Yes. It is ketchup.

Convicting the butler of murder is a far cry from convicting the universe of self-existing and self-organizing.

That was my concluding statement in Part 1 of this topic. In that post, I made my case based on the enormous difference in time scale between forensic and origins science.

Today, I will argue that origins science also lacks the credibility of forensics due to its much heavier ideological load.

We’ll start with a big old reality check. About science itself.

Yes, we’ve used science to do some amazing things. I work in the engineering world myself, where we apply scientific principles to create incredibly complicated systems that interact with the physical world in very, very precise ways. I have a master’s degree in mathematics and I interact with PhDs on a daily basis.

So, please take the next part in context 🙂

In short: We humans corrupt everything we touch.

Think about it: The environment. The education system. Health care. The economy. Politics. The justice system. We specialize in breaking stuff! So it should not be any surprise that science, another of our favorite endeavors, is also tainted. Take off the rose-colored glasses and realize that since science (regardless of which field) is carried out by humans, it’s fallible.

What we want to discuss today is the amount of potential corruption in forensic science vs. origins science. Although there are many things that can corrupt scientific inquiry, like ambition, greed, etc., we will focus on just one, namely, ideology. And let’s remember: even though we are not experts about forensic or origins science, we have every right to apply our common sense to these topics, because Bill Nye asked us to (1). We have the right to raise questions about his argument, even if we are not detectives or paleontologists.

Let’s use the term Ideological Corruption (IC) to refer to a situation where a scientist’s ideology causes him or her (or his or her associates) to attach unwarranted certainty to a certain claim, or, even worse, to reach an incorrect conclusion.

In Part 1, we talked about forensics first, and then origins science. In Part 2, I think we need to come at this the other way.

But before we can get into detail, we need to make sure we understand the vested interest fallacy. Today, I’m going to be questioning the objectivity of materialists, because they have a vested interest in the truth of their claims. But I’m not saying that their vested interest proves they are wrong. I’m simply saying it gives me the right to be skeptical. If a used car salesman tells you the transmission works fine, do you conclude that he is lying, since he has a vested interest? You just committed a logical fallacy. But do you believe him without even so much as a test drive? If so, I pity you.

OK. Let’s dive into this!

How much IC is present in origins science? There are several possible sources to think about.

• Purely materialistic explanations of origins offer (in the final analysis) moral autonomy to the scientist and anyone else who embraces them
  • Christianity does not
• Materialist ideologues may pressure more ambivalent origins scientists to tow the line
• An origins scientist may also tune out any evidence pointing to creation due to (for the sake of brevity we won’t discuss these today):
  • Exposure to counterfeit presentations of the gospel
  • Painful personal experiences involving people who believe in creation
  • The vast amount of human suffering in the world
  • A perception that creationism requires the scientist to be anti-intellectual

So let’s talk about the first bullet…the allure of moral autonomy.

Suppose a doctor tested me and told me I was allergic to cats. I would believe the doctor, of course. But, then suppose I spent time around some cats with no reaction. Then, suppose I bought a cat and he lived with me for years, and I had no problems. In that situation, it’s very easy for me to change my prior belief, based on the current evidence. Changing my belief about my allergies does not require me to reexamine my worldview. I would not feel any need to change my behavior. I don’t even have to reject the science behind allergies! All I have to conclude is that the doctor messed up.  Maybe next time I would get a second opinion.

Unlike the question of whether I am allergic to cats, origins science is not value-free. On the contrary, it’s more like value-Rolls-Royce. Our conclusions about origins science can potentially affect everything about us! Why are we here? Are we accountable to a higher being or not? Can we make up our own rules? Can I sleep with whomever I want?

Not trying to be scandalous here, but I want to make my point crystal clear to you. There’s a LOT riding on the result of that uranium-lead dating method, folks.

