Bias Against Guillermo Gonzalez (Privileged Planet)?

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No, that’s not what I’m saying. But, as you should know if you follow these debates, a good number of people take it to be a religious belief, and, themselves being hostile to religious belief, react to it accordingly.

ID as a theory is nothing more than a theory of design detection. It has all kinds of applications that never touch on anything remotely religious, such as, “Did Jerry Jones copy the exam answers which look astoundingly close to those of the student sitting next to him?”, or “Was this rock produced accidentally by erosion, or by the action of a primitive hunter, chipping away at it to make it into an arrowhead?” It is only when they are applied to the origin of living systems, or to the fine-tuning of the universe, that ID methods are accused of being “religious” – and then, the accusation is due to the fact that, while no one has any interest in absolving Jerry Jones from plagiarism, or in showing that a rock was never intended as an arrowhead, many scientists (and many others) have a strong personal interest in persuading the public that there was no design in the case of biology or fine-tuning – and they have that strong personal interest because they are repelled by the idea of a designer who might be God.

Can you find me some statements where he says that the earth did not come about through natural processes? That he doesn’t think that planets form in the way that most astrophysicists think they form? His specialty is extra-solar planets, and I have no reason to think that he doesn’t agree with mainstream science on how planets form. I’ve seen no statements of his quoted – not even by his detractors – that suggest he thinks the earth was popped into position out of nothing, miraculously, outside of natural processes.

As far as I can tell, his view is that the design lies deeper in the whole system – that the natural causes were all co-ordinated from the beginning to make the earth possible. He infers this because he doesn’t think chance can account for the what we know about the position of our planet in the galaxy, etc.

In any case, even if he did suppose, personally, that though planets usually form entirely through natural causes, the Earth or its location were due to some miraculous act, would that belief disqualify him as a scientist? Francis Collins believes that a man was the son of a virgin (where did the other half of Jesus’ chromosomes come from?), rose from the dead, walked on the water, turned water into wine, etc. Does his belief in events that violate known laws of physics, chemistry and biology disqualify him as a scientist? If Francis Collins were applying for tenure today, based on his work on the genome, and if he had written a popular book in which he said that all of evolutionary science is true but that violations of the laws of nature sometimes happen, as recorded in the Bible, would his “unscientific” (or “anti-scientific”, depending on who is characterizing them) personal beliefs be grounds for denying him tenure? Does the fact that a scientist believes in the existence of God, and in miracles, and says so publicly – though never in any of his peer-reviewed publications, and never in any presentations at scientific conferences, and never in any science textbooks that he writes, and never in his university classroom, but only in popular works – make him unfit for a tenured position at a tax-funded university? I say, no. I believe that Joshua, Glipsnort, and several other scientists here would also say, no. What would you say?

Oh, it’s true that if Gonzalez had not been involved in ID there would have been no story. What is uncertain is what the ending of the story would have been. You are 100% certain that it would ended in exactly the same way. I think there is room for doubt how it would have ended. We will of course never know. That the well was poisoned is an established fact of the case. Whether the poisoning was sufficient to affect the outcome, no one can prove one way or the other.

False. Doubts regarding the mechanism of evolution have been expressed over many decades, going back to the critique of Darwin by Bergson in the early 1900s, and including criticisms levelled at the first Wistar conference in 1966, criticism from the scientist and historian of science and Gifford Lecturer Stanley Jaki, criticism from the philosopher of science Karl Popper, criticism put forward by Margulis, Shapiro, some of the Altenberg people, etc.

In any case, I notice that you did not respond to my request for documentation. I asked for an official document from any State education authority or school board mandating classroom time for the teaching of ID, that is, the presentation of ID arguments. You have not provided such a document. Therefore, your claim that any educational authority has tried to force ID into the classrooms is an unsubstantiated charge. Let me know when you can substantiate the charge.

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If ID is not a religious belief and is instead scientific in nature then I don’t see the harm in judging Gonzalez based on his scientific position. If a scientist is pushing bad science then why shouldn’t a tenure board take that into account?

Those seem to be contradictory statements. If chance can not account for the Earth’s position and whatnot, then that is the same as saying natural processes couldn’t have produced the Earth. It is saying that something outside of nature had to intervene and create the Earth.

So once again we wind up at the same fork in the road. Is ID being presented as a religious belief or science? You want to call it a religious belief when you think the appearance of persecution may help your argument, but you want to act as if it is science elsewhere. You need to pick one.

Dr. Collins isn’t presenting these beliefs as science. That’s the difference. If Dr. Collins was arguing against well evidence scientific theories and pushing pseudoscience based on his religious beliefs then that would be a problem.

Why aren’t you as vociferous a supporter of the 3 other scientists who didn’t get tenure?

Those aren’t the doubts that the Kansas school board were considering. For example, Wells’ book “Icons of Evolution” is based on deception and lies.

I noticed that you didn’t respond to the quote from the Wedge Document.

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ID is scientific only insofar as it tries to detect design. It isn’t scientific when it says the designer is God. Nor does it claim to be. If anyone was prejudiced against Gonzalez for thinking the designer was God, they were prejudiced against his religious conclusions, not his science.

Natural processes are not exhausted by chance events. They are often governed by natural laws, which are not chance. The argument made by many ID people (e.g., Denton) is that natural laws are fine-tuned so as to make intelligent life possible.

