted out mid-lecture by armed security, nice word choice, Sal.) She wasn’t fired. She was working on a year-to-year contract and when the year was up, she simply wasn’t re-hired.

    Of course we expect the University admins to downplay a potential religious controversy in their decision not to extend her contract. But it’s clear the non-religious aspects were plenty sufficient in this case. She was just a damn incompetent biology teacher and had never earned a place in an eminent public university.

    GMU spokesman Daniel Walsch denied that the school had fired Crocker. She was a part-time faculty member, he said, and was let go at the end of her contract period for reasons unrelated to her views on intelligent design. “We wholeheartedly support academic freedom,” he said. But teachers also have a responsibility to stick to subjects they were hired to teach, he added, and intelligent design belonged in a religion class, not biology. Does academic freedom “literally give you the right to talk about anything, whether it has anything to do with the subject matter or not? The answer is no.”

    Here is Crocker being an ignorant washout as a biology teacher:

    She told the students there were two kinds of evolution: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution is easily seen in any microbiology lab. … While such small changes are well established, Crocker said, they are quite different from macroevolution. No one has ever seen a dog turn into a cat in a laboratory.

    What errant nonsense! If a dog did indeed turn into a cat, we would have to scrap all our concepts of evolution. If she’s that ignorant, she’s not competent to teach even elementary-school biology, much less university. If she’s not that ignorant and does know evolution theory, then she’s deliberately misleading students (for her own religious reasons) and deserves to be terminated and blacklisted from all public institutions. Public institutions have an obligation to ensure that taxpayer funds aren’t used to propagandize for sectarian christian views in the place of biology lessons.

    And there’s more. Her incompetence and/or malfeasance went on and on. She’s one of the few women who make me want to use sexist epithets about her. But read the whole article; unlike ID, it’s fair and balanced and actually interesting.

    She admits to a reporter that she never really intended to teach the evidence for evolution in biology:

    Before the class, Crocker had told me that she was going to teach “the strengths and weaknesses of evolution.” Afterward, I asked her whether she was going to discuss the evidence for evolution in another class. She said no.

    [emphasis mine]

    She said no. She said she wasn’t going to teach the evidence for evolution in her class,

    She should have been fired on the spot for gross neglect of her duties as a teacher. But she wasn’t fired. Not then, not ever.

    Trust the IDiots to try to turn Crocker into a hero in the “Expelled” narrative.

    If that’s typical of what you’ve got, Sal, no wonder ID can’t convince anyone they’re legitimate.

  20. So the truth doesn’t matter to you, hence it shouldn’t matter to science.

    And here is an example of misrepresentation and straw men that I so disdain.

    Truth matters, but we don’t always know the truth, we infer, we sometimes guess, we sometimes believe. When there is room for disagreement, if it has no operational consequence, then why ruin peoples lives?

    Evolutionists claim they know for sure things evolved, but when I confront them for the mechanical details that would make certain transitions feasible, I get non-sequiturs and evasions and misrepresentations and assertions of faith, not actual details that should count as a mechanistic explanation. That isn’t due process, and it may not even be right.

    Example:
    Here are two papers written by an Associate Professor of Biology at a secular school who got her PhD at an Ivy League institution (UPenn) and by a former director of a genome research center at Clemson. They pose exactly the sort of questions that cast doubt on Universal Common Ancestry for Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya. Due process and proper skepticism should entertain their objections:

    https://answersingenesis.org/biology/microbiology/information-processing-differences-between-bacteria-and-eukarya/

    https://answersingenesis.org/biology/microbiology/information-processing-differences-between-archaea-and-eukarya/

    Rather than answering those questions, I just get put downs by you and others. Reminds me of the bullying I used to get in church when I asked hard questions, except the bullies were willing to admit they believed something as a matter of faith whereas you claim evolutionary biology is akin to empirical science, which it is not, it is speculation.

  21. From the article about my friend:

    But Crocker was not done. From this ill-conceived theory, she concluded, much harm had arisen. Nazi Germany had taken Darwin’s ideas about natural selection, the credo that only the fittest survive, and followed it to its extreme conclusions — anti-Semitism, eugenics and death camps. “What happened in Germany in World War II was based on science, that some genes and some people should be killed,” Crocker said quietly. “My grandfather had a genetic problem and was put in the hospital and killed.”

