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.
The cloud looks designed, so it must be. After all, doesn't God have His hand in everything?
==It’s too bad there are no scientists who have been able to generate positive evidence for God in subjects such as ID and the eternal struggle against evolution.
ID does not seek positive evidence for God. It limits itself to detecting design. And besides, you fogot about ICON-RIDS: An International Coalition of Non-Religious ID Scientists & Scholars.
http://icon-rids.blogspot.com/
==that’s one faith against another, how would that fact help your case?
As far as Creation Science is concerned, it helps in that it properly defines BOTH camps.
Fixed.
Yes, that was a shrewd move by the Creation Scientists, to re-label their faith to include little green men from Mars as possible "designers", they were able to avoid the pesky problem that there is no positive evidence for God's existence.
So, when did these little green men stop their work?
you fogot about ICON-RIDS: An International Coalition of Non-Religious ID Scientists & Scholars.
Since the Discovery Institute guys can only come up with 500 or so "scientists" (if you accept their generous definition of that career), then the sub-set of atheists in that group must be very small.
Or else many of them are liars.
I'm pretty confident I know which of those options is true.
You are the one linking what the bible may have to say about science to ID. Again, if design was to provide the most robust theory of origin for something like a cell, how does that prove anything about the bible or the biblical god?
The fossil record, on its own, would not prove anything about evolution. It would suggest it as a possibility, certainly, but until Darwin and Wallace came up with a mechanism, the idea of evolution wasn’t taken seriously. Similarly, Alfred Wegener based his theory of continental drift on evidence from the shape of the continents, the distribution of fossils and mountain ranges and so on, but his ideas were not accepted because there was no plausible mechanism that would cause continents to move. Not until the discovery of seafloor spreading fifty years later was the idea of plate tectonics fleshed out and very quickly accepted.
As to Pitman’s site, I read the page you suggested, so my comment is restricted to the content you linked as relevant. Is there new important stuff on other parts of the site?
Does that mean the cloud is not the product of design. No. But because the cloud can be explained by chance and regularity, it is excluded by definition.
==Is there new important stuff on other parts of the site?
That all depends on what you already know. I would start with his article on the geologic column and go from there.
http://www.detectingdesign.com/geologiccolumn.html
Apparently not in you life, but I suspect you haven't asked Him for any help.
ID is chipping away at Darwinism, while at the same time showing evidence of design (especially at the cellular and molecular level). When you combine what they are doing with the evidence of the fossil record, the geologic column, etc...the Biblical account of creation is increasingly vindicated by science (even if I do disagree with many IDers re: the age of the earth, common descent, etc).
And so can evolution of the species. So by Dembski's "filter", the various species we see around us are not evidence for "design".
Sure I have. But this ongoing discussion on evolution forced me to answer the question whether the Bible is 100% factual. I had thought it was OK to accept that Genesis and some other parts of the Bible weren't factually true (because obviously the earth is old, evolution occurs, etc.), while other parts about Jesus were completely factual.
But once people convinced me that the Bible itself insists that it must accept all of it as 100% fact, and I could not do that, then I was forced to reject my faith entirely.
It's a bummer to know that when you die, you die. You can thank the brouhaha begun by "creation scientists" for my rejection. I only wonder how many people never accept Jesus, because the person bringing the Good News insists that one must reject science in order to accept God.
Feel free to elaborate.
That's the singular part of the religious ID movement that makes it the most unacceptable. There appears to be no basic idea that unites all of it's proponents. Old earth vs. new earth, common descent vs. unique creation, on and on and on.
At least science has agreed on the Big Stuff, and any disagreements they have are on periphery issues.
==At least science has agreed on the Big Stuff, and any disagreements they have are on periphery issues.
You are wrong. We are all united by DESIGN.
And much of what you call the Big Stuff, such as random mutation, is about to be overturned IMHO.
Why? To give you text you can pick at? To enable you to ask more questions?
That's the technique of the conspiracy theorist. A technique that can easily make sane people doubt the truth. Why was Lee Harvey Oswald able to get so many shots off so quickly (so therefore there must be another shooter). Why is there no airplane in the video of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon (so it had to be a cruise missile). Why did the WTC buildings fall so perfectly (so therefore the CIA planted explosives). Why did WTC 7 fall down (same answer).
The ID industry is wonderful at making their case based on seemingly intelligent questions, and they convince lots of folks. It's too bad they can only bring only a handful of scientists over to their cause, despite millions of dollars spent in the effort. That speaks volumes to how bad their case really is.
I think your claims for the supposed increasing vindication of the biblical account of creation are ludicrous, but we'll see.
Oh. So how do pathogens change to enable them to tolerate antibiotics? Maybe the Designer reaches in and changes that DNA? You do realize we can sequence DNA and show where these mutations have occurred, don't you?
The big revolution is always just about to happen.LOL.
Better hurry up, the 150th anniversary of The Origin of Species is approaching fast!
==Why? To give you text you can pick at? To enable you to ask more questions?
Put up or shut up.
==That’s the technique of the conspiracy theorist. A technique that can easily make sane people doubt the truth.
Given the content and tone of your post, it would appear that it is YOU who have a case of the conspiracies. It is you NOT ME who are implying that their is an ID conspiracy “to make sane people doubt the truth.” In contrast, I have always maintained that the Church of Darwin is quite open about their attempts to prevent ID from becoming mainstream science.
==It’s too bad they can only bring only a handful of scientists over to their cause, despite millions of dollars spent in the effort. That speaks volumes to how bad their case really is.
I would say that 700 scientists is more than just a handful. And those are just the ones who are willing to come out of the shadows and subject themselves to the very real possibility of retribution from the government sanctioned (and funded) Church of Darwin.
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