Posted on 09/30/2003 10:13:27 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It's been an unusual week in the academy. The academic freedom that so incensed Bill Buckley as a student at Yale decades ago is now acting to protect a conservative scholar under fire.
Baylor's J.M. Dawson Institute for Church-State Studies hired Francis Beckwith as its Associate Director last summer. Although previously known as a philosopher who had developed powerful critiques of abortion, Beckwith has used the past few years and a research fellowship at Princeton to transform himself into a legal scholar investigating the controversy over public schools and the teaching of human origins. His research culminated in publication of the book, Law, Darwinism, and Public Education.
Here's where the matter gets a little sticky. Beckwith concludes an alternative to evolution that goes by the name Intelligent Design may be constitutionally taught in public schools. Here's where it gets a lot sticky. It turns out the Institute's namesake and founder, J.M. Dawson, was an early proponent of teaching evolution in public schools and an ardent, strict separationist in matters of church and state. Dawson was also instrumental in the formation of the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.
After Beckwith testified before the Texas Board of Education as to the constitutionality of teaching Intelligent Design in schools, Dawson's descendants (who do not fund the program) decided the good professor should be reassigned because of the possible divergence of his views with those of the patriarch Dawson. They have since written formal letters requesting Beckwith's removal from the Institute and have vigorously pursued media coverage of their grievance. To date, the story has been featured in the Baptist press, the Waco Tribune, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. Reporters from Dallas, Houston, and World Magazine (a Christian version of Time or Newsweek with a surprisingly large circulation) are beginning to sniff around for a good story.
The current flare-up is further evidence that America has never quite gotten over the Scopes Trial. For some citizens, the face-off between Clarence Darrow as the prophet of the Enlightenment and William Jennings Bryan as the withering apostle of a spent Christian faith stands as a holy moment in history. Jews have Mount Sinai. Christians have Calvary. Enlightenment fundamentalists have Darrow brilliantly cross-examining Bryan in a courthouse in Tennessee. In their version of the national myth, people of learning finally overcame the fearsome faithful through the triumph of cold, hard, liberating reason. Moments like that, properly interpreted or not, are hard to let go.
That's why evolution has always been much more than a scientific issue in America. Darwin's legacy is fully bound up in the broader American culture war between the self-appointed enlightened and those who insist there's something else waiting for us behind Curtain number three.
Among those who fail to be convinced of evolution's status as the final word in the origins controversy are the group of scientists and philosophers in the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. Design theorists have developed a much more sophisticated critique of evolution than young earth "creation scientists" ever put forward. By raising questions about the information content of DNA and irreducible complexity of even simple life forms, ID'ers have stoked the embers of the nation's perennial controversy. Beckwith's examination of ID's legal status in public education put him squarely in the middle of the hot zone.
IT DOESN'T SEEM TO MATTER to Beckwith's opponents that his work fits comfortably within the range of rational discourse on the subject of the origins controversy and public schools. Nor does it mitigate the annoyance of Dawson heirs that Dr. Beckwith hasn't recommended that ID be immediately incorporated into high school curriculums, but merely affirms the constitutionality of doing so. Instead, they repeatedly quote "Church and State," the house organ of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, to support the supposed malignancy of Beckwith's view. One might object on the basis of the non-objectivity of the source. To be fair, there are legitimate scholars who disagree with Dr. Beckwith, but that's hardly the basis for escorting the man out of the ballpark.
As a doctoral fellow in the program, I have to ask the following questions. Does Baylor University want to firmly commit its Church-State Studies department to a particular position on Darwinism, Intelligent Design, and public schools? For that matter, should the department follow its namesake and cast its lot with one version of church-state separation known as strict separationism and work essentially as an adjunct to the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State?