    Despite this, Crocker was an evolutionist most of her life. She had quite a change of heart once she arrived in university, and the behavior of the powers that be, assured her permanent disdain for most of evolutionary theory. As far as I know, she is agnostic about the question of Universal Common Ancestry.

    This at least explains some of the involvement of Jews like Ben Stein into the evolution debate.

  22. stcordova: And here is an example of misrepresentation and straw men that I so disdain.

    This is the kind of out-of-context misrepresentation and unwarranted name-calling that I find so disgusting from you.

    I wrote “So the truth doesn’t matter to you, hence it shouldn’t matter to science,” in response to this:

    Things like engineering failures, medical malpractice — those have operational consequences. Arguments about phylogeny vs. evolutionary convergence vs. “we don’t know” — those are not worthy of someone’s career.

    The fact is that this shows a blatant disregard for the importance of integrity in science, when it doesn’t have direct life or death consequences. I’m afraid that your lack of commitment to truth shows.

    Truth matters, but we don’t always know the truth, we infer, we sometimes guess, we sometimes believe.

    Really? Seems like that was my point, integrity in science. Which you try to undermine.

    When there is room for disagreement, if it has no operational consequence, then why ruin peoples lives?

    First off, your lack of regard for the truth shows again, as you repeat the errant nonsense that evolution (the unspoken subject) has no operational consequence. Secondly, even if it didn’t, integrity matters.

    Evolutionists claim they know for sure things evolved,

    Again, misrepresentation, standard fare for creaitonists/IDiots. “Evolutionists” say that the evidence shows that things evolved. Your “for sure” is nothing but ID myth, again, standard for ID.

    but when I confront themfor the mechanical details that would make certain transitions feasible, I get non-sequiturs and evasions and misrepresentations and assertions of faith, not actual details that should count as a mechanistic explanation.

    You moved the goalpost there. We have the evidence that life evolved, while clearly we lack an enormous amount of detail. You have no evidence that life was designed, and you lack any detail at all for your bald assertion. Your scurrilous BS above lumps better and worse answers you have received together, without any apparent regard for the facts of the matter, and we’ve never pretended that all (or even most) of the lost information can be found.

    That isn’t due process, and it may not even be right.

    No, it’s a creationist tactic to avoid what the evidence shows and to pretend that we have to explain everything, while you have to explain nothing.

    Example:
    Here are two papers written by an Associate Professor of Biology at a secular school who got her PhD at an Ivy League institution (UPenn) and by a former director of a genome research center at Clemson.They pose exactly the sort of questions that cast doubt on Universal Common Ancestry for Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya.Due process and proper skepticism should entertain their objections:

    http://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/2zsc33/eukarya_could_not_have_evolved_from_archaea/

    https://answersingenesis.org/biology/microbiology/information-processing-differences-between-archaea-and-eukarya/

    Rather than answering those questions, I just get put downs by you and others.

    Says the guy who yet again ignores the actual evidence and his own lack of consistency of applying said evidence to the conclusions. I brought up the genetic evidence, which is similar in principle when it shows that Darwin’s Finches evolved from a common ancestor as when it shows that Cambrian phyla evolved from a common ancestor. That’s evidence–when one is consistent–for which you utterly lack anything similar for your claims, and you do your best to smother it with goalpost shifts to demand the lost details–which, again, you cannot provide for your claims, while we can provide a few, since we actually deal in evidence.

    What makes you think that you get to ignore any evidence that you don’t like, while we’re supposed to be concerned about some claims that the three domains of life don’t have common ancestors? The latter doesn’t even matter to most of the “debate” about evolution/creation. You ignored what I wrote about consistency of evidence within Eukarya, That has nothing to do with Archaea and Bacteria, which you’d know if you weren’t ignoring the issues raised.

    Reminds me of the bullying I used to get in church when I asked hard questions, except the bullies were willing to admit they believed something as a matter of faith whereas you claim evolutionary biologyis akin to empirical science, which it is not, it is speculation.

    Yeah, your goalpost shifts and ignoring the importance of consistency in considering evidence does remind me of religious bullying. It’s what we could expect from you and your ilk if you ever get your theocracy.

    It really is horrible how you avoid the issues, and won’t deal with the importance of treating evidence consistently. It’s what makes those of us who value science integrity oppose your efforts at bullying others into submission.

