Getting to the Crux of the matter

I have always been curious about the tendency of evolution opponents - religious or otherwise - to characterize their 'adversaries' as monolithic; essentially an organized conspiracy.

Is this simply a propaganda ploy? Or do they really believe that if their position is not accepted, that there must be some kind of organized resistance to it?

The medical literature spells it out differently---quite differently. The journals that review HIV tests, drugs, and patients, as well as the instructional material from medical schools, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and HIV test manufacturers, will agree with the public perception in the large print. But when you get past the titles, they'll tell you, unabashedly, that HIV tests are not standardized; that they're arbitrarily interpreted; that HIV is not required for AIDS; and, finally, that the term HIV does not describe a single entity but a collection of non-specific, cross-reactive cellular material.

From the Editor's Letter:

Enter CRUX, a new quarterly resource for the systematic exposure of all the double talk, circular reasoning, shoddy scholarship, and logical sleights of hand that have transformed reality into a hall of funhouse mirrors.

Oh, irony of ironies.

Unless I missed it, their website's "by the numbers" box doesn't provide a source. It's just standard practice to document sources, even if one is graced with special divine dispensations. God that's irritating.

That laundry list reminds me of an old fantasy short story I read once, entitled "The Pawns of Crux."

So how many people on the editorial board are between the ages of 25 and 45?

... the embodiment of a fresh and radical perspective on culture that is gaining adherents by the day.

— crux

"So how many people on the editorial board are between the ages of 25 and 45?"
None, or they wouldn't have put in "pernicious ideologies." They almost pull off a decent job of mimicry, but that just throws the whole tone off . . .

Having misspelled it as "mimicracy" at first, I realize I've hit upon a new word to explain the modern political/cultural landscape . . . they may *look* like politicians, scientists, or popstars . . . but no.

None, or they wouldn't have put in "pernicious ideologies."  They almost pull off a decent job of mimicry, but that just throws the whole tone off . . .

Do you believe in absolute truth? If you are like 87% of young adults, you probably don't. It's easy to see why.

The clear implication of the editorial is that you should believe in absolute truth.  It seems to me that the only people who believe in absolute truth are black-and-white thinkers operating at a very low intellectual level.

— Matt Young

Well, well, well. Doncha just love the WHOIS tool!

www.cruxmag.com is registered with www.bulkregister.com. BulkRegister's WHOIS tool returns the following information for cruxmag.com ...

Fellowship of St James
4125 W Newport Ave
Chicago, IL 60641
US

Domain Name: CRUXMAG.COM

Administrative Contact:
Fellowship of St. James battersby@touchstonemag.com
4125 W Newport Ave
Chicago, IL 60641
Chicago, IL 60641
US
Phone: 773-481-1090
Fax:

And when we surf over to www.touchstonemag.com we get ... surprise, surprise ...

"Touchstone is a Christian journal, conservative in doctrine and eclectic in content ..."

I have nothing against Christians ... really. But I have to wonder why "The Wedge" seems to hide its connections ...

Suppose that in our Universal Lottery, there are 50 billion tickets. The odds that a ticket in our book will be a winner are very small but possible. Yet, what if, suddenly, every one of our 10 tickets is called in perfect order, in a row, as a prizewinner. We know that is highly unlikely, even impossible. The lottery, which is now time limited, could not possibly randomly draw every ticket in our book, and no others, in the exact order in which the tickets are numbered. The lottery must have been "fixed"---designed so that we would win. That is indeed the universe we are living in. It appears fixed so that we would win.

— Denyse O'Leary

Mr. Reuland makes a good point. But no one is wholly consistent, not even a black-and-white thinker.

It still seems to me that people who profess belief in any absolute truth - whether religious, political, atheist (God-denier, not nonbeliever) - are almost by necessity thinking on a B&W level. Think, for example, of people who say that you have to accept the Bible in its entirety or conclude that it's a bunch of baloney. You will get that statement both from fundamentalists and from anti-religious people. It never occurs to either of them that the Bible might be a complex book that consists of truth, fiction, poetry, history, allegory - and ambiguity.

The only absolute truth I know of is that, if there is an absolute truth, you don't know what it is.

If they enter as black-and-white thinkers, we hope they will not leave as such. People who peddle absolute truths will only make our jobs harder.

Do you believe mutation/selection is the absolute truth to the origin of life and diversity?

