Got this from contrararian, who, normally, I agree with, but militant orthodoxy of any kind is dangerous, IMHO:
Would You Like Fries With That Theory? | The BioLogos Forum
“Anti-Darwinists love to ridicule the concept of “scientific orthodoxy,” suggesting that it represents the unsupported collective opinion of many scientists who are basically just “voting” on things. Going against it is considered to be evidence of independent thinking and even courage.
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To confront scientific data “on our own” would imply that we have scientific training and experience in whatever area we are looking at. If you say you can interpret fossil data on your own, for example— as biochemist Duane Gish and legal scholar Phillip Johnson tried to do—I would like to give you a brief quiz on fossils: Where might you find a fossil if I asked you to go fetch one? How much of a fossil skeleton is typically present? How do you figure out the age of a fossil? What exactly is a fossil? What parts of a skeleton are most likely to be missing or incompletely fossilized? How do you decide if bones found together are from the same organism?
If you cannot answer simple questions like these then you cannot confront fossil data “on your own.” And fossils are the simplest part of the evolutionary picture. Interpreting genomic data, with its complex biochemical, statistical, and historical underpinnings is not remotely possible without the relevant expertise.”
But what if I can answer those questions but haven’t had any actual training? What if I’m not, a moron and read books and learn things?
Because I don’t have a degree and “scientific colleagues” or “peer reviewed papers,” my opinion should be ignored?
Trusting financial “experts” hasn’t seemed to help our economy at all—in fact—it’s what got us here.
How is trusting science (or any other single discipline) completely any different from trusting the high priests of an ancient religion? In their day, they were the experts.
I’m not saying we should trust everything any moron without a degree says, but either side of the above argument is in the wrong. You can’t summarily dismiss the opinion or judgment of a religious zealot or a scientific one.
It’s all about the provable facts and short of those, it becomes about the most logical explanation (if there is one). Isaac Newton was definitely not an atheist (in fact, he was kind of a nutbag for God) but do we blow him off just because he thought he was chosen by God to decipher the true meaning of scripture?
To suggest all issues boil down to “it’s a science thing, you wouldn’t understand.” is just as bad as saying “because God works in mysterious ways.”
I think Pons and Fleischman would have been big fans of this attitude.
“DON’T QUESTION US! WE’RE SCIENTISTS!!”
Thankfully, other scientists questioned them—but if they hadn’t, would it have been OK for someone else to?