    Glen Davidson

  23. I explained what I meant in case it wasn’t clear to you. You insist you have a better understanding of what I meant. You’re the one who said about me:

    “So the truth doesn’t matter to you, hence it shouldn’t matter to science,”

    Truth matters. People can be mistaken about what is true. There is room for tolerance especially people of Sternberg or Kenyon’s caliber. That’s not the same as:

    “So the truth doesn’t matter to you, hence it shouldn’t matter to science,”

    Your rendering of what I said and meant wasn’t particularly charitable.

  24. stcordova:
    I explained what I meant in case it wasn’tclear to you.You insist you have a better understanding of what I meant.You’re the one who said about me:

    Truth matters.People can be mistaken about what is true.There is room for tolerance especially people of Sternberg or Kenyon’s caliber.That’s not the same as:

    Your rendering of what I said and meant wasn’t particularly charitable.

    It was designed to cut through the BS to what a horrible sentiment yours really is.

    It wasn’t meant to be charitable, since your position is anathema to science integrity.

    Glen Davidson

  25. stcordova: I began to have an increasingly low opinion of the clergy and professional preachers who garner money and power and reputation from their congregations.

    Yes, there’s a lot of that.

    I think it’s not so bad in the smaller local churches. It’s the big time power-hungry places where the scamming becomes bad.

    Additionally, I saw many churches as places where circular reasoning, gullibility, etc. were promoted as virtues.

    This part is true in the smaller local churches, too.

    I saw the same sort of dishonesty at DI. Their early announcements sounded as if they were looking for people with open minds. I found that appealing. But I didn’t sign on, because they left enough clues that they were not being completely honest.

    The first ID event at George Mason University I organized was attended by professor of biology, Caroline Crocker in 2005.

    I have not researched the past of Caroline Crocker. But I did quickly learn that if anything posted at UD has Caroline Crocker’s name connected with it, then I can anticipate a pile of nonsense and misrepresentation.

  26. stcordova:
    From the article about my friend:

    Despite this, Crocker was an evolutionist most of her life.She had quite a change of heart once she arrived in university, and the behavior of the powers that be, assured her permanent disdain for most of evolutionary theory.As far as I know, she is agnostic about the question of Universal Common Ancestry.

    This at least explains some of the involvement of Jews like Ben Stein into the evolution debate.

    Yes, the typical IDist lie about Hitler’s connection with Darwinism is the lie that will never die, because there are plenty of people with motivations (land money to be fleeced from the sheep) for stoking emotional reaction against the “evilutionists”.

    The fact is the the RWAs, christian Dominionists and their so-called-moderate religious allies in the USA are far more closely allied to Nazism than “Darwinists” ever have been.

    Hitler didn’t believe Darwin. Books about evolution were banned by the Nazis. To further illustrate the stupidity of your (and that douchebag Crocker’s) fallacious connection, here’s a real fact for you:

    Hitler admired Robert Koch, an important figure in the discovery of the germ theory of disease, and compared his campaigns against the Jews and other “undesirables” to a type of social or national disinfection. But this is completely irrelevant to the universal medical/scientific acceptance of germ theory.

    [emphasis mine]

    I wonder why your religiously-freaky friends never attempt to smear the Germ Theory of Disease for its link with Hitler, the way they attempt to smear the modern Theory of Evolution. Why? Because germ theory doesn’t threaten their irrational concept of special creation, the divine plan for human souls? Or is it just because they’re cowards and whiners who only attack what they think is the socially-acceptable target — evolution — not the hard target — germ theory.

    Could be all of the above.

    And Ben Stein is a little shit, so him being a Jew who supports the Expelled lying narrative does no credit whatsoever to the IDist faction. Being proud that Ben is on your side is not quite as bad as being proud that Hitler was on your side (which he was) but it certainly doesn’t put you in a good light.

  27. Sal, I also notice that you don’t retract your wrong claim that Crocker was “removed” for her religious views.

    You’ve been provided the evidence. Now please correct your statement in accordance with the facts.

  28. She was working on a year-to-year contract and when the year was up, she simply wasn’t re-hired.

    So says GMU and Christensen her boss and the participating admins who refused to comment. Edward Sisson, Crocker’s atty was at a law firm that discovered GMU also had a contract with that law firm. GMU told the firm to drop Crocker as a client or that firm wouldn’t be getting any more money from them.

    It’s more complicated than you’re representing. Further I met Crocker’s former students, they regard her highly. The one who complained about her was about to flunk because of underperformance.

