BRANDED WITH A 'C'

Once imagined to be a discipline dedicated to open inquiry, scientists are now wrestling with the idea of granting creationists advanced degrees even when they play by science's rules. Using Marcus R. Ross as a case study, the New York Times finds that many scientists are quite prepared to blacklist creationists simply on the basis of their religious beliefs:

Dr. [Eugenie C.] Scott, a former professor of physical anthropology at the University of Colorado, said in an interview that graduate admissions committees were entitled to consider the difficulties that would arise from admitting a doctoral candidate with views “so at variance with what we consider standard science.” She said such students “would require so much remedial instruction it would not be worth my time.”

That is not religious discrimination, she added, it is discrimination “on the basis of science.”

Dr. [Michael L.] Dini, of Texas Tech, agreed. Scientists “ought to make certain the people they are conferring advanced degrees on understand the philosophy of science and are indeed philosophers of science,” he said. “That’s what Ph.D. stands for.”

The problem they have, however, is not with the actual science being produced by these students as they earn their graduate degrees. Dr. Ross's dissertation adviser calls his science 'impeccable'. But yet Dr. Ross believes 'wrong' things while still doing 'good' science. This infuriates the anti-religious crowd because these well accredited scientists, in the secularists' view, are then using their credentials to argue against the evolutionary paradigm, a paradigm that has become the secular religion of science. Not only may you not openly question it, you can't even intellectually doubt it.

One of the real problems the Darwinian Establishment faces, however, is that a rise of well-educated creationists threatens the caricature the Establishment has painted. Creationists can only be foolish fundamentalists who don't really know science in the first place in their view. But what if these Creationists turn out to have credentials literally signed by the Establishment itself? Such people would be a real threat to the rigid intellectual orthodoxy imposed by the Darwinists. This they cannot abide.

Forget open inquiry--brand them with the 'C'!

[Thanks to theosebes reader Wild Bill for the link.]