Replies

Betty,

I would just like to add to what I said earlier and keep it in historical context:

One hundred and fifty years ago, according to Gillespie (1979), most naturalists accepted the idea of common ancestry, but they differed on how new forms arose. The Establishment at Oxford (Buckland, for instance) evidently thought that God occasionally remodeled an existing form into a perfectly adapted new type (Rupke, 1983). The Radical Materialists such as Grant and Knox followed Lamarck in considering matter itself energized with an intrinsic tendency for unifomm development (Desmond, 1989). The followers of German Naturphilosophie (Richard Owen, for instance) held the theory that autonomous extra-material archetypes shaped lineages progressively into their own images (Desmond, 1982). All the schools (with the exception of Louis Agassis) viewed fossil sequences as demonstrations of common descent. They differed on the nature of the power that shaped biological form, but not on whether things shared common ancestry. One further note: although they differed in their philosophies of nature, each school had both Christian and non-Christian adherents.
According to historian James Moore (1982), however, around 1840 a new movement of young middle-class reformers calling themselves "Naturalists" appeared. This group as young adults typically changed their creed from Christianity (which they felt was morally bankrupt) to one based on "Nature." They were "poets and lawyers, doctors and manufacturers, novelists and naturalists, engineers and politicians." The group included such well-known individuals as George Eliot, Herbert Spencer, Matthew Arnold, Francis Galton, J. A. Froude, G. H. Lewes, Charles Bray, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Tyndall, F. W. Newman, A. H. Clough, Harriet Martineau, F. P. Cobbe, and, of course, T. H. Huxley. Moore shows that the central feature of this new creed was the redefinition of human nature, society, order, law, evil, progress, purpose, authority, and nature itself in terms of the Naturalists' particular view of Nature, as opposed to the Christian Scriptures. In fact, they tended to attack the Christian Scriptures as the true source of societal evil. God, if he existed, was to be known only through the Nature which he made. Thus, according to Moore (1982) and Young (1980), "positivism" was not primarily a methodology for science, but a religious movement that sought to replace the cultural dominance of the Established Church.
Charles Darwin launched his theory of biological change in this context. He proposed a mechanism for the appearance of new forms that did not depend on any pre-existing or exterior shaping forces. The environment became the only needed constraint. It was a theory of strategic importance for the Naturalists, particularly for the "X" club, Huxley's "Young Guard" party in science.
The Naturalists succeeded. The "Young Guard" used the trappings of religion to sacralize their "science." Three centuries of cooperation between science and religion were forgotten and their history was rewritten as "warfare." Hymns to nature were sung at popular lectures before the giving of "lay sermons" by a member of Galton's "Scientific Priesthood." Museums were built to resemble cathedrals, and following frantic string-pulling by Lubbock (a member of the "X" club) Charles Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey. The new church was established (Moore, 1982).
If the professionally validated "scientist" is viewed as the only one who can adequately understand nature, and if Nature has replaced Scripture as the source of moral and teleological truth, ipso facto the scientist has replaced the priest. Thus, the "professional" position at stake was as much the pulpit as the lectern.
It is a fact that God is continuously being publicly discussed by very well-known scientists- just read Gould, Dawkins, Hull, Provine, Wilson, Simpson, Futyama, Sagan, Hawking, and others. From a nineteenth century perspective, books like The Blind Watchmaker (Dawkins, 1986) and Wonderful Life (Gould, 1989) are simply Bridgewater treatises such as Paley, Owens, and Roget wrote, works in which up-to-date science is used for the task of world-view apologetics.
Evolution as History and the History of Evolution

But let’s fast forward to our modern day and see if ‘religious persecution’ has been eliminated by modern science that loves to say it functions better now that the shackles of ‘religious persecution’ have been thrown off its back. What have our Universities that were founded on ‘Christian principles’ become with this new found belief of no more dogmatic scientific endeavors and a this new found freedom to explore? Well, this comes from another forum from a gentleman who is neither friendly towards ID or neo-darwinism (and I truly apologize for the language from the professors):

