Are Creationists honest

Are Creationists honest?

Everyone makes mistakes, but there seems to be a common accusation that creationists intend to deceive ( 1 2 3 4 5 ). The most frequent charge is that creationists take quotes 'out of context'. This is an easy charge to make since no creationist goes to the trouble of quoting the ENTIRE book of the author they quote. In most cases evolutionists believe they have resolved the problems they bring up, however when someone acknowledges a problem it seems reasonable to allow the public to know about the problem and then decide whether the proposed solution is indeed reasonable. If the public can be trusted to accept evolution, that same public should be allowed to question evolution.

You know you're over the target when you start getting flak. ~ Ben Stein

We have this going for us, however, which the evolutionary naturalists don’t, namely, the evidence and arguments are on our side. It’s therefore to our advantage to discuss intelligent design and naturalistic evolution on their merits. Conversely, the other side needs to delegitimate the debate between intelligent design and naturalistic evolution, casting intelligent design as a pseudoscience and characterizing its significance purely in political and religious terms. As a consequence, critics of intelligent design engage in all forms of character assassination, ad hominem attacks, guilt by association, and demonization.~ William Dembski

When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff. ~ Cicero

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I shall prepare an answer to Mr. Darrow's charge that I am an ignorant bigot. I am not vain enough to think that this compliment -- for coming from him, it was a compliment -- was intended for me alone. While it was addressed to me, it was intended for all who dare differ from him to the extent of believing in the Bible, the God whom it reveals and the supernatural Christ of whom it tells. ~ William Jennings Bryan See also: Gallup 2 3 4 5 See also: Fark

I always find when I meet creationists or non-evolutionists or critics or whatever, I find it a lot easier to hate them in print than I do in person. ~ Michael Ruse

In my opinion, the Intelligent Design creationists I have met believe their own rhetoric about only doing science and having no religious or political agendas, and they also believe in the religious and political tenets to which they adhere. ~ Michael Shermer

Creationists today -- at least the majority of their spokesmen -- are highly educated, intelligent people. Skilled debaters, they have always done their homework. ~ Niles Eldredge See also: Scientists

For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; and this cannot possibly be here done. ~ Charles Darwin See also: Zogby

When I was in Cambridge one of my supervisors often advised us to 'beware the sound of one hand clapping' which is a way of saying if there is an argument on one side, there is bound to be an argument on the other. And what I've found in studying the structure of the argument in the Origin of Species is that for every evidence based argument for one of Darwin's two key propositions there is an evidence based counter argument. ~ Stephen Meyer

Yet even here, where Darwin’s arguments are strongest, nagging questions remain. For example, a reader of the Origin might be justified in wondering what Creationist view Darwin is referring to. Perhaps this is a problem more for the present-day reader. Darwin’s contemporaries may have known exactly what he meant, though I doubt it. Often the Creationist position seems merely a straw man-set up only to be knocked down. The constraints on space in the Origin, which led Darwin to abandon his original intention of arguing on both sides of the mutability issue, add to this feeling. The result is that the Creationist position is never clearly defined in the Origin. ~ Barry Gale

When you ask a Darwinist, 'What evidence do you have for your mechanism that random variation and natural selection can actually do any creating?' the Darwinist will say, 'Well, tell me what God looks like, Why did he do this or that? I want you to show me God doing the creating because if you can't show me that, we can get rid of God or the creator and what's left is Darwinism, so it's got to be true.' It's the variation of, 'This is the only thing that could have happened, so it doesn't have to be demonstrated, it can just be assumed to be true.' And anyone who doubts that it could be true has to provide ironclad proof and justification for an alternative. ~ Phillip Johnson

When a valid criticism of Darwinism is first proposed, it is dismissed without an adequate response, either on some technicality or with some irrelevancy or by simply being ignored. As time passes, people forget that Darwinists never adequately met the criticism. But Darwinism is still ruling the roost. Since the criticism failed to dislodge Darwinism, the criticism itself must have been discredited or refuted somewhere. Thereafter the criticism becomes known as "that discredited criticism that was refuted a long time ago." And, after that, even to raise the criticism betrays an outdated conception of evolutionary theory. In this way, the criticism, though entirely valid, simply vanishes into oblivion. ~ William Dembski

It is said that there is no place for an argument from authority from science. The community of science is constantly self-critical ... It is certainly true that within each narrowly defined scientific field there is constant challenge to new technical claims and to old wisdom. ... But when scientists transgress the bounds of their own specialty they have no choice but to accept the claims of authority, even though they do not know how solid the grounds of those claims may be. Who am I to believe that quantum physics if not Steven Weinberg, or about the solar system if not Carl Sagan? What worries me is that they may believe what Dawkins and Wilson tell them about evolution. ~ Richard Lewontin

As to assertions without adequate evidence, the literature of science is filled with them, especially the literature of popular science writing. Carl Sagan's list of the "best contemporary science-popularizers" includes E.O. Wilson, Lewis Thomas, and Richard Dawkins, each of whom has put unsubstantiated assertions or counterfactual claims at the very center of the stories they have retailed in the market. ~ Richard Lewontin

As we know, there is a great divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the causes of evolution but even about the actual process. This divergence exists because the evidence is unsatisfactory and does not permit any certain conclusion. It is therefore right and proper to draw the attention of the non-scientific public to the disagreements about evolution. But some recent remarks of evolutionists show that they think this unreasonable. This situation, where scientific men rally to the defense of a doctrine they are unable to define scientifically, much less demonstrate with scientific rigour, attempting to maintain its credit with the public by the suppression of criticism and the elimination of difficulties, is abnormal and undesirable in science. ~ W.R. Thompson

Evolutionists have often protested ‘unfair’ to quoting an evolutionist as if he were against evolution itself. So let it be said from the outset that the vast majority of authorities quoted are themselves ardent believers in evolution. But that is precisely the point... The foundations of the evolutionary edifice are hardly likely to be shaken by a collection of quotes from the many scientists who are biblical creationists. In a court of law, an admission from a hostile witness is the most valuable. Quoting the evolutionary palaeontologist who admits the absence of in-between forms, or the evolutionary biologist who admits the hopelessness of the mutation/selection mechanism, is perfectly legitimate if the admission is accurately represented in its own right, regardless of whether the rest of the article is full of hymns of praise to all the other aspects of evolution. ~ Andrew Snelling

Coyne complains the book is ‘heavily larded’ with quotations from evolutionists. This leads into his being upset with being quoted himself, as discussed above. That aside, however. I don’t know what to make of this statement. What is a book concerning evolution supposed to contain if not quotes from evolutionists? Quotes from accountants? ~ Michael Behe

One of the ironies of the whole controversy is that it's a stock in trade for the Darwinists to say, 'The critics are religiously motivated and they believe in God and they're throwing their religion at us and they shouldn't be doing that, and they should keep that out of science,' But being religious or antireligious is the same thing: It's a position about religion and God, and it goes beyond the evidence and into very confident assertions that are based more on personal convictions than they are scientific testing. ~ Phillip Johnson

In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin. ~ J.Y. Chen

Creationists will have to speak louder. I continue to support those who would like to have their voices heard in biology classes. I encourage the effort to limit the teaching of evolutionary biology until such time as evolutionists encourage a more inclusive participation of students. The very idea of the American Civil Liberties Union conspiring with evolutionary biologists to limit the free speech of the majority of the high school students in this county is grotesque. ~ William Provine

Far more crucial than what we know or do not know is what we do not want to know. ~ Eric Hoffer

It's a funny thing that questions that aren't properly answered don't go away. ~ Paul Nelson