I have several times referred to Fred Hoyle, the atheist who was in his day a world-class cosmologist. Are you unaware of Hoyle’s famous remark about the fine tuning of the universe? And if you are aware it, what is your response to it? That Hoyle was a lousy scientist, for entertaining such professional heresy?

No, my argument is more subtle than that. I do think that scientists should never discriminate, when it comes to hiring, tenure, etc., on religious grounds, so if anyone didn’t want Gonzalez there because he publicly confessed to believing in God, that would be an unethical and improper grounds of discrimination. But I’m also against scientists – or academics of any kind – who try to strangle new ideas in their crib, who try to force supporters of minority views to kowtow to majority views, etc. Thus, on the question of anthropogenic global warming, while I have no strong view on how much warming is caused by man, I’m against the kind of bullying that people like MIchael Mann etc. engage in to try to enforce conformity on other scientists. Similarly, I’m against any bullying by scientists who insist that there couldn’t possibly be any evidence for design in nature, and that anyone who even contemplates the possibility of detectable design is by that very contemplation automatically a bad scientist, etc. I believe that the opposition at Iowa State was at least as much against Gonzalez’s willingness to entertain design arguments in cosmology as against his particular Christian religion.

We must not forget that he did not employ those design arguments in any of his peer-reviewed research, which shows that he was quite capable of “playing the game by the rules” in his professional life. That he chose to use broader and more flexible rules when writing a popular book for the general public should not have been held against him.

And it would not have been held against him if his popular book had carried with it the aroma of atheism and materialism that is found in the writings of Tyson, Sagan, etc. No one on the campus of Iowa state would have raised any objection to his book if it had been of that nature. It was because it allowed design inferences that it was held against him – even though he diligently kept those inferences out of his peer-reviewed work and his teaching at Iowa State.

You don’t share these concerns, and I know that you never will. So we are never going to agree on the propriety or impropriety of academic value judgments of the sort we are talking about. You think it’s legitimate for scientists to decide that design arguments, as such, are bad science and indicate a lousy scientist, and therefore that when tenure consideration comes up, it is legitimate and right for scientists to decide they don’t want a colleague who allows design inferences regarding nature, and to deny him a scientific career on that basis, even if his peer-reviewed publications are squeaky-clean of design inferences. I think the opposite. And we are never going to agree on this. You are never going to persuade me to alter my fundamental academic and intellectual values, or my fundamental conception of what a university ought to be about, and I am never going to persuade you to adopt my view.

I have already made clear that I consider it quite possible that Gonzalez might not have received tenure even were there no prejudice. We are not disagreeing on that. But there was prejudice, and it was based on his perceived views (I say perceived, because I have no idea if any of those voting on his tenure actually read anything he wrote, or went on hearsay) about design in the cosmos. Your argument above justifies the prejudice – you think it’s good that scientists like that be kept out of universities. I disagree. I think that astronomy and astrophysics departments are richer for having people like Gonzalez in them. As long as all members of the department show technical competence in their published work, a wider diversity of thought on larger questions is preferable to a constrictive orthodoxy.

Nor was Gonzalez presenting his conclusion about God as the designer of the cosmos as science. Nor was he presenting the idea of cosmic design as refuting standard scientific theories about the cosmos. He was presenting it as a reflection upon the deeper meaning of the arrangements of the cosmos.

Because I know nothing about their cases. If you tell me that there was an active campaign to stop them from getting tenure, originating from an atheist in the Religion department, and if you tell me that a member of the faculty admitted voting against them because of statements they had made in popular books, statements which some people might interpret as being religious in character, then I might become interested in their cases and investigate. Did that happen in those other cases? Let me know.

That may well be the case. But even if so, it still does not prove that the Kansas school board proposed mandating the study of ID. Even if Jonathan Wells’s discussion of flaws in the presentation of evolutionary theory came up for discussion, it doesn’t follow that it was intended to teach ID. Showing that many arguments for Darwinian theory aren’t sound isn’t the same as providing an ID alternative. “Teaching ID” means teaching irreducible complexity, specified complexity, the explanatory filter, etc. You have not provided me with evidence that Kansas or anywhere else mandated such items as part of the biology curriculum.

I am not defending the attitudes of everyone on the Kansas school board. I am merely pointing out that ID was not mandated as part of the curriculum. If you could concede that we could come to agreement on one point. But you seem determined to block agreement, to negate every point I make.

I did, in some detail. Did you not see my reply above? The Wedge document is an ancient internal discussion paper, not a current (or anywhere near current) Discovery policy document on the teaching of ID in public school science classes. You can find the current policy on the Discovery website. I assume you are good enough with search engines to find the documents fairly quickly – if you are actually interested in learning what the policy is, rather than repeating “Wedge Document” like a mantra.

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Just so we are on the same page, it is legitimate for a tenure board to consider someone’s position on ID independent of who they think the designer is, correct?

From what I understand, Gonzalez is saying that natural laws could not have produced the Earth. Is my understanding incorrect?

I am not against scientists judging ideas based on their scientific merit. That’s their job, afterall.

The problem is that his research had slowed way down. He wasn’t using the telescopes, wasn’t starting new research, and he wasn’t bringing in research money. What papers he did publish were review articles and papers based on data he had accumulated prior to coming to Iowa State.

