The Geological Society of London uses bully tactics
Creationists not even ‘worth the expenditure of our contempt’
by Tas Walker
Photo wikipedia
One good outcome of the current atheists’ outrage against God is the way they
reveal their condescending dogmatic attitude. One such recent attack against young
earth creationism and intelligent design comes from the Geological Society of London,
the oldest such professional geological association in the world. It’s published
in the January 2008 issue of their magazine Geoscientist.1
Ted Nield is the editor as well as being the author of Supercontinent,
a book that sets out his long-age geological ideas on how he thinks our planet evolved over
billions of years. He is also chair of the British Association of Science Writers
and Chair of the Outreach Programme of the International Year of the Earth, a UN-backed
venture.
This attack has been prompted by recent calls for the publicly funded interpretive
centre at the Giant’s Causeway,2
Northern Ireland, to include the young-earth creationist view. This possibility
has concerned the Geological Society of London greatly, and they have
launched a counter offensive.
I reproduce here Ted Nield’s editorial1 on this issue. It reveals something
of the intensity of the battle of ideas being waged in our culture, and how geological
ideas are at the forefront of the battle. You can see for yourself the strategies
and tactics being used by the academic institutions in our countries to intimidate
and silence alternative scientific views.
Are Young Earth Creationists … even worth the expenditure of our contempt?—
Ted Nield, The Geological Society of London
Fighting the fight, or slaying the slain?
Are Young Earth Creationists, Intelligent Designers and other adherents of long-exploded
ideas even worth the expenditure of our contempt?
Beneath ‘contempt’? What does Ted Nield imagine these YE creationists
and IDers doing? Blowing up trains? (He may be thinking of
another religious group which the establishment media are too cowardly to
criticize). Threatening geological meetings? Why would members of an austere professional
association like the Geological Society of London be filled with contempt for people?
Surely not because they disagree with their geological views?
Geoscientist 18(1), January 2008
Woody Allen observed, when discussing neo-Nazis during a cocktail party in his film
Manhattan: ‘A satiric piece in The Times is one thing, but bricks
and baseball bats really get to the point.’ And that point is, arguing with
the closed-minded only serves to dignify their unacceptable dogmas.
Oh, so creationists are as bad as Nazis, are they? He should educate himself about
the evolutionary basis for Nazi
racial and eugenical policies. And Ted thinks geologists should not waste
their time arguing their case but use ‘bricks and baseball bats’ instead?
Is this the normal professional attitude of members of his academic association?
Yet Ted accuses creationists of being ‘closed-minded’ and ‘dogmatic’!
Attentive readers of Geoscientist will know that it is the policy of this
magazine not to engage in public debate with young-Earth creationists (YECs) because
to do so lends them, and the mere notion that there is any ‘debate’
to be had, a credibility they don't deserve.
On the other hand, a debate would mean that geoscientists would need to think outside
the box and give reasons for their view. Shock! Horror!
Tempting though it may be, in PR terms it is a tactical error to engage YECs in
this way, because the very act of doing so hands a victory to the opponents of reason.
Or Nield and Co could be scared of losing, so it’s much easier to declare that the
‘debate is over’. But we will allow people to judge for themselves with
Australian Skeptics vs CMI Australia,
Wieland v Willis, Wieland v Farmer and
Carter v Pierson.
This is so because the only result YECs desire is to foster in the minds of gullible
people the illusion that they and their misguided notions are taken seriously by
anyone who should be taken seriously.
Does the geological society not want people to take the society’s views seriously?
In the US the polls show that over 40% of the public hold creationist views. Are
these the people Ted means when he speaks of ‘gullible people’?
President Robin Cocks, writing to The Times in 1999, established the Geological
Society's position on faith and science. He wrote: ‘Science and religion coexist
quite happily in the minds of all but the most strident fundamentalists (scientific
or religious). Whereas science explores the empirical constitution of the universe,
religion is the search for ethical values and spiritual meaning … Neither
can trespass competently upon the domain of the other.’
‘Strident fundamentalists’. Insults and name-calling seem to be this
editor’s stock in trade.
‘Neither can trespass competently upon the domain of the other.’ Geologist
A.A. Holmes, a former member of the society admitted that the idea of separate domains
is not correct. It depends on what religion you are talking about. Holmes recognized
that long-age geology is compatible with Hindu philosophy but incompatible with
biblical Christianity.3
Sherwood Taylor, Curator of the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, said in
1949:
‘In England it was geology and the theory of evolution that changed us from
a Christian to a pagan nation’4
So, why is the Geological Society trespassing and telling Christians how to interpret
their Bible?
Science and religion, in other words, constitute ‘non-overlapping magisteria’
(the ‘NOMA Principle’, in Stephen Jay Gould's words).
