Feedback for January 2004

'''Claim:'''

Forrest M. Mims III was fired from a job editing Scientific American's "Amateur Scientist" column because he was a creationist, a clear case of religious discrimination.

'''Source:''' # Hartwig, Mark D., 1990 (21 Nov.) Defending Darwinism: How far is too far? Origins Research Archives 13(1). http://www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or131/mimsrpt3.htm # van der Meer, Jitse, 1995 (12 Jul.). Letter. http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199505-10/0550.html

'''Response:''' # Mims was not fired; he was never hired in the first place. A private company does not have to have an excuse for not hiring someone they don't like.

MIMS REPLIES: Jonathan Piel assigned me to take over "The Amateur Scientist" in a phone call he initiated. He then flew me to New York to discuss the details. I cancelled a book assignment and a column to accept the offer.

# Many evolutionists agree that Piel, the editor of Scientific American, did not act appropriately. Mims' work should be judged on its own merits.

MIMS REPLIES: I have received many comments of support from skeptics and others who happen to differ with my views on creation/design, but who support my right to have such views.

# Arguably, Mims would not have been good for the position. He would not be competent in the field of biology, and his creationist views could likely deny the validity of much of astronomy and geology as well. Piel was reportedly worried mostly about the public relations problems of involving the magazine with creationism, and given Mims' subsequent actions, his worries were justified. Although many people believe Piel made the wrong decision, his decision was not without merit. Mims was discriminated against because of his antiscientific bias; he most certainly was not discriminated against because of his religion.

MIMS REPLIES: I publish papers on biology and atmospheric science in peer-reviewed journals. See www.forrestmims.org for a list. As for religious discrimination, Piel's statements to me during a telephone call amounted to religious discrimination. See his comments in Harpers magazine. Two junior editors asked me about the Bible and abortion. Two senior editors strongly supported me.

# Mims himself emerged from the incident looking very far from virtuous. At least once, he recorded a phone call with Piel without Piel's knowledge or permission, and when Mims was not hired, he started an all-out smear campaign against Piel. Others who have dealt with Mims have said that they would never consider hiring him for anything because he was so abrasive and insufferable.

-- Mark Isaak

MIMS REPLIES: I was advised by an attorney friend to record one conversation to establish the religious discrimination issue. That one recording captured Piel's praise of my columns and the essence of the discrimination issue. HARPER'S magazine published a transcript of part of this recording. I never conducted "an all-out smear campaign against" Jonathan Piel or took any legal action against him. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN warned me not to speak out. I spoke out anyway. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Texas ACLU and many other organizations and individuals sent letters to SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN and the media protesting what happened and/or advocating my religious freedom. I am happy to report that the magazine has new staff and has since published three of my letters to the editor and a column based on an instrument that I designed. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN also published a news feature about my study of major changes in the population of airborne bacteria in Brazil during the 1997 burning season. (These changes were highly correlated with reduced solar UV-B caused by severe smoke pollution.) I bear no hard feelings toward Jonathan Piel or SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, and I look forward to submitting more material to the magazine. Instruments I developed for SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN that were never published led to a Rolex Award (1993) and a new career doing science and publishing many scientific papers that might otherwise have never been written.

-- Forrest M. Mims III (www.forrestmims.org) 12 January 2004.

Also, I would like to comment that this is a tremendous site. 5 years ago, I was on the fence as far as TOE was concerned. This site (the FAQs in particular) pointed out so many misconceptions that I previously had and and answered every question I could think of.

Evolution isn't a science because you can't observe things that happened millions of years ago.

Buy [sic] you can observe the RESULTS of things that happened millions of years ago.

You are making an assumption to prove your point. You assume that these things did, in fact, happen millions of years ago. This is circular reasoning.

1. What was the first life form (you know, the one that WAS spontaneously generated)? [What is the simplest possible life form, and wouldn't that one be a good candidate?]

2. Why did spontaneous generation stop?

3. Why has unnatural selection been ineffective in creating a new species?

4. Why do evolutionists so VEHEMENTLY believe in the ABSENCE of God?

Finally, the evolutionists I respect the most are those who question their own theories the hardest. That's how science progresses. I don't hear a lot of "self challenge" among most evolutionists. I DO hear a lot of irrelevant criticism of other people (NOT just their ideas, but the people themselves). Ultimately, this is the least satisfying aspect of evolution: it CAN'T be questioned! (In that regard, it's IDENTICAL to fundamental creationism.) Best wishes to you, evolutionists and creationists alike.