Do you believe mutation/selection is the absolute truth to the origin of life and diversity? That's a rhetorical question.  Think about it outside the box you were taught to think in.

— Dave Scot

DaveScot asked:
"Do you believe mutation/selection is the absolute truth to the origin of life and diversity?
That's a rhetorical question.  Think about it outside the box you were taught to think in."

Rhetorical or not, the answer of any scientist is 'no'. And if you have to ask, it shows your utter lack of ignorance on scientific subjects, once more. Evolution (the theory, not the fact) is the explanaition that best fits the data without adding unnecesary complexity. I.e. while your unknowable aliens explains everything, evolution explains much less, but all of what we have seen so far. By Occam's razor, it is much better. Faced with Genetic Algortihms, you say "God did it". I, being a proper Computer Scientists, can see that there was no design and that it works much better than anything we could've designed. And they developed on their own, using only selection and random mutation.

DaveScot, you have been asked great many questions about your beliefs. You claim that they're proper scientific theories, but they remain beliefs until you provide answer to such questions as: how can we know if something is designed? (is a logic board circuit that distinguishes between 1000 Hz and 10000 Hz designed?) or: what is a falsifiable test of a designer? (what could I possibly find in the universe that would be proof of the nonexistance of a designer?)

Until you're ready to answer those easy questions (evolution has answered them extensivelly, and continues to do so daily), please do us all a favor and a) admit that you're just a troll or b) stand mute and do some science for a change.

Hope that helps,

Grey Wolf

If commerce laws were applied equally, the "knowing is beautiful" ads for HIV testing would have to bear a disclaimer, just like cigarettes: "Warning: This test will not tell you if you’re infected with a virus. It may confirm that you are pregnant or have used drugs or alcohol, or that you’ve been vaccinated; that you have a cold, liver disease, arthritis, or are stressed, poor, hungry, or tired. Or that you’re African. It will not tell you if you’re going to live or die; in fact, we really don’t know what testing positive or negative means at all."

Do you believe mutation/selection is the absolute truth to the origin of life and diversity?

Think about it outside the box you were taught to think in.

So Evolution Means What? Evolution is the theory that all life forms are descended from one or several common ancestors that were present on the early earth, three to four billion years ago. It includes the process by which one species is transformed into another, for example a dinosaur species into a bird species. There have been a number of models of how evolution works, including models that assume divine guidance or perhaps divine intervention at various points along the way.

— Denyse O'Leary

So Darwinism Means Exactly What?

— Denyse O'Leary

Sasquatch Prayer Rituals The Secret to Seeing Jesus in Your Ice Cream How the Gay Community Drives the Evolution Debate High Priest Ashcroft: How YOU Can Make it Happen 10 Sexy Secrets About Abstinence Crucilicks: Stryper Still Rockin' for the J-Man Trolling Evolution Blogs: Tips for Beginners What Wheaton's Straightest Students are Saying about Phil Johnson's Latest Creationist Script Dissembling: Evolution of the Art Form

Yep, that is straight-up HIV-AIDS denial right there.

For a rather amazing amount of evidence contradicting the HIV-AIDS deniers, see this NIH page.

Let me offer Wesley's Maxim of Coolness: If you have to say that you are cool, you are not cool.

That's to go with my Maxim of Minimal Musical Merit: Any group that uses piano can't be all bad.

Wesley

To DaveScot and others sympathetic to the ID crowd.

I'd like to clear up a confusion ya'll are having about "believing in" versus "knowing that" and it's not just an issue of semantics.

Unlike religion, science is not and never has been a "belief system." I don't "believe in" science or the knowledge it produces in the way I "believe in" love, goodness, justice, etc. Science at its most basic level is simply a method of inquiry, a way of investigating the world around us. That which derives from this method is always tentative and subject to revision given new evidence. Religious belief is never tentative and subject to such revisions. You either believe or disbelieve in your particular divine being; evidence has nothing to do with why you "believe in" god x, y or z (by the way, if you claim that the reasons why you "believe in" God are based on scientific evidence, you're simply lying and you know it.).

Anyway, you can certainly conjure up any number of arguments (moral, philosophical, logical, etc.) that make a convincing case for having a set of religious beliefs, but such supporting arguments are not evidential in nature. For example, I love my wife not because the available evidence suggests that I do so, but because I just do. Moreover, I don't "believe in" my wife because she's sitting on the couch next to me. Rather, I "know that" she exists because she's sitting next to me and I can touch here and see her -- the evidence is pretty strong to support this knowledge claim. Can you see the difference here?

