Lee Strobel is a Christian apologist and author whose book, The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence that Points Toward God, is on Dr. Eric Hedin’s reading list for his creationism-infested “science” course at Ball State University. Strobel claims that he was once an atheist, but that the evidence turned him religious.
Wikipedia characterizes the book thusly, which is perfectly in line with the other books on Hedin’s one-sided creationist reading list:
The Case for a Creator consists of interviews with intelligent design advocates and Christian apologists who argue for the existence of a creator. Critics of the book accuse it of bias, which they assert is contrary to the book’s own claims of being neutral and scientifically rigorous.
The advocates interviewed in the chapters and their topic(s) of discussion are as follows:
- Intelligent design advocate and Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture(CSC) fellow Jonathan Wells presents a case against evolution;
- Philosopher of science Stephen C. Meyer discusses the relationship between science and religion, as well as the origin of life, arguing against the likelihood of abiogenesis without the assistance of a creator;
- Philosopher of religion William Lane Craig discusses the Big Bang and argues for a creator as first cause, using the Kalam cosmological argument;
- International Society for Complexity, Information and Design fellow and philosopher Robin Collins discusses the anthropic principle and argues that the universe must be designed by a creator;
- Guillermo Gonzalez (astronomer) and Jay Richards (theologian) present a case that the Rare Earth hypothesis supports intelligent design;
- Biochemist Michael Behe discusses irreducible complexity in biology as an argument for a creator; and,
- Philosopher and theologian J.P. Moreland examines the supposed existence of consciousness separate from the brain, including near-death experiences, as an argument for a creator.
It’s no surprise, then, that over at the wonderfully-named site For God’s Glory Alone Ministry (article expanded from one in The Christian Post) Strobel is quoted as saying that Hedin’s course is great, for it provides the opportunity fo the kids to see all sides:
“I believe we should give teachers, scientists, and students the right to pursue the evidence wherever it takes them – even if it takes them to the politically incorrect conclusion that there’s an Intelligent Designer,” Strobel told The Christian Post via email. “In other words, let’s test the evidence in the marketplace of ideas.
The two problems are these: intelligent design (and also old-earth creationism, also on Hedin’s reading list in the form of books by Hugh Ross), has already been tested in the marketplace, and scientists aren’t buying it. And, of course, Hedin’s course doesn’t present the alternative view that has been tested in the marketplace, and won: modern evolutionary biology. The man is intellectually dishonest, but of course that’s what creationists must do to get their ideas into the classroom (we’ll see how long Hedin is able to get away with this).
Strobel, who apparently hasn’t really looked at Hedin’s class, nevertheless teaches something similar. His defense of this strategy is, really, indistinguishable from the views of P. Z. Myers and Larry Moran, both of whom have—while criticizing content of Hedin’s course—argued that it should nevertheless continue to be taught because eliminating it would violate “academic freedom.” The words in bold below perfectly express P.Z.’s and Larry’s views. I wonder if they realize that their views are perfectly consonant with the creationist call to “teach the controversy” on the college level.
Strobel, whose book, The Case for a Creator, is on the course reading list, says that he doesn’t have any specific knowledge about Hedin’s class, but said, “In my view, a fair teaching of cosmology, physics, biochemistry, biological information and human consciousness tends to point quite naturally toward an Intelligent Designer. Students should be allowed to draw their own conclusions based on the evidence. I certainly don’t see any First Amendment prohibition against free academic inquiry, especially in an elective course like this. I hope students will be able to consider all aspects of scientific evidence and not be unfairly prohibited from considering certain evidence just because some critics don’t like its implications.”
He added, “For me, it was a surface-level understanding of science that paved my path into atheism, but it was a more thorough and open-minded investigation of the broad spectrum of evidence that ultimately led me to conclude there’s a a Creator, as I describe in my book The Case for a Creator.”
LOL! If Ball State keeps this up, their graduation photo will look like this:
[Strobel claims that he was once an atheist, but that the evidence turned him religious.]
lol. Everyone begins as an atheist but only fuckwits become convinced that a Magic Invisible Carpenter exists.
haha
In The Case For The Creater, Strobel also claims to be an attorney. The tone of the book is that of a defense attorney with a weak case who relies on emotional pleas.
