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'55 Science Paper Retracted to Thwart Creationists
i_like_spam writes "The New York Times has up a story about a paper published in 1955 by Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College. The paper, entitled 'Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life', speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in the Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, 'one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.' Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, but today it is winning Dr. Jacobson acclaim that he does not want — from creationists who cite it as proof that life could not have emerged on earth without divine intervention. So after 52 years, he has retracted the paper. 'Dr. Jacobson's retraction is in "the noblest tradition of science," Rosalind Reid, editor of American Scientist, wrote in its November-December issue, which has Dr. Jacobson's letter. His letter shows, Ms. Reid wrote, "the distinction between a scientist who cannot let error stand, no matter the embarrassment of public correction," and people who "cling to dogma."'"
If you RTFA, you would see that he reread his paper and found many errors that no one else had found yet. He retracted the paper because of the errors. Of course he might have other motives but that is anybody's guess
The nature of the citations made him re-read it, and realize he'd made factual errors. Those errors were being used to support the arguments of the people citing the paper. So he retracted it to remove those errors from circulation.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Where in the bible does it state that the earth is 6000 years old? Can you please quote this?
This site should provide you with the answer to your question. In particular, this document lays out the argument quite nicely.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The New York Times is wrong again. He did not retract the entire paper. He retracted "two brief passages". Besides, there is recent evidence that water existed early in the Earth's formation so his assumptions about the Hadean environment might be obsolete.
The original retraction letter is inspiring. I am glad that Dr. Jacobson set the record straight, even though it would have been easier for him to ignore his earlier mistakes.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
Actually, every person who believes in a creation story really is basing this belief solely on dogma. There is absolutely no evidence supporting any of the supernatural claims in any of the genesis myths of any of the worlds' religions. None.
Scientists believe knowledge comes from evidence and the logical conclusions derivable from that evidence.
Religious people believe knowledge comes from "faith" (aka "it is written"), which is the polar opposite of evidence.
The so called "moderate" religious people exist in a state of mind called "cognitive dissonance" whereby all knowledge is derived from evidence and logic EXCEPT knowledge pertaining to topics they have been indoctrinated from birth to accept due to faith. This is your textbook dogma.
Don't take a textbook definition of dogma and call it anything else. That's really disingenuous of you.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
It wasn't religion that stumbled Einstein (he wasn't religious in any meaningful sense of the word), but it was his sense of aesthetic. He was the last of the Classical Physicists, and in that tradition, he wanted a clockwork universe, and not one that did funky things like expand from some singularity where mathematics broke down, nor did he want one that was at some subatomic level was a chaotic bubbling brew where the arrow of time and causality lost their meaning.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you're in science, it's basically your opinion that scientific theories are only useful if they're predictive. If you don't buy that, you're not in science.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
First, notice the way you had to qualify your definition, i.e. "belief without proof". You recognize that the word "belief", anyway, just indicates that you accept something to be true. It doesn't say anything about the justification for your belief, only that you have the belief. Well, in our translations of the Bible, "believe" and "faith" are both used to translate the same root word, in verb or noun form (pistis, pistia, etc.).
The actual meaning of "faith" is complex. It has more than one sense, both in the Biblical languages and in English. It can mean fidelity, loyalty, faithfulness. "I made the promise in good faith." "He has been a faithful companion." It can mean conviction of the truth of something. It can mean trust in something, or reliance on it. There's an interesting verse in Paul's letter to the Roman church, with three different uses: disbelieve, unbelief, and faithfulness--where the third use is referring to God's own "faith". That's right, God is said to have faith--and in that case it obviously has nothing to do with a blind leap. (Here's the verse, if you're curious, along with the language resources.)
An illustration. Most people will say that Christian faith is more than simple intellectual assent; it involves a trust component. Trust? Aren't I talking about blind faith now? No, not necessarily. As I said above, there's a sense of trusting in something, relying on it. I would compare it to trusting in the skill of a pilot and the construction of an airplane to take you safely where you're going. Your trust might be blind--perhaps if you're from an isolated tribal culture with no familiarity with modern technology. Or it might be extremely well-founded, based on a familiarity with the engineering of the manufacturer and the maintenance procedures of the airline and the training & experience of the pilot. Or it might be slightly less researched--maybe you just know that the airline has a good track-record, and so you just trust in all the rest. In other words, your faith can have different levels of warrant. And the more research you've done, the stronger your faith will be.
