Old-guard scientists reveal their biases as new scientists suggest evidence for God

American Thinker  December 29, 2020

For many years now, the argument by atheist scientists has seemed reasonable. It goes something like this: we do not claim that there is no God. We simply claim that there is no scientific evidence for Him. If you have such evidence, we will examine it. If the evidence justifies a belief in God, we will accept it. Until then, only the physical can explain the physical. There is no need for God and no room for Him in science. If you say there is a God, then show us the evidence.

That was their argument because, until recent years, there was not, in the strictest sense, the kind of evidence science requires. To be sure, there were claims of such evidence, but however sincere those claims may have been, they were not persuasive enough to convince an honest skeptic. The gold standard of science, stated informally, is that a new paradigm is accepted when the evidence is solid enough to convince an objective, unbiased, and qualified person.

It turns out that scientists are as biased as anyone else. Their biases are being exposed by an increasing number of younger, more open-minded scientists. These newcomers are breaking free of the unscientific philosophy, the doctrine of physicalism, that presently dominates their disciplines. They are willing to challenge the notion that nothing exists except the physical. The old guard is resisting. The entrenched establishment is making ever less credible excuses for holding on to its resolute belief that only the physical exists.

Evolution or intelligent design? The story of the bacterial flagellar motor

ABC

Nature abounds with wonders — and the quest to explain them has driven some epic human advances.

But scientific discoveries are often resisted when they contradict powerful religious traditions.

Galileo famously argued in the early 17th century that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, and was instead moving at great speed around the Sun.

As a result, the Roman Catholic Inquisition banned Galileo's books and sentenced him to house arrest until his death.

In the 21st century, one natural wonder that has attracted controversy is the tiny rotating wheel that powers the swimming movement of bacteria.

Followers of a modern form of creationism known as "intelligent design" argue that this motor is too complex, too incredible, and too efficient to have possibly arisen naturally.

The bacterial flagellar motor moves bacteria to places where the environment suits them better.

It does this under the control of a sensory system in which receptors on the outside of the bacteria respond to changing nutrient concentrations in its environment. A chemical signalling system tells the flagellar motor to change direction.

It is a nanomachine a millionth the size of a grain of sand that can rotate five times faster than a Formula One engine and can change direction faster than a mosquito beats it wings.

And it's able to change its structure, dynamically, while it is rotating at up to 100,000 rpm — the equivalent of a Formula One car changing the number of pistons in the engine while driving around the track.

What's more, the flagellar motor quite literally builds itself, on demand, out of constituent protein parts, assembling them at the right time and in the right place.

Birdsong works even more like language than we think

Miami Herald March 29, 2018

On a dewy summer morning, Karla Rivera-Cáceres, an ornithology researcher at the University of Miami, crouched in her usual workspace –– the tall grasses of Costa Rica’s woodland –– and heard something unusual.

Rivera-Cáceres studies bird song, and that day she was listening to the canebrake wren, a brown bird whose bland appearance (it was once named the “plain wren”) belies an unusual and extremely complex call.

Canebrake wrens are songbirds, the subset of species whose calls develop beyond the standard tweet or chirp into full-fledged ballads –– and within that group they are part of a somewhat exclusive club: duetting birds.

When two of these wrens communicate, they weave their songs into an elaborate, Sonny and Cher-style duet. They warble back and forth, literally finishing each other’s phrases, with such high coordination that, to an outsider, they sound like a single voice.

But as Rivera-Cáceres sat listening that morning in 2011, she noticed something odd about this pair’s effort: their duet was really bad.

The birds were sloppy. They chirped over each other. They sang the wrong responses and screwed up the timing. They were young, still inexperienced at singing, and it showed. As birdsong goes, their act was like a five-year-old belting opera. In the world of bird science, her observation proved huge.

Namely: it demonstrated that birdsong works even more like language than we think –– that in order to achieve their Pavarotti-esque exchanges, wrens need to learn a specific set of social rules which are similar to what humans might call manners.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article207286584.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article207286584.html#storylink=cpy

One of Korea's top universities to offer course teaching creationism

One of Korea’s top universities to offer course teaching creationism

Posted on : Aug.12,2015 17:41 KST Modified on : Aug.12,2015 17:41 KST

A sign at the main entrance to Yonsei University in Seoul

One disgruntled student says Yonsei University now may as well offer credit courses in African voodoo practices

