Treating scientists as 'apostles of evolution': why?

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

(As an aside: I haven't seen anyone, Creationist or otherwise, refer to any scientists as an 'apostle of evolution'. I was just stuck for a title)

This is something that I see a lot of times on so many threads where the theory of evolution is brought up or talked about, or even mentioned: there will always be one Creationist who starts acting like Darwin or Hawking or Gould or Lenski or whoever is some sort of... well, apostle is really the only word I can think of to use for them going by the way some people treat them.

So I have to ask... why? Why is that the words of a single scientists are treated as gospel with regards to evolution when there's thousands of scientists across the globe to talk about?
Why is it that Darwin, who has been dead for 132, should have the last word on a theory that has grown far beyond the scope that he imagined it being?

Just... why?

 

[Paulos23]

They are trying to bring science to their level, to something they understand. One thing I do find is that not all creationists understand the process that science goes through and they mistake the acknowledgment of scientist's major achievements as idols. Many don't understand that Evolution Theory has moved past Darwin's original theory, though he is still acknowledged and the first scientist to discover and document it.

They like to see science as dogmatic rather than the ever-changing mass of ideas that it is. But that is just my observation.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

They are trying to bring science to their level, to something they understand. One thing I do find is that not all creationists understand the process that science goes through and they mistake the acknowledgment of scientist's major achievements as idols. Many don't understand that Evolution Theory has moved past Darwin's original theory, though he is still acknowledged and the first scientist to discover and document it.

They like to see science as dogmatic rather than the ever-changing mass of ideas that it is. But that is just my observation.

And your observation is, I think, correct.

 

[SkyWriting]

(As an aside: I haven't seen anyone, Creationist or otherwise, refer to any scientists as an 'apostle of evolution'. I was just stuck for a title)

This is something that I see a lot of times on so many threads where the theory of evolution is brought up or talked about, or even mentioned: there will always be one Creationist who starts acting like Darwin or Hawking or Gould or Lenski or whoever is some sort of... well, apostle is really the only word I can think of to use for them going by the way some people treat them.

So I have to ask... why? Why is that the words of a single scientists are treated as gospel with regards to evolution when there's thousands of scientists across the globe to talk about?
Why is it that Darwin, who has been dead for 132, should have the last word on a theory that has grown far beyond the scope that he imagined it being?

Just... why?

As one can figure out, people love a God. And if they don't have one, then they make one up. And they insist that the God they have created is the most practical and logical God there is and everyone else is insane for not seeing it. This God can be a system or a person or a method of analysis, or whatever they want their god to be.

 

[SkyWriting]

They are trying to bring science to their level, to something they understand. One thing I do find is that not all creationists understand the process that science goes through and they mistake the acknowledgment of scientist's major achievements as idols. Many don't understand that Evolution Theory has moved past Darwin's original theory, though he is still acknowledged and the first scientist to discover and document it.

He's not actually. Gradualism pre-dated Darwin by centuries. He just happened to apply it to biology at one point in history where people were tired of listening to religious leaders who answered to the Pope of the day. People were hungry for a different way to understand what they observed in the world.
And Darwin wanted to make an impact on the world without mentioning God, even though I think he did see that evolution was an engineered process and not random at all.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

As one can figure out, people love a God. And if they don't have one, then they make one up. And they insist that the God they have created is the most practical and logical God there is and everyone else is insane for not seeing it. This God can be a system or a person or a method of analysis, or whatever they want their god to be.

But it's not the non-Creationists who are treating scientists like apostles or gods. It's the Creationists.

 

[SkyWriting]

But it's not the non-Creationists who are treating scientists like apostles or gods. It's the Creationists.

I was formally a Young Earth Creationist and your claim has no basis.
It simply never happened. There are scores of publications by YEC's that hold no special standing to scientists, whatsoever.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I can agree to disagree.

I think that you didn't actually read the OP and just read the title.

 

[SkyWriting]

I think that you didn't actually read the OP and just read the title.

I was responding to this post:

But it's not the non-Creationists who are treating scientists like apostles or gods. It's the Creationists.

Which is not factual. YE Creationists say "His anti-God bias clearly paved the way for the development of Darwinian evolution." So your views are distorted.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I was responding to this post:



Which is not factual.

But it is. Time and again, I have seen Creationists treat Darwin as the final word for the theory of evolution, even though the theory has progressed and changed heavily since his time of writing the initial theory. They treat Stephen Hawking like an apostle of all science, along with Einstein.

 

[Paulos23]

He's not actually. Gradualism pre-dated Darwin by centuries. He just happened to apply it to biology at one point in history where people were tired of listening to religious leaders who answered to the Pope of the day. People were hungry for a different way to understand what they observed in the world.
And Darwin wanted to make an impact on the world without mentioning God, even though I think he did see that evolution was an engineered process and not random at all.

It is true the idea was floating around before Darwin, but he is the one who put the pieces together and did the work to back it up. Years and years of work.

Darwin didn't find evidence of God, like most scientists, but he wasn't trying to exclude God. It was his friend Huxley that really pushed that this was the death of God. Darwin didn't really like that idea.

But like I said before, the theory has been added to and has moved past what Darwin thought was happening and the causes of Evolution. But any new theory still has to deal with his base observations.

 

[Speedwell]

I was formally a Young Earth Creationist and your claim has no basis.
It simply never happened. There are scores of publications by YEC's that hold no special standing to scientists, whatsoever.

