Yes I should have mentioned this earlier. Ryan Foley of Melbourne sent me this email on January 29:

This may be of interest. It was an advert in the Herald Sun today, p. 18. It is advertising an exhibition/celebration of evolution/Darwin at Melbourne Museum. What I found interesting is at the end of their list of activities they state ‘lectures, debates and church services’. They give a website: www.evolutionaustralia.org.au

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

A year-long festival of events celebrating evolution began yesterday with a special service at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Here too is CMI’s appropriately entitled response: Compromising churchians in self-destruct mode

This is the same Anglican diocese that recommended the Victorian government decriminalise abortion. It figures.

Ewan McDonald.

Sorry, but we are not buying your bluff here. Wasting our time whining about how I only print comments of those who agree with me is certainly a good way to ensure comments will not appear. With 17 of your comments on this website, you have had a very good run here, as have hundreds of other atheists, Darwinists, secularists, and so on. So please spare us this silliness about censorship.

As I have said on numerous occasions, I am more than happy to debate those who are honest seekers and diligent enquirers. But I am not going to spend all my time with those who are true believers, who have already made up their minds, and simply want to push their own agendas. As my rules state, such people are welcome to set up their own websites and pontificate to their heart’s content.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

I’d dearly love to respond to Mansel, Mark and Roger but let’s face it – there isn’t any point is there? I’ll spend valuable time explaining how Mansel’s appendix example does not support his case, how Mark’s sporting match analogy fails and Roger’s glib dismissal of my source as ‘arrogant’ and ‘illogical’ is pretty much all I expected from him, and I’ll visit your website in a few days to find my comments still ‘awaiting moderation’….

Heather Bates

In what, sadly, tends to be typical of such ‘academic’ responses, they are arrogant, just as illogical and have a very disturbing tendency to only apply the ‘rules’ of criticism in one-way, i.e. if a creationist makes a single error (in the mind, or worldview of the person making the assessment), then the whole work is dismissed, or if material is published after the production of the book that again apparently contradicts it (even when that is still very much open to question), then it is classified as ‘embarrassing.’ If the same thing happens to a ‘real’ scientist – i.e. someone towing the official party line – then it is called ‘research’ or ‘progress.’

It is appropriate to observe further illogical comments in your post whereby you set up what is essentially a straw-man argument regarding the supernatural. Creation scientists also ‘roll up their sleeves and do hard work.’ Believing in the supernatural does not mean all the answers come by divine decree!

The advances in modern science started in the Western world based on a belief that God was consistent and so His creation could be studied. Initially, the belief was that such findings would not be inconsistent with theology, but that overlooked the problem that the humanists would highjack the ‘academy’ and change the rules.

Although others have basically responded to your comments on advancement of knowledge in the scientific world, I would add that this is also a flawed question. Creationists may have different views to your own naturalistic ones, but in many cases they are very well educated – and have the benefit of understanding both sides of the argument – the naturalistic, atheistic position as well as their own. They also have to know the ‘rules’ if they are to have a career in the scientific world – one of which is to hide one’s belief! So, how do you know that many advances (such as those developed by Sanford) are not coming from closet creationists?

A bigger issue to your question about advancement of knowledge is why is it that the scientific ‘academy’ wishes to exclude potential areas of research, avenues to pursue in that research or even who can do research? This ’ban’ is based purely a philosophical issue. If the biases and prejudices of your side of the debate and, in many cases, the ignorance of your opponents’ views could be removed, then who knows what could be achieved?

Roger Birch

See also Creationism, Science and Peer Review.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

….of course, a very small problem with your analogy of the Holocaust is that there are photos and a fair amount of credible testimony from eyewitnesses, some who are still alive today.

I trust you will be forthcoming with a similar level of evidence for your assertions about evolution in order to maintain the validity of that analogy?

Sorry, but, as Bill has pointed out, and Jonathan, and Roger, etc. etc., for a while now across a few posts, your ‘peer-reviewed’ mantra has no credibility because – well, let me use an analogy that would actually have some value as an illustration:

What you are basically advocating is this – Team 1 plays Team 2 in a sporting match.  But Team 2 gets to choose the umpires (from their own team, mind you), the players on Team 1, and write up the post-match report as well.  And even gets to change the rules if Team 1 still manages to start scoring goals.  But all that is considered fair in your view, and in the view of others.  Is it really surprising that many on Team 1 just end up forgetting about that match altogether?  And just how valid is any ‘victory’ of Team 2?

You’re not a Collingwood supporter perchance?  ;-)

By and large, the game is rigged, Heather.  (Not as a conspiracy, btw, but as a result of the common rebellion against God and truth in people’s hearts.)  Why can’t you see that?

And that excuse not to check out Expelled is really exceptionally lame.  As Bill has pointed out, ironically you are imitating the very behaviour the doco uncovers!  I actually haven’t seen it yet either – I might just get Mansel to offer to buy me a copy too!  ;-)

I suspect you think it good enough for creationists to buy evolutionists materials, but you won’t even accept a freebie?  Let the readers of this thread decide what to make of your position.

“It’s (EXPELLED) going to appeal strongly to the religious, the paranoid, the conspiracy theorists, and the ignorant –– which means they’re going to draw in about 90% of the American market.”
-Atheist blogger and fabulist PZ Myers, on a film he has not yet seen.
- From the movie’s website.

Funny how much of that quote sounds awfully similar to what you write, Heather.  Doesn’t it bother you even just a little the company who you effectively agree with?

Mark Rabich

In response to your challenge to identify one area of the natural world where we would be better advanced if we had taken a supernatural view (such as the Bible being true) rather than the assumption of methodological naturalism, allow me to nominate medical science. In particular let me nominate the study and knowledge of the so-called vestigial organs.

Taking a methodological naturalist approach it is perfectly consistent to assume that they have no function because they are left-overs from evolution. And this is what was assumed by the scientific establishment for decades past, because of their adherence to evolution.

If we start from the position that the Bible is true, however, we must assume that they do (or at the very least did, only a few thousand years ago) have a purpose because they were designed by God.

Now, over the past few decades new purposes keep being found. The human appendix, for example, is now thought to act as a trap for bacteria to “reboot” the gut after infections. And we would have known of this sooner if we had looked for a use we knew it must have, rather than assumed naturalism all-the-way-down.

Medical procedures and patients’ health would have been more advanced as people would not have had their appendices removed as a precaution under the false notion that it was just a useless leftover.

creationontheweb.com/content/view/3039/

What is to be concluded from all this? It is that knowing and applying the truth (i.e. the Bible) has real, positive implications for all of man’s endeavours (including applying the scientific method).

Mansel Rogerson, Melbourne

Another great example Heather: you dismiss out of hand a documentary that you have not even bothered to view. If I had dismissed Dawkin’s The God Delusion without even bothering to read it, the atheist cheer squad would be up in arms – and rightly so. Yet because you are a true believer, you don’t even need to read or view what the other side is saying. As I said, you already have your mind made up (in true unscientific fashion) and simply will not allow the evidence to be followed. Indeed, you simply suppress the evidence, and shoot the messengers who bring any countervailing evidence. In other words, you do the very things so well-documented in Expelled.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch