idea that "everything is valid" is nonsense

[Luna_Northcat]

[...unWARP!!!]

Good evening.


LUNA!!!!

[HUGS!!!]

Good to see you again!!

Fear not. Both my dad and sister have taken follow up tests (by doctor's orders, mind you), which have subsequently proved that the cancer is indeed gone.
<snip>

I'm sorry about your dad, Luna. I hope that the person who "preached" to him be confronted and held accountable for his actions.

<snip>

Awww! It's really good to see you too. [hugs back]

And, that is such good news for your family. May they have many, many years of healthy and happy life!

*sigh* It was my grandfather, not my father, who died of the stomach cancer as I described. One of the reasons I haven't been around much in this last year is that my father just died last winter. That wasn't a good death either, though -- if there is such a thing as a "good" death. I suppose the only difference between the deaths of my grandfather and my father is that my father did not expect God to heal him.
The last few months of his life brought him a tremendous amount of pain and deterioration, and it was a very ugly death, something I wouldn't wish on anyone and he was a good man who deserved much, much, much better. There really isn't anything noble about puking and falling and emergency aspirations and such. It's been hard to come to terms with.

I work on acceptance, but to be honest, it is one of the reasons why I have so much difficulty with the idea of an immediately-involved, interventionist God. I have seen a lot of pain and ugliness that was not in any way deserved, and which did not make people stronger, it made them weaker and stripped them of everything of any value and killed them. It's the age-old question, if there is a God Who saves some and lets others suffer, then why so random and so arbitrary? I suppose you can argue that God is most certainly in a position to see things that we do not, but it still leaves a lot of unanswered questions...and not unanswered in a good "so what can we do to find out" way.

[Luna_Northcat]

In case you hadn't guessed by now, this all boils down to the fact that if there were actually anything to ID, labs wouldn't be suppressing it -- they would be all over it.

Yes, well, there's a small problem with that... you're assuming that these scientists, these great, wonderful human beings with the greatest minds on the planet, are devoted, entirely, completely, and unerringly, to the pursuit of science... and nothing else.

I cannot begin to conceive of how an intelligent woman like yourself could believe such a ridiculous thing. They're human beings, not gods. They are not perfect. Even if most of them are dedicated to furthering science, how do they define it?

If Intelligent Design does not fit into their definition, it doesn't matter how intelligent or rational they are. They will never consider any of it to be true, whether it's provable or not. People don't support stuff that doesn't fit into their worldview without good reason and a lot of honest thought.

As for those with less than honorable motives... well, if Evolution is disproven, a lot of research is gonna see its funding go up in smoke.

Wulf, seriously, you missed the entire point of my post. Did you read all of it?

I'm not saying that scientists are all noble and pure of heart. They are most certainly human, which pretty much excludes "automatic nobility" for the entire population. The point of the post is that scientists are :
(a) ambitious (at least some of them really want to make a big name for themselves)
(b) frequently in competition with each other, and
(c) very aware that each of them has a self-interest.

Very few research careers would actually "go up in smoke", given that there are a tremendous number of unanswered question with practical applications which are being worked on. There are a lot of research careers which would have had to undergo radical shifts in direction, which would piss people off. But, you see, every time a new field or new direction opens up, there are hundreds of people who will dive in early, to make a name for themselves -- if there is any vague possibility that a name can be made. Even with the thoroughly-discredited cold fusion, there is a hard-core group of a few dozen physicists still plugging away and publishing papers, trying to be the founders of a new field.

Notice I said "publishing papers".

Here's the thing -- the Discovery Institute has had 16 years, and millions of dollars, and they have produced squat by way of actual research. That's really a good sign that there's no good science available there. Seriously.

It would, indeed, piss a lot of people off if evolution were discredited. What you're missing is the fact that there are a lot of up-and-comings who would be more than happy to do that, if they could make a career for themselves by it. But there is no reason people who are serious about making a career in science would believe they could do that, because it comes down, ultimately, to whether or not the evidence stands up to scrutiny.

From our previous discussions, you seem to have a lot of denial about the state of evidence regarding evolution. It seems pretty pointless to write more about it, since you have an interest in not knowing. All I'll say, though, is that really, given the evidence, evolution is pretty safe.

[Tom Mazanec]

Catholicism believes in Baptism by Desire,,,that you can be a member of the Church and not know it. Good non-Christians who die trying to do the right thing can go to heaven. Hope to see you there.

