THE NEW ATHEISM fad of the 00's and its blather on the blogs, in pop-lit aka "journalism", in academic lit, etc. taught me a lot about the eutrophic decadence of modernism and scientism and atheism. But, then, so did the unedited, unselected, raw thought product of huge numbers of college credentialed people who wrote in something like the English language.
The Darwin wars were something which before about 1995 I had the most conventional modernist views on, unknowingly and uncritically believing the post-WWII lies constructed to "protect science" from the truth of what he really said, what those he cited as reliable science said. In my subsequent researches, I never found a single case from before WWII in which those who supported the theory of natural selection denied that led to such things as eugenics, it was common knowledge then. That is I stupidly accepted the conventional post-war "scientific" lie until I did what such atheists almost never do, honestly read his own words, those of his Darwinist colleagues he cited as reliable knowledge, those of his children about him and his theory and admit what they said and the consequences of what they said being believed by others such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Davenport, Paul Popenoe, Wilhelm Schallmeyer, Alfred Ploetz, Fischer, Baur and Lenz, and through them, Rodolph Hess, Adolph Hitler and later the likes of William L. Pierce and the Darwinist economists who had Trump's and the Swedish government's ear on Covid policy.
I can say that almost every time I looked at the primary and cited secondary documentary evidence of such conflicts, the conventional modernist required POV turned out to be a rather obvious lie. That was true in researching Darwinism, many issues of history, such as those around the prosecutions of Galileo, Bruni, John Scopes, the Huxley Wilberforce "debate", the character of the U.S. Constitution, the personal integrity of many clayfootted heroes such as the fetishized "founding fathers," the real history of the American left, around the controlled, published science done in such issues as telepathy and precognition, the actual character of the so-called sciences such as psychology, sociology, anthropology and, God help us, again, economics.
I have never done anything but insist that an honest evaluation of such issues has to be heavily based in a critical reading of the primary documentation and such secondary literature as the creator of the primary documentation claimed as supporting their arguments, especially those whose point of view became conventionally viewed as authoritative on the matter. That is with the little understood understanding that a critical reading can be confirmatory as well as disconfirming.
I have never wandered into the actual primary and related secondary materials without being prepared to find my hypothesis about it was what turned out to be wrong. I think I have always admitted when that was entirely possible, though I tend not to find that was the case, I'm kind of careful about making hypotheses. I had the history of psychology as as a cautionary lesson about doing that, if you're not careful you might just create an illusion of confirmation for of your hypothesis that is illusory.
Sometimes I had no really firm or definite commitment before I went into it. When I first looked into some of them I was genuinely interested in finding out who was right, if that was possible to discern from the record. Sometimes I have come out of it with the firm belief that neither side had enough evidence, often they had none at all that made believing their contentions logical or credible.
My arguments with academic, even scientific, EVEN MATHEMATICAL(!) ideologues of modernism, of material-atheist-scientism have proven to me over and over again they are usually far, far more interested in pushing their ideologies and even their rather easily refuted lies than they are in the integrity of their beliefs. More typically online, they're only interested in getting attention from their fellow ideologues and kicking the dirt around with them. That is especially true of the boys club of "Skepticism," atheism, scientism, whiny always-online geeks who love to whine about why females don't fall for them, etc.
Good theologians argue at a far, far higher level of adherence to the pretended standards of intellectual practice than any modernist, materialist, atheist devotee of scientism, even those who are supposed to be professional scientists and even mathematicians(!) regularly do. The amount of time those who claim their disinterest in religion spend on trying to discredit or "disprove" the existence of God, having that as a rather obvious focus of their allegedly scientific work is rather self-discrediting as to both their disinterest and their interest in the integrity of their scientific endeavors. It also, far more often than not, proves they don't really have any grounding in the philosophical character of science or even what you need to do to make credible arguments. The appeal to prejudice is probably the major MO of a huge number of such scientific academics. Certainly when they wade into popular conversations.
Among other things over the period since I first went online and discovered along with the the enormous wealth of primary documentation, secondary documentation - especially that cited by the creator of the primary documentation, the first-hand evidence of observation and testimony by those who did what virtually no one else then or now could claim to have done KNOWN PERSONALLY AND OBSERVED AT FIRST HAND AND LISTENED TO, SINCE THAT'S ONE OF YOUR MAJOR BONES OF CONTENTION, CHARLES DARWIN, for another "the founding fathers" . . . among the other things that have happened is that my life long, childish belief in the integrity of many scientists, academics and intellectuals would not rather obviously lie about things they thought was important was just that, a childish belief which I held well into late middle-age.
