pck Posted April 26, 2014 Posted April 26, 2014 As there seem to be quite a lot of creationists out there, it is not surprising to find some scientists among them, especially those that work in a field completely unrelated to evolution. Today, I came across a biophysicist called Dean H. Kenyon. What makes his case somewhat special is that he seemd to have accepted evolution and even was working in this field and then turned to YEC (or ID) after having read some christian literature: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_H._Kenyon http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2010/07/dean-kenyon-a-y.html A professor discarding his own theory after reading some fundamentalist-christian literature is a story that is hardly to believe, imo. Have you ever heard of this guy? Do you have any material regarding the books of A.E. Wilder-Smith who seem to have had a very strong influence on Kenyon?
florduh Posted April 26, 2014 Posted April 26, 2014 Welcome! ...turned to YEC (or ID) after having read some christian literature There are some very intelligent and educated people who happen also to have an unshakable belief in the Bible story and its heroes, the Koran and its prophet and god, or L. Ron Hubbard and his unassailable teachings. The answer is, faith always trumps logic/facts. Always.
pck Posted April 26, 2014 Author Posted April 26, 2014 Welcome! ...turned to YEC (or ID) after having read some christian literature There are some very intelligent and educated people who happen also to have an unshakable belief in the Bible story and its heroes, the Koran and its prophet and god, or L. Ron Hubbard and his unassailable teachings. The answer is, faith always trumps logic/facts. Always. Thank you. I've been reading in this board for quite a while, but never posted anything so far - I should probably introduce myself and tell my story when I find the time. Of course you're right that a belief can be so strong that one ignores or denies anything that goes against it. But in this case, matters seem to be a bit different to me. It's not that someone who was raised in a fundamentalist environment became a scientist and tried to scientifically proof creation, but the other way around. I don't see many plausible explanations how this can happen. Perhaps he omitted some details of his story, but if he really turned his back towards evolution and become a creationist after reading some creationist books, he either wasn't very convinced of the theory of evolution and his own research work, or the book(s) made some pretty convincing arguments.
Thurisaz Posted April 26, 2014 Posted April 26, 2014 Let's also not forget that even the best and smartest people are sometimes vulnerable to bullshit... extremely vulnerable. Just ask my wife who "lost" a close relative to jehoover's witlesses because they recruited him right on the graveyard after the funeral service... of a family member. Up to that day he'd been a reasonable fellow.
florduh Posted April 26, 2014 Posted April 26, 2014 ...but if he really turned his back towards evolution and become a creationist after reading some creationist books, he either wasn't very convinced of the theory of evolution and his own research work, or the book(s) made some pretty convincing arguments. What I was getting at is that the logical arguments become irrelevant once one is infected by religion. Since accepting the religious version of things he now believes he simply MUST have been wrong . Creationism can't possibly win minds with facts and logic, as it has none to offer.
sdelsolray Posted April 27, 2014 Posted April 27, 2014 What is missing from the online sources is a history of Kenyon's religious indoctrination as a child, if any. I'm not saying that occurred, but it would not be surprising at all.
StillLooking Posted April 27, 2014 Posted April 27, 2014 There is a good article about him at Panda's Thumb: http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2010/07/dean-kenyon-a-y.html
Bhim Posted April 27, 2014 Posted April 27, 2014 Let's also not forget that even the best and smartest people are sometimes vulnerable to bullshit... extremely vulnerable. Just ask my wife who "lost" a close relative to jehoover's witlesses because they recruited him right on the graveyard after the funeral service... of a family member. Up to that day he'd been a reasonable fellow. This is true, but it may not even be the bullshit to which they are vulnerable. I was an undergrad physics major when I became an evangelical, and I was two years into my doctoral work when I deconverted. The whole time I claimed to be an old earth creationist, but really my reasons for converting and deconverting had nothing to do with the facts (or as Florduh put it, faith trumps facts). My "belief" in creationism was incidental, really it was the whole intellectual and moral system of evangelical Christianity that attracted me, and creationism was just something that happened to go along with all of this. So it may be that bullshit is a symptom of the problem here, as opposed to being the underlying cause.