I still prefer the Raelian creation story to that of genesis.
And I prefer evolution to raelism.
The Hopi creation story with its nine worlds–on for the creator, one for his/her minions, one for humans–where bad human behavior prompting the destruction of the human world with the good humans saved by living with the ant people is my favorite… we’re in the fourth world… only three more screw ups and we’re done… hoping teaching creationism as science doesn’t do us in… 😉
If christians really want to teach the controversy, should we also teach the Hopi and the Raelian story alongside genesis?
Psst, Mordanicus, keep this under your hat, but scuttlebutt down at the precinct station is that the christians don’t really want to teach the controversy, if you know what I mean…
Of course I know, so do you. The purpose of my question is to demonstrate the hypocrisy which is the foundation of christianity.
Evolution theory is a creation theory of intelligent design.
Should any theories be taught in school?
What about just the truth, Truth 101?
The truth all our children need.
=
“Should any theories be taught in school?”
Of course: The ones that are supported by evidence, are explanatory, are falsifiable, and are accepted by the people who, you know, actually know the subject matter.
I’m not sure why I’m taking your post seriously however.
“Should any theories be taught in school?” I think we should revert back to the ancient Greek methods of teaching; from authority, rote memorisation of theology and philosophy and teaching how to argue. Nothing scientific should be taught. Atomic theory has only been around for just over a century, critical thinking is another modern invention. Creationism/ID (which isn’t a theory by any scientific definition) has been around since humans could think, if it didn’t work we wouldn’t keep it.
I like the Roman way better where you get a Greek slave to teach your kids and have another slave walk them to school 😉
“What about just the truth, Truth 101?”
All truth is theory dependent.
Theory is theory dependent,
And faith faith,
Truth simply is
=
Blah gobbledy blah gook blah…
Well said.
😀
This sentence makes no sense.
I remember when I was in school and they constantly taught us theories: the atomic theory, the theory of electromagnetism, the molecular orbital theory and the germ theory of disease. That was torture. Children don’t need that. They just need the Truth!
Truth is All we need!
=
The perfect doesn’t exist in the real world.
(And the ontological argument is a fallacy.)
And what is the truth? How do we know what is most probably the truth? Observation and direct experience (empiricism) plus peer review and demand for reproducibility (SCIENCE) is the only way to approach the truth.
Truth isn’t probable,
Truth is absolute.
I am,
Are you?
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Truth may be absolute, but our ability to empirically assess something as “true” is always probabilistic.
Perhaps you’ve assessed it too far.
Truth simply is
=
Truth simply is, but how we come to know truth isn’t simple at all.
Then you have made it harder than it is.
Perhaps you should go the other Way.
=
How do understand what is true and what is just human-made fiction without science? Your comments are far too vague to have any meaning.
For some truth is vague and for others like science only probable at best. For religion ye must have faith, and for justice there is only the grayness of fair.
But for a least One, and surely there must me others, truth is simple, absolute, and crystal clear.
Be true,
=
MJA, do you think you could tone down the mystic bullshit con game a bit?
You can be as certain as you want on whatever justification you want, but that has absolutely no bearing on reality whatsoever. Sure, it might feel nice to be that certain, but wetting your bed feels nice for a minute or so, too.
If there’s one thing humans have learned in the past couple millennia, it’s that the only way to have a chance of aligning your beliefs with reality is to test those beliefs against reality, and that’s exactly what science does.
Faith just short-circuits the whole process at some arbitrary point. Faith is awesome for con artists to instill in their marks — and, make no mistrake, religion is the oldest con game of all. But for the marks, faith is the surest way to fall for the con.
You know this, too. You don’t have faith that the Sun will rise in the East tomorrow; you have overwhelming evidence and theory demonstrating that it will. And if it didn’t rise in the East, you wouldn’t have faith that it really did; you’d take the new evidence as an indication that your theory isn’t sound and needs revision.
