Monday, February 12, 2007

oh, paradigms

This article was published today in the NYT about a doctoral candidate at the University of Rhode Island who is a 'young earth creationist' (believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old), and yet wrote his dissertation on a reptile that vanished from the earth about 65 million years ago. How could this be, you ask? He's just "separating the different paradigms."

(I don't get it.)

There's an interesting argument presented, though. The people who are fighting the awarding of this dude's Ph.D. are of the mind that "fundamentalists who capitalize on secular credentials 'to miseducate the public' [are] doing a disservice."

How do people feel about this? Is there any place for creationism in science? Is it possible (or rather, is it acceptable) to "separate the paradigms" in order to get a Ph.D.? The article refers almost sarcastically to one man as a "creationist wearing the secular mantle of science;" should creationist scientists be vilified in this way?

Discuss.

5 comments:

Christina said...

No, there is no place in science for creationism. "Creationist scientist" is an oxymoron. They look for things that they can't answer-like a scientist would- but instead of trying to figure it out like a scientist, they just say god did it and then get huffy about it. NOT SCIENCE.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I think it's ok to discriminate against anyone and say they shouldn't be allowed to get a PhD based only on his confusing beliefs. I'd just hope that people would realize that having a PhD doesn't mean you're right, or good at anything for that matter.

Cressida said...

I think the dude should be discriminated against, especially since he's already using his degree in the opposite way that he's meant to be using it. That is, degrees in science give people authority, whether they should or not. He's using his authority to promote a scientifically unsound agenda. What if I were to behave in a scientifically unsound manner that had nothing to do with religion; like what if I falsified data? I wouldn't - and shouldn't - be granted a degree. Juat because this dude is being a dumbass with the help of religion doesn't mean he should be protected. Religion may be used as an excuse when people kill gay dudes, but that doesn't mean it's a legitimate excuse.

*steps off soap box*

Christina said...

I think if he's actually writing about reptiles and not making shit up and trying to put it in his thesis, he should get a PhD. What would be the difference between not letting this guy get a PhD and a state deciding that no one who believes in evolution can get a PhD from its public university? Killing someone because they are gay (or for any reason in my opinion) is absolutely wrong, but you can believe whatever you want, no matter how many letters you have after your name, thank God (harharhar).

Pabs said...

hmmm... I agree with the opinion that it's not the university's place to grant or deny the degree based on religious creed. However, I do wonder what this guy may plan on doing with his degree, and I would have a problem with him using his credentials to bolster creationism or I.D. as science. He's teaching anthropology at a Christian university, and the biggest question in my head is what is this guy going to teach his students? How to do objective science? Or how to tell people what they want to hear?

His justification "I'm just shifting paradigms when I tell you about what I do, as opposed to what I really believe happened" in this case sounds to me like he's telling people what they want to hear (65M years ago if I talk to you because that's what you believe in, although in my head that really means 6000 years ago.) From a physical standpoint, these are mutually exclusive claims and only one can be correct.

That being said, I believe that religion is not equipped to answer scientific questions and vice versa, and that likewise one can justify having different "paradigms" when it comes down to issues of science or religion. Whether you believe there's a God and whether evolution happened in my mind don't have to be exclusive, because they can't be compared side by side. How can science prove that there is no God? How can a religious belief prove that evolution did not occur?

However, this guy's argument seems soft when it comes to physical, measurable things such as how old a bone may be based on carbon dating (although I do agree that it's not an entirely accurate process all the time, getting it wrong by 4 zeroes seems a stretch).

Aside from that, I'm a firm believer that things fall under their own weight, and that this guy's credibility in the scientific community may stand on shaky ground. I imagine that anything he publishes would be scrutinized carefully, just like everything else should. But when it comes to him saying that a bone is 6,000 years old when tests tell you otherwise, I think it would be easy enough to challenge that argument.

Anyway, sorry for the ranting.

Dave said...

Appropriate:

http://xkcd.com/c154.html