Posted on 01/31/2005 12:15:48 PM PST by Grey Rabbit
WND EVOLUTION WATCH Smithsonian in uproar over intelligent-design article Museum researcher's career threatened after he published favorable piece Posted: January 29, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
The career of a prominent researcher at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington is in jeopardy after he published a peer-reviewed article by a leading proponent of intelligent design, an alternative to evolutionary theory dismissed by the science and education establishment as a tool of religious conservatives.
Stephen Meyer's article advocates the theory of intelligent design. (Photo courtesy Discovery Institute)
Richard Sternberg says that although he continues to work in the museum's Department of Zoology, he has been kicked out of his office and shunned by colleagues, prompting him to file a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
Sternberg charges he was subjected to discrimination on the basis of perceived religious beliefs.
"I'm spending my time trying to figure out how to salvage a scientific career," Sternberg told David Klinghoffer, a columnist for the Jewish Forward, who reported the story in the Wall Street Journal.
Sternberg is managing editor of a nominally independent journal published at the museum, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. His trouble started when he included in the August issue a review-essay by Stephen Meyer, who holds a Cambridge University doctorate in the philosophy of biology.
Hans Sues, the museum's No. 2 senior scientist, denounced Meyer's article in a widely forwarded e-mail as "unscientific garbage."
According to Sternberg's complaint, which is being investigated, one museum specialist chided him by saying: "I think you are a religiously motivated person and you have dragged down the Proceedings because of your religiously motivated agenda."
Sternberg strongly denies that.
While acknowledging he is a Catholic who attends Mass, he says, "I would call myself a believer with a lot of questions, about everything. I'm in the postmodern predicament."
The complaint says the chairman of the Zoology Department, Jonathan Coddington, called Sternberg's supervisor to look into the matter.
"First, he asked whether Sternberg was a religious fundamentalist. She told him no. Coddington then asked if Sternberg was affiliated with or belonged to any religious organization. ... He then asked where Sternberg stood politically; ... he asked, 'Is he a right-winger? What is his political affiliation?'
The supervisor recounted the conversation to Sternberg, who also quotes her observing: "There are Christians here, but they keep their heads down."
The complaint, according to the Journal column, says Coddington took away Sternberg's office, which prevents access to the specimen collections he needs. Sternberg also was assigned to the close oversight of a curator with whom he had professional disagreements unrelated to evolution.
"I'm going to be straightforward with you," said Coddington, according to the complaint. "Yes, you are being singled out."
Meyer's article, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories," cites mainstream biologists and paleontologists from schools such as the University of Chicago, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford who are critical of certain aspects of Darwinism.
Meyer – a fellow at Seattle's Discovery Institute, a leading advocate of intelligent design – contends supporters of Darwin's theory cannot explain how so many different animal types sprang into existence during the relatively short period of Earth history known as the Cambrian explosion.
He argues the Darwinian mechanism would require more time for the necessary genetic "information" to be generated, and intelligent design offers a better explanation.
The Journal notes Meyer's piece is the first peer-reviewed article to appear in a technical biology journal laying out the evidential case for intelligent design.
The theory holds that the complex features of living organisms, such as an eye, are better explained by an unspecified designing intelligence than by random mutation and natural selection.
Klinghoffer notes the Biological Society of Washington released a statement regretting its association with Meyer's article but did not address its arguments.
Klinghoffer points out the circularity of the arguments of critics who insisted intelligent design was unscientific because if had not been put forward in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
"Now that it has," he wrote, "they argue that it shouldn't have been because it's unscientific."
Because God left evidence contrary to Creation being a single point in time. If He did it so that some would become faithless, so be it, but my statement would then be, "God made the universe 6,400 years ago in such a way that it appears 15 billion years old, and in such a way that it appears man evolved from lower forms." Tada! Creationism and evolution are reconciled!
Here's one for you: God created man in His image, according to His likeness. If so, does God have nipples? I am not trying to be flippant - this is a serious question.
Now, you didn't answer my question. Jesus was God incarnated as Man. Let me be more specific, did God have nipples before He parted the waters?
We only understand so mush of physics -- when we look out at stars a gauge brightness or shifted-spectra we infer great times, great velocities, great distances -- yet based on our own very small window into what the underlying physics are. Is the dielectric of empty space, the zero-point energy, the gravitational wavelength the same at every point in space time? We don't know.
We don't know the length of a day, except those we have experienced -- the rest of days, the length of those days, we can only guess at.
Absolutely false. Science does the equivalent all the time, in trying to decide whether an archaeological relic is man made or not. That is to say, it assumes a human, therefore natural, designer.
