Posted on 01/28/2005 6:50:34 AM PST by Heartlander
A life long and world renowned atheist, Flew worked with some of the worlds leading professionals and came to the conclusion that it's impossible for life to have evolved from chemicals and there appears to be a higher deity in the design of life.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science has a position paper on this issue: Intelligent Design and Peer Review. Excerpts:
Stephen Meyer, the author of the paper, is Director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (DI/CSC), the primary institutional advocate of ID. He earned a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University. He is also University Professor of the Conceptual Foundations of Science at Palm Beach Atlantic University, a theologically conservative Christian institution.The editor for the issue of the Proceedings in which the Meyer article appears was Richard Sternberg, Research Associate in the Department of Systematic Biology (Invertebrate Zoology) of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. He is also a Fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID), which promotes intelligent design, and serves on the Editorial Board of the Baraminology Study Group, a creation science group. Given these associations, Dr. Sternberg would appear to be, at very least, an advocate for "intelligent design" and critical of standard peer review processes as they bear on the scientific assessment of the "intelligent design" hypothesis.
The external reviewers of the paper are unknown.
Can't the Smithsonian just follow the historic ritual and burn him at the stake already?
What a surprise.</sarcasm>
Why not? Personally, I think it's time to see who the reviewers were....
Or if the reviewers were....
What we do know is that the reviewers disagreed with the conclusions of the paper. That might have been a red flag to a careful editor.
I'll bet they turn out to be Henry Morris, Duane Gish, Michael Behe, and Ken Ham. I think that the creatards have taken over the Biological Society of Washington...
I subscribe to a school of biological thought often termed “process structuralism.” Process or biological structuralism is concerned with understanding the formal, generative rules underlying organic forms, and focuses on the system architectures of organisms and their interrelationships. Structuralist analysis is generally ahistorical, systems-oriented, and non-evolutionary (not anti-evolutionary). Both creationism and neo-Darwinism are, in contrast, emphatically historicist with one positing extreme polyphyly (de novo creation of species) and the other radical monophyly (common descent). Since the structuralist perspective runs somewhat perpendicular to the origins debate, creationists and evolutionists tend to see it as inimical to their positions. The truth is structuralism has little at stake in the origins issue, leaving a person like myself free to dialogue with all parties. For this reason, I frequently discourse with ultra-Darwinians, macromutationists, self-organization theorists, complexity theorists, intelligent design advocates, theistic evolutionists, and young-earth creationists without necessarily agreeing with any of their views.Structuralism does, however, provide an important perspective on the origins debate. Structuralists' lack of commitment to an historical theory of biology allows them to explore the historical evidence more objectively. Moreover, because they focus on formal analysis, struturalists are far more open than neo-Darwinians to the powerful evidence for continuity within species (forms) and discontinuity between and among species. They also allow themselves to wonder about the cause of the amazing repetition of forms across the biological world rather than being forced by prior commitments to accept a major neo-Darwinian epicycle known as "convergent evolution."
- Dr. Richard M. v. Sternberg
I'm glad I'm in physics. :P
We're a much more laid-back lot.
This is Sternberg's version, but even so it supports my statement that the reviewers disagreed with the paper's conclusions. Normally, a paper that is published to stir up controversy would be labeled as such.
Again, the problem with ID is not that it is wrong, but that it can't be proven wrong.
If ID wants respectability, do som research that demonstrates that design is possible. Show how you can predict the effects of an allele change on the individual organism, the species and the ecosystem. After all, "cause and effect" are the mantra of ID.
And Noam Chomsky focuses on generative rules in language, with equal success. Chomsky abandoned generative grammer some years ago.
If you propose that there are generative rules you need to demonstrate at least one.
I followed the standard peer review process, sending the paper to four qualified scientists, three of whom agreed to review it. The reviewers' comments were provided to Dr. Meyer who made changes in the paper accordingly.
Then, since there is so much controversy, and a career is allegedly being ruined, we need to know what those comments were and what changes were made as a result.
Ah. Those must be the thousands of credentialed scientists who are, year after year, in ever-increasing numbers, flocking to the banner of ID. Known as the flockers.
Can you imagine what a psychologist could do with this scenario? We see the insecure antagonists bullying, exhibiting paranoia, assuming the role of thought police, and having a collective panic attack. A little further investigation might reveal thumb-sucking and bed-wetting.
Ha ha. Yup, you got it, alright.
William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, ex officio, Chancellor
Richard B. Cheney, Vice-President of the United States, ex officio
Thad Cochran, Senator from Mississippi
Bill Frist, Senator from Tennessee
Patrick J. Leahy, Senator from Vermont
Sam Johnson, Representative from Texas
Robert T. Matsui, Representative from California Ralph Regula, Representative from Ohio Hanna H. Gray, Professor of History and former President of the University of Chicago
Anne d’Harnoncourt, the George D. Widener Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Manuel L. Ibáñez, President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus, Texas A&M University in Kingsville, Texas
Walter E. Massey, Physicist and President of Morehouse College in Atlanta Roger W. Sant, chairman emeritus and cofounder of the AES Corporation and chairman of the board of The Summit Foundation
Alan G. Spoon, managing general partner in Polaris Venture Partners, former President of The Washington Post Company
Patricia Q. Stonesifer, co-chair and president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Wesley S. Williams Jr., of Washington, D.C., Partner in the law firm of Covington & Burling
We should contact the Board members. Certainly, Sen. Frist and Sen. Cochran should be sympatric
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