Why creationist can't pass peer review

[sfs]

Science doesn't actually have a definition for "natural". What science really cares about is whether a proposed explanation can be tested. If a mechanism can be tested, it is subject to scientific investigation. The assumptions of science are that observable phenomena can be explained by testable hypotheses, and that the physical world behaves in consistent ways. To the extent that the world behaves in unpredictable ways, it fails as an enterprise.

As for the suggestion that most of biology for the last 150 years has been nothing but a big mistake, the result of making some bad assumptions . . . I don't think so. The thing about wrong assumptions is they lead you to make wrong predictions. What science does (all it does, really), is make predictions and test them. The theory of evolution has suggested millions of predictions about nature, and has an extremely good record of having those predictions confirmed when more data has been acquired. Alternatives to evolution, on the other hand, have made few predictions, and most of those have been wrong. Why should this be the case, if evolution is just a mistaken assumption? If it's wrong, why can't creationism do better than it can?

 

[Buho]

What is "natural" anyway?

The physical universe.

How do we truly know anything is "natural?"

We can detect and test it, using our senses.

In another thread you state you've been in the crevo debate for 35 years. Yet you write fallacious things like this.

You could have touched Jesus 2000 years ago. He was physical. Is Jesus therefore "natural"?

You could have detected Jesus and put him on a scale to measure his mass. Does that put Jesus in the realm of "natural"? What about that God-part of the God-man Jesus?

And then there's what sfs said: science can't delineate "nature" very well.

Your answers, tested against the clearly supernatural, do not hold, and exceed the bounds of what science is capable of stating.

Regarding the whole abilities of science and stuff, it seems to me that there is nothing in science (the scientific method) that restricts supernatural causation. Several here have said science is ill-equipped to study the supernatural. I agree. However, not even creationists attempt to use science to study the supernatural. What differentiates the creationist from the materialist is that the creationist is open to the possibility of supernatural causation. One is able to use the methods of science to identify a host of natural and supernatural causes. Only when the probable natural causes have been investigated and found to be insufficient is one able to posit a supernatural cause. Positing a supernatural cause is not the same as investigating the supernatural agent, which is what several here rightly object to.

As for the suggestion that most of biology for the last 150 years has been nothing but a big mistake, the result of making some bad assumptions . . . I don't think so.

I don't think that's what he was saying. If you haven't noticed, creationists are able to strip out the empty evolutionary conjecture and still hold onto what is good: the observations and facts accumulated in biological science and held together with established natural law (biogenesis, inheritence, genetics, etc).

As shown on this thread, much of the work the creationists perform is indistinguishable from secular research. The only part that makes them different is their views of history.

The theory of evolution has suggested millions of predictions about nature, and has an extremely good record of having those predictions confirmed when more data has been acquired.

This isn't what I see. I see the words "surprised," "puzzled," "mystery," "shocked," and other words that hint that new discoveries contradict previously-held predictions, but paragraphs later the theory is re-molded to fit the new evidence and all is okay once again in the evolution camp. In popular magazines, these contradicting adjectives are couched in a positive light that "Science" is progressing forward with no mention of failed predictions, or any critique that the new ones are any better.

 

[shernren]

Only when the probable natural causes have been investigated and found to be insufficient is one able to posit a supernatural cause. Positing a supernatural cause is not the same as investigating the supernatural agent, which is what several here rightly object to.

But how would you discriminate between a supernatural cause but a natural (just as yet unknown) cause?

This is important because if you are going to anchor people's faith on the idea that certain causes of biological facts must be supernatural (as some creationists are wont to do), you have to be able to discriminate.

I don't think that's what he was saying. If you haven't noticed, creationists are able to strip out the empty evolutionary conjecture and still hold onto what is good: the observations and facts accumulated in biological science and held together with established natural law (biogenesis, inheritence, genetics, etc).

As shown on this thread, much of the work the creationists perform is indistinguishable from secular research. The only part that makes them different is their views of history.

To put this in the nicest way possible: I think the past tense in "as shown" is a little overoptimistic.

