Expelled

[alecto]

Well, I found this online:

http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html

It's on a (badly designed) pro-evolution web site. (I think. The site is badly designed). I have visited Discovery.org, however, and haven't found anything yet to dissuade me from believing they have a definite social agenda that would have definitely caused a journal referee to be suspicious of Stephen Meyer's paper (which triggered the events referred to in Expelled.)

Particularly disturbing is the tendency of their articles to appear largely in highly conservative and sometimes highly agenda-driven Republican forumas like HumanEvents.com.

I am highly suspicious of a movement that claims to support Creation being intentionally designed (and called "good") by God but which then supports the agenda of a political party whose representatives in Congress regularly vote to destroy the natural world, including especially the very species they claim were not the result of chance, but which were designed by God as if their design somehow actually mattered.

It is this kind of "higher hypocrisy" that really makes scientists worried about some religion.

There is also a tendency on the sight to make Hitler out to be a Darwinist, as if somehow the fact that someone can abuse ideas they may have learned from reading Darwin makes them less true. Are the rules governing the function of gunpowder less believable because some people kill other people with guns? Is Christ wrong because some churches supposedly founded on his teachings have supported persecutions and executions of "heretics"?

It really is frightening. There is a reason why intelligent people think ID as it is usually proposed is a wedge that will undermine social justice.

[prebe]

Alecto, I get the feeling that you are a biologist too. And you consider yourself a Christian I gather?

I am a biologist and an agnostic (leaning toward atheism). What do you say, that you and I give ourselves a bit of homework, and actually openmindedly (though not un-critically) read that , and report our analysis of it to the forum?

Prebe

[alecto]

[salanor]

[postodave]

Welcome back Sal

What I'm going to do now is encourage everyone to take another look at John Stuart Mill on Liberty


Now why do I think this is so important.
Mill is one of the founders of modern liberalism none the less I would argue we have retreated from his position. Liberalism is a political ideology which strongly defends human rights including the right to be wrong. He is certainly not a Christian and he argues strongly against Christianity in some places none the less he defends the right to both religious and scientific freedom. So you find him arguing that as strongly supported by evidence as it is Newton's theories may one day be replaced. Given that in our day the replacement of Newton by Einstein is seen as almost the ideal type of theory change in science this was rather far sighted. But Mill goes further he argues that even if we could know that we were right and our opponents were wrong it would still be evil to repress their views and harmful not to them but to us because we would rob ourselves of the chance to sharpen our own ideas. Now behind all this is something which Mill (did I mention that he was a philosopher of science - no) Well anyway as a philosopher of science he is very aware that science as it had developed in his day was hypothetical and he knows as a logician (did I . . .) that this is problematic. Because however good any hypothesis is it is always possible that it will be replaced by some other hypothesis we have not thought of. Something which Aquinas was also aware of though Aquinas reaches a very different conclusion to Mill. It is not surprising that these philosophers, and one might add Popper to the list, have a problem with hypothesis because to say that because a hypothesis is strongly confirmed by evidence it is therefore true is to commit the logical error known as affirming the consequent (think about it) Now Aquinas drew the conclusion from this that the only answer is to place more trust in purely deductive than hypothetical science whereas Mill decides that the only option is to come up with a concept of science as being based purely on induction. And although almost everyone now thinks his philosophy of science is riddled with errors people also reckon it's the most sophisticated inductivist account of science ever.

Be that as it may (is anyone still listening?) when it comes to education Mill sees at once that you can't go around trying to repress theories because you think there is no evidence for them but he also recognizes that some people are more competent than others at judging whether a hypothesis is valid.

Now how does this apply to teaching evolution. Anyone who wants to be a biologist or claim to have any knowledge of biology needs to understand the theory of evolution and to be able to pass exams and show they understand it. But no one is obliged to believe it since it remains a hypothesis albeit a valid one with no real alternative at present.

Well read Mill and see if I have judged him correctly and whether you think he is relevant.

[rusmeister]

Hey, postodave!
I'm still hoping to get back to Mill after Easter, and to take a (surprise surprise!) Chestertonian tack on the comments. Being Holy Week right now, I can't really take the time.

[postodave]

[rusmeister]

[Shadowland Dweller]

here is a story from that horribly biased news group.......

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,353767,00.html

I think I could be satisfied with that.

[rusmeister]

Speaking to Christians, I think it is important to do what we can and think is right. But I frequently get an impression that sometimes we forget that this whole world is only temporary, and then worries about what is going to happen here eclipse eternity and our spiritual lives.

[faceache]

[Shadowland Dweller]

[Shadowland Dweller]

[sqrt[-1]]

[Tuke]