There was a great line from Matthew McConaughey in the movie Contact - he and Jodie Foster are discussing the proof (evidence) for God's existence, and he says to Foster: "Did you love your father?" Foster appears flustered at first but answers "Yes" and then McConaughey retorts with what is supposed to be a gotcha moment and says "prove it!"

When I first saw Contact, I was waiting for Foster to bury McConaughey with the simple reply of: "I don't doubt that you love God, I just don't believe in your object of affection because there's no evidence that it even exists." But of course in Hollywood's shallow wisdom they left that scene with the question hanging. I was so pissed, I blurted out "You can't be serious!" in the theater.

When I "tuned in" to their website, the masthead was flashing the slogan "Where truth meets fiction.' Me thinks truer words were never written. Do they even understand what they write? Also consider their choice of Crux for their title/name. We all know what the word means in common usage---the central issue, an unresolved question of import, the essential kernel of an idea---but consider its Latin root and meaning. Are they trying to say something while being a few marbles short of subtle?

Given that the website masthead and name for the Discovery Institute and its illegititimate offspring, the Center for, etc., have evolved rather rapidly, anyone wish to predict the evolution and life span of this new species?

The Senior Editor is listed as Bobby Maddex (yes, it's spelled with an 'e') with an address in Georgetown, Texas, a suburb north of Austin, but not far from Waco. Who is he? Well I googled him and he turns up variously as the Circulation Manager for Touchstone magazine (a Christian journal that promotes Crux on its website!), a staff writer (writing about the band U2) for Gadfly magazine (now defunct), and a contributor to an assortment of other sites, some religious and some relating to art (in one he offers a brief discourse on Picasso).

And their "lead" article on Bob Dylan, who is old hat to anyone under 45, their "target demographic", is a reprint from the July 1984, Sunday Times (London). It briefly touches on Dylan's conversion from Judaism to Christianity, but otherwise seems wholly irrelevant to their aim.

Incidentally, the founder and Editorial Director of Crux is a Dentist in Culver City, California.

From the web pages:
"The most surprising thing about AZT is that it doesn't even claim to work: "Retrovir is not a cure for HIV infection . .."

What a load of crap. AZT, in combination with other therapies has been shown to extend lives in numerous trials.

It may not be apparent at first glance, but the concept of the universe as an endless lottery of meaningless events actually shaped the "modern" culture of our society, from about the 1850s on. Modern culture, better known as "modernism," was the culture created by the theories of Darwin, Marx, and Freud. We humans were believed to be just an accident, living on a mediocre planet, circling a suburban star, in an irrelevantly repetitious universe. For culture, that means, among other things, "no God," "no meaning," "no purpose," and "no rules!" Not surprisingly, we have all heard these themes sounded every day from every source.

— Denyse O'Leary

The Senior Editor is listed as Bobby Maddex (yes, it's spelled with an 'e') with an address in Georgetown, Texas, a suburb north of Austin, but not far from Waco. Who is he?

Pedant points: it's principal, not principle, and privileged, not priviledged.

And their "lead" article on Bob Dylan, who is old hat to anyone under 45, their "target demographic", is a reprint from the July 1984, Sunday Times (London).

— Keanus

In 1985, at the beginning of HIV testing, it was known that "68% to 89% of all repeatedly reactive ELISA (HIV antibody) tests [were] likely to represent false positive results" (New England Journal of Medicine). In 1992, the Lancet reported that for 66 true positives, there were 30,000 false positives. And in pregnant women "there were 8,000 false positives for 6 confirmations." And in September 2000, the Archives of Family Medicine stated that the more women we test, the greater "the proportion of false-positive and ambiguous (indeterminate) test results."

Ah, that's what the "preview" button is for, uh?

HIV denial, anti-abortion. I guess they want to punish people for their sexual transgressions, one way or the other.

My suspiscion (sp?) is that Crux is destined for a swift death - the presentation format is OK, but the articles are generally dull and most likely to turn off their target demographic (a demographic which includes me, so I'm speaking from a position of strength here.... :))

There is the slight possibility that it will appeal to folks like the members of IDEA; the articles have that sort of dull earnestness that characterizes that crowd.

