re: #240 Ming

I can’t wrap my head around this. According to Wikipedia, Ben Carson, retired neurosurgeon, “He is credited with being the first surgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins joined at the head.”

How can such an accomplished person be a young earth creationist, which shows profound hostility to the scientific method?

I’m as guilty as anyone else, but I’m fascinated by how a person can be so smart in some areas, and so stupid in other areas. Sometimes I wish I’d majored in psychology.

Expertise, even skill mastery, in one area, does not actually transfer to other contiguous area of knowledge.

As a neurosurgeon, he’s got a sense of brain anatomy good enough to perform highly delicate surgery. Doesn’t mean he grasps any other part of biology at all well.

ETA: And it suggests a basic dishonesty on his part, or at least at least unjustified arrogance, to suggest that his skillset means he has any insight into evolutionary biology . It’s Argument From Authority.