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.
Kind of like all the evidence that points to the CIA blowing up the WTC. People have made movies about that you know. Millions believe it.
Evidently narby you think that a religious person cannot be a scientist? If so, what do you make of my tagline?
It was the scientist saying it, not me, and I think he proves his point by your subsequent posts on clouds and men from mars.
Anyone who understands science knows that it is not the number of scientiests that subscribe to a given theory that makes it valid, it’s the ability of a given theory to predict. On that count, from the fossil record, to genetics, to irriducibly complex biological systems, Darwinism is being discredited left and right.
Surely they can, as long as they don't allow their faith to trump the evidence. But in the case of evolution, it's perhaps a bit similar to expecting the liberal media to be "unbiased" in their reporting. It's theoretically possible, but not likely.
There is one scientist who is an outspoken Christian that I would trust on this issue, Dr. Francis S. Collins, the who led the Human Genome project. He has written on the subject of evolution and creation, and has no problem accepting evolution for the role it has in separating the species.
Here’s one of Dr. Collins’ non-peer reviewed publications: Collins FS. The Human Genome Project: tool of atheistic reductionism or embodiment of the Christian mandate to heal? Science & Christian Belief, 1999;11:99-111
I haven’t heard any evidence of the CIA blowing up the WTC, if there were evidence, such as the overwhelming evidence that macroevolution is a fraud, then it would be worth examining, not forcibly excluding from all public schools. I have heard both sides of the darwin debate, don’t you think its time for you to do so also?
The close minded liberals on his campus will make his life miserable! Thay are not yet evolved to become normal human beings!
Then I must not have explained myself well enough.
The "men from mars" point is how ID theorists hand wave away the fact that they're really talking about how God created the species, but they know they can't admit that out loud without problems with church-state separation. They claim with a straight face that ID *could* mean little green men from mars, so they aren't really attempting to hijack science in the name of religion. Right.
The point about clouds is that it could easily be concluded by someone unfamiliar with condensation and convection that they were "designed". After all, why do they have distinct edges where the open sky ends and the cloud begins. Why wouldn't the water in the air spread itself evenly, instead of clump together? It was the norm for people to have such views 300 years ago. God brought the rain, the lightning, etc. and in today's parlance they would be "designed".
The only difference is that the mass of people understand clouds, but they generally have a very bad understanding of evolution, so it is possible to hoodwink them with stories about ID. Particularly when it supports their faith.
It's easy to hoodwink people about technical issues, such as metallurgy that affects steel in the WTC. Given a political bent to think a certain way, many people can be convinced of totally irrational ideas about 9/11. Just as people with a religious conviction can be convinced of totally irrational ideas such as a 5000 year old earth, or that evolution is incorrect.
Boy, there's some genuine Clintonian spin there GGG.
In order to be "increasingly discredited" by science, as your post asserted, then by definition there must be a movement of the consensus of scientists away from an old understanding and toward a new one. That 1% figure of "scientists" (to be generous in that description) demonstrates that there is no "increasing discrediting" of evolution. It's just your particular disingenuous sales pitch in your agenda of destroying the science of evolution.
By the way, the "irreducible complexity" argument of ID has itself been totally discredited by science. It's a nice term that I'm sure often fools the uneducated on this issue.
I think all that they are saying is that ID doesn't necessarily mean that the designer *has* to be the Judeo-Christian God. The same could be said when atheists state that evolution doesn't *preclude* the existance of God.
The point about clouds is that it could easily be concluded by someone unfamiliar with condensation and convection that they were "designed". After all, why do they have distinct edges where the open sky ends and the cloud begins. Why wouldn't the water in the air spread itself evenly, instead of clump together? It was the norm for people to have such views 300 years ago. God brought the rain, the lightning, etc. and in today's parlance they would be "designed".
But nobody has tried to claim that a cloud is alive.
No. But that doesn't stop millions of people believing that it is true. Just as the total lack of evidence for the existence of God doesn't stop a large majority from believing in Him.
the overwhelming evidence that macroevolution is a fraud,
Oh, here we go, Piltdown man again. You do realize that it was a scientist who noticed that Piltdown didn't fit into an evolutionary pattern that led to the discovery of the fraud in the first place? Typically, the creationists didn't even contribute to the discovery of the fraud, but had to look over the shoulders of real scientists in order to get their talking points. I would really love to see the contributions of committed creationists to *any* real science involving biology. The list must be totally underwhelming.
I have heard both sides of the darwin debate, don’t you think its time for you to do so also?
I've been in these crevo threads for years. Where have you been?
I agree with you regarding Dr. Collins. I understand he is a "recovered atheist." :^)
I suppose other trustworthy "outspoken Christians" who have been scientists would include such notables as Gregor Mendel, several Jesuit astronomers after which 12 of the craters of the Moon have been named, plus Isaac Newton, and -- in his strange way -- Albert Einstein; and the list goes on....