Good scientists have bad ideas all of the time. What keeps a good scientist’s career going is if they also have good ideas the spawn research and funding. That is where Gonzalez was lacking. That is why these claims of persecution fall flat.

To use another example, let’s say that there was a car salesman who hadn’t sold a car in 5 years. Management reviewed his personnel file and sales record and concluded that he wasn’t a good salesman, so he wouldn’t be getting a promotion. The salesman then went on to claim that he was discriminated against because he was black. Doesn’t that claim of discrimination seem a bit hollow given his sales record?

It is the stated goal of the Discovery Institute to replace the theory of evolution with Intelligent Design. Part of the reason ID was constructed to begin with is to get around the prohibitions against teaching creationism in public schools. That known history doesn’t disappear.

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No, not without qualification. If an ID proponent makes scientifically flawed arguments then the tenure board will of course take that into account, as they would in the case of any scientist who offered flawed arguments, and I have no problem with that. But a general opposition to the possibility of detecting design in nature – a dogmatic position that it is not and never will be possible to detect design in nature – is philosophical or ideological in motivation, and is an improper reason for rejecting a scientist who supports ID.

In any case, your whole point is irrelevant, since the popular book written by Gonzalez (which is where the ID material is found; it’s not in his peer-reviewed work) shouldn’t have been a factor in any case. I have said several times that if the book has been Carl Sagan’s Cosmos rather than Gonzalez’s Privileged Planet, the reaction of the tenure committee would have been, “Oh, I see under “other publications” that Dr. Sagan has also written a popular book on astronomy – that’s nice, I suppose, but it’s not popular writings we’re evaluating here,” and the committee wouldn’t have given the book another thought. Thus, If Sagan had been applying for tenure, his application would have been judged on his peer-reviewed publications, not on his popular book; and if his colleagues happened to have read his popular book, and noticed some loose reasoning and scientific inaccuracies in it, they would have chalked it up to the needs of popularization, or the like, and would have forgiven them – as long as in the peer-reviewed articles no such sloppiness was seen. Thus, in the end, the contents of Sagan’s book would have been virtually irrelevant.

But when it’s Gonzalez, the treatment will be different. Now, assuming for the sake of argument that anyone on the tenure board actually reads the book, the slightest little scientific inaccuracy will be pounced on, and not excused as a necessity of popularization, but as a sign of incompetence, and probably as a sign of motivation by fundamentalist religion. The standard is different.

And yet, we’re told over and over again – I’ve been told on this site by several scientists – books have no importance in science, only articles do; it’s by articles in peer-reviewed journals that scientists are measured. So why would Gonzalez’s book be a factor at all? Why would the tenure committee be looking at it? And yet it’s the contents of the book, not of his peer-reviewed articles, that you are here objecting to.

It is my understanding that his argument is an argument based on fine tuning; such arguments do not necessarily go against natural cause explanations, but can supplement them, as in Aristotle formal and final cause explanations can supplement efficient cause explanations. I do not have a copy of his book. If you do, perhaps you can find me passages where he speaks of the origin of the earth in terms of actions which violate natural laws, and we can discuss them.

A very misleading way of stating the facts. I had a long discussion of this with someone (hostile to Gonzalez, by the way) in the field of astronomy. The actual wording of the criticism of Gonzalez by Iowa State on this point was that “he had not been granted” much telescope time – note the passive verb. It means, as my astronomy contact explained, that telescope time is very precious, as there are not many telescopes in the USA with sufficient power for the kind of work astronomers, especially in Gonzalez’s area of work, need to do. Indeed, my expert explained, more Ph.D.s in astronomy/astrophysics are graduated each year than the available high-quality telescopes can accommodate, so there is a sort of musical chairs effect, where when the music stops, some find themselves without the tool they need to do their research. So telescope usage is rationed; astronomers actually have to apply for time on the telescopes, justifying their request in terms of a research program; and they can be denied. Gonzalez was not spending time on the telescopes, not because he was too lazy to drive out to an observatory, but because the various agencies that grant telescope time were giving the time to other astronomers rather than him. Thus, faulting him for not using the telescopes enough is like faulting a lame man for not walking to work every morning.

The papers would, when published, still read: “G. Gonzalez, Iowa State University,” and therefore would still redound to the credit of Iowa State. In any case, what is wrong with doing research at one place, and working out its implications in another? Both are parts of the scientific process. I see this as a completely lame objection, all form and no substance.

No, not “the theory of evolution”, but “Darwinian evolution” – a narrower term.

Discovery, as I have pointed out, has now published four books by Michael Denton, who is pro-evolutionary, so it would hardly be consistent for it to oppose “evolution” in general.

I see that you still are unable to find a single State school authority or local school board which has mandated the inclusion of textbooks by Dembski, Behe, etc., or mandated the inclusion of irreducible complexity, specified complexity, explanatory filter, etc. for any science course in any public high school. Your inability to provide evidence for this is revealing; it means that your original statement (about school authorities, at the instigation of Discovery, forcing ID into the schools) was simply false.

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His association with the Discovery Institute, which did push similar beliefs as science and not philosophy, made him guilty by association, unfortunately. This is just how society works.

@Patrick Surely you must be familiar with attempts to slip in ID into American science curriculum? Eddie is asking for examples. I keep hearing about this “teach the controversy” episodes in some American textbooks every other year or so.

