On Nov 14, 2009, at 10:47 PM, Schwarzwald wrote:
> Now, I realize West is making a claim here about the views of "most
> evolutionary biologists", etc, that you may disagree with. Great,
> take issue with that. But let me ask you this. If West (who I cite
> mostly because he's part of the DI here, and this was a very public
> exchange) is right... then isn't there a big problem here? Better
> yet, if West and company truly believe this, then doesn't that make
> some of their criticisms (At least of "Darwinism" in the sense West
> qualifies it) vastly more reasonable at least given their perspective?
You're asking so what if the strawman is true? Come on. That's the
whole point. This would not be an issue if the people being discussed
were the vocal minority that go beyond the science but it's not. In
the secular science community there is a growing movement who are very
much opposed to what Dawkins and company have done. ID can join with
them and say Dawkins and the other atheistic apologists go beyond the
consensus concerning evolution. But their first commitment is not
being pro-intelligent design or even being anti-unguided -- read
atheistic -- evolution. Rather, they agree with Dawkins claiming his
extra-scientific conclusions are the warp and woof of evolutionary
theory because their first commitment is anti-evolution. In the
process they viscously attack fellow Christians working in the
sciences. It's bad enough that scientists have to hide that they are
Christians in the workplace but we also have to hide we are scientists
in churches. Fortunately and unfortunately it's easy to hide you're a
Christian in the scientific workplace. All you have to do is to do a
good job and your secular colleagues will never suspect.
Rich Blinne
Member ASA
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Received on Sun Nov 15 10:00:27 2009
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