ElShamah - Reason & Science: Defending ID and the Christian Worldview
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ElShamah - Reason & Science: Defending ID and the Christian Worldview

Otangelo Grasso: This is my personal virtual library, where i collect information, which leads in my view to the Christian faith, creationism, and Intelligent Design as the best explanation of the origin of the physical Universe, life, biodiversity


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If intelligent design theorists do manage to publish in a peer-reviewed science journal, Darwinists will make sure the editor suffers grievously for it.

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Otangelo


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If intelligent design theorists do manage to publish in a peer-reviewed science journal, Darwinists will make sure the editor suffers grievously for it.

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2247-if-intelligent-design-theorists-do-manage-to-publish-in-a-peer-reviewed-science-journal-darwinists-will-make-sure-the-editor-suffers-grievously-for-it

"The scientific establishment bears a grisly resemblance to the Spanish Inquisition. Either you accept the rules and attitudes and beliefs promulgated by the 'papacy' (for which read, perhaps, the Royal Society or the Royal College of Physicians), or face a dreadful retribution. We will not actually burn you at the stake, because that sanction, unhappily, is now no longer available under our milksop laws. But we will make damned sure that you are a dead duck in our trade."
(Gould, Donald [former editor of New Scientist], "Letting poetry loose in the laboratory," New Scientist, 29 August 1992, p.51)

Why isn't intelligent design found published in mainstream peer-reviewed science journals? Darwinists use a similar rule—I call it “Catch-23”—to exclude intelligent design from science: intelligent design is not scientific, so it can’t be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. How do we know it’s not scientific? Because it isn’t published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Catch-23! 4

From Jonathan Wells Phd., A politically incorrect guide to Darwinism and intelligent design, page 111

A journal editor sends an article to several outside referees (“peer reviewers”) who advise the editor whether the article should be accepted as written, accepted only after revision, or rejected.

In 2003, Meyer submitted an article titled “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories” to the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. The article provided extensive references from the scientific literature to support Meyer’s argument that DNA carries complex specified information that cannot be produced solely by natural processes such as mutation and selection. Relying on an inference to the best explanation, Meyer concluded that intelligent design was the cause of the enormous increase in biological information required to produce the major animal body plans in the Cambrian explosion.

Meyer wrote: “Analysis of the problem of the origin of biological information . . . exposes a deficiency in the causal powers of natural selection that corresponds precisely to powers that agents are uniquely known to possess. Intelligent agents have foresight. Such agents can select functional goals before they exist.” Intelligent design theorists “are not positing an arbitrary explanatory element unmotivated by a consideration of the evidence. Instead, they are positing an entity possessing precisely the attributes and causal powers that the phenomenon in question requires.”1

Sternberg, was a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) with two doctoral degrees in evolutionary biology. Following standard procedure, Sternberg sent Meyer’s article to three reviewers, all of them evolutionary and molecular biologists at well-known institutions. The reviewers recommended that the article be published, though only after substantial revisions. Meyer revised his article in accordance with their recommendations, and the journal published it in August 2004. 2

When the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington published Meyer’s article proposing intelligent design as an explanation for the origin of biological information, all hell broke loose. Science journals regularly publish articles attacking intelligent design, but they routinely reject articles defending intelligent design. For example, Darwinists have criticized Michael Behe’s arguments for ID (Chapter Ten) in many peer-reviewed science journals, including Nature, Trends in Ecology and Evolution, and the Quarterly Review of Biology. But those journals routinely refuse to publish Behe’s responses. One journal editor to whom Behe submitted a response cited a reviewer who wrote: “In this referee’s judgment, the manuscript of Michael Behe does not contribute anything useful to evolutionary science.” The editor of another journal wrote to Behe: “As you no doubt know,
our journal has supported and demonstrated a strong evolutionary position from the very beginning, and believes that evolutionary explanations of all structures and phenomena of life are possible and inevitable. Hence a position such as yours . . . cannot be appropriate for our pages.” 3

