I'm not talking about people who sincerely question current scientific theory or who choose to believe in creation as a matter of faith. I'm talking about those individuals and organizations who knowingly spread disinformation to the unsuspecting (gullible?) masses.
So why do these good christians knowingly seek to deceive others?
Talking in General, this has nothing to do with dishonesty.
To elaborate, These people (as an example) seriously believes the Earth to be 6000 years old. They simple refuse to accept the reality that it is not. Anf from this point, it has nothing to do with any dishonesty/honesty, but ignorance. They believe what they believe, and no amount of Reality will ever make them change their mind. If it does not fit there world, they either change it, or ignore it (wangle it).
They dont consider this dishonesty, as they believe that they are on the right, and its everyone else that refuses to accept the Truth.
And specifically (disregarding the general public): Some people just act like that. Dont bother them, and they wont bother me
Perhaps the ends justifies the means to some people and certain groups feel they have more to gain and not much to loose if they manipulate the truth. In all honesty, some scientists have done the same thing with evolution, which has had its share of hoaxes, but I don't think much can top the dishonesty of certain creationists.
I think part of the problem is that creationists are few in number, but because they don't have much a voice in the scientific community, there are many, many web pages devoted to the topic of creationism, or, rather, just the subject of how to attack evolution, many of which aren't written by scientists. Your average John Creationist will go to these websites searching for arguments. They will take a quote-mined argument in complete good faith which, once posted on a forum such as this, is quickly seen through. Even though the forum participant had no idea that the information he was using was faulty, the damage is done and all creationist credibility suffers. The dishonesty of one creationist webmaster cripples how many people perceive all creationists. The webmaster will never take his content down, so we see this repeating over and over in forums everywhere. We don't see this so much with evolutionists because they have no need to be on the attack.
As a laugh, read this catfight between Kent Hovind and the Answers in Genesis Institute. Answer in Genesis seems to believe in maintaining some integrity. Why they don't disassociate themselves from people like Hovind is beyond me.
<i>'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'</i>
-John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn.
I would agree with Corvus that the 'ends justifies the means' mentality plays a part.
Another aspect, I think, that stems from this is that they don't care about the truth, only about persuading as many people as possible to A) share their beliefs or B) failing A, casting enough doubt on evolution so that at least people will disbelieve evolutionists, even if they don't buy into creationism. It is really a public relations campaign, even a political campaign.
In response to Lilsnopp, yes, I think most (but I would bet not all!) believe in the 6000 year old earth, etc., and as such are not being dishonest. The dishonesty lies in the arguments they put forward to try and support their beliefs and persuade people to share these beliefs. I think it is fairly well-established, and Lotan has given some examples, that some creationists use arguments and cite facts that they know full well are false and/or disingenuous. The purposeful mischaracterizations of the theory of evolution, the second law of thermodynamics, etc. are legion.
Finally, since many of the arguments do not require a great deal of sophistication to put forward, nearly anyone can put something up on a website that will fool someone (besides the person putting it up).
I sometimes make an analogy between creationism and a murder trial.
The creationists are the friends and family of an unfortunate murderer who has been convicted resoundingly, and is at the end of his innumerable appeals. Multiple courts have looked at the case, and all have concluded the defendants guilt beyond any reasonable doubt.
THe friends and family, of course, just can't believe that their 'dear boy' is guilty. They accuse the courts of bias, and do all they can to demonize the prosecutors as evil and unfeeling people.
Having exhausted legal remedies, the friends and family try to drag the case into the court of public opinion, and are surprisingly successful in convincing many people that a great injustice is being done (the defendant is well-known and quite popular with the general public).
As in any murder trial, there are innumerable details that the prosecution cannot explain, and the friends and family sieze upon these, and spend a great deal of time coming up with new 'unexplained' details. What did the victim eat for breakfast the day of the murder? Did the murder occur at 12 a.m. or 1 a.m. (the prosecution can't seem to pin it down)? There were no eyewitnesses, so how can we possibly say beyond a shadow of a doubt that our friend did it? etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.
THe prosecution tries to explain as many of these as they can, often noting that many of them are irrelevant and/or do not negate the powerful case that they have put forward. THe friends and family, of course, are hearing none of it, and when the prosecutors ignore any of their contentions, they sieze on this as evidence that the prosecutors are failing in making their case, and that the conviction is sure to be overturned at any moment.
The friends and family are so successful in their PR campaign that they are able to exert political pressure on the legal system, having some elected judges voted out of office, and getting some continuances on the sentencing.
The defendant has been sentenced to life in prison, and has been there for a number of years. Unfortunately, there is no let up in the efforts of the friends and family.
As my fellow compared said, (and like i said), the ´ends justifies the means´ seems to be the only choice when talking in general about this.
I would say, the people which mendaciously do this, simply consider they have the right on their side, as does evil evolutionists have the state behind them, its their only choice.
And some (like Mr Hovind for example), just do it to earn as much money as possible.
PS: ok, stop spelling my name incorrectly, its TWO L´s ok.
LILL = Small, Snopp = Penis, LillSnopp = Small Penis. LilSnopp = Incorrect spelling, TWO L´s DAMNIT
Lotan wrote:
So why do these good christians knowingly seek to deceive others?
I will not deny that creationists are imperfect. They can misquote, misuse, and misrepresent facts. But, why do they do it? I think the simple answer is that we are human.
