PODCAST EPISODE 011: Jimmy vs. the Flying Spaghetti Monster!

24 thoughts on “PODCAST EPISODE 011: Jimmy vs. the Flying Spaghetti Monster!”

1. Dear Jimmy, Thank you, thank you, thank you. – Richard, Santa Clara

2. Check out The Sacred Page Podcast: http://www.thesacredpage.com/search/label/podcast

3. Don’t get me started on this. Bobby Henderson may be a competent physicist, but he is a lousy philosopher who, apparently, wouldn’t know an ontological class difference if it hit him with a meatball.
   His quote:
   “What I have a problem with is religion posing as science. If there is a god and he’s intelligent, then I would guess he has a sense of humor.”
   tells me that he really doesn’t understand that theology is a science and that he has no understanding of it. Another scholar talking out of his field of expertise, sigh.
   God has compassion for people of good-will searching for the truth. Such is what the Intelligent Designers are doing; he might smile at their being off the mark from time to time. I suspect that God has little patience for insincerity and posery, such as Mr./Dr. (don’t know which) Henderson is evidencing. Try calling your Father a meatball and see how long you go before being hit over the head.
   I have way too many things to say and not a little bit of anger with this “scientist,” which I will not vent, here, because it would quickly lead to harsh words and sin.
   He is not searching for the truth and I have no time for such a person. God can handle misguidedness, but he has a problem with arrogance. No doubt Henderson would claim that it is the IDers who are being arrogant, not he, but then, his actions speak for themselves.
   Yes, I can take a joke, but this isn’t one.
   The Chicken

4. Now, a scientist I have respect for is Dr. Pamela Gay of Astronomy Cast fame. An academic astronomer, she finally broke down and admitted that she was a Christian on her blog (although her reasoning is a bit murky as to why she is, to my mind) and she had the distinction of being martyred on her blog almost immediately by PZ Meyers…martyred in the sense of having to deal with PZ Myer’s response. Apparently, he cannot believe that one can be a scientist and a Christian.
   The Chicken

5. Hear, hear, Chicken!
   Someone should put together a list of lazy, mobbish atheist catchphrases and sort them by fallacy, for example:
   a. Circular, e.g. “Too bad God doesn’t exist,” especially circular namecalling, “deluded” et. al.
   b. Straw man, e.g. Flying Spaghetti Monster, other misrepresentations of the Five Ways.
   c. Sound and fury*, &c., &c., e.g. all that blather belying God as homicidal, genocidal, hateful and all the rest.
   d. Paranoid, e.g. that remark that seeing scientists who were Christians was like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
   e. Equivocal, e.g. saying “Faith” when you mean “Muslim,” or “Christian” when you mean “Fundamentalist.”
   f. Ad hominem, e.g. references to the Inquisition, that Hitler was baptized or Stalin formerly a seminarian.
   I’d rather the atheists pick on someone their own size. Catholicism has borne the Borgias; she will survive Dawkins. If only more atheists were like Leah at Unequally Yoked, by which I mean honestly in the business of looking for truth. Not that I judge her to be doing so, as I cannot see through the Internet and into her soul.
   * Technically not a fallacy, but trope enough to be tiresome.

6. Some people won’t allow themselves to think about the deeper questions of life. They appear to be satisfied with reality being purely material. I remember reading excerpts of an interview with Richard Dawkins (it was part of a sort of discussion / debate with a major Rabbi in England) where he claimed (I’m paraphrasing) that it was arrogant to even pursue questions about the fundamental nature of existence. What do you say to something like that? My guess is that the same people who parade the FSM stuff around have the same attitude about such things.
   Should ID be taught in schools? I don’t know. I think the right solution to this is to de-monopolize the educational system of this country, and let parents choose where they want to send their children. That would solve a lot of these problems. We don’t live in a society which is generally united in the fundamentals, so how can we not have conflict when it comes to teaching children?

