Posted on 06/23/2007 12:21:46 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Pro-Darwin Biology Professor Laments Academia's "Intolerance" and Supports Teaching Intelligent Design
Charles Darwin famously said, "A fair result can be obtained only by fully balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." According to a recent article by J. Scott Turner, a pro-Darwin biology professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York, modern Neo-Darwinists are failing to heed Darwin's advice. (We blogged about a similar article by Turner in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January, 2007.) Turner is up front with his skepticism of intelligent design (ID), which will hopefully allow his criticisms to strike a chord with other Darwinists.
Turner starts by observing that the real threat to education today is not ID itself, but the attitude of scientists towards ID: "Unlike most of my colleagues, however, I don't see ID as a threat to biology, public education or the ideals of the republic. To the contrary, what worries me more is the way that many of my colleagues have responded to the challenge." He describes the "modern academy" as "a tedious intellectual monoculture where conformity and not contention is the norm." Turner explains that the "[r]eflexive hostility to ID is largely cut from that cloth: some ID critics are not so much worried about a hurtful climate as they are about a climate in which people are free to disagree with them." He then recounts and laments the hostility faced by Richard Sternberg at the Smithsonian:
It would be comforting if one could dismiss such incidents as the actions of a misguided few. But the intolerance that gave rise to the Sternberg debacle is all too common: you can see it in its unfiltered glory by taking a look at Web sites like pandasthumb.org or recursed.blogspot.com [Jeffry Shallit's blog] and following a few of the threads on ID. The attitudes on display there, which at the extreme verge on antireligious hysteria, can hardly be squared with the relatively innocuous (even if wrong-headed) ideas that sit at ID's core.
(J. Scott Turner, Signs of Design, The Christian Century, June 12, 2007.)
Turner on the Kitzmiller v. Dover Case
Turner sees the Kitzmiller v. Dover case as the dangerous real-world expression of the intolerance common in the academy: "My blood chills ... when these essentially harmless hypocrisies are joined with the all-American tradition of litigiousness, for it is in the hand of courts and lawyers that real damage to cherished academic ideas is likely to be done." He laments the fact that "courts are where many of my colleagues seem determined to go with the ID issue” and predicts, “I believe we will ultimately come to regret this."
Turner justifies his reasonable foresight by explaining that Kitzmiller only provided a pyrrhic victory for the pro-Darwin lobby:
Although there was general jubilation at the ruling, I think the joy will be short-lived, for we have affirmed the principle that a federal judge, not scientists or teachers, can dictate what is and what is not science, and what may or may not be taught in the classroom. Forgive me if I do not feel more free.
(J. Scott Turner, Signs of Design, The Christian Century, June 12, 2007.)
Turner on Education
Turner explains, quite accurately, that ID remains popular not because of some vast conspiracy or religious fanaticism, but because it deals with an evidentiary fact that resonates with many people, and Darwinian scientists do not respond to ID's arguments effectively:
[I]ntelligent design … is one of multiple emerging critiques of materialism in science and evolution. Unfortunately, many scientists fail to see this, preferring the gross caricature that ID is simply "stealth creationism." But this strategy fails to meet the challenge. Rather than simply lament that so many people take ID seriously, scientists would do better to ask why so many take it seriously. The answer would be hard for us to bear: ID is not popular because the stupid or ignorant like it, but because neo-Darwinism's principled banishment of purpose seems less defensible each passing day.
(J. Scott Turner, Signs of Design, The Christian Century, June 12, 2007.)
Turner asks, “What, then, is the harm in allowing teachers to deal with the subject as each sees fit?” ID can't be taught, he explains, because most scientists believe that "normal standards of tolerance and academic freedom should not apply in the case of ID." He says that the mere suggestion that ID could be taught brings out "all manner of evasions and prevarications that are quite out of character for otherwise balanced, intelligent and reasonable people."
As we noted earlier, hopefully Turner’s criticisms will strike a chord with Darwinists who might otherwise close their ears to the argument for academic freedom for ID-proponents. Given the intolerance towards ID-sympathy that Turner describes, let us also hope that the chord is heard but the strummer is not harmed.
Sure, but nobody is actually reading anybody's posts. They look for some congruence such as a word, e.g. 'observer problem' and riff off of that. It is impossible for a group to develop a coherent philosophical system, which can't be proved deductively but inductively it might be noted that philosophers have always been single and no two agree fully and it also might be noted that this thread represents all the major philosophies at once.
That might be the second universal truism I've run across (The first being the incredible wisdom of "You can get all your nails even by biting them" ... but on reflection, they may be the same truism in different words)
However, even posing a coherent question mutually understood could make it possible to at least illuminate and refine the points of divergence thereby permitting actual 'communication.'
Thus far, I wouldn't use this thread as an example that there exists such a thing as Alamo Girl's 'information.'
Thats an interesting observation.. or control issue..
Well, at over 1,500 posts it looks like we're not going to let a little thing like that stop us, now, are we.
Which, reminds me; as a nominalist, are the "different things" to which you refer above real things are are they just figments of our imagination?
That's what confuses me about nominalism. How would we know communication if we saw it?
Cordially,
Whatever it is you’re selling, if I want any I’ll get it from someone else.
What is Life?... Not what does life DO but what IS LIFE?..
Well Duuugh!.. You realize that just broadens my market?..
yasee .. can't even agree on a question yet. If 'life' IS anything, it IS what it DOES - life is activity. Your attempt to limit the kind of answer allowed is like trying to say "what is gravity - not what does gravity DO ? " You can't answer that without at least implying a DOING.
If I were to venture a start at an answer, it would probably be along the lines of "Life is [autonomous?] self-copying"
It is not determined exactly what gravity is either..
OR Matter for that "matter"... (Life)
Life is the spirit of the machine.. even if the machine is doing nothing.. What then is spirit?.. Spirit?.. DNA(rna) are plans(the Manual) for the machine..
You have a point; asking the right question in the right way with the right emphasis could be a step forward.. in dialog between observers.. Good point also about including a dictionary and thesaurus.. NEXT you would need a "club" of posters that agree to all the rules..
What is LIFE?, matter?, spirit?, Spirit?, gravity? even what is a HUMAN? are not easy questions.. The answers even the questions draw on other(several) memes to engage.. There is a little Archie Bunker in all of us.. and a little Meathead too.. Edith was just a Dingbat.. OR Was SHE?...
"This is the bait he will use to catch all the Christians who secretly aspire to appropriate what naturalism calls freedom while still calling themselves Christians....
"You can't get any benefit or enlightenment from thinking about Teilhard. The ravages that he has wrought that I have witnessed are horrifying. I do everything I can to avoid having to talk about him. People are not content with just teaching him, they preach him. They use him like a siege engine to undermine the Church from within (I am not kidding) and I, for one, want no part of this destructive scheme."
I wholly agree with Gilson that "nature" has no freedom to offer, and if this is what Chardin suggests, then it would appear he is not keeping faith with his ordination vows. He is conducting himself as a naturalist rather than a theologian. (Possibly that can be a temptation for a highly-well-educated and secularly-attuned Jesuit? Not that I want to over-generalize here....)
Thank you very much for this contribution to the discussion, cornelis!
Teilhard was a noedarwinist.
OK, then ... I'll retract the "Life is self-copying" since I suppose that is 'earth-life chauvinistic' - no need for "life" to necessarily be self-copying.
Is this spirit which "defines" life the "Will to Survive" - NB not specifying 'self' since the 'object' of survival might be self, hive, species, or possibly even the 'body' of which ine is part as Alamo Girl pointed out. I'll generalize with the term 'self-set'
Of course 'Will' necessarily implies ability to effect - i.e. 'act' in some fashion - i.e. influence/alter situation.
That would lead to "Life IS ability to influence/alter" - but that would include all the natural forces so is clearly not a sufficient definition unless one wishes to claim the 'universe is alive'
Perhaps "Life is ability to self-set perpetuate" while spirit is "Will to self-set perpetuate" [kind of curious that it almost presumes 'life is fragile' - not likely to last long absent active measures to preserve it.]
That also indicates life is inseparable from will - 'desire without ability' or 'ability without desire' are both meaningless and irrelevant.
Perhaps 'self-set perpetuate' is also too limiting; I suppose I can imagine 'life' for which self-set perpetuation is moot (God for example) yet stll desires and can alter/influence situation.
Does "Life is ability AND will to alter/influence situation" work for you? 'Ability' being the physical embodiment and 'will' the spiritual embodiment of life.
Teilhard was one of a tiny handful of people present at the "discovery" of Piltdown Man, and somehow managed to keep the discovery out of his own writings for decades. Revelation?
ps - Gravity is the spirit of mass.
Got some good points there..
Organic machines.. can self-copy.. with "will/desire"(qualia) TO Copy being present..
The Will, That is to copy the machine.. how do you copy a spirit?..
The "will" is bound up in identity.. Are you the machine or are you the driver of the machine(spirit).. One identity poses one set of questions the other poses a different set of options.. There is a third alternative that the machine and the spirit are one.. parts of the same thing.. a dualism of will..
What is life? must be adjusted to these paradigms to make sense..
Could be that there is a form of life that matches each of these memes.. Organic machine, spirit or a mix of machine and spirit.. All could be called life but classified life..
Thats a Killer sound bite, LoL....
Fat people have more spirit?.. or are spiritual magnets?..
Just kidding..
methinks you are getting ahead of things. Identity implies awareness (i.e. sentience) - and we're still at 'life' per se, not yet to conscious life. e.g. a tree (or an amoeba for that matter) exhibits a very rudimentary form of 'will' (a proto-will) by growing and self copying, responding to its situation of sunlght, temperature, water, etc.) but is not yet sentient.
how do you copy a spirit?..
How do you copy 'information'? Just because it is abstract rather than physical does not make it less 'copy-able'. Perhaps your real question is really "What is the nature/property of 'spirit' that is 'copy-able'?"
First, one ought not presume 'will' (spirit) copies WITH 'ability' (physical) - perhaps it is generated by, attaches to, is attracted to, ... any number of possible means for the conjoinment of the two.
Your turn. What, in your opinion, is the manner by which spirit and body conjoin?
I'm not sure "spirit" Is information.. but rather identity in the form of spiritual thinglyness.. Not what as much as who.. "You MUST be born again" -Jesus.. Born as something, someone else.. Therefore metaphorically two persons you before and you after...
[.. Your turn. What, in your opinion, is the manner by which spirit and body conjoin? ..]
Metaphorically "we" are a Donkey(body) being ridden by a spirit.. unless we (metaphorically) are a spirit being ridden by a Donkey(both seems to be possible).. We are born thinking that what we see in a mirror is us.. when what we really are is a spirit.. Pretty much all of Jesus ministry proves and ministers that.. If true then all human spirits will live forever(somewhere) and/as human bodies die.. A dead human body is merely the machine without the driver..
Life is "spirit".. Could be that all life is spiritual.. i.e. different forms/types/degrees of spirit.. even a carrot has a form/type of spirit as "life".. Could be true..
DNA(rna) is/are plans for the machine(microbe,carrot,human), the spirit is the life/rider/driver.. With earth for a time being a testing ground for the qualification of various degrees/types of spiritual lifeforms.. Qualified for what?.. Future tasks to be performed.. What tasks?.. I don't know.. I suspect tasks some but don't really know.. There could be many types of spirits..
Semantics issues again ... I think you are refering to 'soul' which I am not prepared to say is synonymous with 'spirit' as I have been employing the word.
[I didn't mean to imply spirit was information, just used 'information' as an analogy of something abstract which can be copied, so why not spirit as well]
Too, you are talking about 'identity' again ("looking in the mirror") whereas I am still at a point much further back: 'will/spirit' without yet considering even sentience.
That is, I am trying to come to some mutual understanding of the words being used so that the question can be properly put forth.
Along those lines, I also want to revise a bit my postulate that "a tree ... exhibits a very rudimentary form of 'will'." Upon reflection, I think it more accurate to say that a species of tree exhibits a rudimentary form of 'will' - i.e. there is a 'spEcial' (long E) 'will' or spirit. The individual tree is pretty much just 'responds' to stimuli but doesn't 'try' to survive. That cannot be said of the species to which the tree belongs. Each species develops it's own strategies for reproduction, competing against other local species, even altering it's own local environment (situation), 'moving' to the most hospitable climes, defending against predators, etc.
And here we have the very heart of the evolution vs intelligent design debate. Do those strategies arise from 'will' or by fortuitous accident? A Darwinist cannot imagine even the possibility of a non-sentient 'will' and therefore opts for the latter. I think it behooves an ID'er to at least postulate how such is indeed possible.
If I recall correctly, in the early days of the human genome project there were some fascinating discoveries about DNA. Specifically, I believe it was discovered, or at least postulated, that DNA actually responds to the environment 'in-vitro' as it were. i.e. DNA did not rely upon random mutations to chance upon a 'better' solution, but in fact self-mutated according to environmental stimuli. Actually, that should not be too surprising given that DNA is essentially 'life' - not just a 'plans for the machine' as hosepipe avers.
The one example of this 'stimulated' mutation I recall is that our human teeth are getting smaller, generation by generation, for lack of need to grind tough food. Smaller teeth are not a survival mechanism, nor, I presume, a selection criterion. Besiides which it was happening 'too fast' to be attributed to either. Perhaps Alamo Girl's expertise in molecular biology can help me out here - is it still thought that DNA 'responds' to aspects of 'living'? Is there any more rigorous proof of such in the interim? Are you aware of any other examples?
If it is true, or at least possible, that DNA 'lives,' then it is arguable that BOTH 'body' and 'spirit/will' are encoded within it.
Again, I'm still not talking about 'soul,' just the 'spirit' that drives physical 'living'
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