With faith, you’re just plain screwed. Faith is for fools. Proclaiming your faith is exactly equivalent to painting a giant “PLEASE SCAM ME NOW!” sign on your forehead.
That, and all the claims of the faithful are bizarrely childish. I mean, really? Zombies who like having people thrust their hands in the zombie’s gaping chest wounds? Talking plants (on fire!) that give magic wand lessons to the reluctant hero? An enchanted garden with talking animals and an angry wizard? This is what you have faith in?
Please. Grow up.
Cheers,
b&
Okay, “MJA” you are posting incoherent nonsense here. Your next post will be a coherent and readable presentation of the reasons why you believe in God. If you can’t do that, you’re out of here.
But I can’t understand anything you’ve already said, so I consider that unlikely.
The Truth is, you appear to be deliberately obtuse.
Please demonstrate how you KNOW that Truth simply is…and please avoid tautology.
Okay, I’ll bite: tell us your proposed course syllabus for “The Boundaries of Science” course.
I’ve read Lee Strobel’s book about Jesus. Total moron. The authorities he marshals to support his case are full of BS and make wild conclusions from non-existent “evidence”.
His opinion is worth diddly.
Hi Mr Coyne and everyone in the comments. One of my biology teacher, who draw cartoons about everything related to science and biology, just posted today a cartoon that he made on ID that I think fits perfectly for these classes. If they want to teach “teh controversy”, they should at least point out that all of their “irreducible complexity” seems to be really tiny things. It’s the first image on the top. Thanks
http://peopleinwhitecoats.blogspot.ca/
Those are pretty good!
Clearly not a microbiologist.
I think both you and the cartoon are being far too kind to ID. There is really no such thing as “The Bacterial Flagella” as ID conceives it. Their version is the kind of idealised abstraction used as a conceptual aid. In nature there is a great deal of variety in bacterial flagella. They vary in structure between species; and a single species may have more than one type of flagella.
Flagella may also have more than one function, they are not just for swimming. Some also export chemicals, including toxins responsible for illness. Some anchor the bacteria to a solid substrate. Some are internalised, and provide structural support for the cell.
Bacterial flagella start out as a special case of a secretion system. There are a lot of similar secretion structures in bacterial cell membranes. But in this case what is secreted is the rest of the flagella. The secretion system becomes part of the base of the flagella.
The flagella is powered by hydrogen ions “falling” down a concentration gradient across the cell membrane. This is a common mechanism in secretory structures.
So, we’ve got something that shows great variety. It shares features with some simpler structures. It is a modification of another simpler structure. And, unlike ID’s claim that “indirect” evolution is impossible as it would be hard to imagine a different function for a flagella, we can see that flagella currently have a variety of different functions not related to swimming.
I’ve not yet seen a convincing case of irreducible complexity in a living organism. ID proponents just hope that their audience won’t know enough to call them out when they misrepresent things.
(But I do like the cartoon)
You might then like this one : http://peopleinwhitecoats.blogspot.ca/2011/12/let-god-be-judge.html
But it was funny!
I would add the archaella as an analogous structure with similar, but different, roots, a clear example of convergent evolution.
Speaking of convergent evolution, I presume eukaryote cilia, which I know much less about, would be another example.
Yes, there is similar function, but different structure, for eukaryote cilia. Though IIRC (I may not, it’s been a long time) Behe treats them similarly. Here comes the essay — sometimes I can’t help myself.
I don’t recall as much about eukaryote cilia as I do about the prokaryotes’. But Behe treats them similarly to prokaryotes. He divides them into the same 3 functional abstractions that he does eubacter flagella, then claims they are irreducible based on his abstraction, largely ignoring the underlying biochemistry. (This is going back to about the time of “Darwin’s Black Box”, Behe may have changed his position since then, but I doubt it).
Eukaryote flagella are structurally different to prokaryote flagella. Eukaryote cilia/flagella are extensions of the cytoskeleton. The ideal flagella consists of a basal body and an axoneme. Axonemes have an outer ring of 9 microtubule doublets and a central pair of microtubules. The members of each doublet are heavily cross-linked, and associated with dynein arms. Dyneins also occur elsewhere in eukaryotic cells, they are ATP powered motor protein complexes. In flagella they use the energy from ATP hydrolysis to cause members of a microtubule doublet to slide along each other, resulting in a wave that propagates from the filament’s base to its tip. (This is very simplified, there’s a lot of coordination required.)
