Intelligent design goes Ivy League: Cornell offers course despite president denouncing theory

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | 04/11/2006

[SirLinksalot]

Intelligent design goes Ivy League

Cornell offers course despite president denouncing theory

--------------------------------------------------------

Posted: April 11, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com

Cornell University plans to offer a course this summer on intelligent design, using textbooks by leading proponents of the controversial theory of origins.

The Ivy League school's course – "Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?" – aims to "sort out the various issues at play, and to come to clarity on how those issues can be integrated into the perspective of the natural sciences as a whole."

The announcement comes just half a year after Cornell President Hunter Rawlings III denounced intelligent design as a "religious belief masquerading as a secular idea."

Proponents of intelligent design say it draws on recent discoveries in physics, biochemistry and related disciplines that indicate some features of the natural world are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. Supporters include scientists at numerous universities and science organizations worldwide.

Taught by senior lecturer Allen MacNeill of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department, Cornell's four-credit seminar course will use books such as "Debating Design," by William Dembski and Michael Ruse; and "Darwin's Black Box," by Michael Behe.

The university's Intelligent Design Evolution Awareness club said that while it's been on the opposite side of MacNeill in many debates, it has appreciated his "commitment to the ideal of the university as a free market-place of ideas."

"We have found him always ready to go out of his way to encourage diversity of thought, and his former students speak highly of his fairness," the group said. "We look forward to a course where careful examination of the issues and critical thinking is encouraged."

Intelligent design has been virtually shut out of public high schools across the nation. In December, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones' gave a stinging rebuke to a Dover, Pa., school board policy that required students of a ninth-grade biology class to hear a one-minute statement that says evolution is a theory, and intelligent design "is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin's view."

Jones determined Dover board members violated the U.S. Constitution's ban on congressional establishment of religion and charged that several members lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs.

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," Jones wrote. "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

[Junior]

"Freepday" is the day you joined FR. It's a bit like a birthday or anniversary. The only folks included, however, are those who take part in these debates.

[Dimensio]

Though we do have some here at FR, disturbingly.

Do you have any relevant links to postings handy? I have only encountered on geocentrist online, and she inhabits fark.com.

[gondramB]

Thank you.

[Junior]

Not a problem. Your name will be on the list in August.

[gondramB]

"Not a problem. Your name will be on the list in August."

Aha - Immortality at last. :)

[Junior]

Aha - Immortality at last. :)

At least until I drop dead...

[shhrubbery!]

js1138: If you are going to make this kind of charge I'm going to ask you to back it up. Name the textbooks.

Dimensio: What textbooks are still promoting Haeckel's fraud and what is fraudulent about the peppered moth photographs?

OK, here's your answer...for starters...

Each of these recent textbooks reproduces uncritically Ernst Haeckel's series of embryos (which were found to be fraudulent during Haeckel's lifetime over a hundred years ago) :

1. Alton Biggs, Chris Kapicka & Linda Landgren. Biology: The Dynamics of Life (Westerville, OH: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 1998). ISBN 0-02-8254331-7

2. Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology. Third Edition (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 1998). ISBN 0-87893-189-9

3. Burton S. Gutman, Biology (Boston: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1999). ISBN 0-697-22366-3

4. Sylvia Mader, Biology, Sixth Edition (Boston: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1998). ISBN 0-697-34080-5

5. Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph Levine, Biology, Fifth Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000). ISBN 0-13-436265-9

6. Peter H. Raven & George B. Johnson, Biology, Fifth Edition (Boston: WCB/McGraw-Hill, 1999). ISBN 0-697-35353-2

7. William D. Schraer & Herbert J. Stoltze, Biology: The Study of Life, Seventh Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 21999.) ISBN 0-13-435086-3

8. Cecie Starr & Ralph Taggart, Biology: The Unity and Diversity of Life, Eighth Edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Comany, 1998). ISBN 0-534-530001-X

Good enough for ya? Heh.

Actually I'd like to give you citations for textbooks published more recently than the year 2000; but the paper that was the source for this info was itself published in 2000. However, I trust you will agree with me that these textbooks are "recent."

May I quote someone you perhaps admire, Stephen Jay Gould, on the subject of textbooks continuing to promote Haeckel's lie?

Harvard evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote that Haeckel's drawings of vertebrate embryos "exaggerated the similarites by idealizations and omissions. He also, in some cases -- in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent -- simply copied the same figure over and over again."...

"We do, I think, have the right," Gould wrote in 2000, "to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks."

Dimensio, I have to leave the computer and don't have time to address the peppered moths fraud now. But I'm sure you know how to do a google search.

[shhrubbery!]

I have read that book its tripe!

Really? Then perhaps your critical reading skills are as good as your grammar and punctuation.

