Treating scientists as 'apostles of evolution': why?

[J_B_]

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.

I was replying to the comment by @Occams Barber, not the OP . However, with respect to the OP, it is probably better said that you think believers see unbelievers as making an appeal to authority. Then they make a sort of ad hominem fallacy in trying to discredit that authority. It was you who stated that hypothesis using religious language (and admitted that's what you were doing), so let's not make the mistake of now thinking believers actually make their accusations in those terms.

In contrast, I have seen believers make the types of statements @Occams Barber referred to.

So, no doubt some believers try to discredit people like Darwin, and think that will discredit evolution. That is a type of ad hominem fallacy. No doubt they also view the world through a religious lens, and sometimes struggle to put that aside and pick up the scientific lens. I think it was a clever observation on your part to use the word "apostle" to describe that situation, but don't make the same mistake you're accusing believers of - appropriating the word to the point that you think believers actually say that, or burdening those terms with a subtext that implies believer's are making a unique mistake because of their religious world view.

I was saying that, despite the ad hominem fallacy, believers do have a point. I'm sure none of the superbly educated unbelievers in this forum would ever make the mistake, but it would be naïve to say no unbeliever has ever committed an appeal to authority fallacy - quoting Darwin, Dawkins, or Gould as if that settles the matter.

It would further be naïve to think those names never had any influence on scientists by name only. Though the common sense is that science would eventually root out any mistake they might have made, their name means it would take much longer than overturning the error of John Doe Biologist. Their name influenced where the money went, what questions were researched, etc.

It is a frequent anecdote of scientific history that part of the resistance to Relativity and the 20th century scientific revolution was the indignation that anyone would ever dare challenge the great Newton. That's a major theme of Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science and Frederick Gregory's history of science.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

It simply never happened. There are scores of publications by YEC's that hold no special standing to scientists, whatsoever.

I missed the edit for this... but what does this have to do with my OP?

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I was replying to the comment by @Occams Barber, not the OP . However, with respect to the OP, it is probably better said that you think believers see unbelievers as making an appeal to authority. Then they make a sort of ad hominem fallacy in trying to discredit that authority. It was you who stated that hypothesis using religious language (and admitted that's what you were doing), so let's not make the mistake of now thinking believers actually make their accusations in those terms.

In contrast, I have seen believers make the types of statements @Occams Barber referred to.

So, no doubt some believers try to discredit people like Darwin, and think that will discredit evolution. That is a type of ad hominem fallacy. No doubt they also view the world through a religious lens, and sometimes struggle to put that aside and pick up the scientific lens. I think it was a clever observation on your part to use the word "apostle" to describe that situation, but don't make the same mistake you're accusing believers of - appropriating the word to the point that you think believers actually say that, or burdening those terms with a subtext that implies believer's are making a unique mistake because of their religious world view.

I was saying that, despite the ad hominem fallacy, believers do have a point. I'm sure none of the superbly educated unbelievers in this forum would ever make the mistake, but it would be naïve to say no unbeliever has ever committed an appeal to authority fallacy - quoting Darwin, Dawkins, or Gould as if that settles the matter.

It would further be naïve to think those names never had any influence on scientists by name only. Though the common sense is that science would eventually root out any mistake they might have made, their name means it would take much longer than overturning the error of John Doe Biologist. Their name influenced where the money went, what questions were researched, etc.

It is a frequent anecdote of scientific history that part of the resistance to Relativity and the 20th century scientific revolution was the indignation that anyone would ever dare challenge the great Newton. That's a major theme of Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science and Frederick Gregory's history of science.

I mean... that is an impressive look on the whole thing, no word of a lie.

 

[essentialsaltes]

It only makes sense if you mistakenly think science is a religion.

 

[Occams Barber]

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.

It's justified and unjustified in the same sense that 'love' in these two sentences means the same thing:

• I love my children
• I love chocolate biscuits

What's happened here is that the word 'love' has become a kind of semi-metaphor - a parody of itself. We don't really believe that people love biscuits in the same sense they love their kids.

For a Christian to describe (say) science as a 'religion' is a way of suggesting that science shares the characteristics of a religion. This claim is an attempt to equate science and religion. If they can be made to appear comparable, then criticism applied to one can be equally applied to the other.

OB

 

[J_B_]

For a Christian to describe (say) science as a 'religion' is a way of suggesting that science shares the characteristics of a religion. This claim is an attempt to equate science and religion. If they can be made to appear comparable, then criticism applied to one can be equally applied to the other.

That is one possibility.

 

[Ophiolite]

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.

Another aspect of Darwin's work that rightly attracts the respect of today's scientists is that he identified problem areas with his theory, where much work needed to be done. Unfortunately most YEC's are either unaware of this, or choose to ignore it, or even (bizarrely) assert this means he "knew" his theory was wrong.

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.

I thought this a very odd set of comments.

• I can seen nothing in Darwin's scientific works, in his correspondence, or in his life that suggests he "wanted to make an impact on the world without mentioning God". Would you care to offer your evidence for this view.
• Equally what evidence do you offer that he saw it as an engineered process (metaphors aside).
• His entire point that evolution was both random (via the chance variations in a population) and non-random (in the selection, by natural processes, of certain variations for survival).

 

[AV1611VET]

(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)

Spiffy.

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.

"Disciple."

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?

QV please:

It says:

As we continue to unknowingly subscribe to their philosophies, we keep the grave open for Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Julius Wellhausen, John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, John Maynard Keynes, and Soren Kierkegaard. Dave Breese warns us of the dangers of believing unreservedly the ideas of these seven men.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

QV please:

How about you QV it for us.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... it would be naïve to say no unbeliever has ever committed an appeal to authority fallacy - quoting Darwin, Dawkins, or Gould as if that settles the matter.

An appeal to authority isn't fallacious if it is a relevant authority that represents the expert consensus. Appealing to a scientific authority as the final word on a matter is just unscientific.