This is being pedantic. If a Jesus mythicist taught in an NT class that “there are serious doubts about the arguments for the existence of historical figure named Jesus” but doesn’t go as far as teaching theories on how the “Jesus myth” arose, does that absolve them of teaching mythcism?

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But my point has been that is not what Discovery has said. Unfortunately, a good number of people here have formed their impression of Discovery based on rumor and hearsay; almost no one, it seems, has gone to their website and read their very clear statements about what ID is (and is not), what Discovery policy on ID in the schools is (and is not).

On teaching ID in the schools:

On teaching creationism in the schools:

Meyer and West on the distinction between ID and creationism:

http://www.stephencmeyer.org/news/2012/06/this_article_was_originally_pu.html

Behe on the difference between what scientific arguments can show vs. what other kinds of argument (philosophical, theological) can show:

In speaking of “miracles”–relying for rhetorical effect on that word’s pejorative connotations when used in a scientific context–Ruse and Futuyma are ascribing to me a position I was scrupulous in my book to avoid. Although I acknowledged that most people (including myself) will attribute the design to God–based in part on other, non-scientific judgments they have made–I did not claim that the biochemical evidence leads ineluctably to a conclusion about who the designer is. In fact, I directly said that, from a scientific point of view, the question remains open. (Behe 1996, 245-250) In doing so I was not being coy, but only limiting my claims to what I think the evidence will support. To illustrate, Francis Crick has famously suggested that life on earth may have been deliberately seeded by space aliens (Crick and Orgel 1973). If Crick said he thought that the clotting cascade was designed by aliens, I could not point to a biochemical feature of that system to show he was wrong. The biochemical evidence strongly indicates design, but does not show who the designer was.

I could list scores of similar articles from the Discovery website, and scores of similar references from ID writings.

I have never found the ID writers – at least, those closest to the center of Discovery – to be unclear or evasive about the distinction between science and philosophy, or science and theology, or science and faith. They have always maintained that design inferences are in principle scientific, and that identifications of the designer are not scientific, but rest on other forms of reasoning, or on revelation.

I don’t know how you are using “mythicism”, but if you are suggesting that the mere expression of academic doubt about the historicity of Jesus automatically commits one to any particular view on the real truth about Jesus, I would disagree. For example, the stories might be meant as “myths” in the technical sense, but they also might be outright fabrications of the early Christian community; or they might be an incoherent fusing together of oral and written sources by people who were honest, but too late in the game to know exactly what happened at the time of Jesus and the first disciples. Saying: “These stories don’t look like accurate history to me” doesn’t commit oneself to any alternate explanation for the existence of the stories.

In the case of ID, the claim is that the Darwinian understanding of evolution (which ID proponents explain as based primarily on random mutations and natural selection) is an inadequate account of the origin of species, body plans, organs of extreme perfection, etc. One possible alternative account for the origin of those things is ID, but one doesn’t have to insist on the ID account in order to state one’s objections regarding the Darwinian view. And one doesn’t have to support teaching ID in the schools in order to support pointing out to students that there are serious disagreements among scientists regarding the number and ranking of evolutionary mechanisms.

And in fact, as my link above shows, Discovery has not called for the mandatory inclusion of ID arguments or conclusions in high school biology classes, and actively opposes such mandatory inclusion of ID as premature, until ID is further developed at the scientific level; and neither T. aquaticus nor anyone else has shown that any State or lower-level education authority in any public school system has mandated ID contents for any course.

If T. aquaticus wants to claim that Behe promotes ID, that is fine; if he wants to claim that Discovery promotes ID, that is fine, too; but if he claims that Discovery is urging educational authorities to mandate ID in the science classes in public schools, that is not OK, because it’s false; and if he claims that any educational authority in the USA has mandated the teaching of ID in the science class (beyond the four-paragraph, “a theory called ID exists” statement made at Dover, which included no information regarding the contents of ID), that is not OK, because it’s false.

If he wants to speculate that introducing doubts about Darwin is part of a sinister plot to eventually evict evolution from the schools, and bring in compulsory ID in its place, he can do that, but then he is engaging in conspiracy theory, not describing the actual policy of Discovery or the actual policy of any State or local educational authority. He should describe the empirical, determinable, documentable facts on the ground with complete honesty and accuracy, before engaging in such speculations, not substituting those speculations for getting the facts straight.

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Eddie is fully aware of Dover and all the cases. Freedom From Religion Foundations fights over 1000 complaints a year of religion separation issues into schools.

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The general opposition is against the flawed “God of the Gaps” argument that sits at the foundation of ID arguments.

You seem to be dreaming up persecution where it doesn’t exist. You are making all of these claims as to what the tenure board thought and believed, and I don’t see how any of those claims are supported. This is the problem. Any criticism against ID is automatically cast in such a way that it is about persecution instead of the science. I think this is done deliberately so that supporters don’t have to discuss the lack of scientific merit in ID claims.

My understanding is that he wasn’t even signing up for telescope time. He could have had telescope time if he had asked for it.

Before giving someone a lifetime appointment you want to make sure their career is on the right path. This means they need to be actively researching, not simply writing papers on stuff they have already done.

These word games are getting silly.

What the DI says in public is obviously the opposite of what they say internally. It’s not that hard to see through.