No, it's the creationists acting out the snark that evolutionists revere scientists like Darwin as Apostles. It's an offshoot of the "evolution is a religion!" school of apologetics.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I was formally a Young Earth Creationist and your claim has no basis.
It simply never happened. There are scores of publications by YEC's that hold no special standing to scientists, whatsoever.

Then you obviously have not been paying much attention to this website since I, and others, have seen it time and time again.

 

[Tinker Grey]

If I may, and I could be wrong, but I think @Warden_of_the_Storm is saying that YECs treat scientists as apostles or gods in the sense that they think that if they can find something wrong with, say, Darwin then they've defeated a prophet.

IOW, YECs treat scientists as if those of us who aren't YECs think scientists are apostles.

Yanno, like trashing Joseph Smith's character tarnishes Mormonism.

(*Edit: misspelled Mormon.)

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

If I may, and I could be wrong, but I think @Warden_of_the_Storm is saying that YECs treat scientists as apostles or gods in the sense that they think that if they can find something wrong with, say, Darwin then they've defeated a prophet.

IOW, YECs treat scientists as if those of us who aren't YECs think scientists are apostles.

Yanno, like trashing Joseph Smith's character tarnishes Mormanism.

... essentially, yes. Like the people who go "Darwin didn't know anything about genetics of DNA in his day, so the theory of evolution can't be true."

 

[pitabread]

Awhile back I started digging into the psychological differences of religious fundamentalists (e.g. creationists), non-fundamentalist theists and the non-religious.

There do appear to be fundamental differences in psychological wiring that seem to predispose people to these different types of views and consequently shape the way they process and interpret things.

I suspect this might be at the core of how creationists view science and scientists versus how non-creationists view them.

 

[Occams Barber]

It's fairly common on CF to hear a Christian describe evolution or atheism or science-in-general, as a religion. I can't pinpoint which particular brands of Christian tend to do this but it's usually in the context of Creation/Evolution conversations so it's probably a fundamentalist thing. They are applying the metaphorical use of 'religion' ("He follows football religiously") to science without realising it's a metaphor for 'enthusiastic'.

The 'apostles' thing seems to be the need for a clear target so Darwin, Einstein/Hawkins or Dawkins become symbolic. There's even crossover where the scientific standing of, say, Darwin or Einstein, is used to substantiate a religious view they may have (allegedly) held.

OB

 

[J_B_]

It's fairly common on CF to hear a Christian describe evolution or atheism or science-in-general, as a religion.

This is a tough one. You are correct it is fairly common, but your implication that to do so is wrong is both justified and unjustified - in the same way that it is both right and wrong for people to call Aristotle a scientist. Aristotle was in no way a scientist per the modern meaning of the word, yet he did exude a scientific spirit that bears many similarities to modern science. He was also an important stepping stone in the continuum toward modern science.

I've heard scholars of religion call all kinds of things "religious" from patriotism to romance - and they make some good points.

I think the objection to the label from unbelievers comes because of their disagreements with formal religion and a wish to distance themselves from it. Fair enough.

I think there is a legitimate use for calling some scientists religious when talking heads like Carl Sagan or Neil Desgrasse Tyson wax poetic about the wonders of nature in very non-scientific terms, and when that label represents an expression of a religious person's context for processing the world around him. Better said, what they are sometimes saying is, "Sagan sounds religious to me."

The error in the use of that term is when the religious person then shifts the goal posts toward a strawman in order to accuse the unbeliever of violating some religious precept.

In other words, I think both sides have a point.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

(As an aside: I haven't seen anyone, Creationist or otherwise, refer to any scientists as an 'apostle of evolution'. I was just stuck for a title)

This is something that I see a lot of times on so many threads where the theory of evolution is brought up or talked about, or even mentioned: there will always be one Creationist who starts acting like Darwin or Hawking or Gould or Lenski or whoever is some sort of... well, apostle is really the only word I can think of to use for them going by the way some people treat them.

So I have to ask... why? Why is that the words of a single scientists are treated as gospel with regards to evolution when there's thousands of scientists across the globe to talk about?
Why is it that Darwin, who has been dead for 132, should have the last word on a theory that has grown far beyond the scope that he imagined it being?

Just... why?

I suspect it's just a habitual pattern of thought, interpreting things in familiar ways - mapping great scientists to prophets or apostles.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

This is a tough one. You are correct it is fairly common, but your implication that to do so is wrong is both justified and unjustified - in the same way that it is both right and wrong for people to call Aristotle a scientist. Aristotle was in no way a scientist per the modern meaning of the word, yet he did exude a scientific spirit that bears many similarities to modern science. He was also an important stepping stone in the continuum toward modern science.

I've heard scholars of religion call all kinds of things "religious" from patriotism to romance - and they make some good points.

I think the objection to the label from unbelievers comes because of their disagreements with formal religion and a wish to distance themselves from it. Fair enough.

I think there is a legitimate use for calling some scientists religious when talking heads like Carl Sagan or Neil Desgrasse Tyson wax poetic about the wonders of nature in very non-scientific terms, and when that label represents an expression of a religious person's context for processing the world around him. Better said, what they are sometimes saying is, "Sagan sounds religious to me."

The error in the use of that term is when the religious person then shifts the goal posts toward a strawman in order to accuse the unbeliever of violating some religious precept.

In other words, I think both sides have a point.

But it's not about scientists sounding religious or saying they sound religious. The OP is about, and is clearly about, Creationists saying and treating Darwin, Einstein, whoever as being akin to an apostle or even a pope of science.