[Luna_Northcat]

Part of my own critique of ID is that it has spent way too much time politicizing and way too little time in the lab. But that paper that you cite, are you familiar what happened in the wake of its publication? For the audacity of green lighting an ID literature review the editor had his own scientific career ruined.

*That* is what I was referring to when I remarked that scientific orthodoxy has been improperly marshaled against ID. Slander, libel, hostile work environment, the only reason the Smithsonian hasn't been taken to court yet is the guy stepped wrong legally and filed his first appeal to a body that ultimately determined that he had a great case for a lawsuit but that they did not have jurisdiction.

There was another fellow who was discovered to have ID beliefs and was promptly fired from his post writing HS level science columns (ie, nothing that had anything to do with ID), though that case was further back and my memory of it is fuzzy.

Firing and defaming scientists for their beliefs is just not normal. When big bang deniers openly fought against the theory because it was too close to "let there be light" for them to be comfortable, people were not sacked over it. And the big bang proponents also were not fired. That's normal, and I'd love to see that level of noisy debate over irreducible complexity. But I don't think it's happening.

That's also not what actually happened.

The research paper I was referring to was by Axe (2000), although it is actually fairly weak support. The lit review I referred to was Lönnig and Saedler (2002). The paper you're referring to -- which supposedly got the editor fired -- was Meyer (2004), and I'm not even counting that.

As to why I'm not counting that -- it goes with exactly what happened. The editor who published it, in the perfectly respectable journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was Richard Sternberg, managing editor at the time. Sternberg made a big thing out of claiming he was "fired" over it. Do a bit of checking up; Sternberg had resigned some months ago, but was standing in as managing editor until a new editor had been brought in, and the issue in which Meyer's paper appeared was, by previous arrangement, the last issue that Sternberg would edit.

The paper was indeed retracted by the journal and an apology issued by the new editor, for two reasons:
1. It was not a subject area covered by the journal.
2. It really wasn't very good.

1. by itself is enough for retraction and apology. Seriously, managing editors are not supposed to sneak articles in on irrelevant topics to a professional journal. But the thing about 2. -- Sternberg claimed that he had sent the paper to three "qualified biologists" for peer review, before it was published, but he won't tell anybody who they are. Sorry, but that's just crap. And having had a look at the paper, I can see why it wasn't held in very high regard quality-wise, either.

Later Sternberg claimed that he was "hounded out of his position at the Smithsonian" because of his support for ID and for this paper. Originally, he did bring a case against them. The case was dropped for lack of merit; first, he was never a paid employee of the Smithsonian, they merely gave him office space as a visiting "research associate". They couldn't fire him because they didn't pay him. That was the real reason why the Office of Special Counsel did not have jurisdiction. --The other reason the case was dropped, though, was that Sternberg couldn't actually prove that anything he said had happened (by way of persecution) had happened.

I've never heard of any other case of a pro-ID researcher being "hounded out" of anywhere that even had that level of credibility.

Taking into account all of the above -- ID still has an appallingly poor publication record. The DI lists about a half-dozen papers on their website as peer-reviewed and in support of ID, but I've checked all of them -- most of them do not make any reference to ID, nor do they explicitly or implicitly support design, nor do they particularly challenge evolution, when it comes to the nitty-gritty of the topic. The rest are not actually peer-reviewed by other biologists, which is disingenuous in the extreme.

IF there were anything to ID, they have had the opportunity to have plenty of papers out. Seriously, I don't think that people realise the sheer volume of biology papers published every week, and a half-dozen papers, while ok for one young researcher, is simply unacceptable for an organisation. And it stinks that to even get that far they had to pad the list with a lot of spin.

There really is no noisy debate over ID within the field of biology itself, because there's nothing to it. There's no evidence to debate!

[Tom Mazanec]

One thing I have trouble with is the word "believe". Look, I believe in God. On a lesser level, I believe in theistic evolution. On a still lower level, I believe in global warming. "Love" is a similar word. My love of God exceeds my love for my aunt which exceeds my love of TotQ which exceeds my love of chocolate sundaes. English really needs an expanded vocabulary for such words. This is why my "I believe..." post is rather awkwardly phrased.

[WhiteFox]

I'm talking about what I believe. Not what I know. If I knew, we would only have one religeon we knew to be true, and one culture we knew to be the best way to live.

