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.
I understand that. But if time doesn't pass for an object traveling at the speed of light, then it seems odd to speak of another object seeming to be "at rest" if it's traveling at the same velocity. What would you use for a basis to determine what is not "at rest" without any time delta reference?
Does time really not pass for an object at the speed of light, or does it just appear that way from our perspective?
Then the question remains, how would one traveling at the speed of light determine anything to not be "at rest" without a time delta?
We all suffer from the observer problem. LOL!
For instance, I tend to look at the leaves and count on betty boop to smack me across the head every now and then so I don't lose sight off the forest.
Spiritually speaking, the mega-language is Jesus Christ, the Word of God, Logos.
Looking at those leaves - the languages are several as you say: mathematical structures, DNA/tRNA, myriad symbolic languages representing images or concepts.
Concerning life, at this time, I'm leaning to light as a carrier of information in the cosmos - though there may also be an expanded time-like dimension (Wesson) or field (all points in space/time) involved.
That's why it seemed odd to talk about another object traveling at the speed of light "seeming to be at rest" to him. He shouldn't be aware of it at all.
Not quite right, I'm afraid.
If you and I are traveling at the speed of light relative to each other - I appear to you as not aging and you appear to me as not aging -hence the twin paradox. Neither of us is right or wrong nor our observations true or false. Since there is no absolute frame of reference neither of us can be said to be ACTUALLLY traveling at the speed of light - only the there is a relative speed between us - I claim you are while you claim I am.
So both of us 'experience' time 'normally' but 'observe' the other to not be.
My thoughts are going that way too. LOL! Makes your head spin!
God did say: Let there be Light. Seems light is the "stuff" that everything was made of, in the Beginning.... And Christ, the Logos, by Whom and for Whom was everything made that was made; the Alpha and Omega; is the Light of the world....
Indeed, spiritually speaking, Jesus Christ is the mega-language, or meta-language.... Even Niels Bohr -- not a particularly "religious" man -- conflates Light and Life.
dougd, it's all your fault: the last lines I read last night before going to bed were your thoughts re: spirit. Jeepers, I dreamed about your words and where they led all night long. And now I'm simply exhausted.... For now anyway. :^)
Thank you both so much for a fascinating conversation.
Doesn't sound like a conclusive argument to me. A parasite in my gut doesn't change when I die - does that mean it isn't alive either?
as an aside - I think the forensic use of DNA is a somewhat dangerous proposition. First - the 'probablities' of identifications I hear are logically just pure garbage - sometimes it is said in court 'the DNA found at the crime scene identifies this individual to 1 in a couple of billion' (which is inherently silly if you know how few chunks of the entire DNA are used to reach such conclusions and the background of why those specific chunks were chosen as 'relevant' or 'identifying' ) But it also means they can statistically prove from the DNA that the suspect has no twin. Further, DNA does change during life - whether or not in response to some outside influence not yet clear. So who's to claim that particular chunk did not 'mutate' ??? but i digress on a pet peeve.
The conjecture is that DNA is not itself what codes for life, but rather may be the master "decryption key" that accesses whatever it is that does code for life, transcribing it in ways relevant to the particular organism.
My conjecture, which I have been ruminating upon for the last 20 years off and on is that genomes of DNA and neurons of our 'brains' are both data and process. (this is an unfortunate side effect of Shannon's work that we believe that data and process must be functonally independant - something which is not necessarily true and probably severely limits our chance to comprehend existing 'informing mechanisms' let alone our ability to potentially create better electronic mousetraps). IOW - DNA can be BOTH the 'plan' and the 'means to effect the plan.' Indeed, that happens to more easily explain how so very much 'information' is encoded in DNA - especially when much of it was, until very recently, considered 'junk' DNA. It turns out those 'junk' sequences are not junk after all.
DNA really does process itself in the manner it 'creates' enzymes.
Moreover, your argument that DNA doesn't change when it's organism dies and therefore cannot itself be 'alive' seems to me like saying Souls do not exist of more prosaicly, since a hive can be destroyed it proves that the individual bees or ants are not alive.
re your bringing up one of my favorite conundrums - the two slit experiment - you remind me that perhaps one of my postulates that physical interactions do not 'occur' over time except through 'consciousness' could be a corollary of the 'organic' photon concept. It turns out sending individual photons through the two slits, one photon at a time with as long an interlude as desired between photons, such that individual photons can be 'counted' as they arrive at specific locations on the screen on the far side, still eventually results in the familiar 'interference' pattern. However, I'm still not prepared to say photons are 'organic.' I think rather that the phenomenon is more likely explained that we are intepreting non-time 'cognizant' bosons from our 'chrono-chauvinistic' perspective. i.e. it only appears to be 'miraculous' that a photon 'knows' whether there are two slits or one because we have such difficulty conceiving what the world is like for bosons - for which the two slit experiment is not the least paradoxical. But it does make me think that our inability to 'conjoin' conceptually the wave/particle duality of photons may well be a derivative of our 'chrono-chauvinistic' perspective. Thank you for that interesting line of inquiry.
