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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Creationists are not stupid
Message-ID: <222@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Oct-84 23:01:29 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.222
Posted: Sun Oct 28 23:01:29 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Oct-84 03:11:24 EST
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 98

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    Thanks to Patrick Wyant and Bill Jefferys for their recent excellent
 contributions.  As Bill points out, for L. Bickford to claim that empirical
 evidence exists which contradicts evolution theory (the alleged human
 footprints at Glen Rose) and in the next breath to claim that evolution
 theory can never be contradicted by any empirical evidence, is the distilled
 essence of creationist-style argumentation, something to frame and hang on
 the wall.  Larry, Long Distance from San Diego.
 
    Pat Wyant is right on the money when he states in a recent article:

       In summary, we must recognize that long-standing controversies rarely
     concern what they purport to concern.  If the creationism-evolution
     controversy were a matter of science, it could readily be resolved.
     Evolutionists and creationists have argued as if the issues were 
     scientific ones, resolvable by appeal to the data.  Since creationism 
     predates evolutionism, and the debate goes on, the cause of the conflict 
     must lie elsewhere.
 
    Exactly.  The fundamental motivation for creationist belief is not the
 motivation underlying the pursuit of science.  Consequently one can refute
 creationism by scientifically correct arguments from now until the Second
 Coming without budging the creationists from their beliefs; since it was not
 the pursuit of science that brought them to creationist belief, science
 cannot take them away from it.
 
    It follows that scientists should not be surprised or indignant when
 their scientifically cogent arguments fail to convince the creationists; on
 the contrary, that is what one would expect.  Further, it would be well for
 scientists to be consistent in their scientific attitudes.  They, of all
 people, have the least reason to take a judgmental attitude toward human
 behavior, since science is based on the belief that all phenomena in the
 natural world can be rationally explained, including human behavior.
 What I am saying is that we need to try to achieve a genuinely
 *scientific* understanding of the creationist movement.  Such an
 understanding would eschew the use of judgmental, moralistic terms such as
 "stupid", "dishonest", "lazy", "evil," and the like.  These terms have no
 scientific meaning, and are merely words of abuse for people with whom one
 has lost patience.  Of course it is very easy to lose one's patience with
 the creationists from time to time.  But I find that an effective remedy is
 to exert one's intelligence to discover the motivation of the annoying
 behavior.  
 
    Creationists are not "stupid".  Consider our creationist friends on the
 net.  They impress me as honest and sincere people who are doing their best
 to figure things out.  They did not invent the fallacious arguments for
 creationism that they serve up to us; they are simply relaying them from
 persons whom they respect.  They have adopted the belief system of persons
 whom they have known and looked up to, just as we have ourselves.  So let us
 please lay off the rhetoric of moral turpitude that we sometimes roast
 them with, or at the very least save it for Morris, Gish, and Co.
 
    This leads to the larger question of the causes of the resurgence of
 creationism in the United States, a question that has no simple answer.  I
 believe it has a great deal to do with the need of an economically and
 politically oppressed sector of American society to defend its autonomy and
 integrity by asserting control over the education of its children and over
 its way of life in general.  This is only the beginning of a long discussion,
 one which I would very much like to see taking place in net.origins.  
 
    Science and religion have had a long and troubled relationship, but it is
 worth reflecting on the fact that they have evolved from a common ancestor
 (!).  A direct lineage leads back from modern scientists to the
 quasi-religious Presocratics (I'll bear correction from those who know
 history better than I).  The ancient Greeks had no concept of "religion" in
 our modern sense, and it is doubtful whether they had a concept of "science"
 either, although certainly Aristotle, for example, laid the foundations for
 modern science.  In any case, it should be noted that *science*, with which
 the creationists are doing battle, is not merely a certain body of
 institutions and practices developed in the West over the last 400 years or
 so.  It is, as Duane Gish points out, the same thing as *knowledge*; in
 other words, it is the entire human endeavor, beginning in prehistory, to
 satisfy the desire (or *eros*) for knowledge which seems to be a universal
 trait of the species optimistically named *Homo sapiens*.
 
    Enough of my disorganized reflections.  My main point is that I would
 like to see some thoughtful discussion in this newsgroup of the
 sociological, psychological, philosophical, and historical dimensions of the
 creationism/evolutionism conflict.  A final point.  In my experience,
 conflicts among Homines sapientes, whether between husband and wife or
 between superpower nations, are never resolved so long as both sides hold to
 the belief that the conflict is one between Right and Wrong, moral good and
 moral evil.  It can only be resolved when at least one side adopts the
 desire to learn and understand as its basic motivation and finds the
 courage to reject the alternative, the desire to protect oneself against
 perceived threats emanating from wicked people.  The only way, ultimately,
 to deal successfully with troublesome people is to attempt to understand the
 causes of their behavior.  Now, it is intrinsic to the world view of the
 creationists to divide the world into two groups, those who are on the side
 of God and those who are in rebellion against Him, the good and the evil.
 On the other hand, it is intrinsic to the nature of the scientific endeavor
 to seek a dispassionate understanding of the causes of things, including
 human behavior.  That is why I believe that people with a scientific
 perspective can, at least potentially, lead the way to a real resolution of
 the apparently irreconcilable conflict pointed out by P. Wyant, and why I
 believe that the creationists cannot.
 
 					Richard Carnes