However, we don't know. And frankly, it's hubris to think we can, or do.

I don't like to use the term "I think" because too much of religon is taken on faith. to say "I think" assumes that I have rational facts that I've considered. So, I choose to believe.

As for Nick's interpretation of Pascals Wager, he's argueing the concequences. Much like saying "Darwin is wrong, because I don't want to be decended from monkies" he's saying "Christianity is right, because more people get to go to heaven." It's also an appeal to the majority.

By the way... being a Baha'i, I don't believe in hell or heaven.

[Luna_Northcat]

"Belief"...hm.

Maybe this is a good place for me to put up my own statement of position.

To me, "belief" is an active choice, a decision made where there is ambiguous evidence, or no evidence, and one has several rational options open according to the evaluation of what one does know. "Acceptance", to me, is what happens when the evidence is clear and obvious. Then it's not so much an active choice; it's just, well...acceptance. Like, you know, I don't spend a lot of time "believing in" tables. I simply accept that tables exist. I tend to use them a lot, you see, and the evidence that they exist is fairly overwhelming. Making an active choice to believe in them pretty much seems a waste of effort, if nothing else. They're there.

To refuse to accept the evidence, to make a choice to believe something else, in the face of evidence to the contrary, that is back to belief again. I can't call it faith, because faith involves belief in what can't be proven, not belief in what can be (and has been) proven wrong. I hope it's clear what I mean, here.

That said:
I both believe in and accept God.

I believe in the historical Jesus.

I accept that the Bible may have been inspired by God, but it was written by men; it was filtered through human brains and human understandings and human limitations and human pre-existing ideas, and it was changed and limited thereby.

I accept that the world and the universe were the work of God.

I both believe and accept that God is vaster than we are on a scale which we are not really set up to understand.

I believe that if we are to touch the mind of God, then we should look not to the work of men for literal truths, but to the work of God; that we should do so humbly, earnestly, and with an open mind, but with a certain amount of skepticism so that we do not fall into the trap of simply believing what we want to believe. Self-deception is an easy thing, for humans.

I do not accept, in any way, that we have the right to limit God to what we think He did or didn't do, or would or wouldn't do, to something which we understand easily and are comfortable with. We are not in that position.

I believe that the people who make statements on what God absolutely, definitely does and thinks seem to have a strong tendency to pattern "what God does and thinks" along what they can easily grasp and what they want, and what they are inclined towards. As such, it is difficult not to see it as self-indulgence and self-righteousness.

I believe that, frankly, any human being who thinks that he (or she) knows exactly what God thinks is almost certainly wrong, or at best, only has hold of a small part of it. We aren't big enough for a total understanding of God. And a lot of these people aren't even real clear on how their TV works, but they think they can get a line on the mind of God????? That isn't humility, anyway.

I believe that sometimes, at least, such certainty is actually motivated by fear. Because not knowing leaves you in doubt about yourself, and feeling vulnerable.

I believe that the best that we can do for understanding, is to try to gain as much evidence as we can about the nature of the universe, and evaluate that evidence with intelligence and honesty and without regard to our own comfort level about what we find. The universe is older than we are, it is bigger than we are, and it owes us nothing; perhaps part of humility before God, and growing up as a species, involves understanding the true vastness of that.

I both believe and accept that science is simply a set of tools -- mental, philosophical, methodological, and technical -- which best allows us to do that. It isn't perfect, but it's the best way of doing that we've got.

I believe, and accept, that the universe follows rules.

I accept an ancient Earth, one that is probably around 4.6 billion years old. That is what the evidence tells us.

I accept evolution. That is what the evidence tells us. And since this is part and parcel of what I am currently doing on a daily basis, it's pretty much in-your-face, for me.

I believe that God is capable of setting up a system where His hand is so integral and subtle that we cannot distinguish it from the way things simply work. Perhaps God's hand simply is "just the way things work".

I believe that coming to God should be a choice. That each person must make that decision on their own, for themselves, for whatever they decide is the best reason. And that God left it that way.

I believe that telling people "you MUST choose God, or you'll be damned to Hell forever, because the Bible says so and He demands it" is a piss-poor way to make friends and influence people. And possibly not what God wants anyway.

I believe that we can work in such a way as to be an example. I believe that we can speak in such a way as to get people to think and without invoking defensiveness or contempt. And I believe that this serves God far better.

