Archive for the ‘Scientists’ category

Dr. Colin Patterson

August 2nd, 2009

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On November 5, 1981, the late  Colin Patterson (who at the time was the senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History in London, the editor of the professional journal published by the museum, and one of the world’s foremost fossil experts) delivered a public address to his evolutionist colleagues at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In his speech, Dr. Patterson astonished those colleagues when he stated that he had been “kicking around” non-evolutionary, or “anti-evolutionary,” ideas for about eighteen months. As he went on to describe it:

One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That’s quite a shock to learn that one can be misled so long. Either there was something wrong with me, or there was something wrong with evolution theory (1981).

Dr. Patterson said he knew there was nothing wrong with him, so he started asking various individuals and groups a simple question: “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence.” He tried it on the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar at the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all he got there “was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, ‘I do know one thing—it ought not to be taught in high school.’ ” He then remarked, “It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. We know it ought not to be taught in high school, and that’s all we know about it.”

Dr. Patterson went on to say: “Then I woke up and realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolution as revealed truth in some way.” But more important, he termed evolution an “anti-theory” that produced “anti-knowledge.” He also suggested that “the explanatory value of the hypothesis is nil,” and that evolution theory is “a void that has the function of knowledge but conveys none.” To use Patterson’s wording, “I feel that the effects of hypotheses of common ancestry in systematics has not been merely boring, not just a lack of knowledge, I think it has been positively anti-knowledge” (1981; cf. Bethell, 1985, 270:49-52,56-58,60-61).

Dr. Patterson made it clear, as I wish to do here, that he had no fondness for the creationist position. Yet he did refer to his stance as “anti-evolutionary,” which was quite a change for a man who had authored several books (one of which was titled simply Evolution) in the field that he later acknowledged was capable of producing only “anti-knowledge.”

The above article was taken out of an article published in the Apologetics Press :: Sensible Science 

Is Evolution a “Fact” of Science?

by Bert Thompson, Ph.D.

GREAT SCIENTISTS

July 25th, 2009

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It is false to say that you cannot be a true scientist if you believe in creation. The very founders of the scientific methods and the scientists who developed some of the most important foundational principles of modern science were primarily creationists. Creationists find themselves in the company of great men of science such as Robert Boyle, George Washington Carver, Michael Faraday, John Ambrose Fleming, James Joule, Lord Kelvin, Carolus Linneaus, Matthew Maury, Joseph Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel, Samuel F.B. Morse, Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, William Ramsay and Leonardo da Vinci. Many scientists, such as Carolus Linnaeus, George Washington Carver and Matthew Maury, claim to have received their inspirational ideas directly from the Bible. There are also many creation scientists today who are top in their fields. Their, belief in creation and a young earth has not proven to be a hindrance, but actually an asset to their scientific endeavors.

The discoveries of these great men of science are a testament to their belief in the Creator of a designed universe. Their Confidence to pursue scientific discoveries was and continues to be a natural outcome of their belief that discovering how the world works is possible because the universe is the product of an intelligent and all-powerful Designer of order.

The above was taken from Men of Science, Men of God, p. 1-3 as quoted in A Closer Look At The Evidence, by Richard & Tina Kleiss.

The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple. (Psalm 119: 130)

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