This isn't what I see. I see the words "surprised," "puzzled," "mystery," "shocked," and other words that hint that new discoveries contradict previously-held predictions, but paragraphs later the theory is re-molded to fit the new evidence and all is okay once again in the evolution camp. In popular magazines, these contradicting adjectives are couched in a positive light that "Science" is progressing forward with no mention of failed predictions, or any critique that the new ones are any better.

Then again, here's what I saw yesterday in a journal paper:

Even less likely is that a superposition of Laguerre-Gaussian modes would scale linearly ... And yet precisely this result has been obtained experimentally over two orders of magnitude in l. (emphasis in original)
​

So it's not just evolution, eh? All of laser physics is in seething upheaval! It's time for the Intelligent Deathray advocates to step up and make their case.

Like it or not, that's how science works. Right now I'm running an experiment in my lab with optical vortices, studying how their properties change with increasing l, trying to verify results found by another group in the US. Do I expect to see anything different? I don't. Will I see anything different? I might.

If I do see something different, and formulate a theory for it, will this theory be an advance over previous theories? Yes, even though it will come as a surprise to me initially: because a new theory must be able to explain both new data and old data. Progress is made in the sense that each successive theory must be able to explain more and more data. Einstein's theory of relativity contained Newton's laws within it; whatever theory of quantum gravity comes next must contain Einstein's theory within it.

The other aspect of this (especially with popular science magazines) is that it's human nature to want to titillate. Statements like "we were surprised" are found much less often in proper journal articles. But when all you care about is readership ...

I'm thinking now of all those gossip magazines where, upon hearing of the latest scandal by some spoilt Hollywood celebrity, the editor plasters a big "SHOCKER!!!" on the front page. Really? Are they shocked? Are we surprised? Did we really not expect Paris Hilton to make yet another silly decision? (I was about to reference Britney Spears; then I realized how old that would make me look!) Were we really taken by surprise? Or is it simply that we tend to be attracted to drama and hype?

 

[Buho]

But how would you discriminate between a supernatural cause but a natural (just as yet unknown) cause?

Why discriminate? Since when does science yield absolute facts of reality that never change? Doesn't science aim for the best explanation possible at that time, which is open to revision in the future?

SETI is a good example. If a strange signal were detected, they would exhaust all naturalistic origin explanations before entertaining alien causation.

I think the past tense in "as shown" is a little overoptimistic.

I was thinking of the creationist papers in secular journals that have nothing to do with creation or evolution.

If I do see something different, and formulate a theory for it, will this theory be an advance over previous theories?

I agree with what you say in this paragraph. But with the predictions and theories surrounding evolution, I do not see steady progression. I see waffling and contradiction, and more exceptions than laws.

I also agree with you about titillation in popular rags, but the words are also found in journals.

 

[gluadys]

In another thread you state you've been in the crevo debate for 35 years. Yet you write fallacious things like this.

You could have touched Jesus 2000 years ago. He was physical. Is Jesus therefore "natural"?

Yes. If he wasn't the incarnation would be a sham and we should have listened to the Gnostics.

You could have detected Jesus and put him on a scale to measure his mass. Does that put Jesus in the realm of "natural"? What about that God-part of the God-man Jesus?

Can you quantify what effect the God-part of Jesus would have on his physical mass?

 

[shernren]

Can you quantify what effect the God-part of Jesus would have on his physical mass?

21 grams. (And not 42, because Jesus was one person having two natures; nor 10.5, because Jesus was wholly God and wholly man.)

Why discriminate? Since when does science yield absolute facts of reality that never change? Doesn't science aim for the best explanation possible at that time, which is open to revision in the future?

Because you said earlier:

What differentiates the creationist from the materialist is that the creationist is open to the possibility of supernatural causation. One is able to use the methods of science to identify a host of natural and supernatural causes. Only when the probable natural causes have been investigated and found to be insufficient is one able to posit a supernatural cause. Positing a supernatural cause is not the same as investigating the supernatural agent, which is what several here rightly object to.

After saying "what distinguishes creationists from materialists is that creationists are open to the possibility of supernatural causation", are you telling me that distinguishing supernatural from natural causation really isn't that important after all?

I agree with what you say in this paragraph. But with the predictions and theories surrounding evolution, I do not see steady progression. I see waffling and contradiction, and more exceptions than laws.

