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.
Some things never seem to change....
Thank you for this wonderful essay/post, Damond -- and for the links!
Hmmm.. I guess I’m wrong about Singer... got my Singers crossed..
I prefer Conan's way of dealing with slave masters much better than what is advocated by the New Testament.
Darwin presented his theory to the Linnean in 1858, not '59, in joint papers with Alfred Russell Wallace, and did not make any "statement" because he wasn't there in person. Nor does the phrase from Tennyson appear anywhere in the Darwin-Wallace papers, the complete text of which is available here.
You are splitting hairs. What is important in a Darwin quote is not what he actually said, but what he intended to say. The fact that he wasn't present to say it is of no importance.
Behe has stated under oath that he thinks the designer is God. Your rhetoric is laced with references to God. More importantly, ID is irretrievably linked to anti-empiricism. It simply can't be anything but theology until it proposes research using the methods of science.
The fact that science does not support a literal reading of Genesis does not make it atheistic.
Now I know you're unfamiliar with Darwin biographically and as a man. If there was anything Darwin was most definitely NOT it was a "public speaker," most especially not an "attention-grabbing" one. By the time he published on evolution, even going into London tended to make him physically ill.
There, btw, are many theories about Darwin's illness, and it's an unresolved issue, but one idea I find interesting is the possibility that excitement and/or stress caused him to hyperventilate to the point of inducing nausea. IOW Darwin had something at least somewhat like an "anxiety disorder" even when being and socializing in large crowds was all that was involved. He probably would have gone completely to pieces if he ever had to give a formal presentation, which I'm not sure he ever did, at least as an adult.
Now Darwin certainly was very interested in getting attention for his scientific work. But he prosecuted his case through his scientific publications, through extensive letter writing, through one-on-one interactions, through advocacy by friends and associates, and that sort of thing.
The difference is that no evolution supporter on these threads has argued for this, whereas the majority of anti-evolution posters on these threads argue for a literal Genesis. There are a few who try to avoid discussing that issue, but I haven't encountered an anti-evolution poster who doesn't eventually conflate science with atheism. It is actually rare to encounter an evolution critic who will speak out against young earth creationism. Certainly they do not confront Young earthers.
You can go further than that. We have a GEOCENTRIST who posts in these threads regularly (not pinging cause it's a screen name I always get mixed up with another) who I've never noticed being confronted by another creationist.
You are splitting hairs again. The fact that Darwin never gave public speeches and never said or wrote, "red in tooth and claw," even to quote Tennyson, is of no importance.
What is important is what people think he might have said.
Even more important, whether he kept the pentagram solidly closed all the time when he was speaking directly to S.
Must consult my source and get back to you Stultis. Later!
The Intelligent Design hypothesis is no more capable of anti-empiricism than the Theory of Evolution is capable of anti-Christianity.
They are what they are. It's the supporters who have agendas and thereby abuse them.
Again, not every supporter of the Intelligent Design hypothesis is a Young Earth Creationist - or Christian, for that matter.
And not every supporter of the Theory of Evolution is an atheist, or anti-Christianity activist.
Also, I see no linkage between the Intelligent Design hypothesis and empiricism. I do however see an adversarial relationship between empiricism and Christianity.
The empiricist believes that all knowledge comes from sensory perception and reasoning.
On principle, he rejects the Spiritual insight that God’s ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)
If he believes God exists, he cannot help anthropomorphizing God - at least not until he experiences that definitive divine revelation that Jesus Christ is Lord, at which time he is no longer entirely empiricist.
But until then, he remains a doubting Thomas. Then again, doubting Thomas was an apostle, too.
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