The whole thing involves about 250 proteins. Many of them the same or similar to proteins that occur elsewhere in the eukaryotic cell. But we also know there are lots of variations on the theme. Some protozoans, for example, have flagella containing only three doublet microtubules, and no central single microtubles.
I seem to recall a lot of work was done on Chlamydomonas mutants. Some of them were motile, many of them were not. But I can’t find my reference to the article.:(
I should probably note that eukaryotic flagella and cilia are not just associated with swimming. They are also involved in creating currents to “pull” water, and the food particles it contains, towards themselves. Some protozoans use cilia to creep along surfaces. Some eukaryotes use cilia to move stuff over the cell surface. Some use their cilia/flagella to trap prey.
So again we’ve got something that shows great variety. It shares features with some other structures. It is a modification of another simpler structure (the cytoskeleton). It already shows more than one function.
I think the thing that Behe mostly manages to prove is that his abstractions are a poor fit for the systems he models. It’s ironic that he thinks this is somehow meaningful.
There goes an evening – pretty well spent!
The “teaching both sides” argument could have worked 150 years ago. But some humans have progressed since.
I don’t see how that is clearly wrong. In legal terms, it appears very much to be an open question as to whether the BSU course violates the Establishment Clause — certainly the FFRF letter was unable to cite any meaningful legal precedent. And surely we want instructors to be able to present evidence that other may reject because of its implications — after all, evolution is precisely a theory that involves evidence many people reject merely because of its implications.
The problems with the BSU course is not that it violates the First Amendement (I don’t think it does), or that it presents information that some people don’t like (many courses do that). The problem with the BSU course is that the information it provides is wrong. That alone should be sufficient reason for BSU to remove the course and censure its instructor. There is nothing special about its religious content — the problem is that the science course is teaching material that isn’t scientific. As I see it, it’s as simple as that.
It’s a three-fold failure:
1. False advertising: Selling a product (science education) and then delivering religion. It’s fraud.
2. Marketing fail: Making a damned fool of yourself in public (taking BSU as a “person”).
3. Teaching your personal religious opinion in a publicly-funded institution does violate the establishment clause. This has been upheld repeatedly in the US courts.
Yes, it is false advertising, and thus the students have recourse to civil law.
As far as I know, there is no case law involving university courses, at least addressing whether a course can violate the First Amendment in the claimed fashion. (All the case law the FFRF cited regarded the ability of an institution to fire/discipline an instructor, and not whether the institution itself was in violation of the First Amendment.)
This has now been much reviewed in this web site. It is a puzzle that there is a scarcity of public university courses that have gone to litigation for being on the wrong side of the establishment clause. So we may not have a close match in precedent. But please ask yourself this question: Would this course content be acceptable in a public K-12 school? If you can conclude that it would be in violation of the establishment clause, then you must conclude that it is also in violation at a public university. The peripheral issues about it being an elective and about academic freedom are in the end irrelevant. It is established that the course was not an elective for some students. And academic freedom has no basis in law.
Of course the content would not be acceptable in a K-12 class, but the question is whether there are legal considerations that apply specifically to universities. For example, most children are required to attend K-12 classes, whereas no one is required to attend university classes. Most children are required to attend a specific public school in their area, and don’t have choice of a variety of public schools. And children aren’t adults.
I don’t know if any of those would be relevant to First Amendment issues, but I think it is very much an open question, unlike Jerry claims, and I don’t know that precedents at the K-12 level are all that useful a guide as to how the courts would decide.
Just to be clear, I am not at all opposed to testing the issue in court. I just think it is not unlikely that the FFRF would lose.
The government isn’t permitted to establish a religion. That includes government officials in their official capacity promoting religious beliefs.
It even extends to non-government actors using government money for promoting religious beliefs. Your church can take government money to run a soup kitchen, but you can’t use those funds to pay the pastor’s salary.
