Posted on 03/24/2007 10:28:12 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Professors opposed to the Bush library aren't the only angry faculty members at Southern Methodist University this week.
Science professors upset about a presentation on "Intelligent Design" fired blistering letters to the administration, asking that the event be shut down.
The “Darwin vs. Design” conference, co-sponsored by the SMU law school’s Christian Legal Society, will say that a designer with the power to shape the cosmos is the best explanation for aspects of life and the universe. The event is produced by the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based organization that says it has scientific evidence for its claims.
The anthropology department at SMU begged to differ:
"These are conferences of and for believers and their sympathetic recruits," said the letter sent to administrators by the department. "They have no place on an academic campus with their polemics hidden behind a deceptive mask."
Similar letters were sent by the biology and geology departments.
The university is not going to cancel the event, interim provost Tom Tunks said Friday. The official response is a statement that the event to be held in McFarlin Auditorium April 13-14 is not endorsed by the school:
"Although SMU makes its facilities available as a community service, and in support of the free marketplace of ideas, providing facilities for those programs does not imply SMU's endorsement of the presenters' views," the statement said.
The school also will review its policies about who is allowed to hold events on campus, Dr. Tunks said.
The size of the dispute reflects two ongoing battles about academic freedom and responsibility.
One is local: The concern that some SMU professors have that the proposed Bush library and an accompanying policy institute would create the impression that the school tilts politically toward the positions of the current administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Wonder what John Wesley would think of this...
Nice to see that the school didn't cancel the event as the left-wing professors desired.
The Left is decidedly intolerant of alternative viewpoints, as evidenced by the responses of the most vocal profs.
I don't believe in Intelligent Design, but I always find it hilarious when professors and teachers attempt to squash opposing points of view in a free society. Next week these same people will be whining about someone trying to "silence dissent" when they try to teach how evil the USA is, or something.
Sure, but how does that conflict with evolution?
What these ID "scientists" have to do is declare a consensus on the question, and then the Lefty "Global Warming" crowd would jump onboard and fully support the idea.
Does it make no difference to you that ID is religion dishonestly masquerading as science? Its not exactly a secret. Check out the wedge document. It spells out the Trojan horse approach that the Discovery Institute developed a couple of decades ago.
Within science there are not two "opposing points of view" to debate. Rather there is science, which relies of evidence and theory, and the ability to make accurate predictions. Opposing this is a particular strain of religion which seeks to overrule the findings of science because those findings do not conform to that religious belief. Creation "science" distorts science in any way necessary to make things come out to fit, for example, the Biblical version of things.
This latter approach is not science, and deserves no role in scientific debate.
If we can debate such "soft sciences" as psychotherapy, and such ideas as "fuzzy logic" I don't see a problem with ID being DEBATED. Where's the harm in discussion?
If the world, the universe, and all life were created by God, as many (including myself) believe, then no scientific debate would be complete without discussing how Intelligent Design has worked to form all that we can know.
You don't believe that it's possible, but all the evidence shows that life cannot have been some grand coincidence, which means it must have been purposely created.
Your continued denial of this fact does not make you a scientifically minded rational thinker. It simply makes you a close-minded denier of the obvious.
You have a cognitive dissonance that borders on the fanatical.
You don't believe that it's possible, but all the evidence shows that life cannot have been some grand coincidence, which means it must have been purposely created.
You are arguing a religious point, not a scientific point.
If you want to argue within the realm of science, you need to bring scientific evidence.
You're right in that it is not science. It should not be taught or debated as such. It is philosophy. I believe philosophy can be debated on college campuses. And if a philosophy has religious or areligious underpinnings, that's not really new or novel, is it?
What rules of debate will you use? Science, or apologetics. And where will you conduct the debate?
Unless you can agree on a set of rules for the debate you will have nothing more than these FR threads.
The real debate in science is conducted in scientific journals and at scientific conferences, using the scientific method. Because it is based entirely on religion, ID has no part in that debate.
Who died and made you the Setter of What Can Be Debated In An Open Society?
The rules for a debate would be set by those engaging in the debate. Why is this such a controversial idea to you--there are debates about ethics, morality, science vs. religion all the time. No one's forcing you to accept the groundrules for any debate, and there are plenty of religious believers who would agree to a science-based debate, and scientists who would agree to any variation of groundrules simply to take on believers in ID.
You claim a completely false authority to set debate rules. There's no sillier concept when the debate is between believers due to scientific evidence and believers due to religious FAITH.
Why is this so hard for you to understand?
What difference does it make
"Left wing"? It's scientists versus lawyers
In science, a debate has to be about the evidence, and to use the scientific method.
Other debates use other methods and rules.
It is useless for a scientist to debate creationists who just wave away any facts they find inconvenient.
The age of the earth is a good example. Science favors about 4.5 billion years based on several lines of evidence. Young earth creationists, with no good scientific backing, often play silly games with the decay rates to try to argue against this. When their arguments are finally beaten down, they turn to something else equally ridiculous. But because their arguments really stem from religious belief, rather than scientific data, they cannot accept the findings of science. Why should scientists waste time arguing with them?
Who's forcing them to?
Stick to the point of this thread--no one is being forced to debate anything. And whether you cop to it or not, there is absolutely nothing wrong with arguing a scientific position vs. a philosophical one.
This is so simple, but you just seem to want to argue.
Sorry to have to tell you this, but you are absolutely wrong about the way science works.
No theory is ever proved in science.
Evolution is a theory, and that is the highest level in science. With additional documentation and support, a theory does not graduate to "proved," or "fact" or "law."
There is nothing wrong with it, but it is apples and oranges.
How many philosophical opinions does it take to show a fact is not a fact?
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