Science, scientism, the BBC and the thought police

There is an idea being spread around in Britain and the USA today that ‘science’ (by which they mean evolutionism) and ‘religion’ (by which they mean Christianity) are in a mortal conflict that only one side can win, and the winner is science. The people who propagate this simplistic dichotomy invariably castigate intelligent design as religion in disguise (‘creationism in a cheap tuxedo’) and therefore, according to their philosophy, it’s claims can be dismissed without going to the trouble of examining them. 

They also assert that Darwinian evolutionary theory is a well established scientific fact which has stood all relevant tests and no evidence has been discovered against it. Therefore, anyone who purports to challenge or question evolutionary orthodoxy is, by definition, advancing a religious, therefore anti- science, agenda and so, again by definition, is not to be listened to. 

None of the above is true. 

A BBC survey a few years (1) ago showed that barely half of us in Britainfully accept Darwinian evolution. And how many of those who accept the idea that ‘we came from monkeys’ (2) also believe that some kind of mind, life force or cosmic entity, if not the God of Moses and Jesus was in some way behind the evolutionary process? Worse still for the evolutionists, as many as 40% of those questioned in the 2006 IPSOS Mori poll believed that creationism or intelligent design (ID) should be taught in school science lessons. 

 Richard Dawkins expressed outrage and disgust at this persistence of what he saw as superstition and ignorance, but if he was the objective ‘go wherever the evidence leads’ rationalist he wants us all to think he is, this study’s results should have made him ask some profound questions. What he and the BBC should have done was get all the Darwin sceptics out into the open where they could shoot us down by evidence. That would have been the fearless thing to do. Instead, he and his chums have refused invitations to public debates and launched further initiatives and lobbying to try to make it even harder than it already is to question Darwin in our education systems.  I don’t think Dawkins is as clever as he supposes, but he is clever enough to realise that his best tactic against those of who are using scientific evidence against his beloved Darwinism is to prevent our arguments being hears, by all means necessary.  

Teaching creationism or questioning Darwin? 

Dawkins has campaigned long and hard against what he calls ‘teaching creationism’ in a few schools, for example the popular and successfulImmanuelCollege inGateshead. In fact, ImmanuelCollege specifically denied his charges, a college spokesman doing so twice on BBC radio which I heard live. He stressed that Darwinian evolution was taught in science class at Immanuel, same as everywhere else, but the theory was also questioned and counter arguments heard. Students also heard that there was a body of argument againstDarwin’s theory and that some people believed that the facts were more in accordance with the presence of a Designer, and that they should think about it and make up their own minds. 

Dawkins compares ‘teaching creationism’ (by which he means ‘questioning Darwinism’ but he can hardly put it like that since science is supposed to allow questions) with child abuse. I heard him say this on BBC radio and he has repeated this vile smear elsewhere. That’s right, a teacher who, having explained Darwinian theory to his pupils also mentions the scientific objections to it is on the same level as if he had, having given her Belgian chocolates and promised her a new iPhone, asked his little niece to come out to the shed to play a special game with him that mummy mustn’t be told about.

Evidence for molecules to man evolution ‘…at least as good as evidence for the Nazi Holocaust’?

Dawkins has also written that the evidence for evolution is ‘…at least as good as the evidence for the Nazi race holocaust.’(3) As one commentator said of this outrageous statement ‘Where are the (Jewish) anti-defamation league when you need them?’ Is this a good model of how scientific enquiry or good education goes forward, from a man who was recently titled ‘Professor of Public Understanding of Science’? No wonder that Professor Alister McGrath told a large audience including myself at Southampton university that ‘Atheists come up to me at Oxford and apologise for Dawkins saying ‘Don’t judge us atheists by him, we’re not all like that.’ Dawkins truly is the Fred Phelps of atheism, embarrassing many on his own side.

 Does science allow questions to be asked? yes or no?

Think. There is no area of science where a dedicated movement is trying to use the law to prevent certain questions being asked or theories challenged. If in their philosophy there can be no reasoned argument against ‘The Fact of Evolution’,then surely it is no longer a theory but a dogma. One could argue that Richard Dawkins, Harry Kroto et al in their efforts to slam down Darwin questioners are heretics and blasphemers against their own belief system, the scientific method. They seem to be saying ‘In the name of Science I forbid you to question the current orthodoxy, ask that question or draw attention to those facts!’ Science and scientism are not the same thing. One is open and neutral and can change if the evidence changes. The other is a fixed philosophical belief and demands compliance with dogma. Let me explain.