Maybe you're just seeing what you want to see. Can you give me a few examples of this waffling and contradiction?

I can give you a pretty good one. People used to believe that the Earth was flat. Now they think it's round. Oh consternation! Flat is like pancakes. Round is like oranges. Confusing one for the other is downright silly, waffling and contradiction. Clearly we can't know anything for sure about the shape of the earth.

The fact is that even when the choices are as different as flat and round, the later theory has to explain the evidence the previous theory explained. Why do we think the Earth is round? After all, it certainly doesn't look very round to me sitting here on flat ground. The reason is that even though the Earth is round, it is very, very big: so in a way, it's almost flat.

I also agree with you about titillation in popular rags, but the words are also found in journals.

Of course they are. Journal editors are people too. Scientists have feelings too, y'know? ;D

I got back not too long ago from the lab where I spent about four hours recording videos of beads revolving in optical vortices, varying some parameters to see what their effect was. I couldn't believe my eyes at the end of it: I'd managed to amass a whopping twelve gigabytes of data. And yet, the irony is that if I do publish a journal paper (anything but guaranteed), these twelve gigabytes of data and three hours of work will not be mentioned. Why? Because I was simply checking someone else's hypotheses out.

My afternoon was spent in legitimate work deserving hard-earned pay (well, that and Lena Hadley and Summer Glau ), but getting a journal paper out is a whole different ball game. You have to write something that people would be interested to know (so no journal articles about, say, the frequency at which the average American male picks his nose); something which is new (so no journal articles about, say, the fact that Coke is fizzzy); and something which is replicable, at least in theory, in other peoples' labs (that last bit is obvious).

The fact that publishing authors in all fields (not just evolution) work within these well-meant guidelines doesn't mean that science is in constant upheaval.

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian observes that nature is the physical universe.

How do we truly know anything is "natural?"

We can detect and test it, using our senses.
​

In another thread you state you've been in the crevo debate for 35 years. Yet you write fallacious things like this.

If you think that's fallacious, I think I see your difficulty in understanding science.

You could have touched Jesus 2000 years ago. He was physical. Is Jesus therefore "natural"?

Had to be. If not, He would not have been fully man. And that was necessary. He has a supernatural component, of course, but then, so do you. That doesn't mean that we can't study your body by scientific means.

You could have detected Jesus and put him on a scale to measure his mass. Does that put Jesus in the realm of "natural"?

You betcha. That's what it means when we speak of the incarnation of God.

What about that God-part of the God-man Jesus?

Science can't look at that. Can't do it with you, either. You have a soul given immediately by God, but science can't study it.

Your answers, tested against the clearly supernatural, do not hold, and exceed the bounds of what science is capable of stating.

I don't think you've thought this out very well. You just made my point for me. Science can study the natural, not the supernatural. When something has both natural and supernatural attributes, then it can only see part of that thing.

Regarding the whole abilities of science and stuff, it seems to me that there is nothing in science (the scientific method) that restricts supernatural causation.

Of course. But just because science can't study something, is not reason to conclude it doesn't exist.

Several here have said science is ill-equipped to study the supernatural. I agree. However, not even creationists attempt to use science to study the supernatural. What differentiates the creationist from the materialist is that the creationist is open to the possibility of supernatural causation.

I think so. They just don't approve of the way God actually did it.

One is able to use the methods of science to identify a host of natural and supernatural causes.

You just contradicted yourself again. Science can't do that.

Only when the probable natural causes have been investigated and found to be insufficient is one able to posit a supernatural cause.

Not a good idea. Otherwise, we go back to imagining that electrical storms are God's attempts to kill people He doesn't like.

The theory of evolution has suggested millions of predictions about nature, and has an extremely good record of having those predictions confirmed when more data has been acquired.
​

This isn't what I see.

Mostly, I think, because you don't know very much about it. Some predictions of evolutionary theory:

• There must have been at one time, feathered dinosaurs.
• There must have been at one time, whales with functional legs
• Bacteria will soon become resistant to antibiotics
• There must be a means for new characteristics to persist in a population
• Humans must have had two chromosomes fuse together in the last few million years
• Whales should have DNA similar to that of ungulates
• There must have been at one time, snakes and fish with legs.

All of these, and many more have been verified. That's why scientists accept it; it works, and it is useful for predicting what we will find.

 

[Buho]

After saying "what distinguishes creationists from materialists is that creationists are open to the possibility of supernatural causation", are you telling me that distinguishing supernatural from natural causation really isn't that important after all?

Pretty much. What reason do you have to separate the two domains, which I see as intertwined (as does Barbarian in Post #40)? Why discriminate?

I can give you a pretty good one. People used to believe that the Earth was flat. Now they think it's round. Oh consternation!

You're not trying very hard.... And you're being intentionally difficult. Just because I disagree with you on a doctrine I am automatically wrong and stupid with everything? Hear me out.

We see single flips like this in science all the time in different areas. What I was talking about is when these giant flips are a regular occurrance in a single field of study, each one hailed as "progressive."

The fossil lineage of humans is a good example. 200 years ago there were no transitionals between ape and human. 100 years ago many were discovered and a straight-line orthogenesis was constructed. Since then, fossils have been contested and shifted around, some multiple times. Frauds were discovered and removed, and lineages had to be shuffled further. Today, it is a mess of contemporaneous fossils loosely held together with dotted lines and question marks. Scientists are now suggesting a bush rather than a tree rather than a stick. Homo floresiensis isn't even on here, probably due to the controversy surrounding its classification. I ask: what is the confidence level of each component of this diagram?

What I see in human evolution is more artistic subjectivism than science. And as with the times, trends in art shift, so does this diagram.



Flipping back to flat, and then later round, and then later flat is not what I call progress.

Not a good idea. Otherwise, we go back to imagining that electrical storms are God's attempts to kill people He doesn't like.

So, we must apply the scientific method to the resurrection of Jesus until we arrive at a plausible naturalistic explanation, and we don't quit until we do?

To an extent, I agree with your concerns. But if you apply the relentless materialism to SETI, even if they get a video feed from space aliens, they must continue to seek natural explanations, right? Clearly there is a limit. You deny this limit?

Feathered dinosaurs: show me feathers that aren't on birds.
Whales with functional legs: show me functional legs on whales.
Resistant bacteria: mutation and natural selection, nobody argues over this.
Persistent characteristics: Mendelian inheritance, nobody argues over this.
Fused chromosomes: show me that this actually occurred.
Whales and ungulates: how is homology exclusive evidence for ancestry?
Snakes with legs: loss of features is the opposite of what evolution needs to evidence.
Fish with legs: show me fish legs capable of supporting their body weight.

Half of these have not been verified, unless you count circular reasoning. The half that are verified are irrelevant.

Barbarian, overall, you've made some good points. I'll think some more on them.

 

[shernren]

You're not trying very hard.... And you're being intentionally difficult. Just because I disagree with you on a doctrine I am automatically wrong and stupid with everything? Hear me out.

Wow, when did I ever say you are automatically wrong and stupid with everything? Chillax, man. =)

(Maybe quoting the flat earth theory might sound a bit patronizing, but the fact is that I'm only following in the footsteps of good old Asimov who used the very same example to explain pretty much what we're talking about right now: http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

We see single flips like this in science all the time in different areas. What I was talking about is when these giant flips are a regular occurrance in a single field of study, each one hailed as "progressive."

The fossil lineage of humans is a good example. 200 years ago there were no transitionals between ape and human. 100 years ago many were discovered and a straight-line orthogenesis was constructed. Since then, fossils have been contested and shifted around, some multiple times. Frauds were discovered and removed, and lineages had to be shuffled further. Today, it is a mess of contemporaneous fossils loosely held together with dotted lines and question marks. Scientists are now suggesting a bush rather than a tree rather than a stick. Homo floresiensis isn't even on here, probably due to the controversy surrounding its classification. I ask: what is the confidence level of each component of this diagram?

What I see in human evolution is more artistic subjectivism than science. And as with the times, trends in art shift, so does this diagram.



Flipping back to flat, and then later round, and then later flat is not what I call progress.

Except that this isn't "flipping back to flat, and then later round, and then later flat". By your own estimation, the sequence goes something like this:

no evidence / no theory
-> some evidence / orthogenesis
-> more evidence / cladogenesis
-> even more evidence / a freaking bush
-> yet more evidence / ???

