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 Turners 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.
Since that is not possible until that man manages to create his own universe outside this one, the purpose is an illusion.
That's the honest truth, dearest Alamo-Girl. Plus it goes without saying that they taught us much of value while they were here, in many different ways.
Truly, I personally miss very much certain people in that "exodus crowd." I regarded them long-time friends, even though we would regularly differ contentiously on "crevo" issues. And I was shocked when I learned they were gone.
Then again, there were others who "left" whose absence can only presage an improvement in civil discourse at Free Republic.
Thank you for your wonderful essay/post, dearest sister A-G!
Or, maybe you're just afraid of the boogey men outside the windowshade.
Okay, since I'm lurking: I'd vote "nay" on common descent (at least as Darwinians understand that term) and "yea" on a multi-billion-year-old earth; plus a universe of probably 15 billion years' age, give or take a few hundred million.
Anyone else want to weigh in?
You lose me there, amigo!
You aren't, by any chance, a student of Hegel, or maybe of Nietzsche? Or may even of Bukharin?
Your thesis seems to be that if man can know nothing for an absolute certainty, then there is nothing worthy to be known by man.
Anyone else want to weigh in?
Vote all you want. The scientists who are studying these issues are the one's whose opinions count. That's harsh, but that's the way it works in science.
If you haven't spent enough time studying an issue to have an informed opinion (and this is often measured in years), then your opinion will probably not be accorded much credence.
And so, it should be obvious that science cannot be counted upon, to tell us thoroughly how that which is discernable by the scientific process got to be exactly how it is. Nor will science be a means of ruling out the unmeasurable, untestable, and/or supernatural (whether any of that could be called an excretion from a male creature with hooves and horns, or not)
js1138: In every case where the courts have been called upon to intervene with attempts to derail the teaching of science, the people behind anti-science have revealed themselves to be young earth creationists hoping to promote Biblical literalism. This is so transparent when people are questioned under oath that the outcome of the cases is never in doubt.
1. You are conflating ID with Creationism and you really do know that, I think.
2. So what if believers in the myth of Gilgamesh were behind the attempt to allow discussion of intelligent design in public education, when the topic is cosmological etiology? Does that somehow disrupt the work of science? That matters about as much as whether or a person who wants a federal program for health savings plans is a communist or capitalist.
3. Surely you must see by now that it is absurd to either equate "evolution" (of whatever kind) with "cosmological etiology," or to say that the only inferences which may play upon the academic discussion of this subject must be those adhering to intentionless, planless, and executionless development -- because, well, because, that's what most of us scientists adhere to.. you know... like man-produced global warming. (That gets to be like the police not wanting to be policed, because, well... they're the police.)
Apt point and Voegelin (not to be confused with Vogon) excerpt.
As you've attested, man must believe in, adhere to, and rely upon something that is "the greatest" (whether that is the greatest, or not).
As Diamond has pointed out, that's how we have "evolved." As I've tried to relate years ago here, that's what our impetus for survival will relate with (accurately or otherwise) in our environment, in order to survive and produce, to elucidate Darwin.
betty boop: Okay, since I'm lurking: I'd vote "nay" on common descent (at least as Darwinians understand that term) and "yea" on a multi-billion-year-old earth; plus a universe of probably 15 billion years' age, give or take a few hundred million.
Anyone else want to weigh in?
I vote "yea" on a multi-billion-year-old earth from our space time coordinates - which would be only a few equivalent earth days from the inception space time coordinates due to the expansion of space/time (inflationary theory and relativity.)
I vote "nay" and "yea" on common descent. Abiogenesis [life from non-life] is impossible on the basis of information content. Likewise, I believe many species or individual creatures were specially created and/or guided into existence and many additional species emerged through genetic adaptation and natural selection.
That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. John 3:6-7
So also [is] the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam [was made] a quickening spirit. I Cor 15:42-45
So much of what we think we know about nature is merely a projection based on our assumptions. This of course goes back to cornelis' first item on the "observer problem" crib sheet.
A civil discourse is hard to achieve with the kind of poster who insults or provokes the host.
What happens on this earth is insignificant over the age of the universe much less eternity.
A thing only matters if God wills it. His opinion is the only one that counts.
To God be the glory.
So true.... To any that think they are more than a mere observer.. I ask..
Observer of the trees or the forest?..
or even observer of observers that is being observed.. i.e. chinese fire drill...
Observations can be tested. How do you test dogma?
Easy now. Don't everyone answer at once.
But remember your Aristotle. Some principles are demonstrable, others not. First principles are axiomatic. Existence for example. Do you want to test existence by making it disappear first?
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