Science is, or rather the sciences are, neutral. The scientific method is about independent thinking, careful examination, doubt, discovery, verification (proving things true) and falsification (proving things false). It must take all the available facts into account, including observer bias. It must go where the evidence leads even if that means re-thinking orthodoxies that careers have been built on. Surely that is what the Galileo affair teaches.

However, reputations and prevailing orthodoxies are not lightly surrendered. Scientific fraud is hard to eradicate as recent scandals show us, not least the notorious University of East Anglia global warming affair where evidence that challenged the politically accepted conclusion was suppressed. I wrote about this and other recent examples of scientific publication bias on the Creation Science Movement news blog. True science is about measurement and testing, comparing one thing with another, seeing if we can make accurate predictions from theories, and it is supposed to change if new evidence appears that the old theory cannot accommodate. This has not happened for evolution theory, which has special protection because it underpins the philosophies of materialism and secularism. Scientific evidence against evolution is dismissed without being properly considered as evolution must be true, or else there would be God, which is considered unacceptable.

Good science can change harmful orthodoxies, without the freedom to ask questions this process is blocked.

Good science enables us to dispel harmful myths: for example, as a young doctor I was taught that lying immobile on a hard surface (typically a door placed under a mattress) was the best thing for back pain. I did as I was taught and gave back pain sufferers this advice in good faith. Later, someone did a proper controlled trial, comparing bed rest with early mobilisation, and proved that early mobilisation gave much better results. I therefore changed my practice to bring it into line with the findings of science. I could give many more similar examples to prove that proper science is good and does us good, and so therefore I and other Christians in science and medicine practice, teach and welcome it. If the Christian religion can be disproved by this kind of science, then away with it. But of course it can’t be. Less rabid atheists acknowledge this.

Society has received many benefits from science, although many harms too, depending on how we humans apply the science and also on unintended consequences. For example, I regularly use the internet both to learn and to teach (4), but others use it for pornography, including the cruel exploitation of children, drug dealing, gambling and cybercrime.  I am driven mad by all the user names and passwords I have to use to stop people robbing me via my computer. Digital photography and the worldwide web have led to an unprecedented explosion of child pornography and help terrorists communicate and recruit. Science and technology give us things which we can use for good or ill, but they cannot make us good and may give us new opportunities and indeed temptations to do evil to one another and harm to ourselves.

Science can enable bad men to do more evil, but it cannot even define goodness

An atheist T shirt slogan reads ‘Science flies you to the moon; religion flies you into buildings’. One could write an essay on the crass dumbness of this slogan, beginning with the observation that in both cases it was men who did the flying and both flying machines equally used science. Science and technology give us tools; we decide how to use them. Science is as neutral as fire, water, steel, chemicals or the spoken and written word. All of those things can be used for good or bad purposes, depending on the choices we make.

But scientism is a materialistic philosophy which insists that, as the atheist Carl Sagan put it, ‘the cosmos is all that there is, was or ever will be’. In other words, there is matter, energy and the laws of physics, there is ABSOLUTELY nothing else. This is an unproveable assertion, a faith position, yet it demands our absolute allegiance. I am prepared to believe a cell biologist when he says ‘trust me I’m a scientist’  as long as he confines himself to cell biology, just as the doctors I teach about skin cancer diagnosis can, I believe, trust me up to a point on that subject. But why on earth should I believe that an astronomer or metallurgist has any more insight into unseen things than I do? 

The insistence of scientism on absolute materialism denies any possibility of there being any afterlife, spirit or God, let alone one who has spoken to us through his son, Jesus. If this is accepted as our baseline, then anyone who tries to put forward evidence either againstDarwinor for Christ will be ruled out of order on a matter of principle before they even speak. Zero tolerance, evidence inadmissible, case dismissed.

The demarcation dispute-your argument against Darwinism may not be put, so Darwin wins

This demarcation dispute is at the heart of the ‘science versus religion’ paradigm so often appealed to today. Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Robert Boyle, Gregor Mendel and the many other Christian believers who not only loved and practiced but founded sciences knew nothing of this false dichotomy, and nor does reason itself. It is a propaganda tactic, skilfully used to prevent evolutionism (atheism’s primary foundation) being questioned. 

