ID Goes International?

@Agauger
As an outsider (to both academics as well as the USA), it seems to me that challenges to current paradigms in evolution are welcomed more warmly in countries such as China. Brazil and even parts of Europe as compare to USA. This seems to be true for both the third way proponents as well as ID proponents.
Perhaps it would be wiser to take the discussion/debate global and forge global partnerships… This might open doors for collaborating and doing good science as well as publishing.
This might help in pushing “storms in a tea cup” kind of controversies to the side and lend focus to actual ideas/reasearch findings.
The world is big…

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Biologic Institute

I’m pretty sure they have been doing that for a long time. As I recall, there have been conferences in South America. There has also been a lot of uptake in islamic countries, some of which were involved in the Kansas Education Board hearings.

From the beginning ID has been about “Theism”, finding common ground with Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Especially in Turkey, there has been a lot of uptake, and it has spread. As I understand it, just like in the US, it is strongest among the more “fundamentalist” factions. Strange bedfellows, right?

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Maybe not… Historically Darwinism (i am not talking about scientific understanding) has been associated with a particular Zeitgeist… it is often credited with a role in the rise of materialism as a philosophy… In its rise, it also had strange bed fellows from the other side of the bed. So its not surprising the politics pans out this way…
Science may be neutral… but its interpretations are not!.

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You’ve been reading too many ID narratives @Ashwin_s :smile:.

I do not think there is good theological grounding for dividing the world between theism and atheism. That is not a sensible division in my view. I do not think it can be justified. There is great evil done in the name of both generic and specific theism.

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I dont divide the world between theism and athiesm… however, i do acknowledge social and political realities…
Anyway, you guys can continue the discussion… i just waned to make a small point… that’s all. :slight_smile:

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Well, I liked it so much we have our own thread for it now. Glad you are here.

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I lecture on ID quite a bit outside the USA (most recently, in Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and Spain). In general I find greater openness to ID outside the USA – remarkably, in June 1999, in southern China. The Chinese paleontologists and evolutionary biologists I met were far more open to questioning textbook evolutionary theory than the Europeans, who in turn were more open than the Americans.

American biologists have Scopes Trial antibodies circulating in their bloodstream. Question evolutionary theory, and they have the intellectual equivalent of a violent immune reaction. :wink:

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See this @Ashwin_s? @pnelson and I agree on something big.

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Point taken.

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I think people underestimate the different approaches to science in different countries, largely because of the Anglophone bias of western science (and of course America’s God-given right to rule the world :grinning:).

Once again I find my own blog stats interesting, given that The Hump of the Camel is, whatever else, not simply a mainstream science site. Currently China is third on the list of users after America and UK. Given the language barrier, >900 hits a month, from a number of centres, is interesting. Somebody out there is interested in genealogical Adam, or Aristotelian approaches to science, and so on.

(There are a few hundred Russians, too, but I kind of assume they’re just trying to influence elections…)

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What a great way to describe it, Dr. Nelson! I’m definitely going to be using that one. I love the expression “Scopes Trial antibodies.”

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I loved that one!

And your blog stats are fascinating.

Well, you’re neither Facebook nor the National Rifle Association. So I wouldn’t worry… Unless your site had something to do with Brexit… :grinning:

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My site definitely didn’t have anything to do with Brexit. My son’s meeting with the Russian ambassador was purely about theistic evolution. And what was wrong with him talking about Brexit anyway? But he didn’t. Much. At all.
:flushed:

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What’s a “Brexit?” Some new-fangled form of breath mint? Tell 'ya what; you send me a roll of them, and I’ll send you a roll of breath mints sold in Christian bookstores, called “Testamints.”
Not joking; they really do exist.
Thanks for Brexiting; we Anglophonys gotta stick together.
As for Russian influence, have you ever read Solzhenitsyn?

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Happy memories - a month’s obstetric attachment at Kingston Hospital at medical school in '75, during which I read The Hobbit and vol 1 of Gulag Archipelago (the other two volumes followed as they came out). And my wife’s cousin is a Russian Historian who write a book on Lenin, and disliked him instensely by the end.

The obstetric registrar at the hospital ended up as Princess Diana’s obstetrician, so there’s my link with William and Harry, as well as that nice Mr Putin.