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."
Sounds like "natural selection" to me....
;-)
It is better to see physical disease and death and learn from it and avoid spiritual disease and death, than it is to simply die spiritually never having a clue of what hit you.
Explore the design to learn about the designer. That was Galileo's motivation long before evolutions was the latest fad.
Change or go extinct.
Keep counting your questions. I'll answer the ones I feel like answering while you and your cheerleaders get all excited. I'm not the one trying to pass of a philosophy as if it were science. There has been no gross misrepresentation of your ramblings, only a lack of desire to count them as anything less than an emotional atempt to justify a philosphy that hangs around the neck of science like a ball and chain.
"Nevertheless I am an enthusiast for democracy. And I take that position, not because I believe majority opinion is inevitably right or true - indeed no majority can take away God-given human rights - but because I believe it most effectively safeguards the value of the individual, and, more than any other system, restrains the abuse of power by the few. And that is a Christian concept." - Margaret Thatcher.
I believe that Christianity has been a force for much good in the world, but following Christianity has not notably restrained Christians from evil behavior also. My post was a response to an attack on atheism on the grounds of the behavior of some atheists.
You betcha. Throwing firecrackers at bowls of snot to illustrate evolution has got to be the most ignorant thing I've heard on these threads in the past seven years.
Ah, life in the trailer park!
And it is interesting that you use the word "created".
It's just a word to indicate the appearance of the first life. Don't get your panties in a knot, I don't mean Odin or Zeus or Jehovah or Amen Ra created it. The natural forces no doubt responsible for it would have "created" it.
What would you call the process by which this "Adam&Eve" simple cell came into being?
Abiogensis, probably. Unless the panspermia theories are correct, then probably panspermia.
Is it just plain chemistry and random chance?
Pretty much. But not so much random chance, but the chemistry and mechanics of self-organizing systems. Think of it this way, under the correct conditions, ice crystals form. They have no choice. Certain chemicals, when mixed, will combust. It isn't random, although the presence of water under the correct conditions or the combustible chemicals meeting may be random. I think that once the necessary materials are assembled under the proper conditions, life will or can result. (And no, I cannot prove that. Obviously, if I could, I'd be accepting my Nobel prize...)
Hinges my Shake and Bake analogy
No. Shake and Bake was a (somewhat) healthy alternative to battering and deep-frying chicken, popularized by its ease and quickness of preparation, and moderately good taste. Abiogenesis is not about food preparation. (That was a joke.)
Minimum requirements, or Irreducibly complexity whats the difference if you do not have the Minimum requirements no fire and no life, regardless of their origins.
Simply because something is required for something else, it does not mean it is complex. Again, to return to the ice crystals: all you need is water and a lack of heat. Neither of these are complex, but they are necessary. There is, thus, no irreducible complexity, but there is a minimum requirement.
And by the way Irreducibly complexity is not just a term, it is a fact, no matter who says it.
Well, in this area of discussion, it has become a term of art coined, if I remember correctly, by Michael Behe, in generating his ID theory. As applied here, by common usage it has been established as having a certain meaning. (His theory has been well debunked. If you know of something in biology that is truly irreducibly complex, please enlighten us. Behe hasn't been successful in pointing one out.)
So whats the difference between saying God breathed on dust or mud and created a human and saying the individual atoms where Shaken and Baked and life sprung up, other that one is Intelligent Design and the other is a just chance happening?
Well, for one, the first theory requires proof of the existence and involvement of God. Next, you have to account for where he came from and who created him. Next, you have to account for and described the natural mechanism by which this supposed "breath" transformed non-living matter into living matter. Absent these proofs, you have religion. The flies spontaneously arising from garbage was superstition and magic--i.e., activities believed on faith. Absent evidence that God exists, of his history, abilities, and basis for his biogenetic actions, you have the same, i.e., activities believed on faith.
The scientific explanation, on the other hand, is simply that certain chemicals, when arranged in a certain manner exhibit the conditions we call life.
I'm encouraged. The creationists are finally embarking on a research program. It's a bit unconventional, of course, but give them credit for trying.
I apologize. Everybody knows you can't have evolution until you have reproduction and so therefore the question of origins is hereby declared Out-of-Bounds. And yet throwing firecrackers at bowls of snot is a lot more entertaining than trying to figure out why intelligent design is an argument from ignorance and punctuated equilibrium is not.
Because ID presupposes facts not in existence (the existence of a designer) and punctuated equilibrium does not. Indeed, the latter is simply Darwinian evolution (Darwin was the first to postulate what became PE).
I know. You'd think that even if He wanted us to get diseases to keep the herd thinned, He'd at least design us with teeth that don't rot and eyesight that remains clear throughout life.
And what's the point of Alzheimers and dementia. Why rob us of our memories and capacity to care for ourselves in our old age?
And why make it so that children get fatal diseases? Why not just make it so that only middle aged and older people get sick. Give everyone minimum of 25-30 good, happy, healthy years on the planet. Then let the physical deterioration begin. And when it's time for us to leave, just pull the plug. Boom!
Since the whole point is to eventually go back to God, why make us with an emotional response to death that we call grief? What's that about? If death is a return to God, shouldn't it be a cause for celebration?
Why? Why? Why?
I have to run home now but I will reply in an hour or so.
Okay, I'm back.
So, you are saying that because there is no God then there can be no God. That is an interesting philosophical position but I am also confused by your assertion that Punctuated Equilibrium is simply an extension of Darwinian evolution.
What is and is not Darwinism is a slippery subject. But in my understanding Darwinism is basically about numerous small changes accumulating over time until a new species is established while PE (in order to account for some differences in the evidence ,i.e. the Cambrian Explosion spoken of by Meyer) posits long stretches of stasis punctuated by times of changes bordering on (but of course, not the same as) Hopeful Monsters.
I have a theory that you claim is a priori unscientific while you have a theory that no one has empirical evidence for and cannot be reproduced experimentally. Now I know that eyewitnesses are impossible for events that predate witnesses and that experiment is not applicable to historical occurences but tell me again how scientific (and therefore falsifiable) your infinitely mutable theory is.
Wrong right off the bat. I never said there was no God (indeed, I'm one of His biggest fans and most popular whipping boy). I'm saying ID presupposes the existence of God, which cannot be shown to be the case. If you are going to posit a designer, you have to show evidence for him, and unfortunately ID cannot do that. Simply saying "this looks designed" is no good because it is subjective. There has to be an objective test.
P.S.
I like your tagline and believe I recognize it from the work of Terry Pratchett. Are you an admirer of the Discworld stories?
P.P.S. I wrote a poem. Perhaps it will amuse or annoy you.
Beervolution or My Creation Story
The Coyote was drunk again,
Drunk as a skunk, he was.
Although ,as yet,
There existed no skunks.
He was relaxin', kickin' back,
throwin' firecrackers
At bowls and tubs of snot.
At snot he shot and hit them not
Because not a good shot was he.
(Seein' as he was drunk.)
So purely by chance,
(It had to be chance,
Because chance is all there is you see.)
Purely by chance
He tossed up a brick
and fortuitously
it plopped with a gloop
in this primordial goop
this serendipitous pot of snot soup
It went off with a bang
And a glurpy Kaboom,
Little snot fairies everywhere.
And that's my story
Of how we all came to be,
Except for it don't account
For who put the yeast
in the Coyote's beer.
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