on 2004-05-24 03:08 Peter Kirk wrote:
If so, please give us some evidence for another side.
I have none. I would be astonished if there weren't another side, but far stranger things than that have happened, and I've been wrong before.
But maybe it is something else. For example, if you read evolutionary biologists strongly defending Darwinian evolution against creationist theories, does that imply an internal squabble among evoutionary biologists and therefore that some support creationism? Or does it rather imply a closing of ranks against outsiders who are attacking their discipline, a defence against (what they perceive as) unscientific attacks from those who don't know what they are talking about?
This is a very apt analogy. IMO, it is *precisely* because evolutionary biologists disagree about some fundamental issues in evolutionary biology (such as the relative importance and scope of natural selection) that they "close ranks". As a result, some of the arguments presented against creationism are caricatures. And the "they don't know what they are talking about" rhetoric is common on both sides.
As one who has debated creationists, I know that there are other approaches, that work incrementally better in educating people whose minds are not already made up. But the Semiticists who have posted against the proposal on this group seem to be falling into the same closed-rank pattern that I know so well from my own field.
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