And yet, where has evolution contradicted itself?

Is there any data that earlier theories explained that current theories do not?

If there is no such data, then current theories explain more data than earlier theories.

As someone who actually does science that's what I think of when I hear "progress". All other areas of science have had their upheavals over the past century. Quantum mechanics couldn't possibly be more different from Newtonian mechanics. If you think evolution has had it bad, you haven't studied the history of physics. Newtonian mechanics is all about forces and acceleration. In quantum mechanics the very idea of "force" isn't even very well defined at all. As a physicist I think that compared to all the changes we've seen in physics, between relativity and QM, evolution has remained essentially unchanged since Darwin first thought of it. Comparatively speaking.

A hundred and fifty years ago if you had even said "atom", you would only have gotten blank stares. And yet today you believe in atoms (without ever having seen one for yourself). Compared to that, all the changes you've mentioned in human evolution are paltry.

Feathered dinosaurs: show me feathers that aren't on birds.

I bet they evolved from tennis balls.

 

[AV1611VET]

Of course I and other "evolutionist" (aka, people who understand the theory) know that the real reason is that a good number of the professional creationist are simply intellectually dishonest.

Let me ask you this, Matthew:

• Does peer review also keep an evolutionist honest?

 

[sfs]

We see single flips like this in science all the time in different areas. What I was talking about is when these giant flips are a regular occurrance in a single field of study, each one hailed as "progressive."

Giant flips are not the norm in evolutionary biology. There are plenty of questions and speculative answers still in evolution, but the broad framework, both of the theory and of the history of life, has not changed in fifty years.

The fossil lineage of humans is a good example. 200 years ago there were no transitionals between ape and human. 100 years ago many were discovered and a straight-line orthogenesis was constructed. Since then, fossils have been contested and shifted around, some multiple times. Frauds were discovered and removed, and lineages had to be shuffled further. Today, it is a mess of contemporaneous fossils loosely held together with dotted lines and question marks. Scientists are now suggesting a bush rather than a tree rather than a stick.

Since Darwin originally predicted something like a bush, this doesn't really represent much of a change to the theory.

Homo floresiensis isn't even on here, probably due to the controversy surrounding its classification. I ask: what is the confidence level of each component of this diagram?

The confidence level for reconstructions of immediate human ancestors is quite low. That's what anyone in the field will tell you, and that's why the diagrams keep changing. Why focus on the low-confidence results, though? The confidence that chimpanzees (with bonobos) are humans' closest living relatives is very high indeed, as is the confidence that gorillas are the next most closely related species.

So, we must apply the scientific method to the resurrection of Jesus until we arrive at a plausible naturalistic explanation, and we don't quit until we do?

If offered evidence about the resurrection of Jesus, science would indeed try to find an explanation consistent with the normal behavior in nature. If it can't find one, it would have to leave it as "cause unknown". The limitation of science is that it can only address the physical world insofar as it behaves in an orderly way. The strength of science is that the physical world usually does behave in an orderly way.

To an extent, I agree with your concerns. But if you apply the relentless materialism to SETI, even if they get a video feed from space aliens, they must continue to seek natural explanations, right?

Space aliens are a natural, material explanation for a video feed. Why should science have any problem with that?

Feathered dinosaurs: show me feathers that aren't on birds.

Microraptor.

Whales with functional legs: show me functional legs on whales.

Ambulocetus.

Fused chromosomes: show me that this actually occurred.

What other explanation is there for human chromosome 2? The DNA sequence of the chromosome lines up exactly with the sequence of two chimpanzee (and gorilla and orang) chromosomes placed end to end. In the human chromosome, in the place where the ends are hypothesized to have fused, there is still recognizable telomere sequence, the kind of sequence found at the end of all chromosomes. In the place where the centromere of one of the ancestral chromosomes would have been, there is still recognizable centromere sequence, even though that region no longer serves as the centromere for humans. What is your explanation for these findings, apart from fusion?

Whales and ungulates: how is homology exclusive evidence for ancestry?