Is it fair to say Crux is biased? Not a single mainstream Christian in the bunch.

They describe the magazine as being, among other things, "a last bastion of Truth". In my experience the use of the word "Truth" (with the capital T) is a dead giveaway for religiously motivated wittering that is typically far from truth.

Religious belief is never tentative and subject to such revisions. You either believe or disbelieve in your particular divine being; evidence has nothing to do with why you "believe in" god x, y or z ....

And what are the odds against Crux being etymologically derived from Cross?

That was the first thought that popped into my head too, although to be fair, I had just been listening to Penderecki's "St Luke Passion".

(Pretentious, moi?)

(And no, Wes, I don't think it has a piano in it. YMMV).

Re: Cross/Crux

Well that would demonstrate that they are being straight forward about being a Christian magazine.

There is however, another magazine with the name Crux.

========

With the "Editorial Advisory Board" of this magazine being a virtual "who's who" of the ID movement and/or the Discovery Institute, pro-mainstream science people really need push the issue with them. It no longer just a few isolated antievolutionist names (see Phillip Johnson, Jonathan Wells, and Tom Bethel in a list of HIV deniers), but now rather quite a list: Francis J. Beckwith, William A. Dembski, Norm Geisler, Phillip E. Johnson, Stephen Meyer, J.P. Moreland, Paul Nelson, Hugh Ross, and John West) on this advisory board of this HIV-denying magazine.

These people need to be confronted on this issue.

I think it is safe to say that there are quite a few people who are uncomfortable with evolution and/or evolutionary biology who will recognize that HIV-denial is nonsense. These people need to learn to the extent the ID movement is in bed with this medical quackery.

--
Anti-spam: Replace "user" with "harlequin2"

It's easy to make sweeping statements about what it means for a religious person to believe---I'm obviously guilty of it myself---but culture, like nature, is full of variation. The history of religion not only records changes in the objects of belief but also also in the meaning of the act of belief. We need to pay attention to the verbs as well as the nouns and not assume that "to believe" has an unchangeable essence, especially since the way that many Fundamentalists believe is apparently a 19th Century innovation with affinities to positivism. Previous Christians didn't make assent to the literal truth of matter-of-fact propositions the crucial test of faith. They certainly thought that God existed as a matter of fact, but that kind of assent was quite distinct from real faith (fides) and could be shared with people who were quite unreligious. In 1700, after all, even the most unspiritual of men thought that God was required to make sense out of the universe.

Wonder if this'll count as publishing in the peer-reviewed literature.

The comparative element here is science. Of course religious beliefs change over time, new ones emerge, others become extinct, etc. I wasn't clear enough with my original post, the point of which was -- for most (I would say virtually all) religious believers, their belief in some divine being, essence, object, whatever, is not contingent upon the presence or absence of empirical evidence.

Believers of all stripes will certainly provide reasons (some good, some bad) why they believe in x, y, or z, but these reasons are not based upon the same types of evidence and criteria that science looks toward. In fact, the means by which these beliefs are forged are very different from the means by which scientific facts, theories, or laws are forged.

That's the crucial difference here. Science is a method of investigation and religion is not; religions are based upon a system of beliefs that are doctrinal in nature (I'm restricting my points to monotheistic belief systems). Such belief systems are not contingent upon the vicissitudes of changing empirical evidence. That's why science puts its eggs in the methodological basket and not the theoretical basket. This allows for knowledge and theories ("beliefs" in the colloquial sense) to change given new evidence. Religion, on the other hand, puts its egg in the theoretical/metaphysical basket.

Confusions occur whenever terms like "believe in" and "know that" are conflated -- yes, this happens all the time but it leads to sloppy thinking. For example, I "know that" it is 5 degrees below zero outside at this moment because the thermometer reads -5. I don't "believe in" this particular fact because I have faith in thermometers to tell me the truth about certain states of affairs. Again, I'll stick by my original example of believing in love, goodness, justice, etc.

Jim, your point about the mutability of meanings is obviously correct and precisely why it's important to show that conflating the meaning of "believing in" with "knowing that" returns us to a pre-scientific era where the two meant the same thing. Science has provided us with a way of looking at the world that does not necessitate the inclusion of a divine presence for it to work. That's the real crux of the matter here and certain religious believers are upset by this, and rightly so -- science can successfully explain things and events without reference to God, miracles, or divine providence. On this score, science continues to expand its borders while religion continues to retreat (ah, that should spark some controversy).

