Two Harvard science PhDs who are YECs!

Faith & Science Conversation
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Kurt Wise worked directly with Stephen Jay Gould.

Nathaniel Jeanson got his PhD I think from the Harvard Med School according to RationalWiki.

Thoughts?

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Two out of how many?

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Titles do not tell if the persons are wrong or correct. Also coworkers or teachers do not matter.
What matters are the facts: how well the person can justify his/her opinions.

PhD from a western university (especially those with Anglo-Saxon style teaching) is just a ‘drivers licence’ to independent research, as one researcher expressed the matter. Work experience in research adds to the basic skills given during the doctoral training. The work experience comes usually from a narrow field of science, which means that the person becomes an expert in his/her narrow research field but does not necessarily know much about anything else.

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There is always cult minded people in the world. Out of roughly eight million scientists a few thousand reject the theory of evolution. It really means nothing.

Kurt said this.

“Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young Earth, I am a young age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.”

He said even if all the evidence pointed against his bad theological interpretations he would still follow through with his belief. Which I get. There is absolutely nothing tangible about the belief in god or miracles and I still believe in god and most of yall still think magic exists. It’s a cultish mindset for all of us. His just happens to be on something that all the evidence undermines.

As for the other guy. Again. For everyone that disagrees with evolution you can find tens of thousands that accept it.

So my thoughts is that it means nothing to me.

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I think this one is important to note. Gould knew Wise was a young earth creationist (YEC). Wise, to his credit, was open and honest about his position. Gould took on Wise as a student anyway, despite Wise’s “unorthodox” position. For all those claiming there is some evil scientific cabal looking to persecute YECs, this is a pretty strong counterpoint.

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Young, aspiring, would be YEC apologists, are cognizant that a prestigious degree from a recognized brand name institution would provide credibility in their future careers. Organizations such as AiG love the wallpaper.

In an introduction piece with ICR, Nathaniel Jeanson’s profile includes

He went straight to Harvard Medical School, which he said “sounded like it would be useful for credentials and evangelism.”

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It’s also interesting that some YECs who go for the big-name degrees for that purpose do end up accepting evolution along the way because they simply weren’t previously aware of how strong the evidence is. I doubt there’s any way to get stats on that, but it would be interesting to know what percentage with that intention actually reach the goal.

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I believe that Dr Lamoureux @DOL said he did something like that, but actually broke much of the ground in his Bible school days, first.

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Hi,
Yes, I am of generation of guys who planned to get PhDs from good universities and when we were done to attack evolution. But the key for me was doing theology first. I came to realize that young earth creation was not biblical. This opened the way to consider evolution seriously,
Blessings, Denis

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Mary Schweitzer of dinosaur soft tissue fame is one prominent example. However, I never got the impression that she was trying to get a degree for false purposes.

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Thanks for that reference! I knew she was a Christian (something I imagine AIG doesn’t appreciate), but didn’t realize she started out YEC.
I believe David MacMillan (who has participated here and was featured on the documentary “We Believe in Dinosaurs”) was studying science academically for the same reason, but he also came to accept the science of evolution.

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It also underlines something which has always been a part of worldwide scientific work. What you want and believe doesn’t matter the slightest in the work of science – so it has always been open to people with vastly different beliefs. It is a methodology which gives the same results regardless of such things.

On the other hand… there is a growing number of people in the scientific community which don’t understand this and have an irrational prejudice that science requires you to be an atheist. I know because I have encountered them. But this is not science – it is ideologues (of both sides) jumping into science in order to pretend it supports their views on religious matters. Science works for getting the truth about some things, but human beings are often liars.

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As the Royal Society puts it, nullius in verba, or take nobody’s word for it. In my head I often phrase it as “the universe doesn’t care what results you want”.

Of course, our beliefs do matter to us, and that’s a good thing. We just have to be aware that our human subjectivity doesn’t always translate into the objective universe.

That’s really unfortunate. Personally, I’ve mentored undergrad summer interns from various Christian universities and it’s never an issue. The same for working with scientists from Christian universities. Frankly, 99% of scientists don’t care about the religious beliefs of their colleagues, at least at a professional level. I’ve heard this same sentiment from Christian scientists here at BioLogos. Any group of more than 100 people is probably going to have at least 1 jerk, and the scientific community is no different. Overall, I have always found the scientific community very welcoming to people of faith.