‘Got a problem with evolution have you? Dare to question Darwin? Well I have a little slogan that will put paid to your question..,.’Evolution is science, creationism is religion.’ Simples! Since evolution is science (because we say so), and since any alternative theory of origins implies design, therefore a Designer, and is therefore creationism and religion, (because we say so) your question or argument against evolution has no validity so may not be put.’

 This is the demarcation based reasoning taken by atheist activists which neatly avoids them having to face science questions they know they cannot answer by re-classifying them as religion, therefore inadmissible. This was the main stratagem used at the infamous 2005 Dover intelligent design trial where the right of school governors to allow Darwinism to be questioned in school was crushed in a perverse and biased trial in which Judge John Jones ignored and misrepresented 3 days of testimony by the intelligent design proponent and biochemist Michael Behe and also violated the American constitution by ruling on religion, as I’ll explain later. 

This is no mere ‘sore loser’ whimpering. The ‘science versus religion’ thing is quite new in historical terms and is being played up to deny a hearing to scientific arguments against Darwinism, arguments which it cannot survive without special pleading or plain cheating. The biochemist Michael Behe, a leading light of the intelligent design movement, has been denied the right to publish in peer review journals or even a right of reply to inaccurate and unfair criticism of his work in such journals. He has posted about this on his web site after being told in writing that if his criticism of ‘the paradigm’ (i.e. Darwinism) were published it might deny space to a letter or article ‘advancing the paradigm’. In other words, you are not allowed to question Darwin.

The Richard Sternberg affair underlines this point.

Forced out of his job for allowing peer review criticism of Darwinism

Sternberg (who accepts evolution) allowed a paper by Stephen Meyer (Cambridge PhD, author of ‘Signature in the Cell’) to be published in the journal of the Smithsonian Institute. The paper was peer reviewed in the normal way; it was a scientific paper whose conclusions were anti-Darwinian. Sternberg found himself an outcast. This is well documented, including in the film‘Expelled’. An effective ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ tactic: deny peer review journal access to anyone questioning Darwin and then you can say ‘No scientist questions Darwin-look at the peer review journals!’ 

In Britain, along similar lines we had the Michael Reiss affair a few years back. I wrote about this at the time on the Creation Science Movement web site. Reiss (who like Alister McGrath is a well qualified biologist and an ordained Anglican minister) found himself the subject of a witch hunt and was hounded out of his job at the Royal Society by a pack of snarling atheists not for questioning Darwinism (he fully accepts it) but for saying in a book and on radio 4 that if a pupil raised the subject in class he should be asked to explain why he believes what he does and how it could be tested, rather than just told to wear a dunce’s cap and sit in the naughty corner.

I heard Michael Reiss being interviewed by John Humphrys on the radio 4 Today programme. I was listening in the car on the westbound M27 on my way to work at the time and my memory is quite clear: I don’t have a recording but wrote this quite soon after. Humphrys asked Reiss, ‘So, if a student says ‘I believe that my Uncle Charley made the world in his shed last Wednesday afternoon, you take him seriously and discuss that, do you?’(5). Reiss politely responded to this spectacularly stupid, belligerent and irrelevant comparison by saying that should such a scenario develop, he would engage the student and ask what evidence he had to support the idea, and hopefully explain why it was an unreasonable proposition. Asked directly if he thought that intelligent design should be taught in schools, Reiss gave a heartfelt one word response,‘No’.

So what was the problem? 

All he was saying was that if children had been raised in religious (probabaly Muslim) homes where (regrettably, as he would see it) they had been taught creation as truth, and brought the subject up at school, then the best way to get them to accept evolution would be to engage them in respectful dialogue. Let’s be clear about this, Reiss is a Darwinist and was talking about the best way to get religiously educated pupils to embrace Darwinism. But even this was too much for the atheist thought police and he was hounded out of his job. His thought crime was not questioning Darwin or saying that intelligent design should be taught, he did neither, but for saying that if a pupil raised the subject because he had been taught it at home (6) he should be engaged in discussion to explain why he is wrong. 

