RE: Today's blogs 2

Ted, yours is a perfectly appropriate answer because it makes my point
beautifully. Thanks so much.

Yes, I know about the Bennetta episode you reference below and wrote about
it in By Design or by Chance? (p. 148)

Anyone who ISN'T waiting to buy my book at a lawn sale can find that out by
looking in the index under "Bennetta".

But what has ASA done SINCE THEN?:

My original point - which I will repeat and now withdraw because I live by
writing for the popular press, not for academic conclaves - is that ASA
FAILED to grasp the opportunity to sponsor the ID controversy.

SO the Discovery Institute got a foothold and now Discovery is setting the
agenda.

ASA has become a forum for the people who are left behind.

Frankly, I do not care whether you listen or not. Lots of organizations just
wither. But I did think I ought to warn you that that is happening.

If you see any future for yourselves, begin by involving more ID mavens in
your inner circles so you can adopt and manage the controversy, instead of
just being biffed around by it and writing plaintive letters to whoever
about how you are misrepresented in journals.

My guess is that ASA has about three years to do something smart like that,
and then it won't matter any more whether it does or not.

Cheers, Denyse
P.S.: I speak frankly because, as a journalist, I don't qualify for mem'ship
in ASA and tend to blow clear of non-media-pro orgs anyway (to avoid
potential conflict of interest). So I can't benefit from association with
you, but thought I would help by warning you. If not, just forget it. - d.

>>> "Denyse O'Leary" <oleary@sympatico.ca> 05/22/05 1:46 PM
>>> >>>writes:Here's
when I will know ASA is making a difference: Darwinists are attacking ASA
the way they attack ID, and mixing Dembski's position up with Miller's, so
Discovery Institute is writing a clarifying letter to Nature. Lemme know
when that happens.

Ted replies:
It has happened, Denyse. You probably don't remember this, but when the ASA
published the little booklet about Teaching Science in a Climate of
Controversy (or some title close to that), California atheist William
Bennetta (sp?) organized a bunch of atheistic scientists in an effort to use
the "creationist" mantra to dismiss the ASA. They surely mixed up our
position with that of Henry Morris, in a deliberately misleading effort to
discredit the ID-friendly suggestions in that booklet. Ron Numbers writes
about this in The Creationists, if you want the full details; I don't have
the book here at home to cite specifically.

Is that an appropriate answer?

ted

--
Read brief excerpts from my book, By Design or by Chance?: The Growing
Controversy On the Origins of Life in the Universe (Augsburg Fortress, 2004)
at
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Denyse O'Leary
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oleary@sympatico.ca 
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