ASA in Science
Thanks to Eugenie Scott of the NCSE in Berkeley, CA, ASA was cited in Science, (vol. 280, 10 APR 98, p. 194) in an article, "Academy Rallies Teachers on Evolution," by Constance Holden. The article covers a National Academy of Sciences report attempting to put evolution at the core of the nation's government school biology curriculum.
Teachers must be able to communicate that science is based not just on observation and experimentation but also on inference ... (Eugenie Scott, Science, vol. 280, p. 194)
Perhaps ASA's book, Teaching Science, with its student exercises, has given the NAS the idea of providing similar exercises in the report, requiring, for instance, that students make inferences about the behavior of extinct animals based on their fossil footprints.
Calling evolution a theory does not mean it's just a hunch. (NAS report)
Scott noted that there is great interest among K-12 teachers for the kind of information the report provides. She was paraphrased in the article as saying:
Teachers must be able to communicate that science is based not just on observation and experimentation but also on inference, says Scott, who claims there is a widespread misapprehension among the general public that if something is not directly observable, it's not science. Indeed, she notes, a group called the American Scientific Affiliation has drafted a model law that would require teachers and textbook publishers to differentiate between "evidence" and "inference" in teaching evolution.
The "model law" is the ASA Science Education Commission's resolution to teach evolution as science, not as an ideologically loaded aspect of either a materialist worldview or a specific theological position on creation. It appears in the current version of ASA's Teaching Science booklet, which includes student exercises in discernment of facts and inferences.
The first point to make about Darwin's theory is that it is no longer a theory, but a fact. (Julian Huxley, Issues in Evolution, p. 41)
Earlier in the article, Stanford biologist Donald Kennedy's panel, who issued the report, took pains to correct a major misunderstanding that they regarded as hindering the teaching of evolution: calling evolution a theory does not mean it's a hunch. The report defines theory as an explanation for a set of known facts and observations. For evolution, these are facts and observations about "similarities among organisms" and the "extraordinary variety of life." * John Wiester
Jim Sire Encounters Richard Dawkins
Itinerant Christian apologist James W. Sire did not plan on having Richard Dawkins' second lecture overlap his own at DePauw U., but 60 people, 20 of whom were not Christians, showed up for Sire's talk anyway. Sire subsequently attended Dawkins' third lecture, "Will the Real God (If Any) Please Stand Up?" and found its delivery eloquent and its approach "profoundly frustrating, selecting for the enemies of purely naturalist science the easy target of astrology rather than, say, Michael Behe ..."
When Sire asked Dawkins why he omitted reference to scientists like Behe, "he launched into a[n] acidic attack on Behe as 'cowardly' and 'lazy.' He should be looking for mechanistic explanations of what he calls 'irreducible complexity,' Dawkins said, not leaping to God as an explanation." When Sire objected to the ad hominem argument, Dawkins admitted it, but went on to say that Behe does not offer one iota of proof for irreducibility.
Sire's comment on the encounter was that, while Dawkins did not explicitly say that he was an atheist, from that point of view there could be no "irreducible complexity." Sire characterized Dawkins' argumentative ploys as obfuscation, name-calling, and motive-labeling, and cautioned Christians and atheists alike to avoid them.
Sire can be reached at e-mail address: GTWR76A@prodigy.com
Industrial Commission Background
What it takes for an active ASA commission is a promoter and leader. ASA's Industrial Commission chairman, John Osepchuk, has been taking the IC through its orientation phase, where members discuss what the IC will be and do.
John drafted an IC mission statement in June, 1996 and offered it for review. John has extensive scientific involvement in whether electromagnetic fields pose a human health problem, and his interest carries over to environmental issues and organizations that promote various positions, and "junk science."
What John hoped to achieve in early 1997 was a basis for ASAers to contribute to an ASA consensus, if there is one. If not, "the objective is to provide a forum for both sides to be heard." By June 1997, the Mission Statement draft was distributed in anticipation of its discussion at ASA97. Its major provisions involved sharing among ASAers about struggles faced in their jobs over scientific truth and morality, and advising ASA leadership on controversies in industry and technology, and when a position needs to be taken.
John mailed the draft to about 100 interested ASAers and by late July, sent to them an analysis of their responses. Generally, John wrote, responses were supportive, but with a wide range of opinions. John concluded that the respondents do not want to try to promote or develop specific ASA positions and that the IC should, at least, stimulate discussion on issues limited to those selected by the IC (or ASA generally) for review.
The most recent activity was reported last issue ("ASA Industrial Commission Warming Up," MAY-JUN98 ASAN, p. 3). Dennis Feucht had asked Osepchuk whether the IC could get a group of expert ASAers together to resolve what the science behind global warming is and issue a report on it. John admits a certain bias regarding the issue for himself, ever since he heard Albert Gore dismiss Prof. Lindzen of MIT as not "within the mainstream scientific community" on talk radio.
The need is evident that the truth about global warming (whatever it is) be determined and stated in a report that ASAers can use for themselves, in their churches or other organizations. With the wide range of opinions about environmental matters within ASA, and with a strong Christian commitment by ASAers to truth, ASA is well-positioned to at least state what the various claims are and provide analysis of their support. Such a report would not be likely to present a consensus, but would serve to organize the nature of the controversy and offer the best scientific arguments in a clear and readable fashion. Besides extending ASA's literature offering, the report could help Christians and others get to the bottom of a major, scientifically-engaged popular issue of our times.