How it can even be hypothetically okay for a science class to teach religious dogma just because of the tenure status of the professor is utterly beyond me.
Might the courts rule otherwise? Sure. The courts fuck up all the time.
But it’s really quite cut-and-dried.
Cheers,
b&
If it goes to litigation, the decision could well come down after weighing several opposing factors. On the one hand an important point for this course being ok is that it is an elective. On the other hand, I know of no clear guidelines on how to consider electives against the huge responsibility of protecting the establishment clause. On one hand, the original complaint came from a student who was constrained to take the course (due to scheduling?) so this was not an elective for them. Buuut that student had withdrawn the complaint. Maybe this factor will therefore not be considered.
Right now I lean toward this being a violation because of the ample precedent in K-12, and because protecting the establishment clause is one of those sacrosanct things. What judge would want to give the appearance of erosion to that? Can you imagine the Pandora’s box that would open?
That the course is an elective is an irrelevant red herring.
Schools can’t hold “optional” prayers, and they can’t offer credit for religious activities. Religious schools that take federal funds can’t use their funds for theology classes, and public schools with theology departments don’t receive public funds for theology.
The only hypothetical “out” is if one buys the bullshit “teach the controversy” angle, and Dover smacked that one down but good.
Cheers,
b&
What judge [Justice] would want to give the appearance of erosion to that?
Scalia, Roberts, Alito, Thomas …
And sometimes Kennedy.
Going to college is elective in a way that going to high school is not.
Second, professors are not viewed as representing the state’s interesters or being agents of the state, even in the classroom, even when the state pays for that class. HS teachers are seen as agents of the state.
Correct, which is why there are several precedent cases that allow Ball State University to remove Hedin or force him to teach to a defined syllabus. But you cannot leap from “academic freedom has no basis in law” to “what he’s doing is illegal.” If a right or freedom has no basis in law, it could be made illegal at the state level, but it isn’t automatically illegal.
Once again, this is irrelevant.
A church can use government funds to run a soup kitchen, but it can’t use government funds to pay the pastor’s salary — even though church services are entirely voluntary.
So long as the government is paying your salary, you’re a government agent for the purposes of the First Amendment, regardless of public perception.
b&
Ben, do you think that government agency applies also to the professor whose salary is paid from grant funds awarded by the federal or state government? Just curious.
Yes — at least for anything paid for by the grant.
This again isn’t at all unusual or controversial. All federal contractors are required to comply with equal employment opportunity laws, for example — at least for those employees working on the contract.
The “academic freedom get-out-of-jail-free card” simply doesn’t exist. If you take government dollars either in salary or from a grant or contract, you’re subject to government rules for the duration of your tenure or the grant or the contract. Don’t like it? Don’t take government money.
And you can’t use government money to promote religious doctrine, no matter how sugar-coated.
Let’s not forget: Hedin is unabashedly teaching Idiot-Designed Cretinism as a “scientific boundary.” Kitzmiller v Dover was absolutely unambiguous on the matter: ID is religion, not science, and government-paid teachers who teach it are unconstitutionally establishing a state religion.
Cheers,
b&
Ball St could put up a defense that ID is science and should be taught, in which case the whole ID thing would have to be settled for Indiana. After all, Kitzmiller only applies to one district in Pennsylvania. I actually think this is a possibility, since the administration knew Hedin was an evangelist when they hired him, and seem to approve of what he’s doing. If it happened, I would expect the Thomas More Law Center, or Rutherford, or another apologetic law group to defend them, since, unlike Dover, this would have a good chance of being appealed all the way to the top, where they just might win, given the makeup of the SC. I could see ID being declared legal to teach.
It could play out as you describe, tomh, but Kitzmiller v Dover was one of those overwhelming decisions that tends to preclude other jurisdictions from taking a contrary position. Judge Jones didn’t really leave any room for anybody to conclude that ID is anything other than religion, that it isn’t science; findings of fact such as what came out of his ruling tend to stand, especially when as solid as in this case.
Instead, a court would have to decide that there’s a constitutionally-protected legitimate interest in teaching religion in the classroom…and I just don’t see that happening.