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Perhaps you prefer the flawed argument that the first life must have arisen by a blind groping of simple molecules toward a stable, self-reproducing combination? Where the “must have” amounts to “chance of the gaps” – the epistemological equivalent of God of the gaps? And where the inference “must have” is theologically motivated?

I’m not. I haven’t asserted definitely that Gonzalez lost the job because of his ID views or his Christianity. I have asserted only that, given the facts of the case, there is room for suspicion. The well was poisoned. You won’t even admit that the well was poisoned. That’s where we disagree.

You are trying to present a cartoon version of scientists in which scientists are paragons of virtue, who never let their own personal prejudices affect their professional conduct. I’m talking about real, flesh-and-blood scientists, with egos, religious preferences, etc. In the real world, it is not at all inconceivable that philosophical prejudices or religious prejudices could affect the outcome of a hiring decision. You are pretending that this isn’t even a possibility. I would call this attitude sociologically and psychologically naive, and I don’t see how it could be held by anyone who has spent much time around university faculty members, with his eyes open and his mind awake.

Regardless of whether or not prejudice played a factor in the Gonzalez case, my comparison with Sagan is bang-on. I know the materialistic academic culture which animates most origins science (yes, I know that there are Christians in origins science, but the overwhelming majority of full-time cosmologists and full-time evolutionary biologists are agnostics and atheists, not Christians). If everything else were exactly the same, only it were Sagan and his book instead of Gonzalez and his book, there would have been no agitation at Iowa State over the fact that a scientist applying for tenure had written a popular book with religious implications (in Sagan’s case, anti-religious implications). The discussion over tenure would have been motivated only by the usual professional considerations. And the reason for the difference in reaction would be that Sagan’s extracurricular religious opinions would be more congenial to those involved (both to the atheist in the religion department who started the agitation and to the Astronomy faculty members). So they would have relaxed about the existence of the popular book and concentrated on the factors usually considered relevant to the award or denial of tenure.

Yet you’ve been arguing over and over again that the rejection of Gonzalez had nothing to do with his ID views, and everything to do with how much funding he brought in, what university he gathered his data at, how often he used telescopes, etc. Your argument has been that Gonzalez was rejected for reasons independent of anything he wrote in his book on the fine tuning of the cosmos. So how can you now turn around and say that he was in fact rejected for being an ID proponent because ID is bad science? Are you now admitting that his views on ID contributed to the tenure refusal?

So you say, but that is not what the wording in the President’s report suggests. Further, it is not what the atheist, anti-Gonzalez astronomy Ph.D. who debated me on BioLogos indicated. As he is an astronomer who knows the field, and you are a biologist who doesn’t, I have to go with his explanation rather than yours.

It’s not a silly word game, but a point of substance. You said that Discovery was anti-evolution. I pointed out that Discovery has published four books by a flagrant evolutionist, Michael Denton. The most recent one came out less than a month ago. Explain that fact, on your hypothesis that Discovery is anti-evolution.

To be much more accurate than you are presently being: What the DI has said in public, in official policy statements, repeatedly since before the time of the Dover trial (i.e., since more than 13 years ago), appears to you to differ from what some of its members said once, in a much older internal discussion paper. And on that basis, you have decided that the much older document, the one which is clearly an outlier in relation to all the other statements, represents the real view of Discovery on the teaching of ID in the public schools. Well, you are entitled to conspiracy theorizing if that is what turns you on. For my money, Discovery has consistently maintained its position against mandating ID in the public schools for over 13 years. But it’s clear you have no counter-examples, so I think we can end the discussion on that groundless charge.

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At Dover, ID theory was never taught. A school board official read a four-paragraph statement indicating that some people thought there were flaws in standard accounts of evolution, and that there existed a theory called ID, which students could read about on a voluntary basis if they were interested. There was no discussion of any ID argument. After the school board official left the room, the biology course resumed and was conducted in exactly the same manner as the year before, i.e., with zero ID content. But even if we count this oblique statement as “teaching ID”, the Dover board would remain the sole public educational authority in the USA to mandate the teaching of ID in science class. I know of no other cases.

I’m sure it does. But which of those over 1,000 complaints are against a State or school board mandating the inclusion of ID arguments in science class? I still have not seen a document produced by any educational authority in the USA which calls for this.

To be clear, “mandating ID” means that high school science teachers must include classroom coverage of irreducible complexity, specified complexity, the explanatory filter, abductive explanation regarding the origin of life, etc. Such a policy would go well beyond requiring high school science teachers to mention disagreements about evolution found in the peer-reviewed scientific literature. Some school boards and State authorities have tried to require the latter; none, to my knowledge, have tried to require the former.

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Most of the articles you cite are written many years after Dover and Gonzalez’ case. So I’m not sure whether DI today is the same since Dover. Yes, we are aware that many times what creationists and other religious folks do regarding ID is not officially endorsed by the DI. If the DI wants to stay as a purely intellectual think tank, they are free to do so, but we know that they didn’t. Their wedge strategy made it clear what the goal was. If they didn’t want that, they should have made more efforts to speak out against the introduction of ID-friendly thought into schools.

Eddie, you and ID advocates might think that not mentioning who the Designer is suffices to upgrade ID from religion or philosophy to science, but the fact is that the majority of scientists, such as myself, disagree. Even if we are wrong and ID will be vindicated 50 years from now, that does not matter: the K-12 and undergraduate scientific curriculum is supposed to teach what the scientific community believes is the most up-to-date, solid science. Not fringe or controversial new theories of any kind. It doesn’t matter at all if Newton or Maxwell would have agreed with design arguments. They are no longer living.