Thank you Matt and Jim for responding and holding my feet to the fire.

From the web pages: "The most surprising thing about AZT is that it doesn't even claim to work: "Retrovir is not a cure for HIV infection . .." What a load of crap. AZT, in combination with other therapies has been shown to extend lives in numerous trials.

— TimI

As a former HIV research, I suspect that the reason why Crux is publishing such ridiculous crap (no other word to describe it) about HIV is that this little tiny virus is an excellent example of micro-evolution. The HIV reverse-transcriptase is so error prone that new viruses are constantly evolving and being selected for and against within a host. Some viruses mutate and are consequently better able to grow in certain organs (like the brain or lungs), some will mutate and will be suddenly resistant to AZT or a myriad of other drugs. You can watch one genetic strain of HIV mutate within days of infecting a culture of cells in the lab. So it makes perfect sense that an organization that promotes creationism would be scared to death of a virus that evolves everyday within a host and has, in fact, evolved within populations of monkeys in Africa over 1000s of years. It's proof of concept for Charles Darwin and shattering to creationist worldviews.

Wonder if the author of the article would refuse AZT and the like if he became HIV-positive.....

the pernicious ideologies that have degraded the American mind

What the hell does this even mean, anyway? Ideologies? Degraded? American mind?

Slur, vaguery, and metaphor.

Feh.

That's the real crux of the matter here and certain religious believers are upset by this, and rightly so -- science can successfully explain things and events without reference to God, miracles, or divine providence. On this score, science continues to expand its borders while religion continues to retreat (ah, that should spark some controversy).

— Jeff

Believers of all stripes will certainly provide reasons (some good, some bad) why they believe in x, y, or z, but these reasons are not based upon the same types of evidence and criteria that science looks toward. In fact, the means by which these beliefs are forged are very different from the means by which scientific facts, theories, or laws are forged.

Ian Barbour (1974) ... notes that even scientific theories are not truly falsifiable. No crucial experiment can distinguish with certainty between rival theories .... [Theories] are accepted because they can explain a preponderance of the available evidence. Thus, [Antony] Flew is being perhaps a bit too stringent in his demand for falsifiability. Barbour agrees, however, that empirical evidence is not irrelevant to religious belief. Following Thomas Kuhn, Barbour notes that established theories ... are rejected only if they can be replaced by more promising or more complete alternatives. Thus, he argues that an established religious paradigm cannot be simply falsified but would instead have to be replaced by a competing paradigm .... Barbour argues, therefore, that scientific beliefs are subjective in a certain sense. (1) The paradigm of the observer determines in part what that observer sees. When Aristotle saw a pendulum swinging, he saw an object slowly attaining its natural state of rest, whereas Galileo saw an object whose inertia would keep it swinging forever if it were not for the force of friction. (2) A paradigm's resistance to falsification is another subjective aspect, as is, finally, (3) the lack of rules for choosing between paradigms. Barbour argues further that, just as science has subjective aspects, religion has objective aspects: (4) common data on which we all agree, such as the existence of fossils, (5) the use of evidence to support a contention, as when a person is "miraculously" saved from an accident, and (6) criteria that fall outside all paradigms, such as the demand for a simple and coherent explanation. To Barbour, religion and science share all six of these aspects, but religious beliefs are more subjective [aspects (1) through (3)] and less objective [aspects (4) through (6)]. Both scientific paradigms and religious paradigms are highly resistant to falsification or replacement, for example, but religious paradigms are much more highly resistant .... On the other hand, religion lacks a base of primitive or underlying laws, like Newton's laws of motion or Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism, which are not in dispute. Such laws are in close agreement with observation and could in principle be falsified by a mere handful of counterexamples; they are as close as we come to "scientific truth." There is no "religious truth" in the sense of a set of basic principles to which all agree. This seems to me to be a major and important difference between scientific and religious beliefs. ... I think [Barbour] may minimize the subjective nature of at least some religious beliefs and exaggerate their objective nature .... I noted [Sir Karl] Popper's comment that some genuinely falsifiable scientific theories are nevertheless propped up by their "admirers," who use various stratagems and therefore lose their claim to objectivity. In religion, where there is substantially less hard evidence than there is in science and no primitive laws or facts, it is very easy for the "admirers" of a specific religious belief to employ ad hoc hypotheses and other stratagems to defend their beliefs against even a mountain of evidence .... Barbour is right in principle, but Flew is right in practice: Too many people have set up their religious beliefs to make them unfalsifiable and will not change their minds no matter what the evidence.