Mega-language, or Meta-language?... Language in "codes" is almost a hinderance to understanding.. For how are the codes decrypted?.. A proper metaphor bridges language(dialect) and culture.. Little wonder Jesus communicated mostly in metaphor.. not only but mostly.. Metaphor speaks words about something(s) but is talking about something else.. A language of mental images.. even the blind can see..
In reading often I can see Mega-phors, Micro-phors, and Macro-phors.. I wonder If DNA/rna is like that, Metaphorical in construct.. i.e. A language on top of a language.. as a metaphor is greater than the words used.. Groups of "words" used to express "something else" than the words say..
I must consider this.. not that I care a wit about DNA, but generally about communication information and processing of data... But the DNA angle has leggs..
It's probably just a quibble, but it's kind of demostrative of the problem of getting a handle on it. While we can theorize about getting past or outside of it, all of our experience and terminology is implicitly dependent on it.
wellll ... if an norganic system could, would it not be a 'living organism'? Seems like saying "vowels can be 'e's, but consonants can't. It must mean something"
the entire universe is a living organism.
hee - which is really just another way of saying God IS. But for my definition of 'living' which is that there must be 'will' to alter/influence situation - not simply stimulus-response which I daresay applies to every quark, photon and galaxy of galaxies. To say "everything is 'life'" demeans 'life.'
but I do have difficulty finding 'will' in the operation of the entire universe. I mean what is the situation of the entire universe that it should 'will' to influence or alter. Moreover - the universe is not time directional, we are. and as I explained earlier, absence of an arrow of time precludes 'will' - as best I can conceive - but again that may only illustrate my poor imagination.
and I dare say no more lest I present you with another sleepless night .. but I am enjoying trying to compreend the two slit experiment from the photon's point of view to see if that helps me with wave-particle duality. thanks again. perhaps you're only paying me back ;->
a good metaphor, I believe.
My guess is that DNA is a group of words which inform how to re-arrange those same words into different meaningful sentences.
Something like - in the simplest construction: "FIRST LAST" which instructs itself to become "LAST FIRST" which instructs itself to become "FIRST LAST" again. Expand that to the 'word count' of DNA and you can have an incredibly complex 'machine'
and note to betty boop - even 1% difference between us and higher apes (which I think was based on excluding all the 'junk DNA' which it turns out should have been counted) can result in a 99% different 'functioning' of that DNA.
No, dougd, it's alive -- for a while. With its host dead, that won't be long. And then its DNA will still be there, too.
You wrote: "an unfortunate side effect of Shannon's work [is] that we believe that data and process must be functonally independant - something which is not necessarily true...." On the other hand, the functional independence of data and process permits Shannon information theory to have universal application to all fields where information processing is relevant. It is "cross-disciplinary" and "content neutral." It works as well in cancer research as it does in information technology.
Then there is this: "Moreover, your argument that DNA doesn't change when it's organism dies and therefore cannot itself be 'alive' seems to me like saying Souls do not exist of more prosaicly, since a hive can be destroyed it proves that the individual bees or ants are not alive."
I just think that's a bad analogy, FWIW. Go see for yourself whether you think this might be the case. In the first place, "soul" is not a term that has application in science. But if we want to go with the body/soul analogy, bees and ants are not the "souls" of the hive that houses them. If there is a "soul" here, it is in the swarm, or colony, not in the structure that houses it. And if we want to use the analogy anyway, for bees and ants, that "soul" might well be the collective organizational intelligence of the swarm.
Or so it seems to me, dougd. These are fascinating things to think about, and discuss. I'm not saying all my answers are "right." But these are the answers I have -- so far. And Life's for learning....
I think you misunderstood somewhat. I was not analogizing 'soul' and the individual organisms of a 'hive,' but using each as independant analogies to DNA. Perhaps more precisely, I might say the queen is akin to the 'DNA' of the hive 'organism.' That destroying the hive (organism) leaves the queen (DNA) unchanged does not argue that the queen (DNA) is not alive.
the functional independence of data and process permits Shannon information theory to have universal application to all fields where information processing is relevant.
my point precisely. When you say all fields, I infer a conception that there can be no other fields wherein data and process are not separate and distinct - the kind of blindness which limits inquiry, understanding and discovery.
I conjecture that at least both DNA and neural activity are those fields where data and process conjoin. I argue that if we are to understand these two types of 'information processing,' then we have to shed the 'staightjacket' of thinking data storage must be distinct from process for there to be information processing.
oops - I meant to be replying to you instead of myself in the abovve post #1578. Sorry about that.
However, on review I think perhaps some aspects have strayed a little beyond that and could possibly be of more general interest.
mea culpa
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