ASA in Nature

I was travelling for a few days and it took a while to wade through all the comments when I returned. Rather than comment individually, permit me to make a few general comments.

It was important to respond to Lynch's letter in Nature, not so much to distance ASA from ID, but to clarify our role of providing a forum for dialog of various perspectives without being an advocate of any particular view, provided it is under the umbrella of our statement of faith and integrity in science. I believe the same response would have been appropriate in the case of YEC, TE, RFEP, Reasons to Believe, or any other particular position. I just finished reading F. Alton Everest's "History of the ASA" and I was struck by the attention the founding fathers paid to the importance of not taking a position. True, Scott Adams has parodied in "The Dilbert Principle" that the best way to avoid being wrong is to "take no position at all." But we do indeed have a very strong position against metaphysical naturalism and are united in our belief in God as the creator of all things and we need to emphasize that much more strongly.

As for ASA's relationship with the ID movement, I believe we do share several key beliefs, namely that the world was created/designed and that we need to oppose the stronghold of metaphysical naturalism. Areas where ASA would not take sides with or against ID but would encourage active debate from its members would include the definition of science, the degree to which evolution and metaphysical naturalism are coupled, and the way(s) in which design can be detected.

ASA may be more of a "dozy organization" than many of us would care to admit. I, for one, am committed to making it less so in the future.

Randy
Received on Sun May 29 20:34:05 2005