Re: ASA misrepresented in Nature

He needs to be lynched! Anyone who looks at the ASAP site or PAC will soon
find a variety of opinions which in fact reflect the constituency of ASAP
(and also CIS in the UK). Yes ID papers have been published as have papers
by Panicky.
I have a paper on ID in the Dec 1999 no of PAC which is very harsh on Bee
and ID.

Nature needs a response from several. Also what about sending Lynch the odd
email. Perhaps I could send him one and refer to that paper of mine.

Michael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Davis" <tdavis@messiah.edu>
To: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 1:46 AM
Subject: ASA misrepresented in Nature

> The latest issue of Nature contains several letters responding to Nature's
> quite sensible suggestion (in an editorial) that scientists actually speak
> about their religious beliefs in their classes, as a way of showing
> students that there are religious scienitsts who do not believe that ID is
> the best way to sort out these issues. Generally speaking the letters are
> sharply critical of Nature for suggesting such a thing. The letter by
> Jerry Coyne (Chicago), a longtime critic of ID, trashes any effort to put
> religion and science together, and other letters are also over the top.
>
> That's enough to be concerned about, but let me now give here the text of
> another letter, from a biologist at my alma mater, that labels the ASA as
> a hotbed of ID in a very disparaging and condescending way. Here it is:
>
> Nature 435, 276 (19 May 2005) | doi: 10.1038/435276b
> Intelligent design or intellectual laziness? Michael Lynch1
>
> Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA
>
> Sir: Much of the concern over ID (Nature 434, 1053 and 1062*1065; 2005)
> has focused on veiled attempts to inject religion into public education.
> Sheltered within the confines of academia, most biologists find it hard to
> believe that the slain need to be slain again. Those in the trenches *
> school boards, school biology teachers and their national representatives
> * often don't know how to respond, in part because they themselves never
> really achieved a deep understanding of evolutionary biology at college.
>
> However, there is a related and equally disturbing issue: the
> legitimization of intellectual laziness. Have a problem explaining
> something? Forget about it: the Designer made it that way. Any place for
> diversity of opinion as to who/what the Designer is/was? The ID literature
> makes it very clear that there is no room for scientific discourse on
> that. Think I'm exaggerating? To get a good idea of what IDers would have
> the face of science look like, check out the journal Perspectives on
> Science and Christian Faith (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF.html).
>
> Two factors have facilitated the promotion of ID. First, IDers like to
> portray evolution as being built entirely on an edifice of darwinian
> natural selection. This caricature of evolutionary biology is not too
> surprising. Most molecular, cell and developmental biologists subscribe to
> the same creed, as do many popular science writers. However, it has long
> been known that purely selective arguments are inadequate to explain many
> aspects of biological diversity. Building a straw man based on natural
> selection alone makes it easy for opponents to poke holes in evolution.
> But features of the genome, such as genomic parasites or non-coding
> introns, which aren't so evolutionarily favourable (nor obviously
> 'intelligent' innovations), can be more readily explained by models that
> include random genetic drift and mutation as substantial evolutionary
> forces.
>
> Second, IDers like to portray evolution as a mere theory. But after a
> century of close scrutiny, evolutionary theory has passed so many litmus
> tests of validation that evolution is as much a fact as respiration and
> digestion.
>
> Less widely appreciated is that evolution has long been the most
> quantitative field of biology, well grounded in the general principles of
> transmission genetics. Yet few students at university, and almost none at
> high school, are exposed to the mathematical underpinnings of evolutionary
> theory. The teaching of evolution purely as history, with little
> consideration given to the underlying mechanisms, reinforces the false
> view that evolution is one of the softer areas of science.
>
> Here is a missed opportunity. Our failure to provide students with the
> mathematical skills necessary to compete in a technical world is a major
> concern in the United States. Mathematics becomes more digestible, and
> even attractive, when students see its immediate application. What better
> place to start than with the population-genetic theory of evolution, much
> of which is couched in algebraic terms accessible to school students?
>
> *******
>
> So, my friends, how should we respond to this? How can we best educate
> both Nature and Dr. Lynch about this? We can obviously point out that
> Keith Miller is an ASA Fellow, and we can note that so is George
> Murphy--both men were mentioned in the Nature article on ID, and both
> pretty clearly as not supporters of ID. Furthermore, we might point out
> that PSCF has lots of articles that dispute key tenets of ID, along with
> (yes) articles that favor ID in various ways. Frankly, one could say the
> same thing about a prestigious secular journal such as Biology and
> Philosophy, or the books published by Cambridge University Press. This is
> a cheap shot by someone who is either ignorant of the ASA (in which case
> we can educate him graciously) or has an ideological axe to grind against
> people like us (religious people in the sciences); several other letter
> writers would fit this latter description.
>
> I'd be happy to respond myself, esp since I have my doctorate from a
> department located in the building adjacent to the one in which Dr. Lynch
> is located (I assume he's located with other biologists in Jordan Hall).
> However, I cannot do this for at least a week, I really can't. I am
> presently now a week overdue on a paper that really must get done this
> week (it goes onto a conference website that others will be accessing
> already), and simply must take the next few days to finish it, regardless
> of how important it is for us to respond to Dr. Lynch.
>
> So, who will respond? I propose conversation here about the
> content/wording of the letter.
>
> Ted
>
>
Received on Thu May 19 03:05:30 2005