I respect people who ask questions. I fear people who think they have all the answers.

I believe that we should always try to ask better question, and that we should be prepared to change our minds -- but only if better evidence comes along.

I accept that it is absolutely wrong to ignore evidence that we have, simply because we don't like it.

I believe that ultimate judgement is up to God, not me.

And having said that, I accept entirely that there are certain absolute moral duties and requirements. I believe that one of those is looking after my fellow human beings -- but especially the innocents, the children and the people who aren't going out of their way to hurt other people.

I accept entirely that not all ideas, philosophies, cultures, practices etc. are equal. Some of them are one heck of a lot better than others. Some of them are stupid, and some of them are harmful, and some of them are downright criminal. See the clause about moral duties, above.

I accept that although ultimate judgement is up to God, not me, it is still my duty to protect people here on earth from predators, fanatics, and sometimes from idiots. It is my duty to make sure that the human predators don't run loose and do whatever they like.

I am, in general, uncomfortable with designating people as "evil", most of the time. It is far too easily overused. It's too often an easy fallback for not bothering to see other people as human, or a strategy to deliberately dehumanize an opponent. That said, I do not doubt the existance of evil, and some people certainly are. But I do not want that to stop me from trying to sort the truly evil out from the people who are just working from an alien viewpoint.

Despite the fact that there are some very bad ideas and philosophies and practices out there, I don't believe that it is enough simply to blow them off. I believe that it is important to know what those ideas, etc., are, and where they actually, really come from in the normal run of human motivations. What other people believe and want informs what they do, and what other people do makes up a lot of the world around us.
If we don't understand the root of that, we can't manage it effectively, and let's face it, managing it effectively can be fairly important. Sure, we can kill lots of people. As a management technique, that actually has a tendency just to breed more bloodshed. And innocents get caught in the crossfire. And we become what we should be fighting. And that sucks, and at some stage, I think we will have to answer for it.

I also believe that I have taken up quite a bit of room here, now, and that I should quit.

[The JAM]

[...unWARP!!!]

Good evening.


My older sister (1970-1985) died of lymphatic disease, and she had bouts of vomiting, and died on the plane to Tulsa (ORU). We were all hit painfully by that, after hearing and seeing all about a healing God (we were saved a few years before that), and we certainly don't know why God allowed that--even my sister knew her time was up--but we did not demand answers or explanations. In the end, we know we'll have all the answers, and, at the funeral, all my dad said was, "God, you lent her to me for 14 years, and I've been the best father I could be for her, but I know that YOU are a much better Father than I could ever be. Take good care of her, okay?"

It still hurts to think about her, but we have the Hope that we'll see her again in that glorious Someday.


¡Zacatepóngolas!

Until next time, remember:

I

AM

THE

J.A.M. (a.k.a. Numbuh i: "Just because I'm imaginary doesn't mean I don't exist")

Good evening.

[WARP!!!]

[Stig Hemmer]

Since everybody else seems to be stating their beliefs: I believe there is no Santa Claus, no tooth fairy and no God. I am aware that this is not a rational belief, but it is my belief. I could no more change that than RHJ could stop believing in God.

However, even if I think RHJ is wrong, that doesn't change the fact tTotQ is his web site, for him to do with as he wishes. If he does too much preaching, he will chase away the readers, but that is still his choice.

Post-Modernism obviously had it wrong, some ideas are obviously better than others. E.g. "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is pretty high up on the list of good ideas. However, one should be aware Truth is not always as absolute as some people think. For example, killing someone is generally considered OK if that person would otherwise kill you.

I've seen people walk out of wheelchairs, ... by direct request to the Healer.

What is this Healer going to do with the James Randi prize money?

How People Make A Big Name In Science, 101:
1. Prove something that is well-accepted to be false.
2. Validate something that no-one believes to be true.

You put it better than I could, so I am quoting you. Some people see a vast conspiracy of scientists trying to surpress the Truth. This is not the case. Scientists know very well that the road to fame and fortune lies through proving old "accepted truth" wrong, and they would have walked over eachothers corpses to prove Intelligent Design... if there had been anything there.

Insults the poster, attacks his character, acts in an arrogant manner...

Hmm... where have I seen this behavior before?

All over the Internet, all the time?

[The JAM]

[...unWARP!!!]

Good evening.


Do? Send someone to present the Gospel to him, if He hasn't done so already.

