Cornell president condemns intelligent design

©2005 Syracuse.com ^ | 10/21/2005, 12:03 p.m. ET | By WILLIAM KATES

[Behind Liberal Lines]

ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University Interim President Hunter Rawlings III on Friday condemned the teaching of intelligent design as science, calling it "a religious belief masquerading as a secular idea."

"Intelligent design is not valid science," Rawlings told nearly 700 trustees, faculty and other school officials attending Cornell's annual board meeting.

"It has no ability to develop new knowledge through hypothesis testing, modification of the original theory based on experimental results and renewed testing through more refined experiments that yield still more refinements and insights," Rawlings said.

Rawlings, Cornell's president from 1995 to 2003, is now serving as interim president in the wake of this summer's sudden departure of former Cornell president Jeffrey Lehman.

Intelligent design is a theory that says life is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying a higher power must have had a hand. It has been harshly criticized by The National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which have called it repackaged creationism and improper to include in scientific education.

There are brewing disputes involving evolution and intelligent design in at least 20 states and numerous school districts nationwide, including California, New Mexico, Kansas and Pennsylvania. President Bush elevated the controversy in August when he said that schools should teach intelligent design along with evolution.

Many Americans, including some supporters of evolution, believe intelligent design should be taught with evolution. Rawlings said a large minority of Americans — nearly 40 percent — want creationism taught in public schools instead of evolution.

For those reasons, Rawlings said he felt it "imperative" to use his state-of-the-university address — usually a recitation of the school's progress over the last year — to speak out against intelligent design, which he said has "put rational thought under attack."

[Coyoteman]

Mankind has come so far in just the past 100 years that I have serious doubts than humans have been "evolving" over millions of years.

Mankind has learned a lot in the past 100 years, but really has not evolved much at all. Civilization has slowed evolution (for the time being). Clothes, for example, allow people to live much farther north, and in Antarctica, without having to adapt physically.

[Bigh4u2]

"What does bother me, is when someone comes along with their brand of Christianity, and tells me that its impossible for me to believe in both evolution and God...and that has happened to me, on a number of occasions..."

I have never believed that God controls our lives because he gave us free will.

And if he gave us free will, he must have also given all things free will. Maybe not on the same level as we understand it but maybe to the point that all living things are allowed to make choices, whether by intelligent thinking or by natural selection (as it has been explained to me).

If sublife forms didn't have the ability to adapt to their environment then all species eventually would have to die out.

I don't think God ever meant that to happen.

I'm probably being a bit naive in my explanation, but it seems logical.

[RightWingAtheist]

Here's an especially pertinent Heinlein quote:

The scientific method will not enable you to hold exact opinions on matters in which you lack sufficient data, but it can keep you from being certain of your opinions and make you aware of the value of your data, and to reserve your judgment until you have amplified your data. --Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 January 1942, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 33

[mlc9852]

I wasn't talking about physical changes. I meant how much knowledge man has accumulated in the past 100 years.

[js1138]

I'm sure you have a justification for your assertion. If your argument is interesting I will read it.

[chet_in_ny]

Good for your son... he was lucky he had a just professor. My first year, I learned to keep my mouth shut- which proved helpful later on in law school. Law school, however, had blind grading, so, for fun on exams, I used to write outrageously Marxist analysis... I never crossed the line and grades were always good, lol.

[AndrewC]

I'm sure you have a justification for your assertion. If your argument is interesting I will read it.

I've presented it.

[LiteKeeper]

YEC INTREP

[andysandmikesmom]

Can you not grant that God created 'nature', whatever one might construe that to be, and than also grant that God put certain things into action(such as gravity), and then allowed man to search out an explantion for such things?...I chose not to put God into a box, and say He must have done it this way or that..could not evolution be something God himself put into action?...

I cannot prove He did, but you cannot prove He didnt...Thats strictly a belief...you believe one way, I believe another...

[Coyoteman]

Here's an especially pertinent Heinlein quote:

The scientific method will not enable you to hold exact opinions on matters in which you lack sufficient data, but it can keep you from being certain of your opinions and make you aware of the value of your data, and to reserve your judgment until you have amplified your data.