Also, evolutionists have demonstrated their share of hoaxes/frauds/dishonesty as well. So, it can also be asked if they too were after the money and/or the chicks.
otseng wrote:Also, evolutionists have demonstrated their share of hoaxes/frauds/dishonesty as well. So, it can also be asked if they too were after the money and/or the chicks.
Definitely the chicks!
Although I have no doubt that there are scientists that have tried to pull scams I'm not nearly as familiar with them as I am with creationist scams and I would be interested to know what you consider to be "their share". Maybe an example or two might help. Scientists rely on their reputations, and any monkey business instantly destroys their credibility when it's found out. That's something that doesn't seem to concern the creationists, they just happily continue on.
Several people on this thread have suggested that creationists are "only human" and I'm beginning to agree that there is no simple answer for their behaviour. Here's an interesting quote that I dug up regarding Duane Gish...
"I used to be convinced that [Duane] Gish was a conscious
liar, because so many of the things he says are demonstrably
false, and he is neither stupid nor uneducated. In the last
few years, I have changed my mind. I now think that Gish is
now so severely deluded that he can no longer distinguish
what he wants to believe from reality, at least on the
conscious level." Joyce Arthur, 1993, 'Scientific'
creationism and integrity, Vancouver.
From here.
Still it could be argued that at least some "good christians knowingly seek to deceive others" in pursuit of MONEY and POWER.
And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto His people. Exodus 32:14
Lotan wrote:
Although I have no doubt that there are scientists that have tried to pull scams I'm not nearly as familiar with them as I am with creationist scams and I would be interested to know what you consider to be "their share". Maybe an example or two might help.
Archaeoraptor liaoningensis is a hoaxed fossil that linked dinosaurs to birds. It was allegedly found in China in the 1990s and was described in the November 1999 issue of National Geographic as “a true missing link in the complex chain that connects dinosaurs to birds.” The specimen is actually a composite of two dinosaur fossils.
Nebraska Man (Hesperopithecus haroldcookii) was described on the basis of a single tooth which turned out to come from a peccary. This tooth was used to construct an entire species, complete with illustrations of the primitive man and his family.
Piltdown man is one of the most famous frauds in the history of science. In 1912 Charles Dawson discovered the first of two skulls found in the Piltdown quarry in Sussex, England, skulls of an apparently primitive hominid, an ancestor of man. Piltdown man, or Eoanthropus dawsoni to use his scientific name, was a sensation. He was the expected "missing link" a mixture of human and ape with the noble brow of Homo sapiens and a primitive jaw. Best of all, he was British!
otseng wrote: Here are several: ... Archaeoraptor ... Nebraska Man ... Piltdown Man
Well, I asked, didn't I?
From the Archaeoraptor link that you provided... "Xu Xing, a Chinese scientist who had initially helped to identify the fossil, was the one who eventually blew the whistle on it."
...also... "Evidently someone had taken one of the slabs bearing the tail fossil and affixed it to a fossil of a bird, thereby producing a hybrid dinosaur-bird creature."
...and this... "The Archaeoraptor hoax is an example of how science works. When an error is made or fraud is committed, it is discovered and dealt with publicly. Science is self-correcting, unlike creationism. If this case was unusual it was due to the hoax being discovered almost immediately after the National Geographic article appeared. The Archaeoraptor fossil only had a few months of glory as the missing link between dinosaurs and birds before it was exposed as a composite. We now know that the head and body of a primitive bird and the tail and hind limbs of a dromaeosaur dinosaur were glued together by a Chinese farmer."
The Archaeoraptor hoax definitely does show dishonesty... on the part of some farmer! Despite creationist claims, the National Geographic reacted in an honorable fashion as you can read here.
Concerning Nebraska Man... "The imaginative drawing of Nebraska Man to which creationists invariably refer was the work of an illustrator collaborating with the scientist Grafton Elliot Smith, and was done for a British popular magazine, not for a scientific publication. Few if any other scientists claimed Nebraska Man was a human ancestor."
...and... "Nebraska Man should not be considered an embarrassment to science. The scientists involved were mistaken, and somewhat incautious, but not incompetent or dishonest. The whole episode was actually an excellent example of the scientific process working at its best. Given a problematic identification, scientists investigated further, found data which falsified their earlier ideas, and promptly abandoned them (a marked contrast to the creationist approach)."
In other words, it was an honest mistake.
Concerning Piltdown Man, we don't know who the hoaxer was (a creationist maybe?). I agree that there is certainly a lesson to be learned from the failure of science to detect the hoax earlier though there is no evidence that anyone besides the hoaxer behaved dishonestly... "The main reason Piltdown was not spotted as a fraud much earlier was that scientists weren't allowed to see the evidence, which was kept securely locked in the British Museum. Instead of focusing their attention on examining the "facts" more closely with an eye to discovering the fraud, scientists weren't even allowed to examine the physical evidence at all!"
What these three examples have in common, of course, is that they were all promptly rejected by science as soon as they were exposed. Apparently scientists are 'only human' when they are mistaken and creationists are 'only human' when they refuse to acknowledge their mistakes. Which of these examples demonstrates that scientists knowingly perpetuated "hoaxes/frauds/dishonesty "?
Last edited by Lotan on Wed May 11, 2005 2:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto His people. Exodus 32:14
