The academic in me...
I heard a rather irritating story on NPR last week when driving home. It was all about academics that support ID (intelligent design) who feel "threatened" at their universities and are afraid to "speak out." The reporter did throw in a few lines here and there about how the vast majority of scientists support evolution, and how ID isn't science by scientific standards, but the overall impression the story created was of these poor, benighted people struggling to speak freely on evil, coercive campuses. It irritated me for many reasons, not least that people get denied tenure, or don't get their contracts renewed for any number of reasons -- there isn't any special vendetta against ID proponents -- although why any university should give tenure to people who spit in the face of biological science is beyond me. Most of all, though, I resented once again the presentation of ID as though it's a reasonable idea, and that the principles of free speech are violated when universities don't support and promote individuals who advocate it. For one thing, this isn't a matter merely of being able to sound off about ID in the odd faculty forum, but of inserting it into the curriculum, or having ID material published in peer-reviewed journals. There are standards to be upheld, whether one likes it or not. Would the same story be told about people who wanted to introduce alchemy into chemistry classes? Or who wanted to talk about the theory of humors as an alternative to contemporary biomedical thought because of the "holes" in our modern view of medicine? Far from it! But sadly, the media appears to have been convinced by the ID public relations machine that there are real flaws in evolutionary theory that ID purports to repair.Most of all, I'm depressed by the fact that so few reporters or commentators understand the dire significance of transforming our definition of science to include the action of supernatural beings. This wouldn't just take us back to before the scientific revolution; it takes us back beyond the ancient Greeks!
posted by Sylvie @ 6:46 AM
0 Comments