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I certainly don’t know what the percentage is. Meet just one “jerk” and it throws off the percentage for your own personal experience. My overall impression is that most non-believers in science just don’t care about religion either way – they have more important things (from their perspective) to do and think about.

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That is definitely true.

Yeah, they have science to do. At the moment, they are probably also worried about losing their job, at least here in the US. If a colleague’s religious beliefs get in the way of the science they are trying to do, then there may be some clashes.

Most importantly, scientists are humans like anyone else. We want to enjoy working with our colleagues, and we want to like them as people. It’s no different than any other workplace.

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That is a big concern, and one that we should be mindful of in supporting our community, regardless of politics or religious persuasion. The general anti-intellectual atmosphere leaves me feeling pretty pessimistic at times, and I fear for our species. But, the pendulum swings both ways, so maybe time will heal, but not before good people suffer, I am afraid. I better shut up before general cultural observations become too political.

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There are exeptions. My experience is that biologists that have worked in USA and had bad experiences about YEC-type believers (or heard such stories) may be quite allergic against ‘US-style’ Christian messages. Catholic context may be ok for them. For example, I know one responsible teacher here who makes it very clear that any studies in ‘Christian’ universities in USA are not accepted as part of the studies although studies in any other credible university may be accepted.

One visible case happened when PLoS published a scientific report that mentioned the creation by God in one sentence where it did not belong. That caused a very strong allergic reaction among some scientists. Some told they will not anymore act as editors or reviewers in the journal, or send manuscripts to it. The editors of the journal panicked and reacted by apologizing and withdrawing completely the article that was otherwise a fine scientific report. The authors apologized also, claiming that it was just an error they made because they did not know the English language well (Chinese authors if I remember correctly).

The reviewers and the editor had made a minor mistake when they did not demand modications to the sentence where God was mentioned without any logical cause. Such minor errors happen often in editorial work. If the error had been anything else, there probably would not have been strong reactions and at most, a correction (corrigendum/erratum) would have been demanded from the authors. Not total withdrawal of an otherwise fine report.

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There was a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1904 who claimed that the rock piles seen in the Bay Area by hikers, made by ranchers clearing their fields earlier in the 19th century, were actually created by the the Lemurians before the ancient continent sank into the Pacific. Just because you have a PhD from a top research institution, albeit I don’t Know if UC Berkeley was a top research institution yet in 1904, doesn’t mean you won’t believe weird things.

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As an outsider, the political situation in USA is not my business and I leave it to the US citizens.

A general comment is that similar type of changes in attitudes are also happening in Europe, although in somewhat milder extent. There seems to be something in this age and atmosphere that boosts uncritical ‘critical’ thinking against research that does not support your opinions. Maybe the bubbles in social media provoke people that might otherwise be quiet with their deviating personal opinions. Maybe the values have shifted towards a harder direction.

In this situation, it is great that the constitution of this country (Finland) protects the freedom of science, arts and the highest-level teaching. Any attempts to restrict the freedom is a violation of the constitution. That has saved the research from attempts to demand avoidance of certain topics. Now it has lead to conflicting interpretations, as we have joint scholarships with NSF. NSF needs to obey the lists of forbidden words, in our country obeying such lists would be against the constitution (illegal). What has saved the situation so far is that the scholarships are funded by the country that grants it, NSF funds the US proposals and Finnish organizations the Finnish proposals.

Someone said that the greatest threat to democracy are the people. If the voters want to get rid of democracy, there is nothing to stop it. Maybe the same principle has been targeted towards science, as if science would just be one form of opinions, dictated by voting. Unfortunately, problems do not disappear if we stop talking about them.

Edit:
Luckily, researchers applying funding have usually been flexible and willing to use words that are somehow in fashion. Changing outdated or ‘forbidden’ words to others and rewording the proposals is business-as-usual for project leaders that are dependent on external funding.
For example, at some point of recent history ‘biodiversity’ was a fashionable word that was used in research proposals because it increased the probability of getting funding. Some years later, it was totally outdated and avoided because it lowered the probability to get funding. You needed to show that your proposal was at the leading edge of the research within the field and ‘biodiversity’ was considered something that had already been studied much and therefore, not something at the leading edge of research.

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A fun fact for me is that when I received my PhD in Physics, I legitimately thought the earth was 6,000 years old.

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