Posted on 12/12/2005 8:01:43 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Occasionally a social issue becomes so ubiquitous that almost everyone wants to talk about it -- even well-meaning but uninformed pundits. For example, Charles Krauthammer preaches that religious conservatives should stop being so darn, well, religious, and should accept his whitewashed version of religion-friendly Darwinism.1 George Will prophesies that disagreements over Darwin could destroy the future of conservatism.2 Both agree that intelligent design is not science.
It is not evident that either of these critics has read much by the design theorists they rebuke. They appear to have gotten most of their information about intelligent design from other critics of the theory, scholars bent on not only distorting the main arguments of intelligent design but also sometimes seeking to deny the academic freedom of design theorists.
In 2001, Iowa State University astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez’s research on galactic habitable zones appeared on the cover of Scientific American. Dr. Gonzalez’s research demonstrates that our universe, galaxy, and solar system were intelligently designed for advanced life. Although Gonzalez does not teach intelligent design in his classes, he nevertheless believes that “[t]he methods [of intelligent design] are scientific, and they don't start with a religious assumption.” But a faculty adviser to the campus atheist club circulated a petition condemning Gonzalez’s scientific views as merely “religious faith.” Attacks such as these should be familiar to the conservative minorities on many university campuses; however, the response to intelligent design has shifted from mere private intolerance to public witch hunts. Gonzalez is up for tenure next year and clearly is being targeted because of his scientific views.
The University of Idaho, in Moscow, Idaho, is home to Scott Minnich, a soft-spoken microbiologist who runs a lab studying the bacterial flagellum, a microscopic rotary engine that he and other scientists believe was intelligently designed -- see "What Is Intelligent Design.") Earlier this year Dr. Minnich testified in favor of intelligent design at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial over the teaching of intelligent design. Apparently threatened by Dr. Minnich’s views, the university president, Tim White, issued an edict proclaiming that “teaching of views that differ from evolution ... is inappropriate in our life, earth, and physical science courses or curricula.” As Gonzaga University law professor David DeWolf asked in an editorial, “Which Moscow is this?” It’s the Moscow where Minnich’s career advancement is in now jeopardized because of his scientific views.
Scientists like Gonzalez and Minnich deserve not only to be understood, but also their cause should be defended. Conservative champions of intellectual freedom should be horrified by the witch hunts of academics seeking to limit academic freedom to investigate or objectively teach intelligent design. Krauthammer’s and Will’s attacks only add fuel to the fire.
By calling evolution “brilliant,” “elegant,” and “divine,” Krauthammer’s defense of Darwin is grounded in emotional arguments and the mirage that a Neo-Darwinism that is thoroughly friendly towards Western theism. While there is no denying the possibility of belief in God and Darwinism, the descriptions of evolution offered by top Darwinists differ greatly from Krauthammer’s sanitized version. For example, Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins explains that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” In addition, Krauthammer’s understanding is in direct opposition to the portrayal of evolution in biology textbooks. Says Douglas Futuyma in the textbook Evolutionary Biology:
“By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”3
“Evolution in a pure Darwinian world has no goal or purpose: the exclusive driving force is random mutations sorted out by natural selection from one generation to the next. … However elevated in power over the rest of life, however exalted in self-image, we were descended from animals by the same blind force that created those animals. …”5
Mr. Luskin is an attorney and published scientist working with the Discovery Institute in Seattle, Wash.
Who says? Why carry the attribute of "vulnerability" into the definition of theory? A theory by defininition is simply a way of explaining data. Read the definition again, and tell me how you wring "vulnerability" out of it.
If you look back at the earlier years of the last century, some supporters of Darwinian evolution supported eugenics and other efforts to "improve the race." So did plenty of other people whose notions of humanity's origins were not derived from Darwin. After Hitler, most people rejected such ideas of eugenics, selective breeding, or the elimination of the "unfit." They saw clearly where such ideas could lead. That held for Darwinians, non-Darwinians, and anti-Darwinians.