Again, not that it’s impossible. The courts have done stupider and stranger things. But the odds of Ball State even making it past the preliminary injunction phase of a court battle are very long, indeed.
Cheers,
b&
Besides, looking at possible consequences instead of working solutions is related to concern trolling. Everything has risks, not everything has rewards – and we all know accommodationism has zip to show.
@ #7
In legal terms, it appears very much to be an open question as to whether the BSU course violates the Establishment Clause — certainly the FFRF letter was unable to cite any meaningful legal precedent.
If it’s an open question perhaps it should be decided in court. Just because the Supreme Court has never ruled on the issue at the university level, doesn’t mean public employees have an open season to proselytize and promote a particular religious viewpoint in classes funded by taxpayer money. The Court has made it very clear that “academic freedom” does not include promoting religion disguised as science. (Edwards v Aguillard)
But Edwards v Aguillard doesn’t involve universities, and my point is that there may be different legal issues involved with those institutions.
Of course it doesn’t involve universities, there are no cases involving universities. Which is a good reason for it to go to court.
There are no cases involving government funded pre-schools, either. Would that make it legal to stock them with religious materials?
I’m not opposed to it going to court — I just don’t think it is a slam-dunk as many folks here do, including our host.
I agree it’s not a slam-dunk case. It should be but it’s not because of the politically correct deference toward people who believe in magic cloud beings.
This quote is the rhetorical equivalent of Lee Strobel putting on a white lab coat and then saying “Hey look, I’m a scientist too” even though he doesn’t actually have any of the training or do any of the work that actual scientists do.
Academic Freedom doesn’t really cover category confusion.
This is not a science course- it’s a tilted slanted course in philosophy of science, and it sure as heck ain’t an astronomy course.
I was once given Strobel’s book to read by, it turns out, someone headed in the other direction. I wasn’t familiar with most of the interviewees at the time, and it’s fascinating to see what a cast of characters it was. I do remember thinking that one would have to suspend reason to even consider being convinced by the arguments.
Just saw the following:
PhD position ‘Psychology of religion and magical thinking’
http://www.uva.nl/en/about-the-uva/working-at-the-uva/vacancies/item/13-161.html
Just as Pres Obama’s drone war is a recruitment tool for terrorists, religion in education must be a fund raiser for FFRF and other secular forces!
Well, there are not many atheists and humanists and assorted nerds who will strap explosives to their body!
“…religion in education must be a fund raiser for FFRF and other secular forces!”
Yes indeed. It certainly works for me. On the other hand, I have been very miserly to the Americans Against Stampeding Unicorns, because they have never convinced me that unicorn stampedes are becoming a serious problem.
Sometimes the connection between donations to organizations and the misdeeds of their opponents is very direct. I recall that one abortion clinic, regularly picketed by anti-choice hecklers, had a fund that helped poor women obtain an abortion; donors pledged a certain amount to the abortion fund for every heckler that showed up outside the clinic. Love it!
I’ve seen Steve Shives ~10 hour review of The Case for Christ, so while I haven’t read it, I’ve got good reason to think I’ve got the gist of it.
Strobel pretends the book to be an unbiased look at said case, but if you examine it, he interviews something like 14 people. Every single one of them unequivocally accepts the claims of the New Testament.
Whats worse, in what can only be seen as an attempt to draw attention to the bias, he has a chapter for ‘the rebuttal evidence’. Oh no, not rebuttal evidence against the case for christ. But the rebuttal evidence for the Jesus Seminar, a grouping of liberal christians who don’t believe the Bible is an absolutely reliable source, but still believe that Jesus almost certainly performed at least one miracle.
In his so called ‘unbiased and skeptical’ look at the evidence for Jesus as the Son of God, the closest he gets to hearing the “No, he wasn’t” side of the argument, is listening to someone else try to shoot down the arguments of people who think that Jesus’ ressurection from the dead was more likely than not.
If Lee Strobel isn’t diagnosibly insane, then he is a charlatan, no mere cognitive dissonance can excuse his gross lack of intellectual rigor. And anyone who buys into that book is not looking for truth, but for confirmation of their own beliefs. Any honest Christian would throw it aside and think that this kind of trash is what gives christians a bad name.
