A Rebuttal in a Long and Arduous Debate... Just the Kind of Think i Enjoy

In response to A Request for JC Masterpiece Regarding Evolution posted by Jewish Atheist.

By the way, in direct response to "I think it is simply because he has been taught only one side of the story, not because he is close-minded", no person can ever attend a public school of any sort and not know about the theory of evolution. It's the problems with that theory that most people are not really told about in school.

That's an interesting article and i appreciate the gesture. Unfortunately, i have done enough research and research papers in my years of undergraduate and graduate work to know that science is far, far from infallible.

All you have to do is look at all of the times the "missing link" between ape and man has been found. In one case it was the tooth that was thought to be some supposed human ancestor. It was given to Dr. Henry Fairfield Osbom, the head of the department of palaeontology at New York’s American Museum of Natural History. He thought it might have been a tooth from a "missing link". A drawing of what the "missing link" and his wife could possibly have looked like appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1922. Later it is quietly discovered that that tooth wasn't really any sort of link at all, but rather it was the tooth of a wild pig. Of course this was swept under the rug. In spite of the fact that the origional article had posted in a major newspaper, the short rebuttal appeared in a scientific journal that the general public would not read. Hmmm, i wonder why that was?

The past century is strewn with absolute proofs of "missing links" only to have those "missing links" later proven to be false. This kind of thing happens all the time. Science and scientists prove something only to turn around a couple of days, few months, a century later and someone comes along and "proves" that the last person was wrong.

I thought that his quote from the Quotations Page, Quotes of the Day for August 22 applies beautifully to this concept;

"Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had."

Michael Crichton, Caltech Michelin Lecture, January 17, 2003
US author & screenwriter (1942 - )
I thought that this quote was perfect as it summs up the nature of science, scientific studies, and research beautifully.

Needless to say i take many scientific journals and studies with a grain of salt. Oftentimes there is possibly some truth in what they say, but just as with bad exegesis of the Bible, people tend to read into the facts what they want to.

It's funny sometimes when i think about it because so many people put so much faith in science that those people treat it like a god even when it's falicies lay right in front of them, and to some people science is their god. I've seen the same thing with education, religion (that the religion itself and not God is the god), the concept of love, and especially money. The more i've thought about this idea the more that i agree with what one of my professors said once. Everyone has their own gods that they worship. It doesn't matter that they aren't made of metal and people don't physically bow down to them. They are their own gods none the less. (not an exact quote, but you get the idea)