Consensus and Science

A recent paper summary from Science Daily got me thinking about what role consensus should play in science. The article was titled “Astronomers agree: Universe is nearly 14 billion years old.” My immediate thought was: “That’s not true. I can name half a dozen creationist astronomers off the top of my head (Jason Lisle, Danny Faulkner, John Hartnett, Russel Humphries, Ron Samec, Spike Psarris, Robert Hill etc) who do not accept that age. The title should start with “Most astronomers” but it clearly doesn’t. So what is going on here? The title is an attempt to convince the public that there is no debate, everyone agrees, and whatever you’ve heard or read is untrue. It’s very much an appeal to majority fallacy.

Preliminary Examination of Sexual Selection

Many male organisms exhibit traits that, intuitively, should be disfavored by selection. From the massive peacock tail fan to guppies with brightly colored tails, it would seem that selection should have weeded out traits that make the organism more vulnerable to predators. However, selection has preserved these traits instead, through a special type of selection called sexual selection. At least this is the standard theory presented by the Darwinists. Parts of it may be accurate, parts may be inaccurate. We’re going to spend some time in 2021 looking at sexual selection, pulling out the meat, and spitting out the bones.

Teaching Creation in Schools

My personal opinion, in a perfect world, would be to teach both sides, something the late Philip Johnson called “teaching the controversy”. However, in a perfect world, no one would be teaching evolution at all so, obviously, I’m not getting that. In the current fallen world we live in, I do not expect the public school system to incorporate any creationism in the near future, and frankly, I’m fine with that. Most evolutionists couldn’t tell me even basic aspects of creation anyway so even if they wanted to represent creationists fairly (they don’t), they couldn’t.

Inbreeding Depression

Inbreeding depression is a very strong danger to small populations. As relatives with
similar DNA interbreed, more and more deleterious mutations begin to be expressed,
effectively crippling the population, and often driving it to extinction. However, small
populations are often unable to avoid inbreeding, meaning other mechanisms must be
employed to counter its destructive effect.