Pro-Darwin Biology Professor...Supports Teaching Intelligent Design

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thank you so much for your outstanding essay-post, dear sister in Christ!

I suspect js1138 is alluding to Hawking’s “imaginary time” theory when he says that Hawking has a mathematical solution which eliminates the beginning. Please correct me if I am wrong about that, js1138.

At any rate, I’d like to make a few points concerning Hawkings’ “imaginary time” model.

At the heart of the issue is the 1960’s CMB measurement which showed that the universe (the geometry) is expanding and thus had a beginning of real space and real time.

This is all about geometry, i.e. space/time which is a continuum of n spatial and n temporal dimensions.

Space and time do not pre-exist, they are created as the universe expands.

The Penrose/Hawking early collaboration showed that at the beginning of this universe was a singularity – a point in which the physical laws break down. Physical causality cannot occur in the absence of the geometry:

In the absence of time, events cannot occur.

In the absence of space, things cannot exist.

Their theory raised troubling issues – most of all, to the atheists, that an outside Creator would be necessary for there to be a beginning at all – because, “in the beginning” there is no geometry, no physical laws including no physical causation. Which is to say, there was no infinity past – no thing and no event whereby to “bootstrap” a beginning of geometry vis-à-vis this universe. Information was lost in the singularity.

For a very long time after the Penrose collaboration, Hawking wrestled with these troubles. Among other things, he proposed that a black hole could emit what it had previously destroyed.

Eventually, he speculated the existence of an “imaginary time” in spatial dimensions, running perpendicular to “real time” which could, theoretically, give rise to a “singularity” without a loss of the physical laws.

It did not defeat the fact of a beginning of “real time.” Period. Nor did he claim that it did.

Moreover, like the brane collision theories, the “imaginary time” model takes geometry as a “given” – indeed, it relies on it for physical causation of the singularity!

In other words, it replies to the actual, substantive, observation that there was a beginning of geometry – by saying that geometry pre-exists geometry. Indeed, all such theories must because physical causation requires geometry. They cannot escape it.

Like all multi-verse theories, it is legedermain – misdirection, a shell game, push the question backward into obscurity without ever answering it – nothing more.

But don’t take my word for it, read Hawking’s description and admission to motive (obviate God the Creator.): Hawking’s lecture on the beginning of time

BTW, I am not picking on Hawking here – all physical cosmologies – all of them – including Steinhardt’s cyclic model – require geometry for physical causation. Period. None of them can explain the beginning and/or existence of geometry itself – which underscores the very point raised by Jastrow, that the CMB measurement was a theological statement. Eventually the scientists – climbing the last mountain of knowledge, will find the theologians sitting there, waiting for them.

js1138, if the motive for a physical cosmology is not to provide an intellectual justification for atheism - but rather to find a closed theory - then look to Max Tegmark’s Level IV parallel universe which suggests that all existents “in” space/time are actually real, noncorporeal, mathematical constructs outside of space/time. His is a radical form of mathematical Platonism and it truly is “closed” putting all beginnings and endings within the geometry itself (and not eliminating the need for a Creator of the geometry) – with the “real” part being outside the geometry.

Hi js1138!

I gather some of our correspondents believe that to ask whether or not the universe had a beginning is a senseless question (including you it seems). But I wonder, if the question is senseless, why is Stephen Hawking working so hard to show that the universe had no beginning? Obviously, an answer is important to him, specifically an answer that denies divine creation. In short, he starts with a presupposition, and aims to prove it. But here’s the problem: the presupposition may be wrong, in which case even if you can come up with a “mathematical proof” of it, that won’t make the presupposition “right.”

