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.
Thats part of the reason its a problem..
Trying to be maturely study etiology, however forensically sound the analyses, always gets to be akin to being confronted by the three year old who finds he can entertain himself by incessantly asking his parent, "Why?"
I suppose that a materialist eventually gets impatient with his inner child, slaps him and tells him to shut up. But we know he would be better off realizing that he is nothing but the child, whether inner or outer, and not really the parent at all.
Yeah thats what I'm talkin about.. Light matter and dark matter.. if there even is such a thing as dark MATTER.. We can see light matter(but we don't know what it is) but dark matter is invisible.. and may not even BE THERE... Where?... WE DON'T KNOW...
Damn... Its not easy being human with one of these brain thingys..
We know that matter is its just what it is we don't know..
I am particularly fond of cornelis' crib sheet for the observer problem - and hope to keep it in mind to avoid getting into discussions where my correspondent and I are talking past each other.
Which is usually the case.. Batting the shuttlecock of ideas around is an observation itself.. No one "wins",,, Keeping the cock in the air is the objective.. Observeing whats going on in some one elses "mind".. is the payoff.. Observers observeing observers.. the subjects observed are excuses to interact.. The fellowship of observation..
Mass (inertia) and gravity (weight) would be accidental qualities of matter when matter actually becomes something. Matter is free of all predicates of quantity and quality and relation since it is a universal, i.e., a word in the nominative case.
It is unfortunate that astronomers named their dark matter such, since that conflates a universal with a genus.
It’s a universal. That is, a word.
Yes there are fossils.
Your keep arriving at God. I did not bring Him up again. You keep arriving at the rational answer. Search out Him and His nature to the degree that your pride will allow. Study 'pride', in all of its forms, and as you demonstrate. To properly study pride, you must quietly walk away from pride itself and search for truth.
A famous man once asked another very famous man, "What is Truth?" If you are really interested, you will find it. Facts come and go, but Truth is eternal.
Also, same space, be it whatever dimension, including solution space regardless of time.
True observation is a skill.. A skill of perception.. What one perceives to be true is true if only as a mental construct.. As most "Evos" prove.. and also followers of other religions..
Humans are bound to the "Observer problem" like a worm and a butterfly.. and a chrysalis..
LOL Sorry to put so much 'pressure' on you by asking you about what you believe.
So when are you guys going to discuss ID vs. evolution, which is the subject of this thread?
I suppose it should be a compliment to evolution that it's detractors have surrendered discussing it directly and instead endlessly take the conversation to philosophic discussions of the unanswerable questions concerning the irrelevant subject of the beginning of the universe.
That would require knowledge and hard work.
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