    And what about Kenyon and Sternberg?

    What would count as competent to you? Teaching evolutionary speculations as empirical facts (which they are not).

  29. Sternberg abused his post to publish a dirt stupid article that would never get past peer review.

    Science is taught as science. Name or list something taught as fact that is not fact.

    What “speculation” are you referring to?

  30. Glen Davidson:

    douchebag Crocker’s

    So say you who maybe doesn’t even know her or her students. She’s cared greatly for them and council girls who were sexually harassed and troubled.

    All the time I’ve know her, I’ve never seen a hint of cowardice. She full well knew she could be shown the door for what she had to say in class. That’s not the behavior of a coward.

    So, in this discussion you have labeled me as not caring about the truth, you’ve called one of my friends who is a caring teacher and honorable scientist a douchebag and coward. It doesn’t reassure me institutions packed with attitudes like yours are impartial and fair and will pursue due process. Even if I and Dr. Crocker and Dr. Sternberg are mistaken about origins, I don’t think it deserves the vitriol you’re pouring out.

  31. Caroline Crocker lies through her teeth, as I discovered in 2008:

    It will be interesting to see Caroline Crocker do the Martyrdom Mambo in Expelled.

    I watched her lie her way through a Coral Ridge Ministries video called The Intelligent Design Controversy in Higher Education (the same one that Slimy Sal was so proud to have appeared in).

    The highlight is this self-righteous quote from Crocker:

    I decided not to give the students only the standard story, which is what they have heard since they were very small, but I did one lecture where I gave them the evidence for and against evolution, just the scientific evidence.

    I was so careful when I wrote that lecture not to be partial in any way. I was very careful to make sure that I would talk about point by point the evidence that the book would put forward for evolution and then talk about point by point the experiments and say “Well, you know, there’s a problem here.”

    And then I did at the end of the lecture talk about, “Well, this is evidence for a new theory that several, that some scientists are considering, and it’s called Intelligent Design…”

    I think it was on the last slide where I left the students with a question. I said “Is it evolution, intelligent design, or creation? Think about it.” At the end of the lecture students would tell me that they didn’t know what I believed and they would ask me, “What do you believe?”, and I would say, “Well, that’s for outside of class.”

    While she is declaring her innocence, images of her slides are being displayed on the screen. Check out what Crocker means by “impartial scientific evidence”:

    Slide 1
    Slide 2
    Slide 3
    Slide 4
    Slide 5
    Slide 6

    If this is impartial scientific evidence, I’d love to see what biased creationist propaganda looks like.

    Sal, do you think Crocker’s egregious dishonesty should be tolerated in a university classroom?

  32. stcordova

    Glen Davidson:

    douchebag Crocker’s

    So say you who maybe doesn’t even know her or her students.She’s cared greatly for them and council girls who were sexually harassed and troubled.

    All the time I’ve know her, I’ve never seen a hint of cowardice.She full well knew she could be shown the door for what she had to say in class.That’s not the behavior of a coward.

    So, in this discussion you have labeled me as not caring about the truth, you’ve called one of my friends who is a caring teacher and honorable scientist a douchebag and coward.It doesn’t reassure me institutions packed with attitudes like yours are impartial and fair and will pursue due process.Even if I and Dr. Crocker and Dr. Sternberg are mistaken about origins, I don’t think it deserves the vitriol you’re pouring out.

    Oh please, why can’t you even keep quotes straight?

    I didn’t write “douchebag Crocker,” you despicable misrepresenting pseudoscientist. Which I suspect you’d know if you cared about the truth rather than about trashing me with or without the facts.

    If it weren’t the only quote in your entire post you could just say “mistake.” Here, it’s your main “basis” for your bigoted attack above, and it’s an absolutely false attribution.

    Meanwhile, you’ve failed to give us any reason to suppose that you are consistent about crackpots taking over science, or consistent with the evidence, or at all concerned about maintaining integrity in science. Indeed, you continue to oppose science integrity, while whining that I note your lack of concern for the truth.

    Now this falsely attributed “quote” more or less makes my point. Yet again.

    Glen Davidson

  33. keiths:
    Caroline Crocker lies through her teeth, as I discovered in 2008:

    While she is declaring her innocence, images of her slides are being displayed on the screen. Check out what Crocker means by “impartial scientific evidence”:

    Slide 1
    Slide 2
    Slide 3
    Slide 4
    Slide 5
    Slide 6

    If this is impartial scientific evidence, I’d love to see what biased creationist propaganda looks like.

