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Revealing His Methodology and ‘Knowledge’
oon after the initial criticism of his evolutionist website (creationism.com) appeared on this site, David Raikow came on the scene in person (via feedback email) to produce the following exchange for TrueOrigin readers’ benefit. Documented in its entirety (except where noted), the exchange provides yet another example of an evolutionist using his credentials—and the expertise they suggest—to perpetuate dogma and ignorance as “science” with presumed impunity...
Raikow: I read your criticism of my website concerning the first sentence of the introduction to creationism.com. You’re right! The grammar was poor and perhaps I exaggerated the statement (and other countries have a problem with creationism too). Thank you for your proofreading.
Wallace: And thank you!
Raikow: However, I must object to your vitriolic tone...
Wallace: Does the pot now wish to call the kettle black? Your objection is not very compelling in light of the manner and tone (however less openly “vitriolic” it may appear to be) with which you approach the creation paradigm.
Raikow: At least I’m not hurling personal insults.
Wallace: Nor am I “hurling personal insults”: If you take it as a “personal insult” that your published falsehoods should be exposed as falsehoods, there’s a simple remedy: tell the truth.
Raikow: My statement was at best an error, not a lie. You actually accuse me of lacking moral integrity. That you chose to publicly attack me instead of bringing the error to my attention shows a lack of decorum at best and just plain nastiness at worst.
Wallace: Your “error” remains unacknowledged and uncorrected on the publicly posted gateway to your website. As long as it remains as such—and you have not acknowledged its “erroneous” nature—it shall henceforth qualify as a deliberate lie, even if it did not, prior to public attention having been brought to it (in the unlikely event of which it was at the very least a product of shamefully shoddy research skills).
Raikow: Actually I have changed it.
Wallace: Actually, although perhaps now you have changed it, it had not been changed at the time you insisted that your claim “was at best an error, not a lie,” nor at the time that my response (above) was dispatched. (I checked, wishing to give you the benefit of the doubt.)
Raikow: Since you have such a high “standard” of honesty, I would like to point out that you say that Biblical creation is the alternative [to evolution], when Biblical creation is clearly an alternative, furthering the misconception that there are only two choices.
Wallace: You are not the first (and probably won’t be the last) to try making this “point”—however, none has (to my knowledge) yet presented one other “alternative” besides biblical creation that has withstood any documented rigorous analysis vis-à-vis the empirical data. In light of this, the statement stands, and is not in the least bit dishonest.
Raikow: I see three classes of alternatives: 1) the continuum of belief from flat-earth creationism, young-earth, day-age, ID, Theistic evolutionism, material evolutionism, etc. (ala E. Scott); 2) the myriad of other religious creation stories (e.g. world-egg stories, Earth out of sea stories, etc.); and 3) the multitude of naturalistic explanations one might hypothesize. Each of these can be examined, and many are believed.
Wallace: I will be glad to reconsider the matter if you would kindly provide references to the source material convincing you that any or all of “flat-earth creationism,” “day-age” creationism, “theistic evolutionism”, “material evolutionism”, the “world-egg” and “earth-out-of-the-sea” stories, and “the multitude of naturalistic explanations”—particularly that “multitude of naturalistic explanations” not related to evolutionism—have, each of them on its own merits, withstood documented rigorous analysis vis-à-vis the empirical data. (Recall that withstanding “documented rigorous analysis vis-à-vis the empirical data”—not merely a presence on the landscape of human ideas—was the one criterion I specified, in response to which you produced your list.)
Also, your use of the word “continuum” notwithstanding, to my knowledge, ID, for example, does not constitute an origins model (see below), and two of the items on your list (“1”) are subcategories of biblical creationism, rendering them unsuitable as alternatives to biblical creationism.
Briefly returning to ID, it should be noted that the scientists who advocate the ID concept are not postulating a complete origins paradigm, but an alternative to the philosophical naturalism to which many scientists dogmatically restrict themselves nowadays:
“The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.”
[http://www.discovery.org/crsc/TopQuestions/whatIsIntelligentDesign.html]Because their detractors have presumed to blur the distinction between ID and creationism, some ID proponents have seen fit to issue statements to clarify the matter.
Raikow: You say yours is the only one supported by empirical data. I’d love to see what you are using as empirical evidence; does your website have a central location for this?
Wallace: Your methodology for dealing with this topic is very curious indeed (and not particularly scientific, from where I sit): First you publish a derisive and dismissive criticism of the hypothesis in question, then you begin inquiry regarding its empirical evidence? What happened to the concepts of in-depth study and rigorous analysis prior to publication? Does a PhD somehow render objective research superfluous?
Not only that, but you would like a convenient “central location” at which to find your answers? To my knowledge, the purveyors of evolutionism do not maintain a convenient web-based “central location” for all their analyses and interpretations of empirical data, so it is curious that you would expect such a thing of the creationary counterpart.
You have already written as if you were quite knowledgeable concerning the subject of creationism, yet only now are you asking about the creationary analysis of empirical data. This is a very telling development indeed. Your already thin credibility as an objective scientist seems further eroded with your every extension of this exchange.
Now, as to the wording of your inquiry (“what you are using as empirical evidence”), your recent perusal of the homepage of the TrueOrigin site might have alerted you to the fact that, by and large, the same empirical evidence is used by both evolutionists and creationists—only their presuppositions, analyses, interpretations, and conclusions differ.
That being said, the literature documenting the many facets of the creationary paradigm vis-à-vis the empirical data is abundant and varied, and by no means capable of being contained in a “central location” on a single website (least of all the TrueOrigin site). A significant sampling is available on the internet, however.
A brief introduction to the creationary literature itself, both popular-level and technical, including periodicals, may be found here. The TrueOrigin website does not contain anything approaching an exhaustive repository of such material, but it does offer several examples from a number of sources. Some of the sites listed on the TrueOrigin site’s “links” page offer additional samples. A great deal of the creationary analysis and interpretation of empirical data will only be found in books and periodicals, however. Some of these are listed on the URL above. Many others are not.
One of the better creationary literature resources that can be had without the monetary outlay required for books and periodicals is Ashby Camp’s list of links to (currently) 419 webbed articles. This list, though (again) not exhaustive, draws on many and varied sources and authors.
The above ought to serve as a solid beginning for developing an informed understanding of the creationary paradigm, including, of course, creationary analyses and interpretations of the available empirical data which you requested.
Raikow: By the way, I found the following grammatical errors on your homepage:
[citations of six spelling errors and three grammatical errors, all of which were promptly corrected]Sincerely,
David Raikow
Wallace: How kind of you! These corrections have now been made.
Thank you,
Tim Wallace
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