This is one rejoinder I’m expecting: “You’re just projecting your dirty mind onto other people, TheFormOfTheFourth”

If that was your reaction, please consider the words (bolding mine) of Aldous Huxley, a non-Christian considered to be “one of the preeminent intellectuals of his time” (2):

“For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaningless was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotical revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.” (3)

Yes, I know Huxley was not a scientist. But he was a human. And so are origins scientists. But, if you really want to hear it from a scientist, please watch the debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox at Oxford, specifically the part where Dawkins clearly expresses distaste for “the sort of God who cares about what you do with your genitals” (4). And Dawkins is an atheist, Oxford-trained scientist who has been referred to as Darwin’s Rottweiler.

So, no, I’m not just projecting my own filthy mind onto others. There is a lot of stake in origins science, in worldview, in the big questions, and these very high stakes certainly have the potential to cause IC.

Let’s talk about the second bullet….the phenomenon of groupthink.

Suppose, just for a minute, that God actually created the world and the major groups of animals therein (perhaps at the family level) without using macro-evolution. Now, suppose in turn that a paleontologist discovers various pieces of evidence that are diametrically opposed to the theory of macroevolution. The paleontologist is thus confronted with two choices:

1. Continue to have faith that the universe single-handedly produced everything around us
   • Endeavor to come up with an entirely new materialistic explanation of biodiversity
2. Conclude that there really is a Creator based on a combination of the following:
   • The ubiquitous evidence of design in nature
   • Faith
   • An inference to the best explanation

But option 2 might mean that the scientist would get rejected by colleagues. To follow the pieces of evidence I am talking about would change everything. And change is hard. The bigger the change, the harder it is to accept. And the change we are talking about here? This one is for all the marbles.

I have heard materialists say something like the following many times:

“TheFormOfTheFourth, if a scientist has hard evidence that contradicts macro-evolution, the scientific community will embrace it. The scientist need not fear his or her colleagues as long as the evidence is sound. So your scenario about a scientist afraid to embrace the evidence is irrelevant.”

If that is what you believe, please explain what happened to Ignaz Semmelweiss.

From Wikipedia:

“Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality to below 1%, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Semmelweis could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands. Semmelweis’s practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory and Joseph Lister, acting on the French microbiologist‘s research, practiced and operated, using hygienic methods, with great success. In 1865, Semmelweis was committed to an asylum, where he died at age 47 of pyaemia, after being beaten by the guards, only 14 days after he was committed.” (5)

Think of how low the stakes were here. He was just recommending hand-washing. No major worldview change required!! And yet it was still a bridge too far, because it didn’t fit the current narrative. No, my imaginary rhetorical sparring partner, I claim that a scientist who finds strong anti-Darwinian evidence has every reason to anticipate rejection. And rejection is a scary thing.

I hope I have impressed upon you the massive amount of ideological baggage inherent in origins science. Are you still not convinced? Then I sincerely beg you to consider this LaGuardia’s worth of baggage from Richard Lewontin, Harvard biology professor (bolding mine):

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.” (6)

Granted, the reasoning he gives for his baggage (he does not want to allow miracles) does not fit into my bullets higher up, and I would like for him to give a more detailed explanation of his resistance to theism. In any case, the above quote does show evidence of a prodigious ideological load.

“Wait, TheFormOfTheFourth, what about the opposite case? Have you considered that?”

Yes, I have.

What if atheists are right, and a creationist scientist (like Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson, who has a PhD in cell and developmental biology from Harvard) discovers evidence diametrically opposed to creation? We can’t trust him either, by the same token. He would not be able to accept the evidence.

My response? It’s true. It would be difficult if not impossible for him to accept the evidence. But as a Christian, my belief in creation is based on the Bible. It’s not based on Answers in Genesis, or any other creationist material. They do great work and I read their stuff, but that’s not why I’m a creationist. So, the prospect of IC in creationism is much less of a concern for me. I’ll say it again…my beliefs are not based on the work of creationists. They are based on the Bible. I have faith that God created the world, and make no apologies for that.