7. I think, as a Christian (and a ‘fan’ of St. Thomas Aquinas), that Intelligent Design should NOT be taught in schools, or at least not in Christian schools…
   1- ID will always be in ‘competition’ with the scientific theory of evolution
   [[while Aquinas teleological argument can accept evolution theory (indeed neo-Thomists have no problem with the theory of evolution as such)]]
   2- ID is based on the idea of ‘complexity’, i.e. that very complex structures are very unlikely (or even impossible) to arise on their own so a ‘creator’ is needed.
   [[Aquinas argument on the other hand does not care about complexity at all, but rather ‘final causation’]]
   3- Even if ID could be accepted, it would, at best, prove a ‘deist’s God’, i.e. a God that once created the world but that does not even need to exist right now.
   [[Aquinas’ teleological argument and his other arguments, point to a Theist’s God, i.e. a God that must exist otherwise nothing else could in principle even exist]]
   In my opinion only the theory of evolution should be taught in biology class… of course not the pseudo-scientific ‘materialist’ view (i.e. that only matter can exist) of people like Dawkins or Dennett (such views are also metaphysical and not scientific).

8. PS: No I do NOT say St. Thomas teleological argument should be taught in biology class either.
   I think it should, perhaps, be taught in schools, in philosophy class (if a school provides a philosophy class…), since it is a metaphysical argument, not a scientific one.

9. PPS (sorry for spamming a bit):
   Regarding the Summa Theologiae, contrary to popular (and atheist) belief, it is not meant to ‘detailed explaination of everything’, sicne the Summa T. is indeed a ‘summa’, i.e. a summary.
   so the ‘five ways’ in the Summa T. are just meant to be a ‘brief summary’ of each argument. Also the terminology is often misunderstood, since Aquinas uses metaphysical terms not physical ones (i.e. when A. says ‘motion’ he does not mean newtonian motion, but the transition from ‘potentiality to actuality’)
   Unfortunately most people do not know the rest of Aquinas’ works, which go in much deeper detail on what the Summa T. tells on Natural Theology (i.e. theology from reason, not a specific revelation, like ‘Revealed Theology’).

10. Dear Ismael,
    I agree, in principle, that ID as it currently stands should not be taught in high school, although I see nothing wrong with the idea of teaching that the design of the universe is governed by reason. In other words, ID people are trying to argue a bottom-up metaphysics, which isn’t going to be anything but speculative because it commits the Fallacy of the Accident in that organization can, at most be an accident of a Creator. God did not have to create an organized universe. It just so happens that, because of who he is, he did create one.
    St. Thomas’s argument by design is a metaphysical top-down argument, as you point out.
    As for St. Thomas, unfortunately the, Sumnma Conrta Gentiles, his more philosophical work, has not, to my knowledge, been available in a complete English translation.
    The Chicken

11. Is not Pegis’s translation complete?
    http://www.amazon.com/Summa-Contra-Gentiles-Book-One/dp/026801678X

12. As for St. Thomas, unfortunately the, Sumnma Conrta Gentiles, his more philosophical work, has not, to my knowledge, been available in a complete English translation.
    Here’s a translation, I think it’s complete.
    http://www.josephkenny.joyeurs.com/CDtexts/ContraGentiles.htm
    In any case the SCG is indeed much harder to find than the ST, which is the only work of Aquinas known to the ‘laymen’
    Also other works of St. Thomas in english:
    http://www.josephkenny.joyeurs.com/CDtexts/index2.htm
    (I cried of joy when I found that site :D)

13. @Marty Mazur Yeah I think so… it would be strange if there would ne no translations at all…

14. Ismael:
    You don’t realize that evolution is unscientific and a religious viewpoint masquerading as science. It’s ironically precisely what atheists themselves are claiming to fight against when they refer to ID or creationism.
    Evolution has no experimental or observable proof, not even a meagre hypothetical explanation for it’s absurd fantasies. ID has FAR more evidence on its side, and Evolution has nada, zip, nothing whatsoever. it is simply paraded and upheld by the consensus establishment of scientists who are entirely ignorant of what they ahve been indoctrinated in through the secular schools and universities who want to censure and eliminate any and everything that would point to the FACT that God created the universe and that naturalism and amterialism is a joke of unbridaled proportions and the greatest deception ever force fed to an entire generation of people. Evolution doesn’t even have even the lest shred of dignity to be put alongside geocentrism in the list of scientific beliefs that are outdated and rubbished.
    To teach evolution in schools and colleges is to give preference to a religious view (materialism/naturalism/atheism). Evolution should either be thrown out, stuffed into a religious class that teaches about various religions, faiths, philosophies etc. OR Intelligent Design and especially Biblical Creationism should also be allowed to be taught. Evolution certainly has no place in the science classroom, unless it covers it in a historic manner alongside other refuted and outdated scientific beliefs such as geocentricity and alchemy.
    For years we have ignorantly been bending over and letting the evolutionary, secular and atheistic establishments define what ‘science’ is and indoctrinating entire generations of people against God and against Creation and against Christianity using nothing but nonsense that’s as laughable as the flying spaghetti monster. The joke is on atheists, a collection of simple minded people who are too irrational to see past their own foolishness and hypocrisy, and couldn’t stand to see the reality that the world and universe and humanity is far too complex a thing for them to comprehend completely, so they prefer the simplification of all things from material nature to human nature. It’s a simpleton’s hopeful solution to solving the world’s problems, but unfortunately for them it ends up being irrational and a self defeating philosophy.
    It’s time to spare these fools no quarter, and call them out on all the things we have sat back and allowed them to whimsically assume unchallenged for all this time.
    The only thing ID lacks is that it doesn’t explicitly give creedence to who God is, preferring to be vague, and also does not narrow down the methodology.
    Biblical Creationism on the other hand adhering to the inerrancy of Scripture and the facts revealed by God Himself in the Bible, does and is the only true model of the universe and origins.