If DI wants science to change, then they should do so as everyone else does - through the proper channels of academia. Not by confusing high school students who don’t even have a clear idea of what science is.

As Josh has pointed out countless times, any time you are using the word “Darwinian”, you are 50 years out of date, as it was already falsified in the 60s. That is the view of the scientific community. It doesn’t matter what J. Scott Turner wrote in his latest new book. His views are not the consensus.

If that is all what the DI want to do - make sure the teaching of evolution includes mechanisms other than natural selection - then sure, nobody would have a problem with that. However, we don’t have to kid ourselves that that was all the DI wanted to do. The DI wanted to pretend that ID is a legitimate scientific viewpoint within the scientific community, even though it didn’t yet have that status. Even today, there are only a handful of biologists who support ID. It was jumping the gun, scientifically speaking, and harnessing religious and political power to do so. This is why scientists were alarmed.

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I prefer “I don’t know” when there isn’t enough evidence.

You are the one poisoning the well. You have already decided that they are persecuting Gonzalez before the evidence is even in.

Notice that I said “any criticism of ID”. I wasn’t talking about Gonzalez specifically.

There is no substance in your use of “Darwinism”. It is rhetoric and little else.

The memo that they thought no one else would ever see is a much better indication of what they really think than the public statements they shape to influence public opinion. This has always been the case.

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I am. The Discovery policy has been the same since well before the Dover trial, i.e., ID should not be mandated as part of the high school science curriculum. That is stated in one of the documents I gave you, and it was stated at the time of the Dover trial, and has been stated many times in between. There is no excuse for T. aquaticus not to know this.

Daniel, these internet discussions are the most constructive when people give and take points, not simply reflexively deny any point an opponent makes, and stubbornly maintain the denial against evidence. T. aquaticus made the charge that Discovery is trying to force ID into science classes. I pointed out that this was false, that in fact Discovery’s official policy, for more than 13 years now, has been precisely the opposite, that school authorities should not mandate the teaching of ID in science classes. It would be easy enough for T. aquaticus to simply admit that he made a false claim, and retract it. It would earn him respect from me and perhaps from others reading the exchange.

He could still state his belief that Discovery has a long-term goal of getting ID onto the science curriculum, if he adjusted the claim to take into account Discovery’s own stipulations. Discovery has said that ID should not be put on the science curriculum before it is better researched and theoretically articulated at the universities and within mainstream scientific discussion. That is a position that T. aquaticus should agree with; and, agreeing with it, he should admit that this is not the same as “forcing” ID into the science classroom. His chosen wording was deliberate rhetorical excess, and it was this that I was objecting to.

I gave you a link to an explicit Discovery statement that creationism, which is ID-friendly, should not be taught in science class. They have said any number of times that discussion of the Bible does not belong in science class. They have said scores of times that any criticism of evolutionary theory discussed in science class should come from discussions of evolution found in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.

As for “ID-friendly thought”, that is unfairly broad. Who can say in advance what might incidentally turn out to be “ID-friendly”? Should Margulis’s criticism of random mutation (i.e., that it is greatly exaggerated in importance as an evolutionary mechanism) be counted as “ID-friendly” merely because it agrees with the ID people on one point – even though Margulis herself was no ID proponent (and as far as I know didn’t believe in God, which is the usual charge regarding ID motivation)? And if a teacher follows the usage of many (non-ID) biologists, referring to cellular organelles as “machines,” should that expression be counted as “ID-friendly” and therefore be forbidden in high school biology class?

You should know, as a physicist, if you follow the history of your field, that at one time many physicists didn’t like the “Big Bang” theory because it was too “creation-friendly” and too “theistic-friendly”. They preferred the Steady State theory because it seemed to go better with atheism, agnosticism, or pantheism – the preferred religious positions of many physicists at the time. Should the Big Bang theory have been disallowed for discussion in science class, because of that? That would be a very dangerous precedent. A theory should be allowed to be discussed in science class if there is a reasonable amount of evidence for it, regardless of whether it might happen to have implications that some people don’t like. So if certain criticisms of current evolutionary mechanisms offered by non-religious, non-ID scientists happen to coincide with criticisms offered by ID theorists, that is no reason for blocking the ears of high school science students so they can’t hear those criticisms.

No, I don’t think that it suffices, and nor do any of the ID leaders. They have written at great length on why they think ID qualifies as science, and the fact that they don’t identify the designer is not one of the reasons they give. Have you read any of the ID literature? Stephen Meyer, in Signature in the Cell, goes to almost tedious length to explain that historical sciences use “abductive” reasoning, and that ID qualifies as science under that criterion. There is also Meyer’s article on methodological equivalence which was published in the peer-reviewed journal edited by Richard Sternberg. Have you read that one? Behe has many times explained why he thinks that ID qualifies as science. Have you read his books and articles on this, or listened to his podcasts? It is certainly not the fact that ID does not identify the designer that in Behe’s mind qualifies ID as science. The same can be said of Dembski’s book No Free Lunch, etc.