What science does not do is suppose that the watch or the archaeological relic was created by a supernatural being. That is religion, not science. No one expects a scientist to say, "I found what is either a stone-ax head or a chip from Thor's hammer. I'll pick the latter." Genesis creationism is picking the chip from Thor's hammer.
That's an improvement -- analysis not conclusion.
I recall some arguments about spontaneous genesis of flies in garbage supported by many learned men of the time. But whoops, another theory bites the dust. The thing I find interesting in this example is all they had to do to prove it wrong was to prevent the flies from depositing the eggs with the information needed to make the flies.
A biogenesis has to be the starting point for discussions of Evolution or Intelligent Design. This mythical first simple cell (by mythical I mean something everyone talks about but no one has seen) however it came to be has to have a minimal irreducibly complex (in my opinion) structure, quantity of material, reproductive and survival information, and suitable environment to live(this may not be an inclusive list of life's requirements but it's suitable for our discussion).
So here we sit with our garbage in a jar, and we can shake and bake it using any process that occurs in nature expecting flies but without the minimal requirements mentioned no biogenesis.
Now given our limited understanding of this MEST and it's quantum foundation and the current theoretical views which postulate up to 11, let me make that clear 11 dimensions of existence, it seems this jar of a Universe we are in exists in a much bigger place. So in these 11 dimensions couldn't there be room for some intelligent designer, or at lest an intelligent design making it's way into this jar of a universe we find ourselves.
As absurd as it may sound if I were to have to defend a position I think it would be easier to defend Intelligent Design vs the for lack of a better name the Shake and Bake theory of abiogenesis. Now I grant you I know more about Physics, Electronics, Computers, and Programming than Biology. So I know a little (not an expert by any stretch) about complex systems and processes, they ALL have an irreducible complexity. Biological systems may not, but they certainly do seem too.
I, like almost everyone I know, don't know it all. I am not beyond believing in Shake and Bake, but I am going to take some convincing. As it stands now I think Intelligent Design has the best chance of being the truth.
God. Genesis makes no mention of the Son, unless you postulate that He was born of flesh before a female had been created to bear Him. So, my question remains, if we are made in God's image, does God have nipples?
No, actually, evolution deals with the diversity of life after it was created. The creationists link the two, but they are sepearate scietnific studies.
This mythical first simple cell (by mythical I mean something everyone talks about but no one has seen) however it came to be has to have a minimal irreducibly complex (in my opinion) structure, quantity of material, reproductive and survival information, and suitable environment to live(this may not be an inclusive list of life's requirements but it's suitable for our discussion).
There is no irreducibly complexity. That is a term of art of creationist IDers. There may be minimum requirements for the self-organization of biological systems, but that doesn't make them irreducibly complex or show any non-natural origin. There are minimum requirements for fire, but every camp fire isn't caused by a god.
So here we sit with our garbage in a jar, and we can shake and bake it using any process that occurs in nature expecting flies but without the minimal requirements mentioned no biogenesis.
Spontaneous generation (the fly in the garbage) is more akin to the biblical creationists saying that god breathed on dust or mud and created a human. That is not the same as positing a biochemical reaction that had the ability to perpetuate itself.
I'll ignore that you state the OT is full of the Son, and then go on to quote the NT!
Okay, so we are made in the image of God, which was really Jesus, who walked in the garden because no one had seen the Father, and Jesus was God become Man. So, if Man has nipples, it's because Jesus had nipples, and Jesus had nipples because Man does. Does the word "tautology" ring any bells, ie., circular reasoning?
This is important (IMHO) because the atheists and their media allies are expert at using straw men to insert a wedge between the Church and those outside the Church. They (the atheists) really do want people to think that you have to believe in Young Earth Creationism in order to be a Christian, because they know that means whole segments of the scientific community will therefore be forever Lost (big "L"). I know, because, while more educated layman than scientist, I came to Christ from the opposite direction - it was my appreciation of the breadth and depth of Creation that helped seal the deal. I was also fortunate that the guy who helped me on my journey, a YEC himself, was none-the-less open to discussions of the subject, rather than saying something akin to "well, if you believe that you're not really a Christian."
If I were that confused, I'd be advocating for the other side.
God is not seen.
1 John 4:12 No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
John 1:18 No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.
God is seen.
GE 12:7, 17:1, 18:1, 26:2, 32:30, EX 3:16, 6:2-3, 24:9-11, 33:11, NU 12:7-8, 14:14, JB 42:5, AM 7:7-8, 9:1
What causes any particular decay of a radioactive isotope? What is the cause?
An electron tunnels through a barrier. What caused that electron to tunnel and not another?
The entire subatomic world is filled with events for which there is only a probabilistic and statistical description. And now you proclaim that all these events have causes.
Prove it. Physists are waiting. You'll be famous.
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