Dan Graur is the author of the book Molecular and Genome Evolution (2016). Dan Graur has a very low threshold for hooey, hype, hypocrisy, postmodernism, bad statistics, ignorance of population genetics and evolutionary biology, and hatred of any kind. This blog is a diary of peeves, dislikes, antipathies, annoyances, and random feelings of contempt. Rarely, do I have good things to say.
Following a silly letter from Scotland, I found it necessary to state very, very clearly that all the opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not represent the views of either my academic employer or the current Secretary of the Flat Earth Society.
Baylor University is a Baptist university. Thus, at Baylor, they celebrate a research creed whereby “research, scholarship and faith guide the mind in understanding the complex diversity of God’s creation.” At Baylor University evolution is taught, but the Biology Department finds it necessary to provide an explanation as to why they do that. Most universities do not provide an explanation.
What do researchers do when their findings contradict elements of the Christian faith or the Christian practice? Do they manipulate the data? Do they burry the results in a drawer. No! They burry the data inside the publication and emphasize the parts that fit the Christian dogma. The most important results are buried deep in almost impenetrable tables and socio-psycho-babble. (They follow G.K. Chesterton’s advice: “Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.”
Take for example, Sung Joon Jang and Aaron Franzen from and their study Is being “spiritual” enough without being religious? A study of violent and property crimes among emerging adults that was published in 2013 in the journal Criminology.
From the abstract:
“This study first examines differences in crime between “spiritual-but-not-religious” individuals and their “religious-and-spiritual,” “religious-but-not-spiritual,” and “neither-religious-nor-spiritual” peers in emerging adulthood. Specifically, we hypothesize that the “spiritual-but-not-religious” young adults are more prone to crime than their “religious” counterparts, while expecting them to be different from the “neither” group… The overall results tend to provide a partial support for the hypotheses. Implications for criminology and future research are discussed.”
C'est tout! There is nothing more of any substance in the abstract.
The expectation of the “scientists” at Baylor was that “religious-and-spiritual” commit the least number of crimes, followed by the “religious but not spiritual,” “spiritual but not religious,” and “neither religious nor spiritual.”
The “partial support” in the abstract seems to indicate that the actual data confirmed their expectation. Indeed, a press release by the Media Relations Department at Baylor was entitled “Spiritual” Young People Are More Likely to Commit Crimes than “Religious” Ones, Baylor Study Finds.“
This conclusion was picked up by the authors of the Findings column of the the August 2013 issue of Harper’s Magazine (unfortunately behind a paywall). (I wish Harper’s would hire me once in a while to do the heavy lifting and rummage through obscurantist tables.)
In reality, the group that was least prone to criminal behavior was the “neither religious nor spiritual.” Given these results, the title of the article by the gentlemen from Baylor should have been “Is being religious and/or spiritual enough? The dearth of property crimes among neither-religious-nor-spiritual emerging adults.”
Such a title would, of course, be unthinkable at a university where “faith guides the complex understanding of God’s subjects.” So what do the authors do. Prevaricate!
Prevaricators in the Name of Christ: Sung Joon Jang, associate professor in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, and Aaron B. Franzen, then Ph.D. candidate at Baylor and currently Associate Professor at Hope College, a four-year liberal arts college emphasizing “vibrant Christian faith”