What qualifies as a competing scientific interpretation? That’s the big question. Most scientists would argue that religious beliefs are not competing scientific interpretations which is why most scientists don’t support the introduction of Intelligent Design into science classes.
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Chris, I have started reading the book. When I finish, I may add some comments regarding the specifically scientific material.
From what I’ve read so far, Hedin seems like someone who would be a very engaging undergraduate teacher, and I can see why the majority of students who commented on his course commented very positively. He introduces the broad issues (the nature of science, how we know what we know, the intersection of science and human questions) very well.
Two things I note so far: First, though T. aquaticus accuses Hedin of God of the gaps (without ever having read a line of Hedin’s writing or having listened to a single sentence of Hedin speaking), Hedin early on in the book criticizes the God of the gaps approach. (Whether he consistently lives up to that, I won’t know until I finish the book, but he does say quite clearly that God of the gaps thinking is for the most part not conducive to scientific research.)
Second, Hedin explicitly distinguishes what he’s trying to do in the book from what he was trying to do in his course. In the book, he says, he is actually trying to make a sustained positive argument for design by an intelligent mind, whereas in his course, he says, he was trying to present that as one option among others, without trying to push students to agree with him.
The latter is the pedagogical approach I have always used, in all the subjects I have taught: religion, classics, politics, etc. When I taught a course on God and Evolution, I made a point of laying out options and making sure I didn’t slant the course toward my preferred options. For example, I spent twice the amount of classroom time on YEC (which I disagree with) as I did on intelligent design (which I sympathize with), and more time discussing the mandatory readings from Darwin’s books than all the time spent on YEC, OEC, TE, and ID combined. I wanted to make sure that I weighted the material fairly, and if anything, against my own biases. I was very pleased when a student spontaneously came up to me and said that he felt completely free to hold any view in the class, because all the positions were presented objectively and without any attempt to push one of them.
How Hedin actually conducted his course, I cannot be sure, because I wasn’t there, but how Hedin says he conducted his course, as described in the book (and in his podcast interviews on Discovery), is a model for how to get students talking about big issues without feeling bullied by a professor. If he taught it the way he says he taught it, it would have been a very good course in the area of the intersection of scientific inquiry with the great human questions about morality, beauty, truth, religion, etc.
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Question: Let’s assume that those things you say about Meyer, Dembski, Wells, Hedin, etc., are true.
Would you prefer that science students be exposed to their arguments so that they get the experience of analyzing them and seeing that for themselves?
Or would you prefer that students not be informed about their arguments and be instructed instead to accept the consensus view because it is the consensus view?
Which is, of course, its intended audience. As always, ID Creationist propaganda is meant to mislead and deceive rather than inform. And we can count on @Eddie to do his part to help the cause.
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As usual, Eddie lies about my posts. I said I have every expectation that Hedin is using a God of the Gaps argument, but I am more than happy to be proven wrong. No one has proven me wrong yet.
Which is???
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I agree.
In other news, in addition to the genetic fallacy, I also know how the straw man fallacy works.
That’s a definite false dichotomy. I would prefer that students be informed about legitimate scientific controversies but that time not be wasted on non-scientific controversies. And they should accept the consensus view because it’s the one best supported by evidence. Class time is too precious to spend on beyond-the-fringe notions.
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There’s no reason to assume anything. I am very familiar with the evidence. Would you like a perfectly objective example?
Question back to you: Precisely how many of Hedin’s facts did you critically evaluate for accuracy and balance before explicitly endorsing the book as “Balancing the facts and arguments”? What about the sections that contain arguments without facts?
Why are you only mentioning arguments? What happened to facts?
I would prefer that science students be exposed to the facts, then expose them to misrepresentations of the facts as examples of pseudoscience.
Again, you refer to arguments but have abandoned facts. Why?
As I prefer facts and hypothesis testing, not the deliberately vague “arguments,” your dichotomy is obviously false.
If students understand the scientific method, they know that all conclusions, even consensuses, are provisional. They know that science proceeds by testing hypotheses to produce new evidence, not by making arguments to laypeople that hide and/or misrepresent that evidence.
That’s the sort of science education we need. Are you opposed to that?
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Time should also not be wasted on illegitimate scientific controversies (which is an apt, if brief, description of the arguments posed by “Meyer, Dembski, Wells, Hedin, etc.”).