It would seem the prudent answer to both of those queries should be in the negative. We are at an exciting point in history where the relationship between church and state is being re-examined in the light of new challenges. What are the possibilities for government-funding of faith-based social services? How does the nation deal with legal issues raised by ever-growing religious pluralism? What role will faith play in a new constitution for Iraq? This is exactly the time for intellectual curiosity and openness in a venerable field of academic inquiry. Attempts to remove a professor for holding "unorthodox views" strike me as stifling and outside the spirit of a university striving to penetrate the top tier of research institutions. Given the further fact that Baylor is explicitly trying to create the most vital center of Christian scholarship in the nation, one imagines the anti-Beckwith efforts will stall out.
So far, Baylor seems up to the challenge and the media scrutiny involved. Public statements by the University's provost have been supportive of Beckwith's work and have invoked the now-sacred principle of academic freedom. The idea that protected the mass introduction of the radical left to American university faculties is finally doing a little work for the other side. Mr. Buckley, I know you're on board with us now.
Hunter Baker is a doctoral fellow in Baylor University's Church-State Studies Department. He may be contacted via email at bakersemail@yahoo.com.
NOTE: Baylor is the same Southern Baptist university that stiffled Dembski, one of the founders of the ID movement!
Evolution is liberalsm ... idealism --- all lies no reality !
467 posted on 09/29/2003 4:31 PM PDT by f.Christian (evolution vs intelligent design ... science3000 ... designeduniverse.com --- * architecture * !)
To: f.Christian
Oh come on there, you should know better then that.
Liberalism is a political belief, evolution is a scientific theory. The 2 are not at all related and have absolutely nothing in common.
To blame a scientific theory for a political belief is one of the most illogical and silly assertions that I have seen in quite a while.
Just because you do not like either of them, does not mean that they are at all synonomous.
468 posted on 09/29/2003 5:06 PM PDT by Ogmios
Good for them.
Knowing who you are and what you intend with that question, I have to respond with: Hell Yes!
When are evolutionists -- liberals ... going to find their own country --- lesser america !
separate post ... link !
To: Hermann the Cherusker
**Your claiming of those Deists as Protestants proves my point that Protestantism doesn't really care what a man believes, and certainly not if he believes in Christ or not, so long as it is not Catholicism. **
Thank you for the opportunity to post this. Note only one Catholic..
Denominational Affiliations of the Framers of the Constitution
Dr. Miles Bradford of the University of Dallas did a study on the denominational classifications that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention accepted for themselves. Contrary to myth, the following list, published by Bradford, indicates that only 3 out of 55 of the framers classified themselves as Deists.
Note: only those Denominations whose Confessions of Faith were expressly Calvinistic at this time have been identified as "Calvinist" denominations. While many "Old-School" Lutherans and "Whitfield" Methodists at this time would have identified themselves with a Calvinistic view of Predestination, their affiliation has for the sake of charity been assumed to be non-Calvinist.
New Hampshire
* John Langdon, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist
* Nicholas Gilman, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist
Massachusetts
* Elbridge Gerry, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Rufus King, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Caleb Strong, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist
* Nathaniel Gorham, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist Connecticut
* Roger Sherman, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist
* William Johnson, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Oliver Ellsworth, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist
New York
* Alexander Hamilton, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* John Lansing, DUTCH REFORMED -- Calvinist
* Robert Yates, DUTCH REFORMED -- Calvinist
New Jersey
* William Patterson, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* William Livingston, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Jonathan Dayton, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* David Brearly, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* William Churchill Houston, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
Pennsylvania
* Benjamin Franklin, DEIST
* Robert Morris, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* James Wilson, DEIST
* Gouverneur Morris, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Thomas Mifflin, QUAKER
* George Clymer, QUAKER
* Thomas FitzSimmons, ROMAN CATHOLIC
* Jared Ingersoll, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
Delaware
* John Dickinson, QUAKER
* George Read, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Richard Bassett, METHODIST
* Gunning Beford, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Jacod Broom, LUTHERAN
Maryland
* Luther Martin, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Daniel Carroll, ROMAN CATHOLIC
* John Mercer, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* James McHenry, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Daniel Jennifer, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
Virginia
* George Washington, EPISCOPALIAN (Non-Communicant)
* James Madison, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* George Mason, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Edmund Randolph, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* James Blair, Jr., EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* James McClung, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* George Wythe, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
North Carolina
* William Davie, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Hugh Williamson, DEIST
* William Blount, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Alexander Martin, PRESBYTERIAN -- Calvinist
* Richard Spaight, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
South Carolina
* John Rutledge, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Charles Pinckney, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist * Pierce Butler, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* Charles Pinckney, III, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
Georgia
* Abraham Baldwin, CONGREGATIONALIST -- Calvinist
* William Leigh Pierce, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* William Houstoun, EPISCOPALIAN -- Calvinist
* William Few, METHODIST
327 posted on 09/30/2003 9:47 PM PDT by RnMomof7
Yeah, too sophisticated (read "vacuous"). The YECs at least had the virtue of being wrong. "Design theory," in the immortal words of Wofgang Pauli, "isn't even wrong."