George Murphy Expands Science-Theology Ministry
George Murphy is a pastor and theoretical physicist who has decided to give more attention to speaking, writing and resource development on science-theology issues. He has conducted several workshops during the past year on "Preaching in a Scientific World." His attractive brochure describes what he is providing to others on "Faith and Science": workshops, lectures and presentations to groups of laity or clergy with varying backgrounds in theology or science.
Wiester Stirs Up Chautauqua Event
by John Wiester
The Chautauqua program, "Creation, Evolution or Both? A Multiple Model Approach," was held May 7-9, 1998, and was taught, as usual, by Craig E. Nelson of Indiana University. His key reading is Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy by Arthur Strahler, whose "spin" is straight out of Eugenie Scott's National Center for Science Education and the National Academy of Sciences book, Science and Creationism.
I attended this course last year, showed the Provine/Johnson debate, held at Stanford University, and stirred the class by challenging Nelson on both facts and interpretation. The class of 30 consisted of about eight Christians who were appreciative of alternative views, in presenting alternatives to accommodationist approaches. Several participants, who were college professors, were specialists in various fields, such as physical anthropology, and we all derived great benefit from their input.
I encourage others in applying to attend this course, which has minimal cost; it is subsidized by the National Academy of Sciences. If one or more ASAers could attend, it would be a great service to others addressing issues in science and religion.
To give you a taste of the fun you might have, Nelson was attempting to close the course by assuring us that science and religion are not in conflict, by having us read an article by the "authority" on the subject, Stephen J. Gould (our 1998 AAAS president), entitled "Nonoverlapping Magisteria: Science and religion are not in conflict, for their teachings occupy distinctly different domains," originally printed in Natural History, March 1997. It was opportune to use Phil Johnson's technique of pointing out to the class that one must first define the words "science" and "religion" before claiming they are compatible.
I had with me Gould's article from the evolution issue of Natural History (June 94), "The Power of This View of Life," where he states (p. 8), after informing us that Nature was not made for us or with us in mind, that it is "Better to learn a stern truth about marvelous multifariousness (and cosmic indifference to us) than to persist in a myth of warm cuddliness or intrinsic harmony that might channel proper attention from our own bodies and minds (true humanism) as the source of ethics and value."
I pointed out to the class that when your religion is evolutionary humanism, of course it is compatible with Darwinism. Whether Darwinism is compatible with the biblical worldview is the point at issue, and it should not be deflected by Gould's smooth rhetoric.
Nelson quickly changed the subject, but it was a wonderful ending to four days of exposing the class to greater rigor in defining ambiguous key words of creation/evolution. I hope some of you can attend the 1999 course. * Timothy Chen
John Polkinghorne Speaks
John Polkinghorne has written an essay on the mathematical nature of reality, entitled, "One World: The Interaction of Science and Theology." It is a mimeographed paper of a speech he gave at Queen's College, Cambridge, (March 2, 1993). It is available from Full Text Paper Copies, P.O. Box 797, Ipswich, MA 01938. Specify the paper by name. What follows is a slightly edited quotation from the paper:
What is mathematics? Mathematics is the free exploration of the human mind. Our mathematical friends sit in their studies, and out of their heads they dream up the beautiful patterns of mathematics. If mathematics is not your subject, just think of mathematics as being a pattern-creating, pattern-analyzing subject. What I'm saying is that some of the most beautiful patterns thought up by mathematicians are found actually to occur in the structure of the physical world around us. In other words, there is some deep-seated relationship between the reason within (the rationality of our minds - in this case mathematics) and the reason without (the rational order and structure of the physical world around us). The two fit together like a glove. º Why are our minds so perfectly shaped to understand the deep patterns of the world around us?
You have a choice in these matters. You can always just shrug your shoulders and say, "Well, that's just the way it happens to be, and a bit of good luck to you chaps who are good at mathematics." My instincts as a scientist, as someone who is searching for understanding, is not to be as intellectually lazy as that. I want to ask the question a famous theoretical physicist called Eugene Wigner once asked: "Why is mathematics so unreasonably effective in understanding our physical world?" You might reply, "That's pretty easy - evolutionary biology will explain that for you." If our minds didn't fit the world around us, we just wouldn't have survived in the struggle for existence. Now that is obviously true, but it's only true up to a point.
It's true about our experience of the everyday world of rocks and trees where we have to dodge the rocks and miss the trees, and it's true of our mathematical thinking of the world, which I suppose amounts to a little elementary arithmetic and a little elementary Euclidean geometry. But when I'm talking about the power of mathematics to illuminate and give understanding of the physical world, I'm not just talking about the everyday world. I'm talking for example, about that counter-intuitive, unpredictable quantum world. That is a world that we can't visualize, but we can understand it and, for its understanding we need very abstract mathematics, ultimately the mathematics of spontaneously broken gauge-field theories - which I'm sure you'll agree is fairly abstract mathematics.
Paul Dirac invented something called quantum field theory which is fundamental to our understanding of the physical world. I can't believe Dirac's ability to invent that theory, or Einstein's ability to invent the general theory of relativity, is a sort of spin-off from our ancestors having to dodge saber-toothed tigers. It seems to me that something much more profound, much more mysterious is going on. I would like to understand why the reason within the reason fit together at a deep level. Religious belief provides me with an entirely rational and entirely satisfying explanation of that fact. It says that the reason within and the reason without have a common origin in this deeper rationality which is the reason of the Creator, whose will is the ground both of my mental and physical experience. That's for me an illustration of theology's power to answer a question, namely, the intelligibility of the world, that arises from science but goes beyond science's unaided power to answer. Remember, science simply assumes the intelligibility of the world. Theology can take that striking fact and make it profoundly comprehensible (pp. 6-8)
Taken from ASA list-server post by: * Robert DeHaan
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