Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

“Erased” paleontologist Bechly gets support from Science and Health Council

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Remember Gunter Bechly? That gifted and productive German paleontologist who got driven out and also disappeared from Wikipedia because he thinks there is design in nature?*

Alex Berezow for American Council for Science and Health noticed and writes:

If a respected scientist endorses a controversial view, should he or she be erased from history? The editors at Wikipedia think so, but only if the controversial opinion is one they personally dislike.

That’s precisely what happened to a respected German paleontologist, Günter Bechly. His biography on Wikipedia has been deleted. Poof. Gone. It’s like he never existed.

According to German Wikipedia, where a version of Dr. Bechly’s page (which appears to have been created in 2012) still exists, he was once an atheist and supporter of Richard Dawkins. Now, he is a devoted Catholic and, as of 2016, an outspoken proponent of Intelligent Design. For that crime, the English version of Wikipedia erased him from history. More.

All true, but then Berezow offers,

To be sure, Intelligent Design is flawed. Science works on the assumption that natural phenomena have natural explanations. However, that assumption is not inconsistent with belief in God; indeed, many scientists are deeply religious or spiritual2. What the assumption does demand, though, is for science to engage in methodological atheism, even if its practitioners are not philosophically atheist. There are many scientists who attend mosque on Friday, synagogue on Saturday, or church on Sunday.

Berezow and the Council would be a bigger help to Bechly and others if they would get up to speed on the issues.

What are “natural” explanations? Do they exclude design in nature? How do we know? What about the new demand that we see consciousness as an evolved illusion? Does “methodological atheism” require that? Could we not just be honest for once about what naturalism (“methodological atheism”) really means?

What about the fact that the smart money knows that Darwinism is necrotic, held in place by the soft corruption of old networks, whether or not there is design in nature?

It’s a good thing Berezow’s mind is in the right place on the assault of post-modernism on science but – the trouble is – the problem is more advanced than he thinks. And religious groups that market necrotic Darwinism to Christians (Berezow mentions one) are a minor part of a very big problem, not any kind of a solution.

*At least then Bechly was able start writing more freely about the problems in human paleontology.

See also: Gunter Bechly: Decline of science imaged in a single paragraph

Human evolution 2018: Not only upended icons but suspicious relics.

and

Genetic novelty conference Salzburg July 4-8, 2018: “Errors cannot explain genetic novelty and complexity.” Conference statement: “This new empirically based perspective on the evolution of genetic novelty will have more explanatory power in the future than the “error-replication” narrative of the last century.”

Comments
Is Gunter Bechly back in Wikipedia? https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BCnter_Bechlyjawa
June 23, 2020
June
06
Jun
23
23
2020
06:59 PM
6
06
59
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply