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.
I don't profess to be a Platonist, but if they might say I have it bass-ackwards, then it would seem they also might not.
You are wrong about that, or not.
Concrete/objective vs abstract/subjective? The deciphering of the grammatical constuction of ancient languages is not my bailiwick.
I think it's arguable as an indeterminately relative absolute.
Perhaps an important question, but it's not related to the subject at hand of ID vs. evolution.
Your question has far more philosophical overtones than scientific. Yes, you can relate anything to philosophy at some point. But you can also muddy the waters of truth using philosophy as well, which no doubt is your real goal in this discussion.
No. He just picked an answer in what was obviously a wasted attempt to move the conversation forward. There is no forward in this conversation, merely circles.
Answered several times, in several threads. I don't believe there is a way to know the answer, and irregardless I don't know what it is.
That said, that the question has even come up I believe is a deliberate distraction from the original subject of ID vs. evolution. A question that perhaps is being lost by the ID side, which necessitates their insistence on changing the subject.
What?!! It takes two to hedge!
That's an answer, bucko.
Correction. The ur-original subject is to see if we can get an opponent to lick our boots.
Well, if your assesment that I have it bass-ackwards is correct, that seems to make the physical universe a matter of opinion.
Right.
I am ignorant, and no matter how my post reads, you do not address the issue, but choose sarcasm.
Well FRiend, sorry, but sarcasm is my forte.
If you want to be the FR sarcasm guru out here then you will have to take a number just like me.
Meanwhile...Fine, you are brilliant, and I never took a Science Course.
I'll just sit out here and let you post a bunch of your puke nonsense with impunity.
Not!
I will not attempt to discuss ID vs.biological evolution except to say that it can only follow that since you believe the universe has always existed I believe that biological systems require very narrow "living conditions" (Physical conditions). Since in your model, the universe has always existed, explain how the physical laws of thermodynamics have not been suspended, an assertion I am quiet interested in hearing from you.Certainly with your model there has been enought time for energy, mass, time to run down via an expanding universe and without some outside interference we should be back to the void.
I am also interested in you dismanteling Fred Hoyles analysis that the chances of life beginnging spontaneously on earth or coming from outter space is 1 to the 40,000 power, which is a number larger than the entire number of atoms in the entire universe. Please site for me the scientific, observable evidence for a "primordial hot soup", if that is how you explain spontanceous generation of first life. If not, please offer your explaination for first life. How did first life "evolve" and give me the scientific evidence for it.
I have endured the ad hominems, so perhaps we can get those out of way from the beginning of this conversation. It serves no real purpose toward the questions you need to answer and assertions which you make.I will help you along the way toward understanding this if you wish. Perhaps you will help me understand. How do you dismiss the fact that constant conjunction is the basis for rational conclusions. YOu see a cause and effect over and over and it is rational to assume a connection. Drop a small bomb in a print shop and suddenly the encyclopedia appears?....over and over and over if that encyclopedia is analagous to the information of DNA in the smallest one celled animal....the first....
Tell me of a single case in nature where you have regular production of complex information, such as at Mount Rushmore, or DNA, where a non-intelligent force produces.
When you carefully explain, dispassionately, without venom and vitriol, I will discuss how the second living organism evolved. But, first things first.
LoL....
Thank you for sharing your views!
Be that as it may, would you dare to assert that Hawking knows "all that there is"? Would you even claim that input from so-called inferior human beings or those of less intellect or education than Hawking (who is indeed a genius by every human measurement of such) have nothing to contribute to his knowledge of what is?
Do you assert that what may be known of 'all that is' can not be known by any to a greater extent that it is known by Hawking?
Pride was the first sin, and will be the last. Jesus (whose life and death is historically verifiable) said (as recorded in the Scriptures, verifiable as true documents of history), “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3)."
Any man who asserts that he is above or beyond instruction is the most foolish man of all. In his supposed position of "higher learning" such a one has forsaken the way of wisdom.
This is fundamentally what separates a Christian from a Humanist: The Christian has accepted that he is a mere (and limited) observer in an infinite universe beyond his scope of space and time and all that is; that he is in need of instruction from outside himself, from outside of his own puny capacity to see, to hear, to even understand; and this Source of knowledge he seeks must not only be outside himself, but must also be outside all selves that dwell within the same limited parameters in which he lives.
Hawking is not even seeking for this One. Are you? Have you also decided that this One cannot possibly exist because you personally, as Hawking, have not yet encounted Him?
The way to find this One is to become as a little child: To ask.
I assert, and I believe the originating article expresses, that it is impossible to hold an opinion on either theory without simultaneously adhering to philosophical and religious belief systems that are
1) shaped by one's positon either ID or evo.
2) are the underlying factor in one's position ID or evo.
If you bothered to read, you might notice that I explicitly stated the he might be wrong. At issue is not whether his conjecture is wright or wrong, but whether it is rational. That is where this discussion began.
It is not science that is prideful, and it is not science that declares, on the basis of alleged witnesses and no hard evidence, that all things are known.
Science is very clear about levels of confidence and very clear about what kind of investigation adds to confidence or subtracts from it. This is what seems to separate skeptical inquiry from absolutism.
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