[Dimensio]

May I quote someone you perhaps admire, Stephen Jay Gould, on the subject of textbooks continuing to promote Haeckel's lie?

So you are saying that, in addition to publishing Haeckel's drawings, they are also advancing Haeckel's failed hypothesis? Please provide excerpts from the books showing as much. I do not dispute that a number of textbooks have reproduced Hacekel's drawings where they should not have, however this is not the same as using the drawings to advocate Haeckel's hypothesis for which he falsified the drawings.

I also note that you have not explained what, exactly, was "fraudulent" regarding the peppered moth photographs.

[Liberal Classic]

Or I move from the left column to the right.

[johnnyb_61820]

"The theory of evolution has never purported to explain the origin of life. I do not understand the relevance."

Common Descent rests squarely on a specific view of the origin of life. As Gordon has pointed out, when you remove that assumption, you do not get common ancestry -- sometimes even up to the family level of taxa (which is where creationists put it as well -- though I'm sure for the most part Gordon would put the origin of monophyly a little higher taxonomically than creationists would):

http://crevobits.blogspot.com/2006/02/monophyly-in-biology.html

Also, Darwinism requires the animal to continue to create massive amounts of information by haphazard changes. This has likewise been shown to be in error, as many of the changes in genetics proceed according to planned, structured mechanisms, which direct genetic changes to useful areas.

Again, Darwinism says "no teleology". Evidence says "yes, much teleology".

"This is an appeal to ignorance."

Can you name another category of causation besides necessity, chance, and agency? If not, then this is not an argument from ignorance, it is an argument from knowledge. Otherwise, we would have to uproot the entire scientific enterprise as being an "appeal to ignorance" since every induction we ever do is based on the fact that we know of no other way certain events occur.

Again, if you know of another category of causation, please let me know. As the paper I referenced points out, chance and necessity are insufficient causes.

[connectthedots]

The theory of evolution has never purported to explain the origin of life.

That is a lie. Evolutionists dropped that claim when the scientific evidence clearly established, even to evolutionists, that the whole primordial soup idea was impossible.

[Right Wing Professor]

I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. The guy who developed the course, Allan McNeill, says "as an evolutionary biologist, I will of course be entering the discussion from the standpoint of a methodological naturalist, with all of the metaphysical assumptions that position entails."

I suggest people check out the discussion on Telic Thoughts.

[Dimensio]

That is a lie.

Please provide a historical reference showing that the theory of evolution once addressed the origin of life.

Are you certain that you are simply remembering incorrectly? If you will recall, you have shown errors in recall in the past. For example, you once denied making a prediction regarding the outcome of the Dover trial, when in fact you had actually predicted a win for the defendants.

[Junior]

There is that, too, but you'll still be "immortal."

[Liberal Classic]

Immortalized, perhaps. Not quite the same thing. ;-)

[Dimensio]

Common Descent rests squarely on a specific view of the origin of life.

I submit five hypothesis regarding the origin of the first life forms.

a) Natural processes occuring entirely upon earth resulted in chains of self-replicating molecular strands that eventually became the first life forms.

b) Aliens from another planet and/or dimension travelled to this planet and -- deliberately or accidentally -- seeded the planet with the first life forms.

c) In the future, humans will develop a means to travel back in time. They will use this technology to plant the first life forms in Earth's past, making the existence of life a causality loop.

d) A divine agent of unspecified nature zap-poofed the first life forms into existence.

e) Any method other than the four described above led to the existence of the first life forms.

If, as you say, common descent "rests squarely on a specific view of the origin of life", then only one of the above hypothesis can be true for common descent to have occured. Please identify which of the five must be true for common descent to have occured, and explain why any two of the other options would prevent common descent from occuring.

[Junior]

What's that old Woody Allen quip? "I don't want to be immortal through my works. I want to be immortal through not dying."

[js1138]

Actually, no I don't trust you. I will, however, attempt to verify your claim that thes books pormote Haeckel uncritically.

I took biology in 1959 and was given something pretty close to the modern interpretation of Haeckel.

Would you prefer books to present photographs rather than drawings?

[johnnyb_61820]

"If, as you say, common descent "rests squarely on a specific view of the origin of life", then only one of the above hypothesis can be true for common descent to have occured."

Bzzzzzzzt. Wrong. Bad logic, try again.

My point was that if you remove assumptions about the origin of life, then your assumptions don't require you to posit monophyly. Then all you have is the evidence. Incidentally, as the paper I referenced points out, the evidence doesn't require it, either, and actually speaks against it in many ways.

Again, without specific assumptions about the origin of life, there is no reason to assume monophyly. That is not the same thing as saying that only one set of assumptions will get you monophyly. The point is that if you don't make origin-of-life assumptions, you do not get monophyly from the data.