And that is precisely how I view Christian faith--made stronger by better evidence. I trust in the promises of God and the work of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. I judge them to be trustworthy, and I judge myself to have good enough reason to exercise that trust.
If you want to read a defense of the idea that the Bible does not ask for a blind leap, but trust in a reliable source, you can check out this essay by Greg Koukl. (He makes a good positive case, though it's not exhaustive.)
Hey, neat. You put that there to illustrate the 'bias' point? In the UK, Australia, and maybe some countries that were colonies of the UK until recently it's Maths for Mathematics. Nice, no?
whoa whoa whoa... careful. The fundies love to jump on that one. Fossils can't be dated with C14. We have other methods to do that.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Darwinism explains everything we know about the animal kingdom. There are no "missing links", just animals missing from the fossil record (which doesn't contain all the animals that have ever existed, as creating a fossil requires a lot of luck in itself). We can see, just from our DNA, that we are related to the other apes - that we have common ancestors. We have observed evolution in laboratories. What are these evolutionary leaps you talk about that you claim disprove Darwinian evolution? I'd be very interested to hear :)
You missed a better one. The first verse of Hebrews 11 would make a stronger case: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."
I pointed you to an essay for a "positive" Biblical case for my view. That is, it points out that knowledge based on good evidence is a major theme in the Gospels and letters of the New Testament. I also said it wasn't exhaustive. I meant that it doesn't deal with criticisms. Specifically, I had in mind that it doesn't address Hebrews 11:1 and Jesus' words to Thomas. I don't think it's at all hard to see why they do not contradict my view, but that essay didn't go through those issues.
Here's the problem: Did you actually read John 20:29? What does it say? That Thomas saw, and believed. Thomas believed. Notice that. He believed. Look at it again. Did Jesus say that his faith wasn't real faith because he wanted justification? No! Did he criticize Thomas? Well...Maybe. Not directly. He praised others who had been willing to believe without seeing him directly. That's either indirect criticism of Thomas' skepticism (as people usually assume), or it's praise for people willing to believe without the level of proof Thomas had. But neither means that faith must be blind.
Jesus' point may have been that it will be harder for people to believe who don't get to see the resurrected body, so they deserve praise. But if he was criticizing Thomas, I'd say it was because his skepticism was not reasonable. It bordered on paranoia. John 20:29 doesn't happen in a vacuum, and it wasn't addressed to you. It was addressed to Thomas, after 20 chapters of Jesus demonstrating divine power, walking on water, raising a dead man, then predicting his own death and resurrection. (I don't care if you don't believe it happened. We're talking about the meaning of the events and the claims. We're defining the Biblical worldview, not talking about whether it's true. You're free to disbelieve, but you're not free to redefine what they said and meant.) After what Thomas had seen, his insistence to see and feel Jesus' hands and side was not reasoned caution, it was a bitter spirit of forgetfulness and disbelief.
As I said, Hebrews 11:1 is stronger--if you read it as a sentence in a vacuum. But keep reading the rest of the chapter. It's often called the "faith hall of fame"--it lists a bunch of Old Testament people who showed great faith. And in many (most?) of those examples, the faith for which they are being praised was exhibited after they had spoken directly with God or seen demonstrations of divine power. Their belief was warranted, and the fact that they had seen proof of God did not make "faith" an empty thing. If you read 11:13, it's more clear. "These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar". They had faith that God would deliver on his promises, even though they died before seeing those promises fulfilled. That's the context. The context does not bear out the idea that 11:1 means faith is only faith if it's blind.
On the basis of these observations, I'm rather confident that the Bible does not ask for blind faith. You may not believe that the evidence is good, but that doesn't mean the Bible is asking for belief without warrant.