Congress stepping in to stop witchunt of IDers

Page not found - WNDThe reliance of evos on heavy-handed political measures to silence their critics is not surprising, but it demonstrates the weakness of evo models to stand on their own in an open and intellectually free environment. Basically, evolutionism cannot stand an open format where factual criticism and alternative concepts can be freely advanced and discussed, and instead relies on ridicule, threats, discrimination, etc,etc,...of anyone daring to challenge their dominant position in academia.As a sidenote, it's not suprising that evos appear to be very Left-leaning as well. The same crowd dominates academia, and so foists it's ideas on the rest without a sense of fairness and academic freedom.

Hi Randman,Representative Souder is an evangelical Christian with an evangelical constituency. Sternberg might do better to seek allies with less obvious religious ties if he wants to succeed in portraying his views as not religiously motivated.Souder's congressional staff has written a report favorable to Sternberg, no surprise there. The report doesn't mention Sternberg's editorial malfeasance and treats ID as if it were a legitimate scientific viewpoint with evidential support. The John West (of the Discovery Institute) quote from the World Net Daily article echoes the confusion many evangelicals have about science when he says that the Smithsonian officials were trying to stamp out anything that disagrees with their own personal beliefs and faith. Science is a consensus activity and not a matter of personal beliefs and faith.Sternberg alienated his scientific colleagues when he abused his position as editor of the BSOW proceedings to publish the Meyer article in the proceedings of the BSOW. The Meyer article was, of course, inappropriate for two reasons. First, the focus of the BSOW proceedings is taxonomic, while the Meyer article was a survey of ID. And second, the Meyer article is at best a work of speculation and not scientific at all.Clearly the religious right is trying to portray this as a matter of fairness and academic freedom, but this misses the central issue for scientists all together. The important issue is what is science and what isn't. As the Dover decision made clear, and as was already obvious anyway, ID is not science.--Percy

And yet many prominent evos are rabid atheists, but somehow they don't need to be concerned with having "religiously" or rather anti-religious motivations?The simple truth is no one but partisan evos really thinks Steinberg did anything wrong whatsoever. Even the Wash Post slams evo orthodoxy over this. It's a witchunt on the part of evos. Arguing, yea, but he really is a witch (in evo eyes) is nonsensical. Basically, you have defined ID as out of bounds and so conducting witchunts of IDers is acceptable to mainstream evos. It's the same old circular reasoning we see evos resorting to in their data analysis.Also, the Dover decision was a joke. The judge copied and pasted something like 90% straight from anti-ID partisan brieds. The fact anyone with a brain that looks into could take it seriously is astonishing. The simple fact is ID is science no matter how hard you guys try to insist and use bogus political and legal tricks and discrimination to try to silence it.

Hi Randman,I think that what ID advocates must do is find and publish the evidence that will convince the scientific community of its validity. As the Biologic Institute concedes, no laboratory support for ID has ever been produced, let alone any peer reviewed research papers. It is not only premature to judge ID valid, the research necessary for making such judgments hasn't even been done yet.Sternberg's mistake was to abuse his editorial position to publish ID nonsense in a legitimate scientific journal. He's paying for that mistake now, and he's making his religious motivations clear by seeking support in the evangelical community.--Percy

So they need to publish, but if they do, the editors daring to publish them will have their careers ruined if evos have anything to do with it, eh?And you don't see a contradiction with the evo stance here?Also, IDers are publishing.

The ID people must publish the results of actual scientific research, not bogus scientific papers like Meyers'. Sternberg finds his career in a shambles not because he published a scientific paper on ID, but because he abused his position as editor to publish a paper having no scientific merit but that supported his personal religious views. It would help their cause a great deal if they would submit the results of actual scientific research (i.e., consistent with the nature of science and following the scientific method) to legitimate scientific journals.--Percy

The paper wasn't bogus. The political nature of evos is to insist that all papers threatening their position are bogus, but that doesn't make it so.

Lets be fair, There are ID proponents who are publishing work looking at plausible relevant questions, i.e. Behe and Snoke and the Axe papers. Some of these papers are interesting and well executed. The problem is that so far none of them provides a whit of support for ID unless taken with a generous pinch of wishful thinking.TTFN,WK

That's your opinion. It is the opinion of the community of scientists that the paper has little to no scientific merit and isn't appropriate for a scientific journal. That Sternberg used his editorial authority to publish it anyway raises serious concerns about the degree to which his scientific judgment is influenced by his religious beliefs, and that is the source of all his subsequent difficulties.If you'd like to open another thread we could go through the host of reasons why the Meyer paper does not represent legitimate science. At a high level the reason is that it purports to be a survey paper but of a field with no record of research in the scientific literature, and that is known to be a pet idea of the evangelical community that opposes the teaching of evolution.--Percy

The problem is the track record of evos does not suggest we should respect their opinion all that much. I hate to bring Haeckel back, but evos kept insisting creationists and IDers were wrong to call it fraudulent well into the 90s, and all evos had to do was look it up for themselves, but they would not.Take the discussions of QM here. I showed quite clearly where quantum physicists themselves state very plainly that either or both local realism and forward causality are being violated, and that QM predicted this and does predict this, and yet you guys insisted otherwise. No amount of lab testing, applied principles, etc,....could shake that conviction because, frankly, evo convictions are not fact-based.

Well, now you're off into your pet topics of Haeckel and QM. If you'd like to discuss the topic of your thread just let me know.--Percy

Your basis for stating ID is not science appears to consist of the fact that partisan evos willing to try to ruin anyone's career that is open to ID have said ID is not science.Somehow you think that's valid?I brought up some other examples evos have thought were valid as well, just to illustrate why, imo, a reasonable person shouldn't listen to you guys.This is indeed a matter of academic freedom, and a willingness not to be led by dogma, but open to facts and analysis.

If you'd like to discuss why the Meyer paper that Sternberg published does not represent legitimate science, just open a new thread. I'm aware that the evangelical community is attempting to characterize this as an issue of academic freedom, but it's only a case of someone suffering the consequences for abusing his editorial responsibilities.--Percy

`Is NPR part of the evangelical conspiracy to misrepresent evos too?

I don't myself see the world in terms of conspiracies, and I don't see any point in discussing an NPR report described 2nd hand that I can't listen to. But I will say that scientists who think it would be a bad career move to make public their support for a pseudoscience whose primary backing is from an anti-science religious group are probably seeing things very clearly.--Percy