Bertvan@aol.com wrote:
> At Baylor the
> faculty didn't want ID debated - not in the science department, not in the
> philosophy department, not in a special center to explore the relation
> between science and philosophy. They didn't want it discussed anywhere on
> their campus!
The External Review Committee did endorse research on ID:
"Nevertheless, the Committee wishes to make it clear that it considers
research on the logical structure of mathematical arguments for
intelligent design to have a legitimate claim to a place in current
discussions of the relations of religion and the sciences. Although
this work, involving as it does technical issues in the theory of
probability, is relatively recent in origin and has thus only just
begun to receive response in professional journals (see, for example,
the essay by Elliot Sober in Philosophy of Science, 66, 1999,
pp. 472-488), the Institute should be free, if it chooses, to include
in its coverage this line of work, when carried out professionally."
(http://pr.baylor.edu/pdf/001017polanyi.pdf)
However, I suspect that many at Baylor are dubious that Dembski's work
is carried out "professionally." Dembski seems to prefer press
releases:
"The report marks the triumph of intelligent design as a legitimate
form of academic inquiry. This is a great day for academic freedom.
I'm deeply grateful to President Sloan and Baylor University for
making this possible, as well as to the peer review committee for its
unqualified affirmation of my own work on intelligent design."
(From the MetaNews archives of http://www.meta-list.org/)
This press release does not accurately reflect the committee report.
The report did endorse research on ID but it did not contain any
"unqualified affirmation of [Dembski's] work on intelligent design."
In fact, the essay by Sober (and others), cited above, is sharply
critical of Dembski's work.
(http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/dembski.pdf)
I suspect that the science faculty at Baylor see Dembski as an
unprofessional "loose cannon" and had a justified fear that the
reputation of their school would have been terribly damaged if
Dembski had succeeded in his efforts to establish himself (and his
press releases) at Baylor.
Dembski has lots of ways to respond to his many critics on this mail
list and elsewhere. A short paper on the Discovery site or the ARN
site could do it. It shouldn't take too long to write.
Put another way, while many of us are dubious about ID, we are even
more dubious about bad arguments for ID.
> If there were a couple of professors at Baylor who believed
> the universe is the result of design and teleology, rather than chance, do
> you suppose they would have dared speak up?
Since Baylor is an avowedly Christian University, I suspect the
tendency is in the other direction, if anything.
Ivar
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