[asa] Bill Dembski on ASA

http://uncommondescent.com/

Seems Bill does not like ASA (probably for opposing Intelligent Design
and the focus on the scientific problems of YEC)

 2007 American Scientific Affiliation — Whatever happened to its mission?
William Dembski

The ASA (American Scientific Affiliation) is an organization of
scientists who are Christians. It has traditionally been strongly pro
theistic evolution. Its most prominent member is Francis Collins. I'm
also a member.

About three years ago I received the following mass mailing from the
ASA's Jack Haas (I've known Jack since 1990 and our exchanges have
always been cordial). In this letter he describes how the ASA had, in
times past, been concerned to address "the sweeping tide of scientific
materialism," but had recently decided to change its emphasis to
combat young-earth creationism.

If the problem with young-earth creationism is that it is off by a few
orders of magnitude about the age of the earth and universe, the
problem with scientific materialism is that is off by infinite orders
of magnitude about what is ultimately the nature of nature. When I
received this letter, I was so upset that I decided to let my
membership (which I had maintained since the 1980s) lapse. Only at the
instance of some fellow ID proponents in the organization did I decide
to stay.

I write this post to put into perspective Denyse O'Leary's recent
remarks about the "gutting of a spiritual tradition from within" (see
here — the relevance of her remarks to the ASA cannot be missed) and
to highlight that with the efforts by Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris to
ramp up their propaganda for atheism since this letter by Jack Haas
was written suggests that the ASA was mistaken in shifting its
emphasis away from "the sweeping tide of scientific materialism."

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Received on Tue Apr 24 00:01:03 2007