Of course, you can object to particular arguments in these writings. You can say there are flaws in the math, or in the genetics, or whatever. That is not the point I’m addressing here. The point is that no one in the ID movement argues: “If we identified the designer as God, then ID wouldn’t be science, but since we don’t identify the designer, ID is science.” Their position has always been that ID, being a theory of design detection using methods recognized in the various sciences, is science, regardless of whether or not the designer can be identified.

Which is exactly why the DI says that high school science courses should not be forced to include instruction about ID; ID does not belong in the high school science curriculum, says the DI, until it is better established at the university level. The battle for acceptance of ID belongs in the universities. The DI agrees with you on this point.

I spit on any “consensus”, insofar as it is merely consensus. Someone who follows consensus, merely because it is consensus, is an intellectual drone, not an independent thinker, and certainly not a real scientist. Michael Crichton wrote a beautiful essay on this.

But that has nothing to do with the claim T. aquaticus and I are debating. Of course the DI wants to argue that ID is a legitimate scientific viewpoint – I have never contested that. But Aquaticus argued that they have tried to make instruction in ID mandatory in high school science class. And that is what I have contested, because it is false.

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I don’t think it’s constructive to nitpick distinctions with T. aquaticus. OK, I’ll agree for the sake of argument that you’re right about the educational stance of the DI. Still, I don’t view the actions of the DI favorably, because it did little to discourage creationists and religious groups from prematurely pushing it into the classroom, even if the DI itself wasn’t directly responsible for that. Official policy means little - it’s just official policy. Of course official policy makes an institute look good!

I’m pretty sure that the reason the DI has been able to exist until today is that it gets a lot of donations from religious people who are more than happy to try to push ID into the classroom if they could. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

The BB theory should not have been discussed in science class when its status was still a fledgling hypothesis. Science classes up to the graduate level focus on what’s very established. Even things that are agreed upon but very new often don’t get coverage. To give you an example, despite the fact that gravitational waves were discovered in 2016, my general relativity class in 2017 didn’t even mention them at all.

I’m not opposed to Margulis-style critique of evolution in the classroom if it is indeed what evolutionary biologists agree are legitimate critiques. But if Margulis was a fringe figure (and I think she was, and still is pretty controversial), then you shouldn’t be feeding those views to high school students, much less middle school students.

Similarly, we don’t talk much about supersymmetry, string theory, or grand unified theories in basic physics classes. We don’t even get to the dark matter problem, baryon asymmetry, neutrino oscillations, or the fact that particle physics has had no groundbreaking discovery in the last 40 years. There’s often not even a mention of any of this. Instead, we talk about the basics. Newtonian mechanics. Maxwell’s equations. 1920s quantum mechanics. The hydrogen atom.

It’s in fact quite interesting to see that up until maybe the second year of college, most students don’t get to learn that Newtonian mechanics isn’t universally valid! Something that we’ve known for more than a century. That’s because scientific education is about learning the basics, not trying to plant the seeds for your own political agenda, whether it be religious or atheistic.

Sure. They have a right to defend that view. We have the First Amendment in the US. But they do not represent scientists and they do not get to determine what goes into the science curriculum. The fact is, the scientific community at large disagrees with their views about ID.

I’m humbly wiping off your spit. :grinning:

I think that’s the misunderstanding here. We’re not following consensus “merely because it is consensus.” We’re following consensus because that’s the point of scientific education up to the graduate level: to get students up to speed on the latest state of the field so that they are equipped to further it later, including overturning consensus if necessary. Fringe views only confuse people.

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Additionally, if we talk about Kansas, I can see no way that DI is not at fault for what happened. AFAIK, the DI did not endorse Dover but did endorse Kansas. For example, on page 76 of the adopted new science standards we see:

d. Whether microevolution (change within a species) can be extrapolated to explain macroevolutionary changes (such as new complex organs or body plans and new biochemical systems which appear irreducibly complex) is controversial. These kinds of macroevolutionary explanations generally are not based on direct observations and often reflect historical narratives based on inferences from indirect or circumstantial evidence.

AFAIK, few evolutionary biologists regard the micro/macroevolution distinction as “controversial”. This is an old creationist talking point. Not to mention that this directly mentions irreducible complexity! There is just no excuse to say “But intelligent design isn’t mentioned explicitly!”

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So do I. So scientists working on the origin of life should say, “We don’t know whether or not life could have originated without design.” Have you ever heard any of them put their ignorance in that way?

You clearly have not paid attention to the multiple concessions I made that Gonzalez might not have received tenure in any case. What I said was that there were grounds for suspicion of prejudice, and that in fact one of his colleagues admitted to harboring some prejudice. You have not admitted that there was some prejudice, and here you disagree with Daniel Ang, who has conceded this. I have not asked you to admit that the prejudice caused a miscarriage of justice. I have only asked you to admit that the prejudice existed. And you won’t grant even that. This is why I think you are being unreasonable. You seem to be determined to deny every point I make. I have of course observed this form of behavior before. It is the form of behavior exhibited by every internet atheist I have ever encountered, save one – Lou Jost, who used to post on BioLogos. He was very good at granting points, retracting points, modifying his expressions, etc. But on the whole, I have found internet atheists doctrinaire and intellectually inflexible.