Why did the modest proposal of this very inoffensive man make the materialist thought police so rattled? I think I know. The threat to their world view is not from children who believe that their uncle Charley made the world in his shed last week (John Humphrys isn’t usually as stupid as that, people’s IQs seem to drop by about 60% when they are insulting Darwin critics, or as in this case, people who are merely willing to allow Darwin criticism). Their main worry is not even, in my opinion,  those who have been raised in homes where the Bible (or more likely these days the Koran) is taught as literal truth, but from the growing number who have become exposed to educated, focused, science based criticism of the weak evidence that supposedly supports evolutionary theory.

Never mind Uncle Charley, this is their nightmare. These kids are more likely to ask the teacher questions like

‘What about the problem of useless intermediate forms? Why would natural selection preserve them? 

Is sickle cell disease really the best example of a beneficial mutation you can offer us? It’s rubbish and you know it, here’s why…

Can you give us even one directly observed example of an animal or plant being bred into something really different? Can’t, can you? 

What about irreducible complexity? How did photosynthesis or Krebs cycle evolve? 

Can we discuss Behe’s mousetrap? 

How did life begin? Don’t give me that Miller-Urey or ‘methinks it is like a weasel’ game nonsense. Here’s a calculation based on generous allowances about the probability of even one strand of collagen developing without a designer, the probability is zero 

What do evolutionists mean by ‘simple’ cells? 

If DNA check and repair doesn’t satisfy Darwin’s test of falsification, what would? 

How did the specific information get into DNA? Stephen Meyer has shown that meaningful information only ever arises from intelligence. One example of meaningful coded information arising from a non intelligent source would falsify the intelligent design hypothesis, do you have any examples? Thought not. 

How can evolutionists say that beneficial new features were built by mutations when this is the opposite of what we see in real world and laboratory?’

This is the scenario I believe they fear. I suspect that Dawkins and Kroto know very well that the teachers can’t give a satisfactory answer to these questions without admitting that there are extremely grave, I say fatal, flaws in Darwinian Theory. This can’t be allowed, so they resort to the tactics of the bully, the censor and the propagandist. Sir Harry Kroto said in an article in the Guardian (7) that allowing intelligent design to be taught in schools would help turn children into suicide bombers.

(PS if these people are actually worried, as I am, about radical Islam taking over Britain and Europe by the end of this century, and make no mistake it is probable on current trends and it would be a forever change, then perhaps they should stop attacking and weakening institutional Christianity which historically allowed if not enabled the Enlightenment and Renaissance and Industrial revolution. Institutional Christisnity is the only world view that has ever successfully protected Europe from Islam during its periodic seasons of invasive spread. Godless liberalism will not in my opinion prove strong enough to save the West from the determined expansionism of its ancient rival.) 

Returning to the question of ‘teaching creationism’ in schools, there is a lot of misinformation around the subject. To hear Dawkins and Kroto rant, you would think that there was some danger of Darwinism being dropped from the National Curriculum and swivel-eyed religious fundamentalists with big black Bibles (King James version of course) or Korans being put in front of classes and telling the students that science was the work of the Devil. Breathtaking cobblers! What is actually happening is that routine one-sided dogmatic evolutionist indoctrination (of the sort that I had from infancy to A level-in Catholic schools!) continues, BUT in a very few places students are additionally being offered the opportunity, perhaps even encouraged, to look at the facts from a different angle which includes scientific criticism of the theory, perhaps also the possibility of creation. It is this which the atheist establishment cannot abide. Of course, if the day comes when the evidence that has already blown their beloved Darwinism asunder becomes widely understood and accepted, they will be asked ‘When did you first know about this?’  If they then say‘We didn’t know until just now.’they will look dumb, but if they say‘we knew back then but denied it.’they will look worse than dumb.One hypothesis for their absolute intolerance of critical thinking against Darwinism is that they are in too deep to admit they are wrong so they are brazening it out to save face and reputation, perhaps until some really convincing evidence appears to prove what they deep down KNOW is true, just as in my ‘Three Men in a HUt’ parable Johan, Robert and Ibrahim all KNEW they were right.