--Robert Anson Heinlein to John W Campbell, in a letter dated 04 January 1942, and reprinted in Grumbles From The Grave, pg 33

I'll have to drag out my copy and reread it. Good post! I had forgotten that one.

[chet_in_ny]

That's the "watchmaker" theory, right?

[shuckmaster]

I wouldn't necessarily use the word stronger though it's often implied. By my simplistic layman's definition natural selection is the sum of any and all reasons why some individuals don't live to reproduce while others reproduce prolifically in relationship to genetic heritable difference. To give an example: if your village gets attacked and all the strong and brave men and women get killed trying to defend while the cowards run hide in the forest then after the enemy is gone, the cowards continue the population gene pool. When another enemy returns several generations later you have a population that is adapted to survive by running and hiding. Chameleons, porcupines, and turtles are a few examples of different adaptations to predators. As you can see, the possibilities are endless.

[andysandmikesmom]

Knowing how argumentative my son can be, I sometimes did fear for his grades...but he was lucky, he just always argued his points, and was always able to get good grades, even if his views would differ from a profs...

[bobdsmith]

The molecular evidence, however, resolves ambiguities in the morphological picture and provides an objective view of the cladistic position of humans among the primates. The molecular data group humans with chimpanzees in subtribe Hominina, with gorillas in tribe Hominini

Humans and chimpanzees are lumped together so if chimpanzees are apes and gorillas are apes then so are humans as displayed here:

        
              APES BELOW HERE
                   / \
                  /   \
                 .     \
                / \     Gorillas
               /   \
              /     \
           Human  Chimpanzee  

[andysandmikesmom]

I dont think I know what the 'watchmaker' theory is...what I related was just of my own thinking...

[PatrickHenry]

The scientific method will not enable you to hold exact opinions on matters in which you lack sufficient data, but it can keep you from being certain of your opinions ...

Probably the most important intellectual development since the invention of writing has been the scientific method. Before it was worked out, people really didn't test their beliefs. Perhaps the most striking event to illustrate this was the (alleged) experiment of Galileo's, when he dropped two different weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, thus disproving a belief about falling bodies that had been accepted on authority for nearly two thousand years.

Of course, lots of people still don't understand the value of reality-tested beliefs, or the difference between them and other notions that have never been tested.

[Bigh4u2]

"When another enemy returns several generations later you have a population that is adapted to survive by running and hiding."

Wow! I never thought of it that way. I guess I should have thought about 'Neville Chamberlain Syndrome'. :0)

Makes me wonder if only the 'strong' of the species survived, what we would be like today.

Thanks.

[andysandmikesmom]

Sure wish I could continue this conversation, but real life does intervene, and I have to leave, and unfortunately will not be able to return until sometime Sunday...but either this thread or another thread dealing with the same subject matter will be running, I am sure, so will check in at that time, and do look forward to reading all the comments...I do feel that I have learned a lot...

[b_sharp]

Welcome back. Support the economy all you can.

"If a species is evolving because of environmental changes, the would natural selection just be a weeding out of the weaker part of the gene pool?

Yes, sort of. There is a tendency for most with little knowledge of evolution to assume that the word 'fittest' means strongest. In the sense of the least sickly it is true, but it does not necessarily mean the physically strongest. What it does mean is that any organisms that have an advantage, whether it be physical strength as in many carnivores, more speed as in many prey animals, physical attractiveness as with birds, better hunters as with humans or even more resistant to bacterial or parasite infections, will have a better chance of having a high number of offspring that survive til they reach the age of reproduction. Its all about how many kids you have that have their own kids, not just about who is the strongest.

[shuckmaster]

I did see a program about a scientist who claims that our biological makeup seemed to be structured rather than random.

The great yin/yang of evolution is phenotype/genotype. In a layman's nutshell, phenotype is everything about you that can be changed by your life's circumstances while genotype is that which is programmed by your genes and can't be changed.