Responses to “Humility: the missing link”
Patricia Corboy distorted Eugenie Scott’s presentation when accusing her of failing to consider serious arguments for Intelligent Design. In fact, Scott presented Dembski’s Explanatory Filter and then gave both a logical rebuttal and a corresponding counterexample. Further, Scott concisely explained the greater-than-facts theory of evolution and its relation to observations in animal populations. Since theories stand or fall based on their correspondence to the data, this sort of explanation, along with her rebuttal of challenges to the theory, is precisely how one would expect Scott to defend her position. Also, there’s no reason to expect Scott to distinguish between “the simple theory of evolution” and Darwinism because the theory, as it stands today, is basically Darwinian. Corboy described Darwinism as a “naturalistic religion.” As science, it is of course a naturalistic explanation of data. Some scientists take evolution further, as Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins has said, to imply a universe with “no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” Others may fail to distinguish between the claims of biology proper and such philosophical conclusions, but criticism of this ought to be directed towards mistaken teachers, not at Darwinian biology broadly. Scott herself, though, identified the proper bounds of science and acknowledged that they do not extend to such religious issues. While it would be wrong for scientists to consider evolution an unassailable dogma, Scott made it clear that she and the scientific community would welcome any better explanation of the origin of the species. Science rewards those who attack established thought, but attack it with good science. If a scientist were to refute evolution, she would be biology’s Einstein.
Jonathan Oatess, ‘08
The debate of evolution versus Intelligent Design almost never came up when I was a student at Hillsdale in the early 1980s. I do, however, remember it coming up twice, once indirectly and once directly, but outside the classroom. It showed up indirectly on a Biology 101 final. The question had to do with the Soviets proclaiming there was no God because they didn’t see him when they went into space (or closer to heaven). The correct answer was this was a nonsensical statement because science sought to explain natural, not supernatural, phenomena, such as religion. The two shouldn’t be considered in the same context. By extension, Intelligent Design doesn’t belong in the science classroom. The one time I heard it explicitly discussed outside the classroom was with one of my biology professors, whom I consider to be one of the most conservative people I have ever met.
“Evolution explains what was done, Intelligent Design explains who did it,” he said.
Put religion in religion classes and science in science classes. Story over.
Dave Kellogg, ‘83