Paranormal? That's where one cannot understand. I'm talking about the supernatural, something that is natural, but higher than the standard natural:

par·a·nor·mal: adj.
Beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation: such paranormal phenomena as telepathy; a medium's paranormal powers.

su‧per‧nat‧u‧ral: adj.
1. of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.
2. of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or attributed to God or a deity.
3. of a superlative degree; preternatural: a missile of supernatural speed.
4. of, pertaining to, or attributed to ghosts, goblins, or other unearthly beings; eerie; occult. [i.e., demonic activity]

¡Zacatepóngolas!

Until next time, remember:

I

AM

THE

J.A.M. (a.k.a. Numbuh i: "Just because I'm imaginary doesn't mean I don't exist")

Good evening.

[WARP!!!]

[Tom Mazanec]

Well, this is our forum, and we can grumble about missing out on our dose of TotQ. Hey, I'm going into withdrawal symptoms people

[Calbeck]

Calbeck
It was when TotQ suddenly morphed into a kind of graphical version of the LJ that I became upset.

That's fine, and understandable, but I wasn't taking issue with what you had to say. -:)

[Kerry Skydancer]

Belief - I think Luna has it pegged nicely. Belief is acceptance of something with no evidence for or against it. Accepting something -against- the evidence smacks a little more strongly of delusion than belief, but can be tolerated in a civil society as long as it harms no one else.

That said? I can't -do- belief. I work on evidence alone. The closest I come to belief is that I assume that a rational objective universe exists, describably by mathematics and congruent to my sensory perception of it (i.e., we're not all stuck in the Matrix or something) and even that is more of a working hypothesis. Show me evidence of something if you want me to accept it. Science tries to do this, and mostly succeeds. Religions, across the board, demand that I accept some things on someone else's say-so as Divine Revelation. I -can't-, even if I wanted to.

Pascal's Wager was rubbish, in that it attempted to put out a false dichotomy of belief in Christianity, or not - even its more recent versions, such as Nick's, assume without evidence that one of the major human religions actually does get it right. But there is no actual evidence to suspect that such a thing is true, and the number of possible belief sets about deities is rather enormous. The chance of guessing correctly is correspondingly tiny, so why waste your life in service to a belief set that is unlikely to be correct? I'll wait for actual evidence. If God wants to punish me for being suspicious about self-serving preachers with bad haircuts in tacky suits, I'll have a few choice words for Him, too, before I go.

[MikeVanPelt]

Since everybody else seems to be stating their beliefs: I believe there is no Santa Claus, no tooth fairy and no God. I am aware that this is not a rational belief, but it is my belief. I could no more change that than RHJ could stop believing in God.

Reminds me of a quote from one of Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan novels. Emperor Ezar Vorbarra said "I'm an atheist. A simple faith, but of much comfort to me in my later years." (I bet it was... Ezar did some spectacularly horrible (though, arguably, necessary) things, that I'm sure he'd like to avoid having to answer for.)

I've seen people walk out of wheelchairs, ... by direct request to the Healer.

What is this Healer going to do with the James Randi prize money?

Assuming this was an actual miracle, Randi's rules would still preclude ever getting with a mile of that million bucks. Randi requires attempts on the prize to be done under very strict conditions. The conditions are reasonable to prevent cheating, but they aren't compatible with events like The JAM described. It's the "You can't put God in a Skinner Box" problem. Miracles happen on God's schedule, not Man's, which would make signing Randy's statement swearing that, if the healing didn't happen RIGHT THEN, that they would renounce any claim that such miracles could ever happen something that it's unlikely anyone will accept.

[Nick012000]

Pascal's Wager was rubbish, in that it attempted to put out a false dichotomy of belief in Christianity, or not - even its more recent versions, such as Nick's, assume without evidence that one of the major human religions actually does get it right. But there is no actual evidence to suspect that such a thing is true, and the number of possible belief sets about deities is rather enormous. The chance of guessing correctly is correspondingly tiny, so why waste your life in service to a belief set that is unlikely to be correct? I'll wait for actual evidence. If God wants to punish me for being suspicious about self-serving preachers with bad haircuts in tacky suits, I'll have a few choice words for Him, too, before I go.

No, I don't. Note that right after I listed the Abraimic religions, I listed Atheism.

[StrangeWulf13]

From our previous discussions, you seem to have a lot of denial about the state of evidence regarding evolution. It seems pretty pointless to write more about it, since you have an interest in not knowing. All I'll say, though, is that really, given the evidence, evolution is pretty safe.