RogueScholar Posted April 27, 2014 Posted April 27, 2014 It's actually very easy to both compartmentalise and shoehorn beliefs into the gaps. I too was an old Earth creationist who believed in evolution. I simply told myself that evolution was the mechanism that god used to "create" humans. There are also fundamentalists who are able to simply ignore imperial evidence in favour of the bible. Richard Dawkins writes about an up and coming scientist who one day, began cutting contradictions and statements out of the bible that didn't have a foundation in empirical evidence and was left with a few scraps of paper. The scientist concluded that evidence in the physical world was false and the bible had to be true. The scientist left his promising career. I believe he is involved with creationist groups and possibly the creation museum?
Ravenstar Posted April 27, 2014 Posted April 27, 2014 It's interesting that a lot of 'scientists' in the creationism company are engineers. You don't find a lot of biologists or geneticists.
Bhim Posted April 27, 2014 Posted April 27, 2014 It's interesting that a lot of 'scientists' in the creationism company are engineers. You don't find a lot of biologists or geneticists. Or astronomers, for that matter. Not to fall into the usual scientist vs. engineer battle we all like to have, but there's a difference between these two professions. In general, scientists create knowledge and engineers apply knowledge. A scientist can certainly become an engineer and vice versa. But most of the engineers in the creationism crowd have never carried out original research projects and learned about the...well, science, of creating knowledge. Even if the facts weren't entirely against them, this is why scientists can't even fathom what goes on in the mind of a creation scientist.
♦ ficino ♦ Posted April 27, 2014 Posted April 27, 2014 As a new Christian, I acquired a small paperback arguing against the ToE. It was authored by an engineer. It made much of how the ToE violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. It was very hard-hitting in other ways, too.
RogueScholar Posted April 27, 2014 Posted April 27, 2014 Which is funny because biochemistry is actually a way of demonstrating the finer points of the second law of thermodynamics as opposed to violating it.
pck Posted April 27, 2014 Author Posted April 27, 2014 It's interesting that a lot of 'scientists' in the creationism company are engineers. You don't find a lot of biologists or geneticists. I think this is what one would expect. The more familiar you are with topics such as evolution and genetics, the less likely it is that you accept (young earth) creationism. But this is exactly what makes the case of Mr. Kenyon so strange. According to the page mentioned by StillLooking and myself, he was even teaching evolution in San Francisco State University and changed his view about it at some point in time.
Ravenstar Posted April 28, 2014 Posted April 28, 2014 Maybe he had a psychotic break? Was he published? Or just teaching? What level? Never mind - I'll look it up. Sometimes really smart people can go a bit nuts fairly easily. Academia can be brutal, maybe he wasn't talented enough to play with the big boys and his ego took a dive? In the creationist arena he'd be a superstar. Who knows… could have had a tragedy happen he couldn't deal with. He obviously hasn't applied the scientific process to himself. 1
pck Posted April 29, 2014 Author Posted April 29, 2014 Another interesting case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_McIntosh_(professor) (Fitting both in this thread and to the comic above ).
Neverlandrut Posted May 3, 2014 Posted May 3, 2014 ...but if he really turned his back towards evolution and become a creationist after reading some creationist books, he either wasn't very convinced of the theory of evolution and his own research work, or the book(s) made some pretty convincing arguments. What I was getting at is that the logical arguments become irrelevant once one is infected by religion. Since accepting the religious version of things he now believes he simply MUST have been wrong . Creationism can't possibly win minds with facts and logic, as it has none to offer. Keep in mind too that when people have an agenda, they tend to oversimplify their stories. They will look back and interpret their past in light of their beliefs. It maybe that this guy was an evolutionist who bought into religion for non-logical reasons; maybe he felt an emotional connection to the message. Then, after the brainwashing set in, he concluded that evolution and anything that goes against his new pet belief systems at be wrong.
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