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Gotcha. Thank you for clarifying.
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I would first question, in regards to ultimate physical theories such as GUT, underpinnings of QM, or why the constants come in the ratios they do, the presupposition that there is an established consensus view at all.
As well, the diversity of contending positions on such questions do not necessarily reduce to a simple dichotomy between theistic and naturalistic explanations. Students should be exposed then, to the full scope and domain of the discussion.
Where there is genuine consensus, such as on common descent, that is generally founded on well established evidence. If the competing interpretation is not credible, it is just a distraction in a science class.
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You have misread (or not read?) the article from which that was quoted or the comment in which it was originally posted. Here it is so you don’t have to look back for it if you should choose to reread it before commenting further. https://salvomag.com/article/salvo26/tethered-professor.
If you have any questions about it after reading it, I’ll be happy to engage with them. Otherwise, I’ll sign off here. You are arguing against things I have not said.
This is quite admirable, Eddie.
He doesn’t, and earlier in this thread I have cited one particularly relevant passage.
Best,
Chris
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No one in any field of study whatsoever is ever under any obligation to disprove a speculation about the contents of a book, coming from someone who has not read the book and apparently has no intention of ever doing so. The onus is on the person with the speculation to provide evidence to support his speculation. This is epistemology 101, logic 101, literary hermeneutics 101, etc. – all subjects apparently never studied by life scientists.
Yes.
Non sequitur, since the unstated premise, i.e., that intelligent design is a religious belief, is false.
Denton wrote a 400-page book arguing for design in nature which presupposes zero religious belief; all conclusions about design in the book are reached by reasoning from the facts of nature, facts confirmed by modern science. Almost no one here has read that book, and of the very few here that have, while some have found fault with its arguments and conclusions, not one has pointed out where its argument depends on religion, not one has even claimed that its argument depends on religion. I look forward, to a post by anyone here who has carefully read Nature’s Destiny, to proof that any of its arguments rest on religious premises. [this paragraph edited for clarity by author]
The response to my last sentence by any trained Arts student would be: “I will refrain from claiming or even speculating that Denton’s book rests on religious premises until I have read it.” People like T. aquaticus, on the other hand, would reason: “Denton is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute. Therefore his motivation is transparently religious, as is proved by the Wedge Document. Therefore we can expect that Nature’s Destiny will be chock full of religious assumptions and arguments. I will continue to believe this is true until someone disproves it.” And this is why people like T. aquaticus are very wise to have chosen to major in biology/biochemistry, where they could pass with As and Bs, rather than in Arts subjects, where they would certainly have earned Ds and Fs.
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I don’t believe I have. Here is the full quote [emphasis mine]:
Balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of certain questions about origins and human existence is precisely what Dr. Hedin is doing in “The Boundaries of Science,” and it’s beyond ironic that his accusers insist he include material espousing “the other side.”
So, precisely how did you determine that Hedin is balancing the facts and arguments? I did write “book” instead of “course,” but the question doesn’t change. If that’s my big misreading, I’m guilty, but the book begins with the course. My questions are relevant either way.
Let’s ignore the arguments for now and concentrate on facts. You must have done a whole lot of checking to justify emphasizing with “precisely.” Which facts from Hedin’s course did you check, and how did you determine that those facts you checked were balanced?
I had read it before I asked my question.
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Quote-mining is reprehensible, and slicing out sentence fragments is dishonest. Shame on you.
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Among other things, I read Hedin’s Point of View article in the Journal of College Science Teaching and the course syllabus, which is no longer online. Two relevant points from the syllabus are:
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List item The aim of the course is to consider whether or not there might be more to the universe than what science is capable of explaining.
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List item From the syllabus: “In this course, we will examine the nature of the physical and the living world with the goal of increasing our appreciation of the scope, wonder, and complexity of physical reality.”
If you’d like to see more, I have seven pages of notes including links. If you’d like to see it, I’ll be happy to send it to you in Word doc form.
It can be.
Or, it can be a concise summation of a stream of words, the result of discernment combined with brevity.
Please do by PM here.
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In this case, however, it isn’t. I could be charitable and assume you misunderstood. I was explaining the conditions under which it would be proper to accept the consensus, and your snip implied I was saying that students should blindly accept it. Do you see that upon re-reading?
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