Homology is not exclusive evidence for ancestry. It is still evidence, however. More specifically, common ancestry predicts certain patterns of homology (i.e. a nested hierarchy), while creationism predicts nothing about homology. Since we do observe the predicted pattern, the observation (which has been repeated many times) counts as evidence for evolution. Why does creationism never make similar predictions?

Snakes with legs: loss of features is the opposite of what evolution needs to evidence.

You misunderstand the predictions of evolution. Snakes are clearly a subset of four-legged land animals (according to biologists), and therefore common descent predicts that snake ancestors once had legs. Evolution can remove or reduce body parts just as well as it can add them. Once again, evolution made a specific prediction, and the prediction has subsequently been confirmed by the discovery of several species of legged snakes. What is creationism's explanation for the existence of fossil snakes with tiny, vestigial legs? What is the creationist prediction here?

Fish with legs: show me fish legs capable of supporting their body weight.

Tiktaalik.

 

[sfs]

Let me ask you this, Matthew:

• Does peer review also keep an evolutionist honest?

Peer review isn't designed to keep scientists honest. It's designed to filter out garbage and to improve the quality of what is published.

 

[The Barbarian]

In effect, that leads your science to merely be a theory as well. Creation is our "theory".

No. Creationism is your religious belief. Creation is perfectly compatible with science.

A big difference is that your reference books change supporting evidence every semester

It does accumulate, doesn't it? That's how science works.

While ours has remained unchanged for thousands of years!

YE creationism is no older than the last century. It was the invention of a Seventh-Day Adventist "prophetess."

Prior to the Adventists' successful transplantation of their ideas to some fundamentalists, most creationists were OE types.

 

[Assyrian]

I've a higher opinion of ID than shernren. ID as a system of thought has made some good (albeit insufficient) attempts to formalize a way to determine if object X has an intelligent origin or not. We intuitively know that a rock on the ground does not have an intelligent origin, but a small rock carving of a turtle on the ground does. How do we know? Beats me, but the ID people have been trying to formalize this. In other words, intelligent agents in the world do exist and create things, and we can recognize these things, but we haven't a clue how this mechanism works!

Fused chromosomes: show me that this actually occurred.

What other explanation is there for human chromosome 2? The DNA sequence of the chromosome lines up exactly with the sequence of two chimpanzee (and gorilla and orang) chromosomes placed end to end. In the human chromosome, in the place where the ends are hypothesized to have fused, there is still recognizable telomere sequence, the kind of sequence found at the end of all chromosomes. In the place where the centromere of one of the ancestral chromosomes would have been, there is still recognizable centromere sequence, even though that region no longer serves as the centromere for humans. What is your explanation for these findings, apart from fusion?

Odd that. Creationists think they can identify design simply by the look of an object, but they cannot see where two components have been joined together.

 

[shernren]

Odd that. Creationists think they can identify design simply by the look of an object, but they cannot see where two components have been joined together.

"Obviously the result of intelligent design" the ID advocate says:

"Obviously the result of chromosomal fusion" the evolutionist says:

I think the evolutionist's "obvious" is a whole lot more obvious.

 

[AV1611VET]

Let me ask you this, Matthew:

• Does peer review also keep an evolutionist honest?

Peer review isn't designed to keep scientists honest. It's designed to filter out garbage and to improve the quality of what is published.

No offense, sfs, I didn't ask what peer review wasn't designed to do.

I asked: does peer review also keep an evolutionist honest.

 

[shernren]

No offense, sfs, I didn't ask what peer review wasn't designed to do.

I asked: does peer review also keep an evolutionist honest.

I would think it does. Peers caught Piltdown; peers caught Archeoraptor; peers (much overdue, admittedly) caught Haeckel.

 

[Assyrian]

I asked: does peer review also keep an evolutionist honest.

...and have you stopped beating your wife

 

[AV1611VET]

I would think it does. Peers caught Piltdown; peers caught Archeoraptor; peers (much overdue, admittedly) caught Haeckel.

In that case, people who live in glass houses shouldn't be making statements like this:

Of course I and other "evolutionist" (aka, people who understand the theory) know that the real reason is that a good number of the professional creationist are simply intellectually dishonest.

 

[AV1611VET]

...and have you stopped beating your wife

No --- shes a 6th-Dan Aikido Master and needs to be put in her place every once in awhile.