[Jack Simth]

Originally posted by spoon:
So what are the political winds behind evolution and the big bang? The example you cited seemed more anecdotal than anything else. The fact that a dictator was pushing a doctrine doesn't discredit science, it discredits the dictator.

That particular one is a relatively recent, specific case where actual documents fairly clearly lay out what happened. For other such cases, it isn't usually laid out in documents from the time, but it is possible to make reasonable inferences based on things they were immediately used to justify, that had been happening beforehand anyway. Whether or not those inferences are accurate is a different matter, but a correlation is there.

For example, racism was happening before evolution became popularized; once evolution became popularized, the racists then had a fairly straightforward justification: they aren't evolved as much as we are; they are naturally stupid. As such, they could be considered less than human; animals for test subjects:

copied from A web page (Am I legally allowed to do this? There doesn't appear to be any note on the site about it one way or the other....)
Tragically, there is evidence that Australian Aborigines may have been killed for use as specimens. Consider these notes:

"A death bed memoir from Korah Wills, who became mayor of Bowen, Queensland, in 1866, graphically describes how he killed and dismembered a local tribesman in 1865 to provide a scientific specimen".

Edward Ramsey, curator of the Australian Museum in Sydney (1874-1894) published a museum booklet that appeared to describe Aborigines as "Australian animals". It also gave instructions on how to rob graves and plug bullet wounds in freshly killed "specimens". He complained in the 1880s that a Queensland law to stop slaughtering Aborigines was affecting his supply.

Amalie Dietrich, a German evolutionist (nicknamed the 'Angel of Black Death') came to Australia and asked that Aborigines be shot for specimens, so their skin could be stuffed and mounted. "Although evicted from at least one property, she shortly returned home with her specimens."

"A new South Wales missionary was a horrified witness to the slaughter by mounted police of a group of Aboriginal men, women and children. Forty-five heads were then boiled down and the best 10 skulls were packed off for overseas."

For more modern political reasons, consider what a lack of a Creator would mean:
Without God, you can't really have a universal standard of behavior resting on any foundation beyond temporal power.
No divine authority to make rules for you to follow pretty strongly implies you can do anything you can get away with, as there won't ultimately be consequences for it (GW mentioned something about that as well, as I recall). This leaves you free to lie, cheat on your spouse, steal, murder, rape, or what have you, as long as you don't get caught (and the sad fact is, most don't unless they make a career out of it, and even then, it may well take thirty or forty years to catch up with them). Those running sleazy megacorps are free to make sleazy practices, as they won't really suffer for it any time soon and it helps them personally in the short run. Those in office can do the same. There's no real accountability. Strong incentive for anyone thirsting for power, and most of those in power anymore thirst for it to some degree.

The Big Bang is possibly a consequence of those in power needing lots of time for evolution, combined with the observation of a near universal redshift of distant stellar objects and Einstien's theory of relativity, which predicted that objects moving away from each other would cause a redshift. Putting those together, it becomes reasonably clear that the universe is expanding (unless another reason for the redshift is postulated, as some do). Well, if it is expanding, and it has been around long enough, then unless the expansion is a recent phenomina things must have come from a point. Getting out of that point required some driving force, and hence the Big Bang theory was born.

There's lots of problems with BB theory and evolutionary theory as a method of describing how we got where we are today, but those are usually either not brought up, quietly kept out of journals usually considered credible, dismissed as minor, or brushed off with "the re-evaluation of the theory is still on-going" with the implication being that all will be answered if it is just given enough time.

Originally posted by spoon:

But with the qualifiaction in there, you agree with the statement, or no?

For the stuff that can be tested locally (chemistry, physics, electronics, et cetera), sure they do, as I've mentioned a number of times.

For stuff about the distant past, which by definition usually involves unrepeatable, happened once phenomina, they tend to argue details, mechanisms, order, specific path, and the like, but they don't dispute the basic thesises (that doesn't look right; what's the plural of thesis?); at least, not in the standard set of journals usually considered credible. Those that do don't usually get research grants or published in the journals usually considered credible.