Interesting views on falsifiabity in 34.4 of Penrose's "Road to Reality". [No I haven't actually read it that far - I've got about half way through but skipped to the end to see who did it.] He comments, in so many words, that observational refutability is too stringent a criterion for scientific admissability of a proposed theory. But he's talking here specifically about physics. I guess it's all, er, relative.

Interesting views on falsifiabity in 34.4 of Penrose's "Road to Reality". [No I haven't actually read it that far - I've got about half way through but skipped to the end to see who did it.] He comments, in so many words, that observational refutability is too stringent a criterion for scientific admissability of a proposed theory. But he's talking here specifically about physics. I guess it's all, er, relative.

As a former HIV research, I suspect that the reason why Crux is publishing such ridiculous crap (no other word to describe it) about HIV is that this little tiny virus is an excellent example of micro-evolution.

As a former HIV research, I suspect that the reason why Crux is publishing such ridiculous crap (no other word to describe it) about HIV is that this little tiny virus is an excellent example of micro-evolution.... So it makes perfect sense that an organization that promotes creationism would be scared to death of a virus that evolves everyday within a host and has, in fact, evolved within populations of monkeys in Africa over 1000s of years. It's proof of concept for Charles Darwin and shattering to creationist worldviews.

— Emily

Mike S. - They do compete insofar as religion attempts to explain phenomena within the domain of science. The issue here is epistemological. Science and religion operate under radically different epistemologies and in that sense they are incompatible.

Your claim of commensurability fits well with ID proponents and some theologians, for the reasons I've stated, but it doesn't fit well with the vast majority of scientists, philosophers, etc. Religion operates under a metaphysical framework, with supernatural phenomena as a basic explanatory component. Science simply doesn't acknowledge these types of explanatory frameworks. Sorry, but science doesn't operate under a democratic model and doesn't need to be fair.

And this is not a contest of winner takes all. Only those who are discontented with scientific explanations see this as a contest. Again, science doesn't really give two hoots about religion and those who want to politicize and legislate scientific truth, namely, creation science and ID. All of these debates over evolution are, in the first and last instance, political and philosophical in nature and not scientific debates!!! This forum does not discuss scientific issues, it addresses issue about science within its present social context -- it's basically a "philosophy of science" discussion forum and that's it.

Unfortunately, most rank and file scientists are not interested in these debates in any way, shape, or form -- they really see them as silly and irrelevant. This seems to be changing, however, as more and more scientists are beginning to understand the necessity of addressing such political struggles -- their funding depends upon it.

All of this, by the way, says nothing about the truth or falsity of religious belief. And that's another confusion that IDers consistently make -- they tag the validity of their belief system on scientific merit. It'll never happen folks. I'll leave it at that for now. I've blabbed on too much already.

I disagree Matt. The issue here is not whether religious beliefs can have empirical threads to them -- some certainly do. The issue is whether religious beliefs are based upon -- i.e., the criteria upon which they sink or swim or the truth conditions upon which they are maintained as a belief -- empirical evidence. I don't see this as plausible, either empirically or theoretically. I have yet to find a religious believer who characterized their faith along scientific lines -- "I researched the question of God's existence, gathered the available evidence that impacts this question, conducted a number of tests on the God hypothesis, and concluded that God indeed does exist and therefore I believe in God and continue to believe in God as a result." That's not how religion operates -- see my post to Mike S.

I have yet to find a religious believer who characterized their faith along scientific lines -- "I researched the question of God's existence, gathered the available evidence that impacts this question, conducted a number of tests on the God hypothesis, and concluded that God indeed does exist and therefore I believe in God and continue to believe in God as a result." That's not how religion operates -- see my post to Mike S.

Thanks Great White - I am surprised but I think it's very rare nonetheless.

If they claim to be evangelical, then either:

1. they're lying to you, because it contradicts the basic theological tenets of evangelicalism.
2. they're very confused about their faith, because it contradicts the basic theological tenets of evangelicalism.
3. they're not an evangelical, because it contradicts the basic theological tenets of evangelicalism.