Among the people who believed in the literal truth of the Bible, there are those who maintain that the world is around 6,000 years old rather than 4.6 billion years, and that the universe and Earth were created in just six days. Known as “creation science” or “creationism,” this position has been offered as a counterargument to the theory of evolution, chiefly by fundamentalist Protestants in the US and South Korea who claim the infallibility of scripture. South Korea was the butt of international jokes in 2012 after a petition circulated by a group called Society for Textbook Revise [sic] resulted in the revision of science textbook accounts on archaeopteryx fossils that are considered strong evidence for evolution. Three years later, creation science is once again the focus of controversy after news that a course on it has been instituted at one of the country’s leading universities - taught by an engineering professor for academic credit. Yonsei University, which has Protestant affiliations, is adding a course on creation science for the second semester of the 2015 academic year in September. The focus of the class is on using creationism as a basis for scientifically examining the events of the Bible. Aimed at first-year students, the course carries one credit and is taught by Choe Yoon-shik, a professor of electrical engineering. A similar class had previously been instituted at the university fourteen years before. The move has generated controversy ahead of registration for the fall semester, with students taking to Facebook to post messages criticizing it. “It is an international embarrassment that subjects like that are being taught at a university,” wrote one. “If we accept a course like this, we should also be accepting African voodoo practices as medicine,” wrote another. Choe, the professor who developed the class, responded to the controversy on Aug. 10. “It isn’t about how creationism is correct and evolution is always wrong,” he said, adding that he found the response “baffling.” “As a Christian studying and teaching engineering, I have often had to think about faith and science. My aim is to talk about these concerns with students - not to try to boost creation science,” he explained. In his course outline, Choe writes that scientists in the Christian faith “often experience conflict between the words of the Bible and their scientific understanding.” The course, he explains, is intended to “find the parts of the Bible that can be tested scientifically and aid Biblical understanding through a scientific approach to creationism and evolution.” Topics include “the emergence of life,” “the origin of species,” “creation and evolution,” and dinosaurs. “The details of the course outline give the impression that he’s trying to teach creation science as ‘science,’” said philosopher of science and Seoul National University liberal studies professor Jang Dae-ik on Aug. 11. “It’s against the mission of education to take a pseudo-discipline that repudiates the established theory and teach it as if it were a specific theory rather than an opinion,” Jang argued. The Korean Association for Creation Research argued that similar courses have been offered at roughly a dozen schools, but almost none with the name “creation science” in the title. “It’s been accepted somewhat at mission schools, but there have been issues in the past where the schools don‘t recognize it and then it becomes known later what the class was about, so they tend to be cautious,” the group explained. In a 1987, the US Supreme Court ruled that requiring the teaching of creationism alongside evolution in schools was an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state. “In the middle ground between creationism and evolution, you have things like ‘monotheistic evolution’ or ‘evolutionary creationism,’” said Yang Hee-song, a theologian and president of the Chungeoram Academy. “They’re trying to harmonize the views, to say that God does exist but that he carried out the creation process using the methods of evolution,” Yang added. “The problem is the overrepresentation of extreme views like creation science among conservative denominations.”

hani.co.kr

POPE FRANCIS SAYS GENESIS ACCOUNT OF CREATION IS NOT TRUE

Oct 30, 2014 by admin in DIASPORA

THE BIG BANG, WHICH SCIENTISTS BELIEVE LED TO THE FORMATION OF THE UNIVERSE SOME 13.8 BILLION YEARS AGO, WAS ALL PART OF GOD’S PLAN, POPE FRANCIS HAS DECLARED.

“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” Colossians 1:16,17

The Pope said the scientific account of the beginning of the universe and the development of life through evolution are compatible with the Catholic Church’s vision of creation. He told a meeting of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Sciences: ‘The Big Bang, which today we hold to be the origin of the world, does not contradict the intervention of the divine creator but, rather, requires it.’

But he said Christians should reject the idea that world came into being by chance. Likewise, evolution was all part of God’s plan, he explained. The development of each creature’s characteristics over millennia ‘does not contrast with the notion of creation because evolution presupposes the creation of beings that evolve,’ he said.

“Reading Genesis we imagine that God is ‘a wizard with a magic wand’ capable of doing all things, he said. ‘But it is not so. He created life and let each creature develop according to the natural laws which he had given each one.’

Francis praised his predecessor, Benedict, who initiated attempts to shed the Catholic Church’s image of being anti-science, a label that stuck when it condemned the astronomer Galileo to death for teaching that the earth revolves around the sun.

The Catholic Church no longer teaches creationism – the belief that God created the world in six days – and says that the account in the book of Genesis is an allegory for the way God created the world.

Source:

Jews News 

Lawsuit: CSUN Scientist Fired After Soft Tissue Found On Dinosaur Fossil

July 24, 2014 2:39 PM

A Triceratops greets visitors at the 14,000 square foot Dinosaur Hall permanent exhibition at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. (Photo credit: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images)

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Attorneys for a California State University, Northridge scientist who was terminated from his job after discovering soft tissue on a triceratops fossil have filed a lawsuit against the university.
While at the Hell Creek Formation excavation site in Montana, researcher Mark Armitage discovered what he believed to be the largest triceratops horn ever unearthed at the site, according to attorney Brad Dacus of Pacific Justice Institute.
Upon examination of the horn under a high-powered microscope back at CSUN, Dacus says Armitage was “fascinated” to find soft tissue on the sample – a discovery Bacus said stunned members of the school’s biology department and even some students “because it indicates that dinosaurs roamed the earth only thousands of years in the past rather than going extinct 60 million years ago.”
“Since some creationists, like [Armitage], believe that the triceratops bones are only 4,000 years old at most, [Armitage’s] work vindicated his view that these dinosaurs roamed the planet relatively recently,” according to the complaint filed July 22 in Los Angeles Superior Court.
The lawsuit against the CSUN board of trustees cites discrimination for perceived religious views.
Armitage’s findings were eventually published in July 2013 in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
According to court documents, shortly after the original soft tissue discovery, a CSUN official told Armitage, “We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department!”
Armitage, a published scientist of over 30 years, was subsequently let go after CSUN abruptly claimed his appointment at the university of 38 months had been temporary, and claimed a lack of funding for his position, according to attorneys.
“Terminating an employee because of their religious views is completely inappropriate and illegal,” Dacus said in a statement. “But doing so in an attempt to silence scientific speech at a public university is even more alarming. This should be a wakeup call and warning to the entire world of academia.”
CSUN spokesperson Carmen Ramos Chandler told CBSLA Armitage was a a temporary hire between 2010-2013 and worked as an electron microscopy technician.  She could not comment on the lawsuit as university officials had not yet received the complaint.
The discovery is the latest in several recent – and controversial – soft tissue finds by archaeologists: researchers last November claimed the controversial discovery of purported 68-million-year-old soft tissue from the bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex can be explained by iron in the dinosaur’s body, which they say preserved the tissue before it could decay.

Source:
 CBS Los Angeles