Re: Why does creationism persist in the USA?

Ray Martinez <pyramidial@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mar 28, 5:18 pm, j.wilki...@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote:
Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 27, 8:32 pm, Cemtech <c...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
In article <1175048575.170561.187...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx says...
"Every biologist was a converted evolutionist."

So Ray admits evolution is SOOOOO good, that every biologist became an
evolutionist.

/addto Ray Quote Mining Project.

Do you not claim to have a graduate degree?

If so, how could a person of your educational credentials not know
that within fifteen years of publication ["Origin of Species"]
Darwin's theory converted biology to his paradigm (Mayr "Growth of
Biological Thought" 1982). Mayr goes on to say that every working
biologist, by 1874, was a converted evolutionist. Prior to 1859,
Creationism and theist suppositions ruled British science. These are
basic historical facts. British natural theology died between 1859 and
1874. Read Dembski "The Demise of British Natural
Theology" ("Intelligent Design" 1999) for an excellent sketch showing
why Creationism died.

Do you even know who Mayr is?

I know one thing about Mayr, and that is that he is a bad historian who
tends to name movements as if they had a Credo they all shared.


http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/precursors/precurssources.html

John Wilkins: "Ernst Mayr, the great 20th century orthnithologist, is
also erudite in the history of biology, and published the most useful
single review (1982)." [the source I used]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/erudite

erudite: characterized by great knowledge; learned or scholarly: an
erudite professor; an erudite commentary.

I have also read another comment by you endorsing Mayr's "Growth of
Biological Thought" as a source which you recommend but I cannot find
it at the Talk Origin pages.

Now notice the date of that. Since then I have done a PhD in the history
of biology, and found that Mayr, while reliable as to dates and names,
is often very unreliable as to the ideas, their characterisation, and
the lumping together of diffrent thinkers as schools, which was the
context of the above comment.

Not that it happens to change much about the precursors FAQ, but I'd use
original or immediate secondary sources now rather than rely on Mayr.

By around 1874, most biologists (not quite all) were convinced of the
fact of evolution (which does not make them "evolutionists" - that term
either means they are a specialist in evolution, which very few were
until the turn of the century, or it has connotations of there being
soem sort of ideology associated with it, which was partially true in
Haeckel's Germany, but not much elsewhere), yes.

Mayr said "most" because there can never be all. And yes if they were
convinced of Darwinian evolution then they were evolutionists, John.
Your comment denying this point makes no sense whatsoever.

Do you deny that you think "evolutionism" is an ideology? If you don't,
then it pays to attend to the context - saying that someone is a
biologist who accepts evolution neither means that they are now a
specialist in evolutionary biology (there were few of these for some
time to come thereafter), which is the *proper* meaning of
"evolutionist"; nor that they were ideologues about it (very few
accepted Darwinian accounts of evolution, for some time afterwards).

There was no radical
shift, though, in the way science was being done.

Yes, there was. It is known as the Darwinian Revolution. Theist
suppositions were out and Naturalism suppositions were in. Darwin
presented his proposal when Creationism ruled science and his book
converted science to his way of thinking (presuppose supernatural to
not be involved in nature). After 1859 "evolutionary thinking" had no
impediments; it displaced natural theology by 1874.

Reasserting it won't make it true. Theism as a player in science was
lost sometime around the end of the 18th century, when Laplace told
Napoleon that he had no need of that hypothesis (that God played a
causal role in a theory). In fact the people who assert that God is
crucial ins cience, by the middle of the 19thC, are the weird eccentric
exceptions rather than the rule, like PH Gosse.

The *reason* most
working biologists were convinced of evolution (and that has to be
elaborated - which aspects of what we call "evolution"?) was that *it
was the best scientific explanation on the prior canons of science*!


According to Gillespie (1979) and Dembski (1999) and Dr. Scott (2001)
the reason biologists accepted Darwin's proposal was because he
insisted upon natural explanations (= God not involved). This makes
sense since his theory, again, was offered when Creationism ruled
British science.

Since there was no real causal mechnism offered for species
transmutation prior to Darwin, any transmutationism had to be sort of
mystical. But many held just that view, for some decades before Darwin.
Otherwise, the "non-speculative" view was that species were as they
always had been; that is, fixed.

However, from around 1830 onwards, an increasing consensus was that
species changed, and when Herschel wrote his response to Lyell's
Principles devoted to Lamarck, published in 1832, he called the
origination of species that "mystery of mysteries", quoted later by
Darwin in the Origin. It was not creationism that ruled prior to Darwin
among the scientific community, but an unresolved problem of species
origins.


Your comment evades the historical and philosophical context that
"Origin of Species" was presented in. Darwin, of course, was a
Creationist himself prior to 1837. Creationism or British Natural
Theology was in power until 1859 and by 1874 the reins had been taken
by Darwin's antithetic paradigm.

There are two senses of "creationism in play here. Darwin held, as
Dobzhansky did a century later, that God created the world. But like
Dobie, he thought that secondary causes generated species, which was the
default scientific view at the time. "Species" creationism - the view
that each individual species was created as it was now, ab initio, had
been dead since Linnaeus' problem with Peloria. The question was if
species were formed from a first stock of a family, as Buffon argued, or
from hybridisation of potential generative forms, as LInnaeus thought.