I really do not think you are intending to say that Creationists are in favor of slavery. Or are you?
Maybe a few hundred thousand people died in the civil war ... never heard about it ?
Dumbksi could have kept his position. The reason he didn't is, bluntly, because he decided to be an self-absorbed and petulant ass, gratuitously undercutting and embarrassing his boss, Baylor President Sloan, who had hired him in the first place, and had defended him throughout the preceeding controversy. In short, he himself demonstrated that he wasn't competent as a manager or director.
Before Dembski becomes a martyr (by Glenn Morton)
http://www.calvin.edu/archive/asa/200010/0200.html
...I am certain that Bill will be hailed as a martyr for the cause of Christ soon, but in fact, he is a martyr to his mouth and poor judgement. Bill had won the battle but allowed his arrogant gloating and his childish rebelliousness to the administration to bring him down. What happened to the Christian virtue of obedience to authority when Bill was asked to withdraw his press release? While Dembski believes that a retraction would 'betray his 'professional career', in fact his obstinance brought down his efforts to achieve his professional goals. His refusal could not be construed as a Biblical stand as no where in the Bible does it say 'William Dembski can say whatever he wants with no consequences'. It is truly a shame as the Nature of Nature Conference was really a great conference. It is unfortunate that Bill's mouth will prevent other similar conferences from being staged. It is also a shame that anywhere else that such a center is formed (where Bill can engage mouth before thinking) will have less prestige than Baylor.And if we Christians turn Dembski into a martyr over this, we are supporting rebelliousness, and naivete rather than the cause of Christ. But I bet I know what we Christians will do--martyrdom is so much fun and plays so well on Christian radio.
Hard to say. Maybe if could also see some posts written while you were ON medication.
BTW, that's not entirely a joke. Get help.
I hope not. Teach real science.
To: f.Christian
Dakmar...
I took a few minutes to decipher that post, and I must say I agree with a lot of what you said.
fC...
These were the Classical liberals...founding fathers-PRINCIPLES---stable/SANE scientific reality/society---industrial progress...moral/social character-values(private/personal) GROWTH(limited NON-intrusive PC Govt/religion---schools)!
Dakmar...
Where you and I diverge is on the Evolution/Communism thing. You seem to view Darwin and evolution as the beginning of the end for enlighted, moral civilization, while I think Marx, class struggle, and the "dictatorship of the proletariat" are the true dangers.
God bless you, I think we both have a common enemy in the BRAVE-NWO.
452 posted on 9/7/02 8:54 PM Pacific by Dakmar
Then I guess you would be against teaching evolution as science. Any theory which requires the words 'possible', 'perhaps', 'maybe', and 'could be' at almost any turn is not science, but meat for the Art Bell show.
That's more than can be said for evolution which is not just wrong, it is totally backwards.
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