    Sal, do you think Crocker’s egregious dishonesty should be tolerated in a university classroom?

    Yes, that’s why I never bother arguing about whether she was fired for her creationist BS or not.

    She should have been, whether or not she was.

    Glen Davidson

  34. stcordova: Glen Davidson:

    douchebag Crocker’s

    So say you who maybe doesn’t even know her or her students. She’s cared greatly for them and council girls who were sexually harassed and troubled.

    Glen didn’t call Crocker douchebag, I did. It’s just a minor quoting error on your part but I don’t want Glen to be confused why you’re trying to take him to task for something he didn’t say.

    And WTF does counseling/helping young women have to do with being a competent teacher? Think, Sal, think. If I want to help young women, the best place may actually be a university, because that’s where there are lots of women who want help — but that goes nowhere towards showing that I am capable of or should desire to be a teacher there to further my “helping goal”. Maybe she should have gotten herself back into school to get a degree as a nurse or a counselor instead of as the incompetent biology teacher she became. Maybe she should have become a minister, which is obviously more congruent with her mindset than teaching science.

    If it’s just meant to prove that Crocker isn’t a total douchebag, well then, granted. She’s not a total douchebag. But since I never said or implied that she totally was, I’m not sure what you thought you were gaining by attempting to correct me with your helpful anecdote.

  35. Glen Davidson:

    you despicable misrepresenting pseudoscientist.

    I think I got that quote right. Is that correct?

  36. I’ve gotten posters mixed up in the heat of battle, so I see no problem with that.

    By ST, you and the people you appear to associate with are cranks. You and they know enough to sling the vocabulary around, but have no understanding of the principles of the science they claim to transcend.

    Prove me wrong. Show that you understand evolution by taking — arguendo — the evolution side. Tell me what’s wrong with Behe’s irreducible complexity.

    This is an exercise in demonstrating your understanding.

    Darwin filled his writing with arguments against evolution. that’s why quote mining his is so easy. But being able to present your opponent’s best case is a hallmark of intelligence and intellectual honesty.

  37. I’ve gotten posters mixed up in the heat of battle, so I see no problem with that.

    I don’t recall ever having done so.

    But it’s ok because you have? A single “quote,” after a whole lot of whining and martyrdom, false accusations, and misrepresentations, and I’m not supposed to link them?

    I wouldn’t make too much of most misquotes, but context matters, and I haven’t gotten a straight response from Sal yet. Ever. Anywhere. He ignores whatever he doesn’t like, and whines that we don’t jump through the hoops that are clearly tendentious and unresponsive to the basic matters of following the evidence.

    Glen Davidson

  38. Well, I’m not very good at keeping my posts straight. That’s one reason I almost never engage in posting history wars.

    But I am interested in meeting an IDist who is willing to engage in an actual discussion.

  39. stcordova: Even if I and Dr. Crocker and Dr. Sternberg are mistaken about origins, I don’t think it deserves the vitriol you’re pouring out.

    Well then, you think wrong. Absolutely, ID propaganda against Darwinists and evolution deserves all the vitriol we can muster against it. Your (and Crocker’s) repeated smears are an intrinsic part of the RWA Dominionist narrative that is attempting to destroy secular society, a society I depend on for my very life and the lives of my potential generations of descendants.

    You -and everyone like you – should be ashamed of yourselves for spreading the Expelled lie. I don’t doubt that you genuinely believe it — the christian narrative of persecution-for-faith is so deeply ingrained in your culture that it easily infects you without you noticing that you’ve lost contact with the facts. But the truth is clear: christians dominate everything in politics and society except in the tiny sphere of academia where the undeniable facts of physical reality cannot be twisted to support a biblical narrative. And it’s vital that universities hold the line against the teach-the-bible-in-science-class regressives.

    That you have convinced yourself to believe our ancient Earth is only 10000 years or younger is not a good sign for your ability to discern neutral physical facts where your religious preferences are at stake. Yes, that’s a genuine ad hom: we cannot ever take you at face value when you assert anything, because your ability to recognize reality is so badly compromised. “She was removed” must be checked for coherence with reality, and surprise, surprise, it’s not true. Which you have yet to admit/correct while you continue to waffle on about what nice truth-loving people you all are.