Now we've come full circle. New techologies create new possibilities and some rush to embrace them. Some Darwinian evolutionists are in the lead, but they aren't the only ones. It will take some time to sort things out. It's doubtful that Darwinians will ever be won over to intelligent design. The question is whether we can adopt a moral consensus that can prevent dangerous policies from being put into effect. There are extreme Darwinians and extreme anti-evolutionists. Most people fit in somewhere in the middle, and are more concerned with doing the right thing in practice, rather than with asserting this or that vision of the universe.
If there is only one kind of causality, one will do perfectly well. My experience with nature is that there is more than one kind of causality.
This isn't dogma and it isn't simplification. It's a simple question about what kind of person you are.
To the extent that you can understand situations and determine outcomes, would you behave differently if the difference between helping or hurting others had no consequenses for you?
So? That makes the theory even more applicable, since it encompasses the practice of science itself.
Evolution (the fact, not the theory) is due to changes in a population's gene pool, with changes more adaptable to the environment more likely to live on and pass those changes to the next generation (the theory).
That statement puts forth a cause. "The organization of matter that behaves under predictable laws" does not.
I told you this is not an interrogation. If you are willing to discuss what virtue is, I can talk with you. If not, fine.
I find it amusing that you can't pin down creationists or semi-creationists on the simple question of their natural inclination towards selfish or altruistic behavior.
The notion that everything will fly apart without an omniscient authority handing out rewards and punishments just has to be projection.
I think the answer is he can think of no rational reason, besides the dictates of a Deity, to make any moral decisions. Morality in that case is subjective, not objective. It's either the subjective whims of a deity, or it is the subjective feelings of an individual. But there can no objective basis to being *moral*. The question seems nonsensical to a subjectivist.
Perhaps there is a hierarchy of causes, but that again is something different than exclusionary causes. What other kinds of causality are there? Aristotle lists four.
The tyranny of logic is in its being locked within the extreme limitations imposed by attempts at verbalized reasoning. The difference between true reasoning--that is by scanning all of the observations of a lifetime, in relation to any subject--and the verbalized constructs of formalized logic, is the equivalent of the difference between the modern computer and an old adding machine.
The reality, easily observable, is that Creation involved the creation of creatures, with a built in tendency to evolve. Hence the idea of a conflict is absurd. (To deny the tendencies that God gave his Creatures, is to deny the reality of Creation. The quest, again, of both science and religion is the same: To find and by implication to celebrate the truth.)
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
No, I've made an attempt to answer the questions based on Bedfellow's understanding of virtue. I will not conjure what he thinks virtue is. I only understand that we must deny eternal consequences to proceed.
This is a point that's easy to miss. Somehow.
This sort of thing reminds me of a bloodhound, nose to the trail, sniffing out his prey, following the spoor.... Everything else around the dog is screened out from the dog's consciousness. But that doesn't mean that only the prey and the spoor exist.
Thanks so much for your excellent essay/post, Alamo-Girl!
"Perhaps there is a hierarchy of causes, but that again is something different than exclusionary causes. What other kinds of causality are there? Aristotle lists four."
How does that make an untestable assumption (divine interference) better than a testable one (natural, physical causes)?
Eugenics, in one form or another, has been around for a long time. It didn't start with Darwin.
Greek warrior Spartan civilization. Weakling infants were left in the mountains to die.
The Republic, Book 5, Section 1. Plato recommended state-supervised selective breeding of children.
History of Australia. Before Darwin, England exiled criminals to purify the race.
" One thing all real scientists agree upon is the fact of evolution itself. It is a fact that we are cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria. Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun. It is not a theory, and for pity’s sake, let’s stop confusing the philosophically naive by calling it so. Evolution is a fact"
BACK TO BASICS
Can any of you "real scientists" defend this statement?
Indeed, what does "virtue" or "morality" mean if the behavior is compelled by a whip in one hand, and a carrot in the other? Can we not make any behavior moral or virtuous merely by offering a reward for some aritrary behaviors and a punishment for others?
The person I'm criticizing is Dawkins, et al. I don't think he makes that distinction at all. His "method" tells him what is legitimate for him to be concerned with, and how he is to think about it. What the method does not cover does not exist for him.
Others recongize that free causality would not be testable as such. Between the two, the second is the health of a civilization and makes politics possible. That is why better is relative. But the denial of one for the other is an exclusion with consequence.
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