Indeed so, but we have refuted
this philosophically bankrupt idea of the late
Marxist Stephen Jay Gould.
This is satisfying because although forcibly expounded by Gould (Hon. FGS) in more
recent times, the concept originated with Thomas Henry Huxley, a former President
of ours—who invented one of the most misunderstood words in the language to
describe it. (‘Agnostic’ does not mean ‘undecided’—it
means ‘unable to know’ and is meant to encapsulate the scientist's position
of being incompetent to judge any propositions that lie beyond nature).
But the Bible also makes claims about nature and these can be tested in the field,
as creationist geologists do. This sounds like another strategy to silence opposing
views without needing to debate them.
Photo Steve Cardno
Did the Deluge really take place? Absolutely, so modern geologists need to take account of that.
And Huxley certainly wasn’t a NOMA advocate. Rather, he had no time for churchians
who compromised the Bible:
‘I confess I soon lose my way when I try to follow those who walk delicately
among “types” and allegories. A certain passion for clearness forces
me to ask, bluntly, whether the writer means to say that Jesus did not believe the
stories in question, or that he did? When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that
“the Flood came and destroyed them all,” did he believe that the Deluge
really took, place, or not?’5
‘If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if
the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” … what
value has Paul's dialectic.’6
But there is another problem. Too strident an approach towards YECs also plays into
their hands by giving to those same gullible people mentioned earlier the impression
that scientists are dogmatic and unwilling to entertain doubt.
‘Dogmatic’? Where could anyone get the impression that the Geological
Society is dogmatic?
These are slippery slopes. Scientists are fully open to reasonable doubt, but see
no point in being open to unreasonable doubt. That is the same as being
so open-minded that your brains fall out.
Ted makes a very good geological point here: creationists’ brains have fallen
out. But he might make an even better point if he could explain why
reason should work at all if we are just rearranged pond scum.
Moreover, whether scientists like it or not, if people really want to believe that
the Earth is 6000 years old
Most of the pioneers of science believed in a young earth, including
Nicholas Steno, the father of stratigraphy. In fact, first edition of the
Encyclopædia Britannica
tabulated young dates for the age for of the earth.
or that it sits on the back of a giant turtle flying through celestial custard,
then they are free to do so.
Ted must move in strange circles if he knows people who believe that.
Theirs is the same freedom that allows scientists to go on experimenting without
fear of villagers with pitchforks and flaming torches.
Yes, freedom to explore ideas is a good thing, so the Giants Causeway should include the creationist interpretation, contrary to the position of the Geological Society of London. But I thought Ted said he advocated
using ‘bricks and baseball bats’ on creationists. This is a classic case
of projection, i.e. imputing one’s own foibles to one’s opponents.
So, tempted though I am to use baseball bats on YECs,
And yet Ted’s ilk would have us believe that the movie
Expelled, about
persecution of Dissenters to Darwinian Dogma, is fantasy.
I think I will stick to satire.
Here’s another idea. How about dealing with models, logic and evidence?
But, just for the record, and because the issue that really matters is what the
State allows to be taught under the National Curriculum, perhaps the Society should
issue a statement of its own, along the lines of that already issued by the Royal?
(see Letters for more on this issue)
‘What the State allows to be taught … ’? So when Ted said ‘freedom’
he intended that freedom apply only to his crowd and not to creationists. Maybe
he has taken a cue from George Orwell’s novel 1984, with its infamous
‘newspeak’, ‘Freedom is Slavery’. But Ted seems not to realize
that 1984 wasn’t a work of advocacy but a warning against
totalitarian governments telling us what to think.
And finally, notice that this editorial relies on insults, misinformation, stereotypes
and scare tactics. Nowhere does this article address what creationists are actually
saying, or use a coherent, logical, scientific argument to make its case.
Related articles
Further reading
Recommended Resources
References
- Nield, Ted,
Fighting the fight, or slaying the slain? Geoscientist 18.1, January
2008. Return
to text.
- Heneghan, T.,
Creationists claim the Giant’s Causeway, Reuters Blog, 30 November 2007.
Return to text.
- Holmes, A.A., Principles of Physical Geology, (2nd ed.), Thomas
Nelson and Sons, London, p. 44, 1972. Return to text.
- Taylor, F.S., Geology changes the outlook; in: Ideas and Beliefs
of the Victorians, Sylvan Press Ltd, London, p. 195, (one of a series of talks broadcast
on BBC radio), 1949. Return to text.
- Huxley, T.H., Science And Hebrew Tradition Essays,
pp. 207,
208, 1897. Return to text.
- Huxley , ref. 5, p. 236. Return to text.
Published: 13 May 2008(GMT+10)
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