Atheists, on the other hand, claim that they are purely evidence-driven, The prospect of IC in evolutionary biology should be much more of a concern, then. After all, macro-evolution is one of the primary support structures of the atheist worldview. It provides a God-free explanation for all the diversity of life around us. Atheists need it to be true.

And by the way, per the famous quote, if you call a tail a leg, a dog still has only four legs. Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg. In turn, I am unconvinced by atheists claiming they are evidence-driven. They are actually just as much (or more) faith-driven as I am. I discussed this further in my post “A Divine Foot in the door”.

Now, let’s take this from the abstract to the concrete.

The next part will anger some people. Sorry, I am really not trying to provoke anyone. But I want to mention one specific case of IC.

Between 1932 and 1952, about 60% of American textbooks mentioned Piltdown man as an example (or potential example) of early man (7). Piltdown was “discovered” in 1912 and conclusively shown to be a hoax in 1953 (8). After some quick reading online, it appears that the ideology undergirding Piltdown was not just macro-evolution, but the desire of British scientists to believe that humans first emerged in Britain. Yes, racism. How fragile and gullible we humans are. Obviously, my bulleted list of sources of IC needs to be expanded.

In any case, Piltdown shows how ideology can drive the origins science train off the rails.

And no, telling me some names of some scientists who doubted Piltdown for a long time before 1953 does not change the fact that some serious IC occurred with Piltdown. Again: 60% of American textbooks. For twenty years.

And the fact that the scientists who exposed Piltdown believed in macro-evolution? So what? Given that they determined that the fossils actually dated no further back than the medieval period (9), their methods could just as easily have been employed by creationist scientists.

“But science corrected itself! Science worked!” is another common response. Yes, but it took 41 years before there was a firm consensus. So it’s very fair for me to ask: how many “Piltdowns” are still flying under the radar?

Is it clear at this point that IC is not just a term I made up, but a real thing that happens in origins science?

If not, I recommend the video “Evolution: The enemy of truth and science” by Dr. Jay Wile, who holds a PhD in nuclear chemistry from Rochester (10).

Now, let’s turn to forensics and wrap this up.

Again, I’m trying to show that origins science has a much heavier ideological load than forensics, and is therefore less definitive. Ken Ham is justified in distinguishing between historical science and operational science. So what about forensics? Well, it should be obvious that questions about macro-evolution and the Big Bang have almost NOTHING to do with forensic science. Forensics science is a big tent where atheists, Muslims, and Christians should all be able to coexist. All we are trying to figure out is who killed John Doe. That’s a very narrow question! That is a much lighter ideological load. A smaller vested interest means less potential for IC. So, I can be more trusting of forensics than of origins science.

Now, I get that racist and religious ideologies can cause IC in forensic science. However, there are many constraints on the amount of potential IC due to these factors. Although one detective might hate race A, a fellow detective might be married to someone of race A. And the same applies to religious factors. In other words, the desire for moral autonomy is much more universal than hatred of any specific race or religion. The desire for moral autonomy crosses all cultural and religious boundaries. So, I believe the network effect of the desire for moral autonomy (in origins science) outweighs the network effect of any particular racist or religious bigotry (in forensic science).

I know some may claim that there is so much racism and religious bigotry in law enforcement that the collective IC from the various strains of institutionalized racism equals or exceeds the amount of IC in origins science. I doubt it. But even if this is true, this breaks the other leg of Nye’s argument. If forensic science is not reliable, he cannot impute its reliability to origins science!

Whether the butler did it or not, not much changes. Whether the the universe did it or not changes everything.

And change is hard.

Links:

1. Nye-Ham debate (CSI comment starts a bit after 24:00)
2. “Preeminent intellectuals”
3. Huxley quote
4. Dawkins-Lennox debate
5. Semmelweiss on wikipedia
6. Lewontin quote
7. 60% of textbooks
8. Piltdown timeline
9. True Piltdown composition
10. Evolution: The enemy of truth and science