Then you unnecessarily confused matters. Our discussion was about Gonzalez. You made your remarks in the context of justifying the verdict against Gonzalez. Gonzalez had advocated ID. It was his advocacy of ID that raised the hackles of many on the Iowa State campus. Your remark was to the effect that prejudice against ID is justifiable. It was natural for me to take that as a justification of prejudice against Gonzalez’s book and the ideas in it, prejudice in the minds of the Astronomy faculty at Iowa State. The way I read your remark was: “Since Gonzalez wrote a book defending ID in the context of cosmology, and since ID is bad science, then the Astronomy faculty at Iowa State were justified in holding his book against him even though a non-peer-reviewed popular book would not normally be taken account of in a tenure decision, and even though he never made any use of ID in his peer-reviewed publications.” If you were switching topics to make a more general point, it would have been helpful if you indicated that “any criticism of ID” was now to be understood to include “any criticism of ID” as ID is found in works other than Gonzalez’s.

I’ve explained some of the historical reasons for the use of the term, and what it means in the writings of ID authors. I’ve conceded that it may not be the best of terms, but in context, it’s usually quite understandable. Your failure to understand the usage of the term by your opponents causes you to make false statements. I gave the example of Denton to show why your statement (that Discovery was inherently anti-evolution) was false. You cannot explain why Discovery should publish Denton’s works, given your rigid belief that Discovery is inherently anti-evolution. You could, however, easily explain this by distinguishing between “Darwinism/neo-Darwinism” (which Denton opposes) and “evolution” (which Denton does not). This is no mere “word game”, but an important distinction. Ask any YEC leader if he is happy to see Discovery publishing pro-evolutionary books.

Correction: “of what they really thought” – past tense, very long past, well over 13 years ago. And “they” needs to be qualified, since in an internal discussion paper it cannot be assumed that everyone in the organization is 100% onside with all the proposals contained therein. I know for a fact that at least some Discovery Fellows are not wild about the “cultural renewal” theme, even if others go for it in a big way.

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I am quoting this for emphasis. This is what the ID people fail to understand.

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No, they should not say that.

They should simply say “we do not know how life originated.”

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Thank you. I am. :slight_smile:

I think that is an overstatement, but I do think that sometimes Discovery has been less cautious in its support of certain causes than it should have been, and that this has confused the public regarding its motives. I don’t say that Discovery bears no responsibility for its public relations problems. I merely maintain that when it sticks to its core ID notions, it is lucid, and not guilty of any duplicity.

Oh, I’m sure that Discovery receives donations from both YEC and OEC sympathizers, and of course there is always the possibility that where there are donations, there will be attempts to exert influence. That’s a reality of human life. I suspect that from time to time there is tension, when groups who want to see the Bible given “equal time” in science class want Discovery to be more supportive. Discovery has tried to hold a difficult middle position, supporting attempts to get a fuller and more critical understanding of evolutionary theory into the schools while denying the right of entry of Bibles and theology into science class. This earns it criticism from both the scientific community and members of fundamentalist groups.

Fair enough, regarding the inclusion of the BB theory in the high school science classes of, say, 1950. I was referring more to the attitudes of the scientists. Many scientists initially disliked the BB theory because of its assertion of a universe with a beginning in time (as per theism) against a universe with no beginning in time (a view usually associated more with pantheism or atheism than theism). My point was that this “theism-friendly” aspect of Big Bang theory would not have justified rejecting BB theory. And now that BB theory is generally accepted, and can be taught in high school science classes, the fact that it still can be seen as theism-friendly would not justify evicting it from science class.

Similarly, if there is significant dissent within the field regarding the weighting of evolutionary mechanisms, dissent which would normally be reported in a science class, it would not be right to repress the reporting of that dissent, merely on the grounds that some of the dissenters employ arguments that incidentally resemble arguments made by ID proponents. That is why I said that “ID-friendly” is too broad a net. I don’t think that all “ID-friendly” arguments should be excluded from science class. The criterion should not be whether or not class material could be used to defend ID; the criterion should be only whether or not the class material represents an accurate view of what scientists agree on, and of where they still significantly disagree. Whether or not that such material could be construed to support ID, or atheism, or feminism, or anything else, should be immaterial to its inclusion in the curriculum.

It wasn’t my point that Margulis in particular, or anyone in particular, should be included in the curriculum. My point was only that decisions on what is included in the curriculum should not be based on considerations such as “We must exclude anything that might incidentally turn out to be ID-friendly”. That is is not a good way to design a science curriculum – or the curriculum of any subject. I know of psychologists who are against classroom discussions (and sometimes more than classroom discussions) of empirical evidence for developmental differences between male and female brains, because discussion of such differences might be taken to support the male oppression of women. That’s a lousy basis for making curriculum decisions. My view is: teach the mainstream thinking, and mention debates in the field if they are significant ones, and don’t worry about whether the presentation of alternate views will be misconstrued by someone. Just represent the field accurately.

And they don’t want to directly determine what goes into the science curriculum. As I said, they have acknowledged that ID needs more development before it could be legitimately taught at the high school level. They do want to be able to discuss their ideas at the university level. That is why it is important to them to be sure that someone like Gonzalez was not denied tenure for supporting ID. If a scientist whose work on extrasolar planets is highly regarded by his peers is then terminated for his ID sympathies, it will be impossible to make the case for ID at the university level. ID proponents will have to self-muzzle, for fear of losing their jobs.

So Discovery is happy not to have ID mandated at the high school level, but on guard for any signs that an ID-supporting scientist will have his career destroyed merely for the fact that he supports ID, regardless of how competent his scientific research and publications are.

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