In Joseph Heller’s classic novel about World War II, Catch-22, an aviator could be excused from combat duty for being crazy. But a rule specified that he first had to request an excuse, and anyone who requested an excuse from combat duty was obviously not crazy, so such requests were invariably denied. The rule that made it impossible to be excused from combat duty was called “Catch-22.”  4

Why isn't intelligent design found published in peer-reviewed science journals? Darwinists use a similar rule—I call it “Catch-23”—to exclude intelligent design from science: intelligent design is not scientific, so it can’t be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. How do we know it’s not scientific? Because it isn’t published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Catch-23! 4

The 2004 publication of Meyer’s article shattered the rule. It also alarmed Darwinists at the Smithsonian Institution (SI), with which the Biological Society of Washington (BSW) is loosely affiliated. Smithsonian Darwinists teamed up with the militantly pro-Darwin National Center for Science Education (NCSE) to control the damage to their cause. NCSE staffers sent long, detailed emails attacking Meyer’s article to high officials at the Smithsonian. The NCSE then worked closely with Smithsonian employees to develop a strategy of character assassination to punish Sternberg for publishing the article. To protect himself, Sternberg lodged a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), established by Congress to investigate such cases. 5

To Dr. Richard Sternberg, concerning his treatment by the Smithsonian Institution (SI) after publishing a peer-reviewed article by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer on intelligent design: “Our
preliminary investigation indicates that retaliation came in many forms. It came in the form of attempts to change your working conditions. . . . During the process you were personally investigated and your professional competence was attacked. Misinformation was disseminated throughout the SI and to outside sources. The allegations against you were later determined to be false. It is also clear that a hostile work environment was created with the ultimate goal of forcing you out of the SI.” 6

In August 2005, the OSC sent Sternberg a letter notifying him that a recent administrative decision had removed his case from their jurisdiction, but confirming that “members of NCSE worked closely with SI and NMNH members in outlining a strategy to have you investigated and discredited,” noting that “OSC questions the use of appropriated funds to work with an outside advocacy group for this purpose.” The OSC letter also confirmed that the management of the Smithsonian had falsely accused Sternberg of mishandling specimens in his research and of violating Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington policies in the publication of Meyer’s article. These accusations “were published to several outside organizations,” severely damaging Sternberg’s reputation. The managers later admitted that the accusations were false, but the OSC saw no evidence that “any effort was made to recall or correct these comments once the truth was known.” There were other abuses, too, but since the OSC lost jurisdiction over the Sternberg case “the SI is now refusing to cooperate with our investigation.” Nevertheless, the OSC concluded that the management of the publicly funded Smithsonian Institution had deliberately “created a hostile working environment” for Sternberg, hoping that he would “leave or resign.”

To investigate the Darwinists’ accusation that Sternberg had circumvented the normal peer-review process, the president of the Council of the BSW reviewed the file, and he found that the peer review had been properly conducted. Nevertheless, the council subsequently issued a statement declaring that “the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings.” Although the BSW stopped short of formally retracting the article, the Darwinists did not end their ruthless campaign of character assassination against Sternberg. Catch-23 is still enforced by most science journals, but it is now supplemented with an additional rule: if intelligent design theorists do manage to publish in a peer-reviewed science journal, Darwinists will make sure the editor suffers grievously for it. 8

Richard Lewontin, American evolutionary biologist, of Harvard once made the following comment regarding this harsh reality:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, ... in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated commitment to materialism. ... we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