15. Johnno, in what way does Theistic (“God-believing”) evolutionism not adhere to the inerrancy of Scripture? A Catholic (or other Christian) who accepts the scientific facts – as currently understood by most scientists – would not deny that God _definitely_ created the _entire_ universe. The question is “How does creation work, biologically speaking?”… and answering that question is outside the scope and purpose of Scripture.
    P. S. I apologise beforehand for any and all errors, linguistic or otherwise, as well as the fact that I might forget to check back here for replies. Sorry. D. S.

16. Dear Johnno
    I don’t know whether you have had the misfortune (in your eyes) to have had any formal scientific education for you to make such confident pronouncements.
    Since you have such a low regard for the methods and conclusions of the “consensus establishment of scientists” regarding evolution (and presumably the age of the earth and universe), perhaps you should consider whether you should be trusting the other fruits of their “indoctrination”.
    Should you be trusting your life to these “fools” science and technology? Surely you should stop using their antibiotics, anaesthetics, airplanes, electronics, cell-phones, TV, computers and the internet?

17. Ike from Sweden –
    Theistic Evolution must compromise with philosophical declarations of naturalists that the world in it’s current state defines the state it has more or less always been in. This means that death, suffering, disease, survival of the fittest, bloodshed, violence, natural injustice, etc. have always existed. And therefore are part of creation, and therefore are intended and created purposefully by God. They are of God’s design and not a result of sin. So God Himself is then responsible for what He calls evil and wrong. It is contrary to Scripture in several places that states the death suffering etc. are a result of sin, and all the ills we witness today are a result of a Fallen and cursed World that was never part of the original design. Hence it makes a mockery of Christ’s Sacrifice on the Cross, as it would make no sense for God to send His Son to die to save us from a world that God Himself created which all pre-existed man and thus pre-existed sin. The very character of God is attacked first and foremost.
    Secondly it is contrary to the clear words of Scripture and dogmatic teachings. God Himself declares in Exodus clearly that everything was created in 6 days, as outlined in Genesis. Christ Himself states that man and woman were fully human created at the beginning of creation, the Apostles themselves again reiterate the teachings that death and suffering are intruders in this world and a result of sin and man’s rebellion. The Church teaches dogmatically that Adam and Eve are our first parents and the parents of the entire human civilization. There are no ‘races’ as such that decended from other tribes etc. as early evolutionist theories taught. We trace Christ’s ancestory right back to the original man Adam created not of former creatures, but from the dust of the Earth, and Eve from his rib. And also that humans and all life, like the angels, both things spiritual and corporeal were created ‘ex nihilo.’ Spiritual beings such as the angels do not go through macro-evolutionary process to get to where they are, and neither have any living things. This is not to say corporeal things do not change through natural selection and/or speciate, but that they do not change from lower kinds to higher kinds through any process that takes them from chemical pond scum to fish to amphibians to small mammals to knuckle walkers to man as he is today. Science has no evidence of this nor has it ever observed anything of the sort.
    Scripture and the infalliable dogmatic teachings of the Church do provide specifics as to what kind of world God Created (Good, free from evil, free from sufferings that later came about due to sin), how He created it (Ex nihilo, 6 days, man made in His image), and even why (to love God, to be joined to Him, the creation and relationship of man and woman foreshadowing the incarnation and the mystical union we are capable to sharing with God). To give into things, that by the way are certainly NOT facts, is to cut yourself off from all these other truths, and endangering to ones salvation and undermines the Gospel.
    Evolution philosophies and naturalism only go on to undermine the faith, undermine who God is, the purpose of creation, and lead man to moral relativism and justify all manner of sin as being natural; because they judge it based on what they observe through nature which is cursed and fallen due to sin. But not realizing this, they assume that this world is what God made, and that therefore either God Himself approves of such natural inclinations that are evil, or they see how incompatabile the God of Christianity is with the worldview of evolution, and beliving evolution’s worldview to be a fact, reject Christianity and Christian morality; or they fall into the trap of believing that Christianity and religion are simply themselves results of evolutionary development that evolved with time and are subject to change. There is nothing dogmatic nor everlasting. There is no truth except that which is subjective to those who are surviving within the current times, and a time will come when it is no longer necessary.