As for humans having more pain, that seems likely given that our infants have relatively large heads, but I see a couple problems with being absolutely sure of this. One is how to quantify pain in an animal that can't even describe what it's feeling -- even doing this with conscious, articulate people has always been a problem. And nowadayds we often don't give birth in ways that are similar to other mammals -- for instance, in cows, it's suggested that licking the infant, and therefore ingesting some of the amniotic fluid, reduces pain. Here's the link for that one, from a study at the University of Geulph, Ontario, Canada: cow lick. So the basic premise of the writer is flawed -- non-human animals do experience pain before, during, and after childbirth. And there's big problems in trying to determine just how much of a difference there is (if any) between humans and non-human animals with respect to childbirth pain. Keep in mind also that until recently, we didn't really care all that much about pain in other animals, and we didn't do a lot of study on it. Keep up the good work.

Matt

Mr. Tucker a.k.a., MR T.

Wilkins position is essentially one of logical positivism. He attempts to distinguish philosophical naturalism from methodological naturalism and explanatory naturalism. One must be in quite a state of cognitive dissonance to disbelief philosophical naturalism, and then turn around and procede on the assumption that it must be true. Logic demands that either 'A' or 'Non-A'. Wilkin's rhetoric that one can "accept the methodological assumption of naturalism in science without invalidating non-naturalistic ontologies" is nothing more than verbal legerdemain. It is just this kind of philosophical naivete that characterizes much of scientific thought in general, and in the field of evolution specifically. The problem with evolutionists (and many creationists) is that they waste time arguing about what counts as 'science' and what doesn't. Those issues are irrelevant. The real issue is, "what's real and true?" and "how do you know?" Wilkins' opinion that "what science delivers is by far the most successful form of knowledge gathering humans have ever developed" is exactly that - an opinion. How does he know that? Has he 'scientifically' verified this by examining all claims to knowledge ever made and verifying which were true and which were false? What kind of 'scientific' experiment can be performed to know what 'truth' is, or if it even exists? Can 'truth' be observed in a test-tube? How can one 'scientifically' verify the intentionality of an idea? Can the correspondence between one's sense perception and the external world be scientifically tested without assuming said correspondence a priori? What kind of scientific experiment justifies the principle of induction without already assuming it? These are all important metaphysical questions, none of which science can provide an answer. What's more, these are issues that are foundational to the scientific enterprise, for without things like 'truth' and 'induction' science wouldn't even be possible. Good scientists can observe regularities, and they can build radios and rockets based on those observations. But, when it comes to evolutionists pontificating on issues of origins, all there is are sloppy metaphysicians dressed in lab coats.

Necessary entirely for the reason of attempting to repudiate the stubborn insistance by some that the glaryingly obvious they see before them is not.

Keep up the excellent work.

I enjoyed your article. My wife summed up the universe concept concisely one day while watching an show on "Angels". Multiple people were reporting that they had seen an angel who had led them to safety. This was forwarded as proof of angels. My wife, who is significantly more spiritual than I, commented "So what about all the people who didn't survive who saw angels leading them to 'safety'."

Thanks!

Brad

However, my posting received criticisms from Gary Hurd. Dr. Hurd found it necessary to first point out to me that the site was never intended to include information from academic fields outside the scope of bio-evolutionary science—A moot point since that was exactly the problem that I was bringing to light.

However, the core of Dr. Hurd’s criticisms were aimed at the Kalam argument, a philosophical proposition I referred to which seeks a first cause of the universe from the implications of the Big Bang. Hurd seemed to shrug off this argument simply because the most outspoken proponent, philosopher William Lane Craig, also has a theological background (Craig has 2 Ph.D.s). The oh-so-witty Hurd even cleverly refers to the philosopher as “Rev. Craig.”

However, despite Hurd’s criticisms, the Kalam argument and philosophical variations of it are widely discussed and debated by philosophers (and some prominent astrophysicists as well) in mainstream institutions. Hurd’s ignorance of this fact is only typical of your site—Yes, Dr., believe it or not, there are other meaningful disciplines within academia besides your own which tackle origins.

Hurd wrote:

“it is highly unlikely that [Craig’s] supernatural cosmology can sustain the rigorous challenge of scientific review.”

What “rigorous challenge of scientific review?” Craig is a philosopher! Only scientific statements made by philosophers are subject to scientific review. Would Dr. Hurd also propose a rigorous scientific review of, say, ethics?

I remain convinced that most of those giving input on this web site have knowledge limited only to the earth sciences and couldn’t care less about other scientific and academic disciplines. As I have previously pointed out, the most ironic thing about all this is that the biological sciences tell us little to nothing about ultimate origins—Big Bang theorists could most claim that monopoly. In short, the information on this site is often over-simplistic (particularly when drawing theological and philosophical conclusions) and only serves to further confuse the masses.