    Yes, I could be much more vitriolic than I am currently showing; I’m restraining myself in respect for Elizabeth’s site. Your conduct shows you to be a direct threat to me, my family, and the ultimate welfare of my nation. Meanwhile, you are enjoying all the benefits of evolutionary science — abundant nourishing food, modern antibiotics, genetic testing to prevent disease, all the GA-designed modern electronics — provided by the same scientists you want to shit on.

    I’ll let PZ (a man who really knows his way with words 🙂 )finish for me:

    She has not been deprived of a right to speak. She can say whatever she want, she can teach that crap in her local Sunday School, she can work for the Discovery Institute and write screeds that will get sent to newspapers all over the country. However, universities have standards and are not under any compulsion to hire any unqualified bozo to jabber in front of a classroom. We have responsibilities, you know, to teach the current state of knowledge, not the opinions of muddle-brained theologians.

    Of course we should discriminate against “Darwin-doubters”. If an electrician came to your house and said he was an “electron-doubter”, didn’t hold with all that nonsense about “circuits” and “grounds”, and told you aluminum foil was the best insulator, you’d fire him on the spot, right? So why all this absurd insistence that biology is a matter of opinion …

    [emphasis mine]

  40. petrushka:
    Well, I’m not very good at keeping my posts straight. That’s one reason I almost never engage in posting history wars.

    But I am interested in meeting an IDist who is willing to engage in an actual discussion.

    Good luck to us all, on that score.

    Glen Davidson

  41. GlenDavidson: Good luck to us all, on that score.

    Well, Sal is in the upper tier of ID posters, so I’d like to see if he can come up with a critique of irreducible complexity. If he does, I’ll make a stab ate defending Behe. We’ll see who understands the opposition.

    I think before you can claim to demolish 160 years of science, you should at least know what it says.

    I pick IC as the topic, because no less than Winston Ewert just said that Dembski’s argument rests on Behe. If Behe is wrong, there’s a problem with ID.

  42. stcordova:
    Sorry Glen, I didn’t get my quote straight.

    You have a history of that, Sal. Make more of an effort in future, please.

  43. By ST, you and the people you appear to associate with are cranks. You and they know enough to sling the vocabulary around, but have no understanding of the principles of the science they claim to transcend.

    Prove me wrong. Show that you understand evolution by taking — arguendo — the evolution side. Tell me what’s wrong with Behe’s irreducible complexity.

    This is an exercise in demonstrating your understanding.

    Hey, I like that. First off, my arguments siding with the evolutionists on 2LOT was the real thing. A few complimented me on that. That was genuine, but now I shall go into full imposter mode. The following do not represent my views, but an evolutionary persona that I synthesized from memory:

    ========================================================

    Michael Behe offers the argument that Darwinian evolution couldn’t happen because of a phenomenon he calls Irreducible Complexity. By that he means systems with well matched parts can’t be selected for part by part and thus Darwinian evolution cannot happen since the whole system must be select for rather than individual parts.

    He illustrates this with the mousetrap argument with a mousetrap consisting of 5 parts. He argues the system on the whole functions only with the 5 parts, however it has been demonstrated the mousetrap can be implemented with fewer than five parts. So the irreducible complexity argument fails even with Behe’s own example since a reducible mouse trap can be constructed.

    Furthermore, selection can co-opt other parts of systems hence selection can select for components of a more complex system. For example proteins in Behe’s famed flagellum example are demostratably co-opted in other systems such as the Type-III secretory system. Ken Miller pointed this out powerfully in the Dover Trial as evidence against the Irreducible Complexity. Nick Matzke also offered a comprehensive phylogenetic and physiological analysis in his classic essay, “Evolution of Bacterial Flagellum in Brownian Space”.

    Just because selection cannot act directly to building a particular feature it is not precluded from acting indirectly from doing so. Thus selection can select for individual parts rather than the whole, contrary to Behe’s claims.

    Further more phylogenetic analysis suggests many proteins pre-existed to form the flagellum which shows natural selection can cumulatively build complex systems with highly interdependent well-matched parts. Behe relies on argument from ignorance he assumes just because he can’t imagine an evolutionary pathway, none must exist.

    Finally after a long night of drinking with Larry Arnhart, when asked how the flagellum came to be, Behe quipped, ” a puff of smoke”. Behe is a biochemist, he is not an evolutionary biologist, and his arguments evidence his lack of appropriate specialization.