Actually, I don’t think they mind the swivel eyed Bible bashing fundamentalist fanatics very much, they have made a lot of mileage out of Fred ‘God hates you!’ Phelps. What I think really scares them is the person who has read the works of scientifically literate Darwin dissenters like Jonathan Sarfati, Vij Sodera, Stuart Burgess, Andy McIntosh, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, John Sanford and others like them. They are scared of people who have read and understood Charles Darwin and point to the gaping holes in evolutionist theory, not using Bible texts but asking difficult questions about laevo amino acids, peptide bonds, Krebs cycle, photosynthesis, the species envelope, synergistic co-enzymes without which other processes can’t even begin, sudden appearance of complex forms and discontinuity in the fossil record, information theory and the demonstrably deleterious nature of random mutations. This is what makes the atheist fundamentalist stick his fingers in his ears, gnash his teeth and cry ‘silence the blaspheming heretics!’

Back to C S Lewis, who wrote ‘The enemy made his lie stronger by mixing a good deal of truth in with it.’ (8) Just as a computer software package can bundle in some bad software with good, a seemingly bland 300 page government piece of legislation may contain a powerful but hidden enabling clause that goes far beyond the bill’s stated intent, and just as a seemingly wholesome meal may contain a poison, so philosophy can be bundled in with science. If as they say religion is being bundled in with Darwin criticism, then why do they ask us to trustingly assume that anti-religion, i.e. atheism, isn’t being bundled in with evolutionism? The acceptance of ‘science’ as the arbiter of all things because it’s very good at measuring distances, analysing chemicals, developing vaccines and medicines, dropping high explosives very accurately on to people from a height of 2 miles (if not always so good at choosing the right people to shred), enabling us to spy on each other and jabber endlessly into mobile phones etc, allows motivated people to slip in some falsehoods disguised as science. And we swallow them.

Does it follow that because science has given us marvellous weapons, tools and toys that scientists are more fit than the rest of us to pronounce on matters outside science? (9) Science has not ruled out God, or told us how we got here or where we are going, or why. It can’t, because supernatural entities cannot be investigated by naturalistic means any more than you can pick up plastic with a magnet or cure cancer with poetry.

Evolution in the sense of fish gradually developing into amphibians, then reptiles, then birds etc has not been observed, it is a set of untestable assumptions about what evolutionists speculate may have happened in the unobservable distant past and is based on faith. The suppositions of evolutionism are based on highly speculative extrapolations of things we can see today, for example variation within species like dogs or apples. But when you look closely at the biological evidence it fits intelligent design theory better. There is a substantial body of science that stands against Darwinism (10) but the masses are being denied access to it. The people who try to bear this message are being shouted down. 

The BBC has a different, and unscientific, set of rules when it comes to questioning Darwin

Going back to John Humphrys’ remark about a pupils’ Uncle Charley creating the world last week in his garden shed, what was that about? Humphreys is very sceptical on many issues and usually gives interviewees a hard time, within the limits of BBC political correctness. So why did he descend to such insulting, asinine puerility when interviewing Michael Reiss about the issue of how authorities should behave towards the student who is questioning Darwin? He normally asks intelligent reasonably well informed questions, even if he is getting them fed into his ear piece. The answer in my view is that there is a solidly materialit, revolutionary, ghedonistic, godless and particularly anti-Christian political culture in Britain that has an absolute zero tolerance policy of questioning Darwin, and the BBC is at the heart of it. I’ll have more to say elsewhere about the real life Uncle Charley who due to inherited and married wealth could afford to spend lots of time in his shed doing amateur naturalism and philosophising and who made outrageously false claims about the how the living world was made.

The Biased Broadcasting Corporation

The BBC has a statutory obligation to cover both sides of controversies, but it never, ever gives Darwin dissidents whether creationist or intelligent design advocates a chance to explain themselves. They gave ample time to the MMR vaccine scare, even when the now discredited Dr Wakefield was in a tiny minority against the whole scientific and medical establishment. They have had apologists for Irish Republican and Islamic violence on the radio, even the hated leader of the British Nation Party Nick Griffin was interviewed and came on Question Time. Even the loathsome Fred Phelps had a decent chance to put his case in a TV documentary ‘The Most Hated Family in America’, but they never give Darwin dissent a chance. Odd, don’t you think, given that their own survey showed 40% of us remain unconvinced after three generations of cradle to grave indoctrination? I can only wonder how many more of us would doubt Darwinism if the establishment allowed the scientific arguments against it to be explored in the public square. 