Academia has some rather odd standards and I’m not sure they are altogether “academic.” Recently the Chairman of the Department of Ethnic Studies at my alma mater said, in so many words, that the victims of 911 deserved what they got; comparing them (or at least those who worked in the financial industry) to NAZI’s. Judging by previous experience he’s not likely to face anything other than a few words of impotent indignation. Because just last summer the president of the university said that calling rape victims “c***s” could be considered “flattering” in some contexts. She, i.e., she, is still the president of the university. I expect he will remain chairman of his department.
Calling the victims of 911 “little Eichman’s” or rape victims “c***s”… OK. Saying that maybe the “Cambrian Explosion” occurred too rapidly to be accounted for by existing theory---Kiss your career goodbye!

But why would he say this? Well, as reported by the Wall Street Journal recently, a respected scientist is actually experiencing persecution for overseeing a peer-review process that allowed a paper to be published that was written by Dr. Steven Meyer who has affiliations with the Discovery Institute. The paper questioned many principles of neo-darwinism:

In October, as the OSC complaint recounts, Mr. Coddington told Mr. Sternberg to give up his office and turn in his keys to the departmental floor, thus denying him access to the specimen collections he needs. Mr. Sternberg was also assigned to the close oversight of a curator with whom he had professional disagreements unrelated to evolution. "I'm going to be straightforward with you," said Mr. Coddington, according to the complaint. "Yes, you are being singled out." Neither Mr. Coddington nor Mr. Sues returned repeated phone messages asking for their version of events.
Mr. Sternberg begged a friendly curator for alternative research space, and he still works at the museum. But many colleagues now ignore him when he greets them in the hall, and his office sits empty as "unclaimed space." Old colleagues at other institutions now refuse to work with him on publication projects, citing the Meyer episode. The Biological Society of Washington released a vaguely ecclesiastical statement regretting its association with the article. It did not address its arguments but denied its orthodoxy, citing a resolution of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that defined ID as, by its very nature, unscientific.
The Branding of a Heretic

It should also be noted that they questioned Sternberg’s political beliefs as well as his religious beliefs. Now one might say that it is fair because this had no place in a scientific journal due to its content and ‘whose theme is such a drastic departure from the traditional focus of the journal’. But I would ask you to consider this from another peer-reviewed journal and apply those same standards:

Annu Rev Genomics Hum Genet. 2003; 4: 143-63. Creationism and intelligent design. by Pennock, RT.

Lyman Briggs School and Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48825, USA.

Abstract: Creationism, the rejection of evolution in favor of supernatural design, comes in many varieties besides the common young-earth Genesis version. Creationist attacks on science education have been evolving in the last few years through the alliance of different varieties. Instead of calls to teach "creation science," one now finds lobbying for "intelligent design" (ID). Guided by the Discovery Institute's "Wedge strategy," the ID movement aims to overturn evolution and what it sees as a pernicious materialist worldview and to renew a theistic foundation to Western culture, in which human beings are recognized as being created in the image of God. Common ID arguments involving scientific naturalism, "irreducible complexity," "complex specified information," and "icons of evolution," have been thoroughly examined and refuted. Nevertheless, from Kansas to Ohio to the U.S. Congress, ID continues lobbying to teach the controversy, and scientists need to be ready to defend good evolution education.

Now, keep in mind that this article was published in the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics and had nothing to do with ‘human genetics’ but was merely a hit piece published in a scientific journal that will obviously never allow a rebuttal.

I’d like to quote the gentleman from another forum again :

“Political correctness” is an attack on our fundamental rights. It has proven to be a powerful and sustained attack. It has very powerful advocates—like university presidents and chairmen. They are not merely “advocates.” They are in positions of power. They have the power to enforce—their beliefs… And they do.

People who have studied Huxley know that this is what he detested most about Universities and why he fought so hard to stop it… It is not so much ironic in a historical context as it is sad. It seems that all we have learned from history is… It seems all that we have learned from history is…

So now the big question: “What do we do and how do we find common ground?”