Do you know the first recorded use of the word "creationist"?

Probably in the middle ages.


IOW, evolution was accepted because science *hadn't* changed its
standards.

It is simply false that creationism was the ruling view prior to 1859.

You have made a dreadful mistake. Of course Creationism was the ruling
view prior to 1859. No Darwinian historian disputes this "round Earth"
fact.

What was the ruling view PRIOR TO 1859, john? <said with extreme
sarcasm>

This question is, of course, rhetorical *Dr. Wilkins.*

Then perhaps you had better inquire more deeply into the source material
rather than relying upon teritary sources.


Most working biologists were not special creationists - meaning they did
not think species were created by God - from around 1820 or so. Working
from ideas presented by Linnaeus, Buffon, and various other taxonomists,
they though species were produced via "secondary causes" - that is, they
were caused by processes that had been created by God, not primary
causes (ie. by God directly). This was pretty much the standard view
throughout Europe, particularly amongst the French systematists. The
*only* objectors were religious.

Owen was a transmutationist of sorts well before Darwin, as was
Geoffroy, and even Cuvier admitted that new species had to come into
being.


Owen was a Creationist.

Darwin graduated from Christ's College in Cambridge (April, 1831). How
many Creationists do you think ran Christ's College in 1831? How many
conducted the science of the day? Evolutionists were the minority
UNTIL 1874.

Lyell was a Creationist and the last hold out in Darwin's inner circle
to abandon creationism and become a convinced evolutionist well after
1859.

As to "theistic presuppositions" I really have no idea what these might
be. Most scientists were theists, yes. But so far as I can tell,
religious beliefs were not permitted by religious scientists to
interfere with their biological inferences.

No John, you are saying 19th century Victorian England science was no
different than today: "Most were theists but they abided by non-theist
suppositions after going through the lab doors." Negative. They were
natural theologians or Creationists and science until Darwin (1859)
used Creationist suppositions. Your "But so far as I can tell" is
timid looneyness - the phraseology of someone who does not know what
he is talking about. We are talking about recent history *Dr. Wilkins*
and not millions of years ago where Darwinists speak authoritively as
to what happened.

Why do you emphasise my name? I know who I am.

Religious beliefs were the foundation of science until 1859-1874. I
have never read an atheist scholar deny this fourth grade fact,
including Dennett, Dawkins, Mayr, Gruber, Browne, Desmond & Moore,
Gillespie, van Wyhe, Ruse, Pennock etc.etc.

Then you had better read more widely. Robert J. Richards, Ron Amundson,
Polly Winsor, and a host of other historians do deny this "fourth grade
fact". In fact fourth grade facts are distingusihed largely in virtue of
being false. Haldane called it Aunt Jobiska's Theorem - "It's a fact
that everyone knows" - meaning it is almost certainly wrong.

Most biologists were fixists of one kind or another from the period from
1686, when Ray defined species fixism, to around 1780, when Buffon
started his attacks on the doctrine. From 1802 when Lamarck (and his
predecessor Erasmus Darwin) proposed transformism, there was an
increasing openness to species transformation, such that (as Adrian
Desmond, of Desmond and Moore, noted) "evolution" was the standard
radical view among scientists in the mid-1830s in Britain and Europe.
Browne also repeats this - have you in fact read that volume? Neither
Dennett nor Dawkins are historians, and van Whye and Ruse both admit
this fact. I think you are just mentioning names for the sake of it.

Your "comments" are ad hoc custom fit to not agree with a Creationist
no matter what. You are dishonest.

I wonder if you can reference the comment above? Here it is again:

Dr. John Wilkins: "As to "theistic presuppositions" I really have no
idea what these might
be. Most scientists were theists, yes. But so far as I can tell,
religious beliefs were not permitted by religious scientists to
interfere with their biological inferences."


Piety was the source of
creationism, but even pious biologists like Cuvier, Gray, and Agassiz
did not prevent them from observing and making inferences. Agassiz was
perhaps the last special creationist of note, but even he admitted that
the Darwinian account had a lot of sense and evidence on its side.


Absolute nonsense.


This is such bad history that I can only conclude you are reading to
find conclusions you already want to find, not to find out what actually
happened. There's a name for this sort of historiography...
--

This beauty says: "people and scholars do not mean what they say and
no one is capable of understanding what they say if it contradicts my
quest to deny that Darwin was attempting to falsify the Creationist
Deity because some modern Darwinists have decided that this fact needs
to be covered because we want ToE endorsed by the Christian
masses" (John Wilkins).

John: Dana Tweedy does a better job at this than you. Also, you are
now on record as saying some of the most embarrassing nonsense anyone
with a degree could possibly say. It is a undisputed historical fact:
Darwinism and its naturalism presuppositions replaced Creationism and
its supernaturalism presuppositions between 1859 and 1874. Science did
an about face and adopted atheist assumptions about nature and
rejected theist assumptions about nature.

Now I know why you usually post endless and meaningless one-liners
most of the time.

Before you have read this I will have already forwarded your "views"
to the greatest Darwin historian alive - Dr. John van Wyhe for
critique. Maybe he will reply. If you are lucky he won't.

Ray

Oh, I do hope that he does. In fact, I will pass this on to him for
comment myself.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

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