RE: Developing story: Steve Gould's friend says Gould would never have signed NCSE's "Steve" list

It's Gould's friend who's making the noise, not me. I only covered the
story.

My money's on the friend though.

- cheers, Denyse

--
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at
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Denyse O'Leary
Tel: 416 485-2392
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oleary@sympatico.ca 
www.designorchance.com
-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of Dr. David Campbell
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 1:18 PM
To: Denyse O'Leary
Cc: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: Developing story: Steve Gould's friend says Gould would never
have signed NCSE's "Steve" list
> Yesterday, I blogged on the fact that a friend of the late Stephen Jay 
> Gould now says that Gould would never have signed the celebrated Steve 
> list - a list of scientists named Steve who oppose creationism (and, 
> presumably, intelligent design theory?).
Here's the statement for the Steve list:
"Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the 
biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in 
favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. 
Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes 
of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution 
occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its 
occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically 
irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited 
to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of 
our nation's public schools." 
I don't think there's anything there that Steve Gould would have 
objected to, with the possible caveat that he did recognize the 
difference between Intelligent Design (the movement) and intelligent 
design (belief in an intelligent designer of some sort) and denied that 
evolution was contrary to faith.  
The diversity within the ID movement makes the equation of intelligent 
design with creationist pseudoscience problematic for me.  Although I'm 
not convinced that any ID claims are scientifically strong, there's a 
good deal of difference between, e.g., Behe and Johnson.  As they don't 
do a good job of highlighting the difference, it's understandable that 
outsiders don't notice it. 
-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections Building
Department of Biological Sciences
Biodiversity and Systematics
University of Alabama, Box 870345
Tuscaloosa AL 35487-0345  USA
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