Jeffrey Schloss, and Now Richard Weikart’s Reply to Him
| August 7, 2008 | Posted by William Dembski under Expelled, Intelligent Design |
Jeff Schloss, formerly an ID supporter and Senior Fellow of Discovery Institute (until August 2003 — click here for Way Back Machine), has since been distancing himself from ID and even going on the offensive against it. I witnessed the beginnings of this offensive at a symposium featuring Ron Numbers, Howard Van Till, Schloss, and me in 2007 at Grove City College (go here for the program). His criticisms of ID at that event seemed to me naive and ill-considered. Yet he did seem to advance them sincerely, and I hoped to have an opportunity try to persuade him otherwise, which unfortunately never happened.
Schloss’s critical review of EXPELLED, however, raised his opposition against ID to a new level and frankly upset me for what I perceived as its disingenuousness (the review appeared with official sanction of the American Scientific Affiliation [ASA] on its server here). By offering so many nuances and qualifications, his review missed the bigger picture that many ID propoents really are getting shafted. I confronted Jeff about this and we had an exchange of emails. As it is, Jeff and I go back and had been friends. He contributed to the MERE CREATION volume (1996) that I edited (his essay was a fine piece on altruism and the difficulties conventional evolutionary theory has in trying to account for it). I even had occasion to visit him in the hospital after he had a surfing accident. The exchange ended with my asking him to admit the following four points:
(1) ID raises important issues for science.
(2) Politics aside, ID proponents ought to get a fair hearing for their views, and they’re not.
(3) A climate of hostility toward ID pervades the academy, which often undermines freedom of thought and expression on this topic.
(4) That climate has led to ID proponents being shamefully treated, losing their reputations and jobs, and suffering real harm.
As it is, Schloss never got back to me. I suppose I could have responded to him on the ASA website — Randy Isaac, the executive director of the ASA, invited me, as an ASA member, to do so. But by putting Schloss’s review front and center as the official position of the ASA on EXPELLED, I saw little point of trying to argue for EXPELLED in that forum.
In any case, Richard Weikart has now responded to Schloss’s review on the most controversial aspect of EXPELLED, namely, the Nazi connection. Weikart’s response may be found by clicking here.
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186 Responses to Jeffrey Schloss, and Now Richard Weikart’s Reply to Him
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oops…
And this is, as you allude to above, the use of the term as ruled against in court and as pejoratively hung on ID.
As you are an IDist, and a creationist, and a theistic evolutionist, you just might see why it’s a big tent, afterall.
As for this
I was going to let my tu quoque rest, but I’m in a different mood today …
Yes, you did confuse me. By using the Galileo/science/religion theme you enter the big tent of those who promote the mythology. By not explicitly distancing yourself from it, and by making use of its rhetorical impact yourself, you are, in effect, endorsing it.
Right?
Throughout the course of this thread, the notion is presented that one of the biggest obstacles of TE accepting ID principles are the creationists, or “creationism.” At least, that’s what I gleaned from Ted Davis’ comments above. I’d like to make a couple of observations.
It appears to me that TE’s problem with ID is not “creationism” (ID has nothing to do with it) it’s the creationist (ID doesn’t ostracize them). This is politics. The fact that ID definitions, wherever they happen to come from, do not include language intended specifically to separate it from creationists seems to be an objection to ID’s politics, not its science. To some it seems unconscionable that ID would not first exclude this group of fanatics, then get down to the business of science.
That said what’s more important are the differences between ID and TE on issues unrelated to association: the scientific claims of ID. The issues that separate TE/Darwinism from ID have to do with Irreducible Complexity, the Edge of Evolution, the Explanatory Filter and CSI, and the Privileged Planet Hypothesis. How does TE deal with these? Does the DNA molecule and the information processing machinery of the cell exhibit the hallmark of design (and is this design objectively detectable by the application of scientific principles) or are Darwinian processes of Random Variation and Natural Selection enough to account for it?
That TE won’t deal with these very serious and paradigm-changing observations of ID because it doesn’t politically affiliate properly doesn’t hold up. Either TE is compatible with ID based on its scientific claims, or it remains firmly aligned with materialist claims of the power of Darwinism’s undirected processes to produce the complexity of biological life. I think it’s really that simple.
Unless ID and TE can achieve some sort of harmony on IC, EoE, EF/CSI, and PPH, there will be no need to argue the playground politics of exclusion by association.
Ted: The point of the exercise was to put all this guilt by association in to perspective:
If we are hanging out with juvenile delinquents (YEC’s), then you are hanging out with three-time losers; (Atheist Darwinists)?
If our friends are to be graded down for believing the improbable (God created the earth in seven days), then your friends should be flunked for believing the impossible (the universe created itself).
So inviting you into our big tent is a greater exercise in magnanimity than allowing the YECs to stay. If you choose to stay out, it is your sensibilities that are on trial, not ours.
oops, I mean “into” perspective.
jerry–
you wrote, “I have emailed John Calvert and hopefully he will reply to clear up just what happened in 1999 and 2005.”
Did Mr Calvert reply? If so, are you able to summarize or forward his comments? I for one would like to know what he says about this.