By the way, I'm not unfamiliar with evangelicalism, theology, religion, etc. I was an evangelical, both in a professional and lay capacity, for over 10 years. I have a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary (class of 95), and I'm presently a PhD candidate in sociology, with my primary emphasis in the sociology of religion. I mention this only to forestall any questions of qualifications, which unfortunately always seems to raise its ugly head.

I have yet to find a religious believer who characterized their faith along scientific lines

— Jeff

My suspicion is that Johnson tried to establish his credibility as an outside critic of biological science by latching on to the HIV denialist coattails.

— TimI

Rational argumentation doesn't constitute scientific argumentation. Rational arguments do not appeal to empirical evidence for their validity -- that's why they're rational arguments! Philosophers make these types of arguments as a matter of course and they would never claim such arguments are true/valid because the empirical evidence suggest so.

The center piece of science is the reliance upon empirical evidence as a fundamental pillar of the scientific enterprise. Religion doesn't fit this model -- empirical evidence is not a fundamental pillar of religious belief. The fact that someone believes because they objectively observed another believer is not empirical evidence in support of that belief -- its truth or falsity is not contingent upon that or any other observation.

You certainly aren't suggesting that religious beliefs are true because it can be empirically demonstrated that the vast majority of human beings believe and/or the path to believing is often due to the example of another believer?! The "empirical evidence" to which you are referring is not religious but sociological in nature.

I'm spending too much time with this, and as much as I enjoy sparring with ya'll, I've got to get some real work done. So, in anticipation of another objection or two, I'll end with this for the moment:

We're not talking about the sociological and/or psychological reasons why people believe in x, y, or z, which is an interesting subject that I spend a lot of time with. We're talking about the truth conditional reasons why people believe in x, y, or z. In other words, what reasons would they give for believing in x, y, or z; what justifications would they give to support why they believe x, y, or z to be true. Now certainly, to believe something is true based on the fact that other people believe it to be true or that "we've always believed it to be true thus it must be true" (beliefs based on tradition) is quite common, but this is about as far away from a scientific justification as you can get.

Narrowing the scope here, Evangelical Christians do not believe in their Lord Jesus Christ because "empirical evidence" persuaded them to do so. They may make claims for "evidence" in support of their belief, but any such evidence neither provides the foundation for their religious belief nor provides basis for their continued belief. It's a theological and not a scientific issue.

The evidence they point to is almost always textual and historical, the former being the New Testament and their primary source. The external historical evidence is very scant -- Josephus and Tacitus primarily -- and much of this is simply passing references to the fact that Jesus was executed. I'll let ya'll argue about the objective independence of the New Testament as a reliable historical account.

I don't know whether this has any truth to it, but I think the main motivation for the HIV/AIDS denial 'movement', such as it is, is primarily related to the cultural issues, which obviously is a concern for the ID movement.

Professor Emeritus Harry Rubin was another UC Berkeley oddball riding on the Duesberg train, as I recall.

It's the "goo to you" evolution that they deny is possible, and specifically the development of complex structures by "chance."

— Tara Smith

Rational argumentation doesn't constitute scientific argumentation.

— Jeff

You certainly aren't suggesting that religious beliefs are true because it can be empirically demonstrated that the vast majority of human beings believe and/or the path to believing is often due to the example of another believer?! The "empirical evidence" to which you are referring is not religious but sociological in nature.

Thanks Mike. Yes, I think we agree more than we disagree. My bottom line is that the relative success of ID masquerading itself as an alternative scientific approach speaks to a disturbing lack of basic scientific aptitude in this country. We (educators) have provided the vacuum that these charlatans presently occupy, and while there's much blame to go around, a large portion of it lies at the feet of higher education.

I really think the primary reason (not the only reason) why ID has been able to get a foothold is that science education at all levels has failed to do its job. The academy no longer takes teaching seriously and we're just beginning to see the fruits of this pedagogical disaster. The present battles over evolution are symptoms of a larger problem.

I really think the primary reason (not the only reason) why ID has been able to get a foothold is that science education at all levels has failed to do its job. The academy no longer takes teaching seriously and we're just beginning to see the fruits of this pedagogical disaster. The present battles over evolution are symptoms of a larger problem.

I really think the primary reason (not the only reason) why ID has been able to get a foothold is that science education at all levels has failed to do its job. The academy no longer takes teaching seriously and we're just beginning to see the fruits of this pedagogical disaster. The present battles over evolution are symptoms of a larger problem.

— Jeff