I admit, my love of learning has diminished over the years. Blame government school if you want, or natural laziness. The result is the same. But perhaps I could take a look at the site Ralph found and read a little... should be interesting...

As for the "safety" of evolution... heh. Let's wait until all the old professors are dead, shall we love? Let the fresh young minds decide for themselves if the old fogeys are full of it or not...

[Sun tzu]

From our previous discussions, you seem to have a lot of denial about the state of evidence regarding evolution. It seems pretty pointless to write more about it, since you have an interest in not knowing. All I'll say, though, is that really, given the evidence, evolution is pretty safe.

I admit, my love of learning has diminished over the years. Blame government school if you want, or natural laziness. The result is the same. But perhaps I could take a look at the site Ralph found and read a little... should be interesting...

As for the "safety" of evolution... heh. Let's wait until all the old professors are dead, shall we love? Let the fresh young minds decide for themselves if the old fogeys are full of it or not...

...
Er, what exactly are you suggesting that we wait for? Every professor from the time evolution was first proposed is quite dead by now - and back then, evolution had to impose itself against the opinion of the majority. "Fresh young minds" are deciding for themselves every day as we speak, as they have for over a century. If the current situation, with the quasi-totality of researchers in the field supporting evolution (despite well-funded foundations attempting to find evidence to the contrary - and failing) doesn't convince you the theory is correct, then what would?

[BlackFulcrum]

Okay time to add my voice to the discussion.

Lets start that I'm not completely happy with how RH has set these Hard Onions up, now I realise that they help him figure things out, and he wishes to tell us his motivations, but the current in your face style is a slight bit bothersome.

Now I'm Dutch, raised a Christian, but left church in my mid teens, science is my main motivation, blind faith is not my thing.
I have friends in the real world and online, from all walks of life, faiths, and nations, they all get the equal ammount of respect from me.
I'm not one to step away from a faith or political discussion, but discussion is the key word here, equal footing, this is a cermon, we cannot challenge this on the same footing.
I am all for someone telling me, this is what I believe, and I believe it because so and so and so, but I want the oppertunity to say what I believe and why, aswell.

What I believe, I believe mostly what science tells us, about the Earth, evolution, the universe.
I do believe there is some form of higher being, or beings, that eventually started this all, maybe even several hundred Big Bangs ago, has to be something or someone to start it off, but I do not believe that it, or they bother with the day to day life and running of this or any other inhabited world in this universe, let alone our own galaxy.

In the end I like to repeat a line from an online discussion I had about the recent US elections, with a good friend of mine, as he said it "a very concervative Texan" (while I'm a very liberal Dutchman).

"Opinions are like noses, people should stick to their own."

If you have an opinion, either give it to me on an equal footing, or keep it to yourself, preaching it at me, without giving me the chance to say anything on an equal platform is not fair, and not nice.

[Luna_Northcat]

JAM: I'm so sorry. I'm glad you found a way to find peace with God about it. But, I'm still so sorry. I don't know quite what to say.

I know what you mean about "it still hurts". It's just, for me, missing the people I've lost, too. Right now, I mean. I so want to talk to my Dad sometimes....that, on top of hurting about the fact that he had to go through what he did. I suppose it's similar.

One has to accept it, because there is no way to change it, if nothing else. But that doesn't mean one can necessarily stop it from hurting.

[Luna_Northcat]

I admit, my love of learning has diminished over the years. Blame government school if you want, or natural laziness. The result is the same. But perhaps I could take a look at the site Ralph found and read a little... should be interesting...

As for the "safety" of evolution... heh. Let's wait until all the old professors are dead, shall we love? Let the fresh young minds decide for themselves if the old fogeys are full of it or not...

Wulf, dear, you aren't after learning at all. I think that was made clear. What you are looking for is reassurance, because you need the world to be a certain way. You said so yourself.

AiG should pander nicely to what you want to hear. Just be aware that they get the bulk of what they write wrong, when compared to objective reality, and no-one in the sciences will respect you for quoting them. The credibility of their arguments depends absolutely on the ignorance of their audience about the detailed operation of the subject matter. But I'm sure you will like them, they will tell you what you need to hear.

You can wait for the old researchers and scientists to die if you like. I have a feeling you will be disappointed about the new ones, too.