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.
Matter: "material substance that occupies space and has weight, that constitutes the observable universe, and that together with energy forms the basis of objective phenomena" -- same objection.
Webster's Dictionary isn't terribly helpful here. Especially in light of the "together with energy" language (as if matter and energy were completely discrete phenomena).... plus the fact that it adds several definitions for matter that are plainly philosophical: "the indeterminate subject of reality; esp : the element in the universe that undergoes formation and alteration"; or "the formless substratum of all things which exists only potentially and upon which form acts to produce realities." Etc.
Well we do have the elemental table....
You know, little billiard balls revolving about some other little balls.. held together by "VALENCE" and other mental images.. and a whole yarn of a story..
The Quantum Mechanics are just poisoning the stew.. with other storys about matter..
Basically NO we pretty much have nothing reliable...
It appears that we’re down to not even being willing to accept the existing definitons of the terms as sufficient to provide a basis for discourse.
Big difference, defining or explaining. We can certainly make some measurements if someone will deliver some of this ‘matter’ to our lab.
It might have already been there. The text is not clear.
It might be noted that a mathematical explanation is like most explanations. It is an analogy. Analogy is not proof, and information is irrelevant.
True.. AND we have not even broached the subject of;
WHAT IS LIFE?... yet...
NOTE: Not what life "DOES" but what life "IS"...
Problem here is there are different definitions in each school. We couldn't even come to an agreement which schools are orthodox and which heretical, nor even which text to base it on.
Go ahead. What's the difference?
Pay attention, Betty. If you insist that everything has to have a cause, then you have an infinite regress.
If you claim that some particular thing doesn't require a cause, then you abandon the claim that everything has to have a cause.
God is not a "thing." Diamond has already cautioned about "category error" earlier on this thread....
Both Einstein and Hawking on their dumbest day are more rational than someone who asserts they can solve the problem of first cause simply by asserting that everything was created by an invisible pink unicorn, or some equivalent invisible entity.
That is not an argument. It's an intellectual tantrum.
God always seems to have whatever attributes are required to prop up the lame arguments of intellectual cripples.
It does seem that occasionally there is some assumed point of agreement that provides a basis to start a discussion, only to find after much time spent what originally appeared to be agreement was only accidental by way of misunderstanding, and the whole exercise was for naught.
Quite an abrupt lane change to leave off Aristotle and Aquinas for watching pink unicorns.
Intellectually crippling was the unfinished work of Aristotle who had about 51 or more first causes.
Such as Plato? Or me?
If that's the best argument you've got....
Imaginary time, multiverse theory, expanding/colliding branes, string landscapes, or God may as well be “invisible pink unicorns” beacause all of them have equal experimental evidence—none. All of these rise to no greater heights than philosophy, falling far short of science.
It just goes to show that scientists are not without their philosophical biases.
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