Posted on 02/24/2006 1:26:26 PM PST by PatrickHenry
"A mendacious bit of hucksterism" is Robert Camp's description of the "teach the controversy" slogan frequently used to promote the teaching of "intelligent design" in the public schools. And it's not just idle rhetoric. Rather, it's based firmly on the results of a survey that he conducted of the heads of biology departments in colleges and universities around the country. As Camp explains, "If there are authoritative voices on the purported existence of a controversy among biologists regarding mechanisms of evolution, they belong to those individuals who are well aware of the most current scholarship in their field and are in touch with daily discussion of that scholarship."
In his new article Turn out the lights, the 'teach the controversy' party's over, posted on the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal's Creationism and Intelligent Design Watch website, Camp reports on his survey, in which he asked the heads of biology departments whether, with respect to "intelligent design," there is "a difference of professional opinion within your department that you feel could be accurately described as a scientific controversy." Over 97% of his respondents answered in the negative. "As an attempt to put empirical weight behind that which has been well understood all along," Camp concludes, "the numbers here are unambiguous."
And the remaining 3%, representing two of the 73 respondents? Camp explains, "One, a 'No, but ...,' observed that there was virtually no professional controversy within their department but acknowledged that one colleague had spoken favorably of the concept publicly .... And the only assent to controversy came from an institution [which Camp elsewhere describes as "a theological medical university"] dedicated to an ideological view of the world, including the world of biology," adding, "This may serve as evidence of a 'controversy' in that particular university. But in the larger context, its effect is only to put the overwhelming consensus into sharper focus."
Please remember to use moderator-compliant FReepSpeaktm. We now say "frequently-repeated error," sometimes called (after the poster has received numerous corrections) a "compulsively repeated error" instead of the harsher term. Everyone be nice.
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Substitute "choir members" and "cheeleaders" for "heads of biology departments" and we might have a more accurate story.
So who wrote the article?
interesting article but not surprising.
No surprise here at all, of course, but it's good someone collected the data.
Ping me when a D14 or equivalent shows up. :)
Yes, especially when some woefully ignorant school board is being gulled into doing what they tried in Dover. It's very useful to be able to give them a study to show that there's no "controversy" at all.
I agree. Until professors include the theory of the Invisible Pink Bunny Who Created the World, our children will not have the full range of information upon which to reach informed opinions.
What a shame that the shear wonder of the universe seems missed in the screaming.
Didja hear? Magellan renounced the global world on his deathbed.
He had reason to be ticked off at the world.
Also I have never heard of a scientific theory that was based on an invisible intelligence. We could say that all phenomena in the end are because of God right? But even the most devout scientists that ever lived would not base their theories on God. It isn't because they were heretics at all, it was because God is so omnipotent that to use him as the answer to everything sort of puts a stop on even attempting to study it. We would never get very far understanding nature if we followed that approach. But this is exactly what seems to be happening with the Intelligent Design theory.
If you drew a straight line between "7-Day Creationists" on the right and "Godless Evolutionists" on the left, I would be about 1/2 way to the right of center. I think God took a while and did a bazillion miracles to get us here with free will to study the universe and draw our own conclusions, the correct one being that He's the Big Engineer. Mrs. 50's Dad is way out there on the left, but I tell her, my business is preaching Salvation and Grace, not driving science-minded people away from Christ by beating them over the head with Genesis. God will explain the real way that He did It five minutes after I am dead, and it probably won't matter to me then. (I'd rather teach Grace and forgiveness and let people bang their heads together about Creation after they are saved, that being the main goal of the thing.)
Now, the rest of you can flame away and turn this into another five-million-post thread on the subject!
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: " - 1 Timothy 6:20
Your understanding is correct. ID tried (and is still trying) to bluff its unearned way into science classrooms.
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