I’d like to excerpt a few passages from Timaeus, beginning at the citation that cornelis provided earlier on [28] that sheds light on an alternative to Hawking’s “answer”:

We must in my opinion begin by distinguishing between that which always is and never becomes from that which is always becoming but never is. The one is apprehensible by intelligence with the aid of reasoning, being eternally the same, the other is the object of opinion and irrational sensation, coming to be and ceasing to be, but never fully real. In addition, everything that becomes or changes must do so owing to some cause; for nothing can come to be without a cause. Whenever, therefore, the maker of anything keeps his eye on the eternally unchanging and uses it as his pattern for the form and function of his product the result must be good; whenever he looks to something that has come to be and uses a model that has come to be, the result is not good.
As for the world – call it that or cosmos or any other name acceptable to it – we must ask about it the question one is bound to ask to begin with about anything: whether it has always existed and had no beginning, or whether it has come into existence and started from some beginning. The answer is that it has come into being; for it is visible, tangible, and corporeal, and therefore perceptible by the senses, and, as we saw, sensible things are objects of opinion and sensation and therefore change and come into being. And what comes into being or changes must do so, we said, owing to some cause. To discover the maker and father of this universe is indeed a hard task, and having found him it would be impossible to tell everyone about him. Let us return to our question, and ask to which pattern did its constructor work, that which remains the same and unchanging or that which has come to be? If the world is beautiful and its maker good, clearly he had his eye on the eternal; if the alternative (which is blasphemy even to mention) is true, on that which is subject to change. Clearly, of course, he had his eye on the eternal; for the world is the fairest of all things that have come into being and he is the best of all causes. That being so, it must have been constructed on the pattern of what is apprehensible by reason and understanding and eternally unchanging; from which again it follows that the world is a likeness of something else. Now it is always most important to begin at the proper place; and therefore we must lay it down that the words in which likeness and pattern are described will be of the same order as that which they describe. Thus a description of what is changeless, fixed and clearly intelligible will be changeless and fixed – will be, that is, as irrefutable and uncontrovertible as a description in words can be; but analogously a description of a mere likeness of the changeless, being a description of a mere likeness will be merely likely; for being has to becoming the same relation as truth to belief. Don’t therefore be surprised, Socrates, if on many matters concerning the gods and the whole world of change we are unable in every respect and on every occasion to render consistent and accurate account. You must be satisfied if our account is as likely as any, remembering that both I and you who are sitting in judgment on it are merely human, and should not look for anything more than a likely story in such matters. [italics added for emphasis]

The “gods” to whom Timaeus refers here are the Olympians and their forebears – the intracosmic gods, not the creator god “beyond the cosmos” who also created the intracosmic gods. Because they are created, they “are not entirely immortal and indissoluble." They seem to be somewhat analogous to the Christian idea of angels (God created them too). But I digress.

Hearing the above statements from Timaeus, Socrates invites him to develop his main theme. Which essentially is that the creation is a work of reason whose motive is to make a world that is a unique copy “of a unique, perfect and eternal model.” In short, the creation is an image or likeness of the god Beyond, the “unseen god” of Acts (my supposition here).

Anyhoot, in Timaeus’ account the cosmos the god created is an ensouled, intelligent living being. “For god’s purpose was to use as his model the highest and most perfect of intelligible things, and so he created a single visible living being, containing within itself all living beings of the name natural order.” The cosmos is ONE:

Are we then right to speak of one universe, or would it be more correct to speak of a plurality or infinity? ONE is right, if it was manufactured according to its pattern; for that which comprises all intelligible beings cannot have a double. There would have to be another being comprising them both, of which both were parts, and it would be correct to call our world a copy not of them but of the being which comprised them.

Follow the logic: This is an exercise in apperception (reasoning, intelligence), not perception (direct observation, sense impression).

In conclusion, I am warm for Plato’s “likely story” – his aletheia logos -- his cosmology of divine creation.

It sure beats a theory of dumb matter accidentally bootstrapping itself into life and intelligence by pure chance in an eternal universe!

Speaking of matter: Science hasn’t even defined what it is. It hasn’t offered so much as a definition for time. Einstein – the father of space-time – had a sort of non- definition: “Time is that which we measure with clocks.” And correspondingly, “space is that which we measure with rods [measuring sticks or rulers].” Yep, that really sheds a whole lot of light on things!

The fact is, science really can’t answer questions like, “What is matter? What is time? What is space?” It just takes them all for granted, and moves on to its business.

Same thing with the question of the origin of life, or the origin of the universe. Probably these are not really “scientific questions” at all.

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