18. Leo –
    Antibiotics, anaesthetics, airplanes, electronics, cell-phones, TV, computers and the internet, and all other technology and scientific progress in these areas have had NOTHING, NADA, ZIP to do with evolution, which deals in past processes that are not observable, can’t be explained, and lack any sort of hypothetical explanation as to their own possibility. They are certainly not their fruits. They are a result of real science that deals with the present processes and things that we can actually recreate and experiment with today, right now, in the present. Evolutionary ideas are nothing new. They were rubbished and ignored by level headed philosophers and scientists since the time of ancient Greece when they denied the role of divinity in the creation of the universe, and nothing has changed much now aside from the sophistry of their arguments and media indoctrination because it is the only belief system of humanity’s origins that levels the playing field for the sake of maintaining secularism and creating doubt as to the valadity of Christianity it’s Scriptures and the Church.
    Antibiotic resistence has nothing to do with macro-evolution. Organisms gain no new information. They lose it through mutation and this gives them a survival advantage against an antibiotic. This is the complete opposite of what evolution proposes for the origin of all life where all things must grow more complex somehow (they haven’t any idea). Other medical progress is made based not on what humans and their still in-development biology were supposedly like millions of years ago; but on what humans and our present bodily systems are like now, here, in the present. The hypothetical past, which even evolutionists will say they don’t fully know and are always changing and constantly rewriting, is totally irrelevant to any and all fields of technological and medical progress. The idea that our complex bodies evolved due to random chance without any good idea how is absurd. Everything else is the result of advancing technology based on present observable and testable science that has been done and maintained over the past thousands of years. Airplanes, cell phones, the internet and cameras etc. didn’t just randomly organize themselves in a vaccuum through random chance. They are a result of Intelligent Designers, a result of experimenting and observing scientific laws and reactions done in the present. They don’t magically appear. And they are nowhere near as complex and amazing as the intricate machinery found in even the simplest of living cells.
    None of it has anything to do with the vain imaginings of naturalists and evolutionist atheism of what things were supposedly like billions of years ago, which are things that are impossible to observe or test through science, it is simply another false religion. You’ve credited too much to all the wrong people. Technology progressed without evolution being the dominant worldview and continues to progress regardless of it because it never had anything to do with it in the first place. You are getting the wrong impression that just because technology is changing and ‘evolving’ by leaps and bounds (due to intelligent design), that this naturally reflects back on the natural world, but there is no connection.