No, they're specifically including extra-solar aliens so they can plausibly claim that ID is not "religious", and therefore should be taught in public schools given the church-state separation thing.
The same could be said when atheists state that evolution doesn't *preclude* the existance of God.
That's because it doesn't. Many parts of the Old Testament have been totally discredited by science. There was no flood, because it would have left far too much evidence behind. Yes, there have been genuinely scientific searches to find such evidence, in particular by to scientists in the 50's who were seeking to prove elements of the Bible. They failed.
So you're left with a choice. You can either believe that Genesis, in particular, is not factually correct, but continue to accept God and Jesus anyway (a great many Christians have in fact decided in this manner, apparently even including Pope John Paul II, and millions more). Your other choice is to recognize the claim in the Bible that it is 100% inerrant, and since that cannot be true, it therefore it must be completely false. That was the choice I made after some on these threads finally convinced me I couldn't have it both ways as in the first option.
But nobody has tried to claim that a cloud is alive.
The philosophical arguments that claim that creatures must have been designed also apply to non-living things apparently designed by an intelligence.
Dr. Collins is a demonstration that it's possible to completely accept God and the Savior, and accept evolution at the same time. My biggest argument is with people who will not accept that such a choice is an option.
The evolution battle has more similarities with the innumerable doctrinal arguments between the various denominations going back as far as the 1st century, than it has with any kind of scientific, or even philosophical debate.
Judge Jones is to jurisprudence what Lindsay Graham is to the Senate.
Don't forget about the Newtonians. They're even worse, the way they list their demonic theory of "gravity" as fact in science textbooks and stifle and crush any dissent from that idea. I refuse to have my children taught the godless "gravity" invisible force that only Newtonians know of is somehow binding us to the earth. They obviously HATE the bible and the fact that God created the heavens above the earth.
Maybe the dense Newtonians are being held to the ground by this "gravity" thing but I know my daddy wasn't enslaved to "gravity" and I'm not either. We must teach the alternatives to children, the fact that there is no gravity and we all walking on earth of our own free will as God intended. The theory of intelligent force should be allowed in classrooms.
Newton is the most dangerous, godless heathen who ever lived. I have no doubt the marxists were directly inspired by Newton and his apple of evil. Perhaps Newton is the serpant God spoke of in the bible.
May Newton rot in hell.
< /creationist mode off>
==In order to be “increasingly discredited” by science, as your post asserted, then by definition there must be a movement of the consensus of scientists away from an old understanding and toward a new one.
Sorry Narby, Galileo discredited geocentrism long before there was a consensus on the subject.
fraud #2 peppered moths from industrial England were staged by gluing dead moths to tree trunks
fraud #3 Haeckel’s embryo drawings showing human embryos next to those of chickens and fish, etc. again turned out to be fake drawings (oh well can’t win’ em all right)
fraud #4 fossils found by Hans Thewssen and Gingrich purportedly showing the link between land mammals and whales. This as well as the rest of the frauds were trumpeted by the darwinist in school texts and elsewhere showing how wonderful darwin was and that his beliefs are really “facts” - later proven that the fossils could not have been related to the whale.
fraud #5 Miller-Urey experiment in 1953 created amino acids by electricity through a “primordial soup” of early earth atmosphere. The “atmosphere they used was later (frauds are always caught after the text books are written to fool our kids - did you notice this) proven to be modeled on Jupiter, not Earth. Of course this and other frauds are still taught in Biology class.
narby, I regard myself as both creationist and evolutionist: creationist, because I think the origin of the universe was a divine act; and evolutionist, because I think the created universe evolves. As a process in space and time, it either has to evolve or remain static. Clearly, it is not static. It seems to me Genesis, and the Holy Scriptures in toto, refer to an evolving universe, or creation. The point of Darwinist theory that I simply cannot accept -- because I consider it thoroughly irrational -- is that biological evolution is a "blind," random, purposeless process. It seems to me that you cannot get from a blind, random, purposeless process to an ordered universe that produces particular clearly purposive natural entities. Even plants seem to have "purpose," in the way they behave. And certainly in the results they produce for the biosphere. Were it not for photosynthesis, plant life could not exist in the first place. And if plant life did not exist, neither could any higher biological form. The entire food supply of biological entities on this planet depends on plants, directly (as in the case of herbivores) or indirectly (as in the case of carnivores).
The words "random" and "purposeless" are the absolute killers for me, when it comes to Darwinian theory. Plus the virtual impossibility of testing "truth claims" like this. What experiment can a scientist design that could show life to be random and purposeless, when everything we human beings know about our world on the basis of direct observation and knowledge of human and natural history screams the very opposite?
If someone could put together an experiment like that, I'd be very interested in taking a look at it. But I'm not holding my breath....
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