While there are scientists, academics, etc. who are very honest and, as a result, tend to be more modest in their claims, they are not typical of modern would-be intellectual life, especially among people hired in the professional world of alleged thinking. Especially those who are deputed to be "public intellectuals" now that the generation of those who were actual intellectuals seems to be largely past. I've had some of the most obviously dishonest arguments made to me by such as those and, more typically, they present nothing like argument at all but would be bullying and appeals to the prejudices of their fellow ideologues.
I used to get trolled regularly by "Skeptics" who complained bitterly when I was skeptical of the leaders in organized "skepticism," especially those around the rinky-dink circle of CSISOP and "Humanism" (funded by the trust-fund last Stalinist, Corliss Lamont, by the way), Paul Kurtz, the total fraud and blatant liar James Randi, Martin Gardner (who is one of the few who wasn't a proclaimed atheist), Carl Sagan, . . . whose torch is now carried by the likes of Stephen Pinker and Richard Dawkins and other professional atheists.
I always found it amusing and telling how many of them, such as Ray Hyman were professionally involved in some of the most blatant of pseudo-science such as psychology and sociology as they misrepresented experimental research far, far more rigorously and honestly and carefully conducted than what their academic ideology accepted as science. I have never, once, found a self proclaimed champion of science from that crowd who was prepared to be honest about the basic dishonesty of much of what is conventionally accepted as science when, like Pinker's and Dawkin's professoinal production, it is nothing of the sort. y
The lack of scientific integrity of that crowd was best exposed in the one flop of an experiment done by the Committee For The Investigation Of Claims Of The Paranormal, the infamous sTARBABY debacle, demonstrating how the champions of science were either entirely prepared to publish fraudulent science which it had been pointed out to them was botched. Or, as in the case of the "Fellows" and allegedly governing group of CSICOP MANY OF WHICH HAD THE PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE TO UNDERSTAND HOW THEIR COLLEAGUES WERE MISREPRESENTING WHAT WAS DONE, including such alleged luminaries as Carl Sagan and two of those who conducted the "research" who certainly knew they had published lies. It was so bad that one of those who warned from the start, a pretty extreme member of that club, Dennis Rawlins, blew the whistle on them after trying to get the likes of Sagan and Martin Gardner (who certainly had the mathematical chops to understand the fraud) and others he took to be honest proved they were in on the con-job. Rawlins is one of the few of that type who I can reluctantly say has proven he has a significant measure of scientific integrity, reluctantly because he's a pretty nasty materialist-atheist-true believer in scientism, himself who will never honestly consider scientific research that challenges his rigidly held ideology. His subsequent ejection from the CSI circle led to at least a couple of others in it to leave, one of them, Richard Kammann wrote one of the best analyses of it.
I now think that such junk pervades much of modern academic writing, even that which appears in so-called peer-reviewed academic and even scientific journals.i Certainly it pervades the "public understanding" not only of science but, also much of history and other important, supposedly fact-based facets of human culture. I think a lot of those are full to the top of it, especially in those denominated sciences that don't really practice scientific methods and things such as American's alleged knowledge of their history, politics and the law.
And yet they wonder why, in so many cases, the public doesn't believe what they say. Tragically, that earned skepticism among a dangerous percentage of the public is true in some of the most obviously correct and important science such as that done around human-created climate change, around rigorous immunology and epidemiology, around environmental science. A lot of that good-will based belief was sacrificed on some of the most contentious science of lesser importance and of little to no importance of all (just what is most of the alleged science of the very real phenomenon of evolution any good for other than its use by ideological atheism? the same question could be asked about cosmology) and as well as "science" made to order and done for profit, such as "nutrition science" sponsored by corporations for the purpose of promoting their products, science such as touted the health benefits of alcohol, chocolate, etc. Nutrition science at many universities and labs is little more than prostituting and pimping sci-credentials for money.
I don't find that to be nearly as true in the theology I read, perhaps that's because a lot of theologians believe something that it's impossible for an atheist to believe and for science to demonstrate, that it's a sin to tell a lie, bear false witness, to misrepresent the truth. Any theologian worth reading certainly has that as a starting point.
I am far more impressed with how the handling of primary, secondary, etc. documentation is handled in the theology I read than I am in how many scientists handle it in their alleged scientific professional writing. I found a lot of them on their own and their colleagues blogs had a lot in common with the crudest and most dishonest of creationists and fundamentalists and denominationally apologetic of fanatics. In fact, most of them are fanatics of materialist-atheist-scientism who would never let disconfirming evidence, exposure of logical incoherence or honesty get in the way of their promotion of their simple childish faith in their own chosen ideology. They're about as interested in the integrity of science as Marjorie Taylor Greene is in what Jesus actually said in the Bible.
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