1) Stephen C. Meyer, “The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories,” Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 117 (2004), 213–39.
2) Meyer’s article itself is available online:  http://www.discovery.org/a/2177
3) http://www.discovery.org/a/450
4) Jonathan Wells, “Catch-23,” Research News & Opportunities in Science and Theology, July/August 2002. Available online (April 2006) at:
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1212
5) Jim Giles, “Peer-reviewed paper defends theory of intelligent design,” Nature 431 (2004): 114. Trevor Stokes, “Intelligent design study appears,” The Scientist 5 (September 3, 2004): 4. Available online (April 2006) at: http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20040903/04/
6) U.S. Office of Special Counsel, 2005
7) David Klinghoffer, “The Branding of a Heretic,” Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2005.
8  Richard Monastersky, “Biology Journal Says It Mistakenly Published paper That Attacks Darwinian Evolution,” Chronicle of Higher Education Daily News, September 10, 2004. “Statement from the Council of the Biological Society of Washington,”

more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sternberg_peer_review_controversy




Last edited by Admin on Sun 23 Aug 2020 - 1:19; edited 8 times in total

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Otangelo


Admin

Later in 2011, I was privileged to attend an ID-research conference at Cornell University where dozens of ID-friendly scientists presented their work. The aftermath of this conference provided valuable insights that exposed the Darwin lobby's true aims, as well as their limitations. Many of the papers at this conference were supposed to appear in the book Biological Information: New Perspectives, to have been published by Springer-Verlag, a prestigious science publishing house. But ID-critics apparently felt threatened by the volume, so they mounted a campaign to pressure Springer to not publish the book. This was extremely revealing. How many times have we heard ID critics say things like "ID can't be taken seriously because it doesn't present research at science conferences and doesn't publish scientific papers." But then what happens when ID proponents do exactly what the critics demanded? What happens when we present pure research papers at a science conference at a top university and then seek to have it published by a world-class scientific publisher? Do Darwin lobbyists applaud us? No. Instead, they try to censor our work. This showed that the true goal of many Darwin lobbyists is to stifle academic freedom for ID at all costs, not to invite real scientific dialogue, and not to seek the truth.
Unfortunately, Springer capitulated to the censors and refused to publish the book, illegally violating their contract. But in the end, the Biological Information: New Perspectives volume was published by another well-respected publisher, World Scientific. The message here is that Darwin lobbyists don't have enough confidence and security in the merits of their viewpoint to allow critics to publish credible alternative viewpoints. It also shows that there areforces in the mainstream scientific community who are willing to seek the truth even in the face of political threats from the Darwin lobby. The whole episode was a major win for ID.


http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/12/a_big_announcem102011.html

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Otangelo


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Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living

The explicit functional link indicates that the biomechanical characteristic of tendinous connective architecture between muscles and articulations is the proper design by the Creator to perform a multitude of daily tasks in a comfortable way.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0146193

and the reaction ? 

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/comment?id=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fannotation%2F234ef7cc-d89a-4a9e-92d6-9070b175620d

The article should be retracted and the handling editor should be dismissed.

If the experimental results are solid, then the authors should be given an opportunity to remove the questionable statements and Republish with an erratum. The creationist conclusion does not appear to be critical to the interpretation of the study.

I think that pretending to defend a creationist argument (non-science) in a science journal raises serious doubts about the whole enterprise. 

In this case I am ashamed that the journal staff, the editor responsable for the paper, the reviewers, all ignored this more than obvious red flag resulting on a creationist argument embedded on a scientific paper. 

They should be ashamed of such a discriminating attitude. 

As others have noted, utilization of an intelligent design creationism framework for explaining human anatomy is not acceptable for a scientific journal.

I find the use of religious language in a scietific paper totally unacceptable.