19. Is not Pegis’s translation complete?
    No. It is a complete translation of the first book, only.
    Ismael, thank you VERY much for that link. I have been looking or this type of site for a long time. There is a Dominocan site that has pretty much the same things.
    You don’t realize that evolution is unscientific and a religious viewpoint masquerading as science. It’s ironically precisely what atheists themselves are claiming to fight against when they refer to ID or creationism.
    Evolution has no experimental or observable proof, not even a meagre hypothetical explanation for it’s absurd fantasies. ID has FAR more evidence on its side, and Evolution has nada, zip, nothing whatsoever. it is simply paraded and upheld by the consensus establishment of scientists who are entirely ignorant of what they ahve been indoctrinated in through the secular schools and universities who want to censure and eliminate any and everything that would point to the FACT that God created the universe and that naturalism and amterialism is a joke of unbridaled proportions and the greatest deception ever force fed to an entire generation of people. Evolution doesn’t even have even the lest shred of dignity to be put alongside geocentrism in the list of scientific beliefs that are outdated and rubbished.
    I don’t know where to even begin to discuss this. I really don’t. Neither Christ nor St. Paul rejected either science or medicine. Neither does the rest of Scrupture. I can cite many passages to prove this. In fact, such study came under the heading of Practical Wisdom in the Old Testament. In any case, I do not think that proof-texting from Scripture proves anything like what you are asserting.
    It seems to me that you might not understand science in general, nor evolution, in detail. To begin with, science is not a means of finding the origin of anything. By it’s very nature it can’t do this. Science is an exclusionary activity. Science, by experimentation, seeks to eliminate that which is inconsistent, in a logical sense. It cannot tell what is Truth. It can only tell what isn’t true or logically consistent. If the Truth is at the center of a dart board, science can only throw darts and try to eliminate those parts of the dart board that can’t be the bullseye, but it can never claim to assert that because it has found many places where the bullseye is not, that it suddenly knows where the bullseye is. In fact, it is throwing darts at a dart board of which it not only doesn’t know the location of the bullseye, but it doesn’t even know the size of the dart board. Science is an eliminative process. It is apophatic, in the best theological sense.
    The philosophy of science has been co-opted in recent years by materialist atheists who make the false claim that science can discover ultimate Truth. Dawkins is a particularly extreme example. Dawkins does not seem to understand either theology or the philosophy of science particularly well and continually commits ontological faux pas after faux pas.
    Science can not prove the existence of God, although it can lead one to the brink. St. Thomas Aquinas calls these philosophical considerations, the “Preambles of Fatih,” – things about God that can be known by pure reason. That God is an orderly God can be known by the observation of the universe, as St. Paul clear points out in Romans:1, or are you denying this passage of Scripture? Science is an adjunct to theology.
    As for evolution, you must first define your use of the term. Do you mean micro-evolution, macro-evolution, Natural Selection, Survival-of-the-Fittest, etc. Macro-evolution has not been proven, although it has some indirect support; micro-evolution can be observed in the laboratory, so it’s existence is beyond question and unarguable. Natural Selection is, to my mind, not established, nor is Survival-of-the-Fittest because there are severe philosophical limitations to both of them, equivalent in a spatial sense to the temporal flaws in Utilitarianism, but that would get us into a whole other discussion.
    As for geocentrism, I have written on that in great detail in this comment box in other posts of Jimmy’s as well as on Mark Shea’s blog. I have read Sungenis, and, it seems to me, that he cribs most of his ideas about the structure of the universe from Mach. Dennis Sciama, the doctoral advisor of Stephen Hawking, wrote a book in 1969 called, The Physical Foundations of General Relativity, in which he derived the SWG equation, which is equivalent to Einstein’s equations, using Mach’s Principle that inertia derives from the structure of the universe and that one may derive the Einstein equations by assuming the universe is a series of concentric shells about a center, which may be defined to be anywhere in the universe, including Earth.
    Personally, this means little to science, in that the equations can put anything at the center of the universe using an equivalent variable transformation. So, the Earth may be the center of the universe, but the math is easier to work with if we assume it is not. For all we know, the Earth may have been the center of the universe at some time t0, but for some reason got shifted. It doesn’t really matter, since the universe is the way it is, now, we have to deal with it. It makes headlines to say that the Earth is the center of the universe (and there are different senses of center – material, philosophical, theological, etc.), but science doesn’t really care. This is something I don’t think the goecentrists get. Science looks for consistency and simplicity, not truth. Even if the Earth is the center of the universe, we haven’t figured out a way to make the case consistent and simple. Until we do, we will muddle along with what we have. That does not discredit science. Sungenis does not seem to understand the philosophy of science in exactly the opposite way that Dawkins does not seem to understand it. Science, properly done, is agnostic to the claims of theology. It is a preamble to faith. It does not specify anything about the content of faith.
    My problem with the Flying Spaghetti Monster is that it is both bad science and bad theology.
    Don’t paint science with such a broad brush. The activity of science suffers from the same defects as any activity tainted my sinful men, but science, itself, when properly done, seeks the truth, if only by elimination, and those who seek the truth seek God, whether they know it or not.
    The Chicken
    Posted by: The Masked Chicken | 