If darwin disenters are so stupid and ignorant, why not make some train crash TV featuring us?

If intelligent design is so obviously stupid and if Darwinian theory is so obviously scientifically proven, then given the persistence of substantial Darwin doubt and dissent, why doesn’t the BBC commission a series to examine this interesting phenomenon? If it’s that dumb, why not have some fun ripping it to shreds in a fair fight! Give the creationists and ID people enough rope to hang themselves; it should make great ‘train wreck TV’! Intelligent design is always dismissed as pseudoscience at best, religious propaganda more often, but this is vigorously denied by its advocates. Why not examine the phenomenon objectively, even as a ‘funny old world’ social phenomenon? No, we only ever get more one sided pro-Darwinian propaganda. 

If teaching creationism is child abuse, then what?

PS If Dawkins believes, as he has often said he does,  that teaching your children that the Bible is true and evolution false is‘tantamount to child abuse’, then where is that kind of rhetoric leading? It’s not a one off slip of the tongue, I carefully checked this for libel before publishing, I don’t want to be sued by someone so rich and so arrogant. He has made similar statements often, sometimes to cheering crowds (‘they treat me like a rock star!’) as well as asserting that people who doubt Darwin are wicked, ignorant, deluded or mentally ill.

What do we do to mentally unsound parents who abuse their children? We take their children away into the loving care of the state, and put them in prison for a long time where they will be severely ill treated by ‘ordinary decent criminals’like thieves and murderers. If they ever leave prison alive they will never work, sleep easy or see their children again. A suspected (but innocent) child abuser was recently stabbed to death and his body set on fure in an English city. Forcible kidnapping of their children by a atheist  State has happened to Christian believers in the 20^th century. Don’t think it couldn’t happen again in post-Christian Britain, especially after the coming collapse (the real one, not the minor foretaste of the last few years) leads to authoritarian government and the end of liberty.

(1)   http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4648598.stm

(2)   I am aware that current Darwinian orthodoxy is that our ancestors were ‘ape like hominids’ but I am writing about what ordinary people think, and a lot of it is half remembered snatches of things they heard on TV. As the BBC knows very well

(3)   ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ Richard Dawkins

(4)   In 2012 I designed and ran (with 2 colleagues) a course for doctors and nurses about diagnosing skin cancer. It was a success and is being repeated in 2013. I also worked with 2 major national medical education bodies, I won’t mention their names here but Googling on my name plus dermatology will find them. I mention this not to boast but to underline my extreme exception to lying accusations of my being ignorant or anti science. PS they would no doubt wish me to state that my views are not theirs. That is correct. These words are my own and stand or fall on ther merits.

(5)   This was a couple of years ago and I don’t have a transcript, so this may not be word for word accurate, but I attest that Humphrys did make the jibe about a Darwin dissenter saying that his Uncle Charley had made the world ‘in his shed’ a few days earlier. Do I really need to point out that neither Uncle Charley nor the shed could have existed prior to the world being created?

(6)   Or, more likely, the madrassahs where hundreds of thousands of British born children are being taught to recite and memorise the Koran and not much else. Funny tat here is so much more fuss about a popular and successful school (Immanuel, Gateshed) with a Christisn ethos where Darwinism is taught as theory and also questioned, than about children being taught the Koran as ht efundamental basis of everything. Have you read the Koran? I have. Its a death warrant for western civilisation.

(7)   Kroto wrote ‘It is a scandal that the present system is enabling a car salesman to divert significant government funds to propagate dogma such as “intelligent design” in our schools. State funds are also being used to support some schools that abuse impressionable young people by brainwashing them into believing that non-believers will burn for all eternity in the fires of hell. This policy is a perfect recipe for the creation of the next generation of home grown and state-educated suicide bombers.’ The full article (some of which makes sense) can be read herehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/may/22/highereducation.education

(8)   ‘The Last Battle’ final story in the Narnia books

(9)   No, it doesn’t, very obviously not

(10) Charles Darwin made many good observations and did a lot of good experimental work e.g. with grasses, earthworms, barnacles, pigeons etc. That is not disputed, even if the originality of his work might be. What is vigorously asserted is that his relatively trivial experimental observations did not support his grand conclusions.