If intelligent design theorists do manage to publish in a peer-reviewed science journal, Darwinists will make sure the editor suffers grievously for it. Z0uLM6G

If intelligent design theorists do manage to publish in a peer-reviewed science journal, Darwinists will make sure the editor suffers grievously for it. Z0uLM6G

If intelligent design theorists do manage to publish in a peer-reviewed science journal, Darwinists will make sure the editor suffers grievously for it. Z0uLM6G



Last edited by Admin on Fri 1 Feb 2019 - 16:44; edited 2 times in total

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Otangelo


Admin

In The New Yorker, Tom Wolfe Compares Persecution of Intelligent Design Advocates to the "Spanish Inquisition


Uncovering and punishing those with secret sympathies for ID is indeed a priority for zealous evolutionists, who insist everyone needs to believe in evolution in "the right way." The anxiety this provokes, especially in academia, is something we deal with all the time behind the scenes.


http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/07/the_right_stuff098081.html

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Otangelo


Admin

Doug Axe, Undeniable, page 35:

Despite the opposition, by 2004 I was confident that I had confirmed Michael Denton’s hunch that
“functional proteins could well be exceedingly rare.”1 As quoted in chapter 3, Denton reckoned that
accidental processes would be incapable of finding new functional proteins if their amino-acid
sequences were more rare than about one in 1040 (1 followed by 40 zeros). Having now completed
the experiments I described to Alan Fersht and the graduate students in 2002, I was able to put a
number on the actual rarity—a startling number. With only one good protein sequence for every 1074
bad ones, I had found functional proteins to be roughly
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000– fold more rare than Denton’s criterion! Unless
this number was overturned somehow, a decisive blow had been dealt to the idea that proteins arose
from accidental causes.
Nevertheless, my expectation that this would compel evolutionary biologists to hang “Out of
Business” signs on their doors proved unrealistic. The stream of scientific consensus continued to
flow in Darwin’s direction throughout 2004, and it still does. I continue to press for the change of
thinking I was pressing for then, and this change is as unwelcome now as ever. Real science is
nothing like the utopian version I held at the beginning of my journey. The flag of materialism I
mentioned in chapter 1 still flies proudly over the academy, and people working under that banner are
expected to show due respect. Any serious opposition will bring the color guard out in full force, to
the sound of blowing whistles.

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Otangelo


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Rick Swindell
On dismissing creationist literature out of hand.
Suppose at the time that Nero was going insane, and murdering untold thousands of Christians, a decree had been made that only the god-Emperor could decide what could and could not be published. Either the Christians would have had to break the law and publish on their own, or would have not to publish at all.
If creationists submit their data to mainline journals, they will not read it. Creationists were forced to start their own publishing.
Our Molecular Biology Prof here at UMC got her first degree in physical chemistry, worked in the genetics of fruitflies and of frogs, worked in research at Harvard Medical school, and came to UMC as an evolutionist, teaching molecular biology since 2006. What she studied convinced her that prokaryotes could not possibly have been the ancestors of eukaryotes, and then finally that molecules to man evolution was not defensible from the standpoint of what she had learned.

She submitted one of her papers showing the evidence for this to people in the biology department, but none would read it, and she began to get warnings that she had better keep quiet. When she would not repent they threw her out of her fancy lab in the new Molecular Biology Building, put her in the smallest lab in the oldest biology building on campus, and divided her equipment between two labs. She did not repent and she did not leave.
The next step was to cut off her access to graduate students, assuming that she could not do research at all without them. She would not leave, funding research with her own resources. At this point she has been given one final semester. If she continues to show the students the evidence for her position she will be thrown out, even as a tenured person.
This is altogether typical. I know from personal experience and from the experience of a great many others. If you imagine scientists are strenuously pursuing truth at all costs, and would quickly change positions on origins if the evidence warranted it, you are sadly mistaken.

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Otangelo


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Wikipedia Erases Paleontologist Günter Bechly

Günter Bechly is a distinguished paleontologist, specializing in fossil dragonflies, exquisitely preserved in amber for tens of millions of years. After revealing his support for the theory of intelligent design, he was pushed out as a curator at the State Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, Germany. He subsequently joined Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture as a Senior Fellow. Now we learn that our colleague has suffered another act of censorship: he has been erased from Wikipedia, ostensibly for not being “notable” enough.