20. Some of my formatting got lost. The following quotes were meant to be in italics in my above post:
    Marty Mazur:
    Is not Pegis’s translation complete?
    Johnno:
    You don’t realize that evolution is unscientific and a religious viewpoint masquerading as science. It’s ironically precisely what atheists themselves are claiming to fight against when they refer to ID or creationism.
    The rest of the post is mine. I really wish blogs would let the original commenter modify their comments.
    The Chicken

21. I didn’t mean to be harsh with Johnno. My apologies if it sounded that way. I tend to get worked on on this subject.
    The Chicken

22. Johno’s quote in my reply actually was:
    You don’t realize that evolution is unscientific and a religious viewpoint masquerading as science. It’s ironically precisely what atheists themselves are claiming to fight against when they refer to ID or creationism.
    Evolution has no experimental or observable proof, not even a meagre hypothetical explanation for it’s absurd fantasies. ID has FAR more evidence on its side, and Evolution has nada, zip, nothing whatsoever. it is simply paraded and upheld by the consensus establishment of scientists who are entirely ignorant of what they ahve been indoctrinated in through the secular schools and universities who want to censure and eliminate any and everything that would point to the FACT that God created the universe and that naturalism and amterialism is a joke of unbridaled proportions and the greatest deception ever force fed to an entire generation of people. Evolution doesn’t even have even the lest shred of dignity to be put alongside geocentrism in the list of scientific beliefs that are outdated and rubbished.
    My reply starts at:
    I don’t know where to even begin to discuss this. I really don’t. Neither Christ nor St. Paul rejected either science or medicine. Neither does the rest of Scrupture. I can cite many passages to prove this. In fact, such study came under the heading of Practical Wisdom in the Old Testament. In any case, I do not think that proof-texting from Scripture proves anything like what you are asserting.
    I have no idea why the formatting got so screwed up. It makes the comment hard to follow. Apparently, copying comments removes the HTML formatting. If my long comment at 7:01 AM, above, makes no sense (since, without proper italics it sounds like I am both ranting against evolution and defending it), feel free to ignore it.
    The Chicken

23. The Chicken:
    I agree with everything you’ve said. I didn’t mean to paint ‘science’ itself as bad or negative. I merely refer to the current scientific consensus as ‘bad.’ As in, the majority of people, or those in power and influence, who conduct science or claim to follow it truthfully today. Or rather I should say that they are simply ‘incorrect’ but that’s giving them the benefit of the doubt.
    Science is a methodology. It gives us data and a framework for working and organizing that data. That’s it. Simple stuff.
    However scientists must draw conclusions from that data. And scientists, being human, will make conclusions based on their worldview/religious beliefs/materialist assumptions. Oftentimes, scientific data is forced to fit certain worldviews, and most often than not, data is outright ignored on purpose because it doesn’t accord with what the scientist wanted it to. Things are ruled out a priori (beforehand) in order to suit the biased conclusions that a to of scientists want to be rather than following the data to see where it is most likely pointing towards.
    Micro evolution and natural selection are self evident. We observe these everyday. Macro Evolution has never been witnessed, never been observed, never even accorded an explanation. Everything we are told repeatedly is known to be at odds with known scientific laws and observable science. But this belief of the universe and life’s origins continues to be pushed because it highly support a secular worldview that ignores God and morality, and casts doubt on Christianity.
    The current scientific establishment today run by secularists, materialists and the media, is what is bad. I’d even say the entire state of affairs is downright diabolical and goes to show how far man has fallen.
    Science cannot 100% prove God or who He is. But it can 100% falsify the materialist and atheistic worldviews with regards to biological and cosmological evolution, because none of it is even in accord with the most basic known facts about biology, physics, chemistry or even reason and logic.

24. However scientists must draw conclusions from that data. And scientists, being human, will make conclusions based on their worldview/religious beliefs/materialist assumptions. Oftentimes, scientific data is forced to fit certain worldviews, and most often than not, data is outright ignored on purpose because it doesn’t accord with what the scientist wanted it to.
    This happens, more often than not in two situations: 1) the scientist has a great deal of peer-pressure, as in the case where grants or tenure are involved and 2) when scientists ally themselves to politics because of money PR prestige. If a scientist has integrity, he must follow the data wherever it leads, but this is enjoined on all men of good-will. Scientist are prone to sin where their egos get involved, just as anyone. The purpose of science as an impartial system is to try to prevent this, but it does not always succeed in the easy cases, but almost always oes, in the end, for hard cases.
    The Chicken

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