  44. I’ll repeat my question:

    Sal, do you think Crocker’s egregious dishonesty should be tolerated in a university classroom?

    The evidence.

  45. stcordova,

    OK, but Behe has a more sophisticated argument in The Edge of Evolution. More specifically, he asserts that for Malaria organisms to achieve quinine tolerance, their gnome must pass through a stage that contains a seriously detrimental mutation. Either that or two necessary mutations must occur at the same time.

    This is a bit stronger than the argument from ignorance.

    Your counter response?

  46. petrushka: OK, but Behe has a more sophisticated argument in The Edge of Evolution. More specifically, he asserts that for Malaria organisms to achieve quinine tolerance, their gnome must pass through a stage that contains a seriously detrimental mutation. Either that or two necessary mutations must occur at the same time.

    Sorry, petrushka, I know this part of the thread is really for Sal. But I have to ask:

    Is Behe’s argument true? I mean, is it true that the genome did have a seriously-detrimental mutation? Is it true that there were two (improbably simultaneious) mutations? Or is it true that quinine resistance turns out to be easily acquired with a simple mutation? Did Behe publish a peer-rieviewed paper or is this argument just something he cooked up for one of his books?

    I’m wondering if you already followed this issue and already know how the arguments and counter-arguments played out a decade ago … I didn’t follow it then and I haven’t researched it since.

    Sorry for butting in here.

  47. Your counter response?

    Behe would have done well to use the term Interdependent Complexity rather than Irreducible Complexity because for sure several functions implemented with many parts have been shown to be implementable with fewer parts.

    For example, a password-login pair can be implemented with 200 characters or 20 characters or even hypothetically 2. Each password-login pair can also be said to co-opt alphabetic characters in existence in other password-login pairs. But the co option of existing alphabetic characters shows how Miller and Matzke’s co-option argument misses the point when they argue co-option of proteins.

    The point is analogous to whether a sufficiently complex login-password pair can be resolved by Darwinian means, not whether the individual parts can be selectively co-opted by other systems. One part of the system must be well matched to another, and it must be in proper sequence.

    Co-opting existing proteins isn’t the problem. One needs to show a Darwinian progression of a 10% built flagellum, 20% …. 90% built flagellum just like showing that a hacker can break a system by having success with 10% of a password, 20% of a password…90% of a password. It’s already a given the hacker is co-opting existing alphabetic characters! In like manner, it can be said IC systems often co-opt existing parts for other purposes.

    I showed the real issue here isn’t the possibility of co-option, and even Matzke showed up to protest. 🙂

    Mouse Trap vs 3-glass 3 Knives

    And that is the real problem irreducible complexity poses, the extravagance involved in doing tasks that can be done more simply.

    I think in light of the misrepresentations put forward by Darwinists, the 3-glass-3-knife illustration can be used instead of mouse-traps since it illustrates the Rube-Goldberg concept which Behe put forward.

    The problem IC poses for Darwinism is the extravagance of nature. Darwin perceived the problem the extravagance of nature posed for his theory and it made him sick. The problem is not that goals are achieved via the simplest means, but via extravagant and irreducibly complex means with great depth of integration.

    My analysis was regarded highly enough in the ID community, the Discovery Institute weighed in:

    Illustrating IC

    Refuting the co-option objection also renders the phylogenenetic comparisons moot because they are only comparing individual proteins, not actual full systems that are stepwise solutions to a password-login type problem. Matzke and Miller have successfully equivocated the sense of what Behe was actually arguing and framed the issue in terms of a co-option vs. non-coption of proteins debate, whereas the real issue is the assembly of co-opted parts toward new function.

    Finally, if IDists frame the debate as Design vs. mindless OOL instead of Design vs. Evolution, the arguments will have even more strength since even the mainstream would admit co-option and Darwinian evolution don’t come into play. In that case, they say, “we don’t know” most of the time. That’s as fair an answer as it gets. If they say, “we don’t know” then it’s OK in my book for people to form beliefs as to the answers for the Origin of Life.

    If evolutionists said “we don’t know for sure, but we speculate…” I’d find that an acceptable scientific answer rather than expulsion of people who find evolutionary answers woefully incomplete or who pose difficult challenges such as the Biochemical Challenge (the subtitle of Behe’s book).

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