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Otangelo


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While I think those behind the publication of the Fine-tuning paper

Using statistical methods to model the fine-tuning of molecular machines and systems
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519320302071?via%3Dihub

on the science journal of Theoretical Biology landed a surprising coup, and the feat that it passed peer review, I think the content is rather disappointing. First, it seems more than the main intuition was to get published in a major secular science journal, rather than to provide information on a new finding.

Secondly, calling the finding a functional amino acid sequence in a vast sequence space as fine-tuned, is unprecedented, and maybe not the adequate description. The sequence is simply functional. And that alone is a feat that demands an explanation, which unlikely is a natural one. It was done by Douglas Axe in 2004, and that was a genuine paper, providing relevant new information, and is worthy of merit.

There ARE examples of fine-tuning in biology, but the authors have not mentioned any of them.

Third, they could have adopted a strategy to point rather implicitly and in a subtle way to an intelligent designer. But rather than that, they did it VERY explicitly and referenced to the entire Discovery Institute crowd, which made it glaringly clear that the boys from Seattle had probably somehow their fingers in the play, in special as it is known that one of the authors has connections to the institute.

As such, it would not wonder if the paper will be soon retracted, rather than be a precursor and true break-through, and paradigm shift. There were other attempts to do the same, as Sternberg & Meyer, and the only result was retraction by the journal, and persecution of the peer reviewers. 

If intelligent design theorists do manage to publish in a peer-reviewed science journal, Darwinists will make sure the editor suffers grievously for it.
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2247-if-intelligent-design-theorists-do-manage-to-publish-in-a-peer-reviewed-science-journal-darwinists-will-make-sure-the-editor-suffers-grievously-for-it

That will probably happen as well in this case. I already saw some asking who reviewed the paper.

The day when the tracks will be changed into a different direction, and when ID will become mainstream, will probably be the day of Saint never. I might be too pessimistic, but the mainstream science culture & landscape is too dominated by a secular scientific establishment that does not seem to be willing to accept this change - the rather quick protest paper in the writing is a sign of that.

Large sample spaces do not imply biological systems are ‘fine-tuned’
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002251932030312X?via%3Dihub#b9005

It would be a healthy move for science itself if the philosophical framework would be permitted to change for the good, and in historical sciences, an intelligent designer permitted as a POSSIBLE explanation. Without pressure, but just letting it go, and giving to any science authors the permission to mention intelligent design as an alternative.

I don't know what would be required for that change to occur, but I feel today, the gap of the two camps is too deep. And forcing it to happen might rather backfire.

Or they eventually have made the bet, played, and will succeed. I hope they will Time will tell. But I am not very hopeful and enthusiastic, that this is the case. The precedence has happened. It's a good move. Let's see....

Biochemical fine-tuning - essential for life
https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t2591-biochemical-fine-tuning-essential-for-life


The journal has now issued a disclaimer from its three editors, which states:
https://retractionwatch.com/2020/10/07/elsevier-journal-disavows-but-does-not-retract-paper-on-intelligent-design/?fbclid=IwAR0iWkTaFkyJzUgoTT4czD8MrhUVB9bjwLJJ4djC9LMAygCXA1vXgxznepw
The Journal of Theoretical Biology and its co-Chief Editors do not endorse in any way the ideology of nor reasoning behind the concept of intelligent design. Since the publication of the paper it has now become evident that the authors are connected to a creationist group (although their addresses are given on the paper as departments in bona fide universities). We were unaware of this fact while the paper was being reviewed. Moreover, the keywords “intelligent design” were added by the authors after the review process during the proofing stage and we were unaware of this action by the authors. We have removed these from the online version of this paper. We believe that intelligent design is not in any way a suitable topic for the Journal of Theoretical Biology.

And the buzz goes on....
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/10/07/jason-rosenhouse-discredits-new-intelligent-design-paper/#comment-1880485

Biology Journal Gets Conned
https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2020/10/biology-journal-gets-conned.html

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