So, there was a peer-reviewed paper that appeared in the PLOS peer-reviewed journal that made reference to a Creator in the abstract. The scientific work of the paper had no problems.

I saved a copy of the post and the comments. Let’s look at some of the comments.

Comments by editors of the journal

Michael Sears:

The article should be retracted and the handling editor should be dismissed. As an Editor for this journal, I am appalled.

Ricard Sol:

I think that pretending to defend a creationist argument (non-science) in a science journal raises serious doubts about the whole enterprise. The paper should be retracted. As a PLOS ONE editor I believe accepting this situation would seriously damage our credibility.

Dante Chialvo:

[…]I am ashamed that the journal staff, the editor responsable for the paper, the reviewers, all ignored this more than obvious red flag resulting on a creationist argument embedded on a scientific paper. I will consider resigning unless exemplary actions are taken by Plos.

Angel Sánchez:

As I have said in a separate post, I will resign as an editor of PLOS ONE if this paper is not retracted immediately. PLOS ONE is a scientific journal and I don’t want to have anything to do, not even my name related to a journal tha publishes about superstition and supernatural entities. I will stop editing and I will stop submitting, and I’ll recommend everybody never to submit again to PLOS ONE. I hope we don’t have to go there.

So, you can see that science – as the naturalists conduct it – is not really the search for truth, no holds barred. It’s the attempt to explain nature without reference to a Creator and Designer. Whatever the experiments show must conform to a philosophical assumption (a religion), called naturalism. And the religion of naturalism determines what can and cannot be accepted as science. You can see the same principle at work in the denial of the Big Bang cosmology despite evidence such as the cosmic microwave background radiation, the light element abundances, and the redshifting of light from distant galaxies. Science has shown we live in a created universe that began about 13.7 billion years ago, but here we have atheists in denial of science sitting in positions of power deriding the Creator who has been revealed by experimental science. That’s the power of the naturalistic dogma. And it turns out that the most powerful argument for Darwinian evolution is this: “believe it, or I’ll have you fired, and ruin your career”. This is how Darwinism propagates from old to young – through coercion, and not through real science.

Other comments

Zach Throckmorton:

As others have noted, utilization of an intelligent design creationism framework for explaining human anatomy is not acceptable for a scientific journal.

Jorge Soberon:

I find the use of religious language in a scietific paper totally unacceptable. I will be watching this paper closely, and distributing it to colleagues. If PLOS ONE does not do something about it, like asking the authors to retratct the paper, or at the very least publishing an explanation, I will stop reviewing papers for PLOS ONE. I do hope the editors of PLOS ONE realize what a huge mistake was to accept publication of a paper with this wording. It says a lot about the care with which a paper is edited.

Adam Hartstone-Rose:

This article proves that there is something SERIOUSLY wrong with the journal. If the paper isn’t retracted, my students, collaborators and I will have no choice but to refrain from submitting to this once respectable journal. I’m embarrassed for you and embarrassed that some of my proudest papers are in your journal.

[…]This requires a ballistic reaction, not a considered “looking into” the problem!

Enrico Petretto:

This is outrageous. If PLOS ONE does not do something about it, i.e., ask the authors to retract the paper, and in any case, if the paper isn’t retracted, my students, collaborators and I will have no choice but to refrain from considering (i..e, reading, reviewing and citing) papers published in PLOS ONE.

Luigi Maiorano:

Quote totally!! outrageous is the minimum! I published 3 of my papers in PlosOne, but I will never do it again. I’m actually telling all my students and colleagues to boycott the journal and never consider it again!

Jean-Michel Heraud:

I have no knowledge to judge this article…

[…]I would recommend to the editor of the journal to exclude definitely the two reviewers that have accepted this manuscript.

Oliver Rauhut:

As noted by many comments below, this is not a matter of inappropriate wording! This rather seems to be a (successfull) attempt to place an intelligent design argument in a (so far) respected scientific journal. Thus, the only solution is the immediate retraction of this paper! Unless this step has been done, my workgroup and me will refrain from publishing further papers in PLoS!

Harry Noyes:

Changing Creator to Nature will not solve the problem since it still implies a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution. That is there is no design process, no outcome is foreseen. Anything that works better tends to have a selective advantage but that is not a product of design it is a product of selection working on random events. The paper clearly needs a substantive rewrite quite apart from the concerns raised about the significance of the results raised by other comments.

Carl Schmidt:

A more important issue is the review process that allowed such nonsense as “Creator” to appear in a journal purportedly devoted to science.

The article has now been retracted.

Evolution News comments:

This would seem to bear out a remark by Chinese paleontologist J.Y. Chen, recounted in Darwin’s Doubt, “In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America, you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.”

So what’s really behind all this fascism?

Consider this quote from famous population geneticist (and Darwinian fundamentalist) Richard Lewontin. And note that he equates science with his chosen religion of naturalism, he doesn’t accept science in the traditional sense of the word, where there is no metaphysical baggage.

He says:

Our willingness to accept scientific [i.e. – naturalistic] claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science [i.e. – naturalism] and the supernatural. We take the side of science [i.e. – naturalism] in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific [i.e. – naturalistic] community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science [i.e. – naturalism] somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

“Billions and Billions of Demons” by Richard Lewtontin. (Link)

“A priori” means before seeing the facts, before seeing the evidence.

And what is behind the choice of naturalism as the preferred religion? Consider this quote from atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel.

He says this:

“In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper–namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers.

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

(”The Last Word” by Thomas Nagel, Oxford University Press: 1997)

The days of Isaac Newton are long gone, and another Newton will not emerge while the Naturalistic Church is in power. And it’s a taxpayer-funded church, too. Think about that next time you vote for bigger or smaller government.

Positive arguments for theism

• The kalam cosmological argument and the Big Bang theory
• The fine-tuning argument from cosmological constants and quantities
• The origin of life, part 1 of 2: the building blocks of life
• The origin of life, part 2 of 2: biological information
• The sudden origin of phyla in the Cambrian explosion
• Galactic habitable zones and circumstellar habitable zones
• Irreducible complexity in molecular machines
• The creative limits of natural selection and random mutation
• Angus Menuge’s ontological argument from reason
• Alvin Plantinga’s epistemological argument from reason
• William Lane Craig’s moral argument
• The unexpected applicability of mathematics to nature
• Six reasons why you should believe in non-physical minds