I can only imagine that his book for this class shows similar scholarly credentials. Unless it’s a huge step up from The Case for Christ, if this professor thinks it’s has value, then his first ammendment violations are secondary concerns to his own credulity.
I have read Strobel’s book on Jesus and your are right on.
Shorter version of your review: Strobel’s book is pure bollocks.
“his gross lack of intellectual rigor” Exactly.
The Case For The Creator fails high-school level science. It fails in its ability to quote scientists correctly.
For example Strobel describes a billionth-of-a-billionth change in gravity would cause animals to have massive legs just to avoid being crushed by their own weight. First off, Strobel confuses the gravitational constant with the force of gravity at the earths surface. He is apparently unaware that gravity anomaly and centripetal forces are orders of magnitude greater than his hypothetical change in gravity, yet birds are able to fly from hemisphere to hemisphere–fly! The numbers he uses comes from the book Just Six Numbers, but he misses a page or two of the quote leading to a complete bastardation of what Martin Rees was describing. As a “Christian,” Strobel shouldn’t be so comfortable with bearing false witness.
Ugh. The just 6 numbers thing makes me cross eyed!
I don’t know if anyone else pointed this out but the “politically incorrect” conclusion, given the American public is majority Xtian and according to public polling, would have to be advocacy of evolution and not intelligent design as Lee Strobel asserted. It’s the scientifically and academically correct conclusion, of course. Even Strobel’s quotes are muddle-headed!
Hey MJA! Hello? I think it would be best for you to email me – twiggy120@hotmail.co.uk – I haven’t a clue what you are talking about. It wont make a ruin the fun of the other commenters this way.
From your last comment to me could you answer these questions (in your email to me)? Who is this “One”? Why haven’t they done anything about the absolute truth they hold? If they are speaking the truth then how do we know without testing their claims (i.e by doing science)? How do they know they are speaking the truth and not just arrogant like a million other theologian types?
1.) The ID material should be not be taught in a science class because ID is a religious concept, full stop.
2.) The ID material should be not be taught in a science class because it has been falsified or is completely unsupported by evidence, and is presented in a way that requires a priori acceptance of parochial, faith-based propositions that lie outside any rational standards of inquiry.
Although we can cite #1 as the legal basis for keeping this crap out of science class, the more powerful argument for keeping it out is actually #2. Relying solely on #1 leaves us open to the objection that we could be rejecting true claims solely because they have a religious origin. Although I am grateful that our courts in the US have decided upon descriptions of science and religion that allows us to legally exclude creationist bunk by definition, no questions asked, it should be emphasized that the more potent reason for not exposing students to this stuff is that it is almost surely wrong!
Whenever I get into discussions on this, as I did last week at my daughter’s birthday party, I ask why we should present falsified information to students. Inevitably, someone says that there are things that we are “not sure about”, and that it “should be open to the students to be creative and explore different explanations for things”. I ask why, if we are going to open the floor to wild, supernatural speculation about natural history, do we just limit that to Judeo-Christian speculation?
I then offer my “Wheel of Faith” solution, in which we put a 100 or so creation myths on a wheel, the teacher spins it, and whatever it lands on happens to be “intelligent design hypothesis” for the day. That seems like a good use of classroom time.
Lee Strobel says:
“In my view, a fair teaching of cosmology, physics, biochemistry, biological information and human consciousness tends to point quite naturally toward an Intelligent Designer. Students should be allowed to draw their own conclusions based on the evidence.”
Well, the Vatican says that invisible, malevolent beings called demons sometimes cause mental illness, and that they have two millennia of experience to support this. Should this be presented in psychology courses as an alternative explanation for mental illness, allowing the students to draw their own conclusions based on the evidence???
Again, the reason that we would not allow this claim to be introduced is not necessarily because it relies on the supernatural or is of a religious origin, but because there is not one shred of evidence to support it. But I could think of certain observations that, if true, might indicate that a person was under the control of some other intelligence.
Maybe I’m just in a particularly grumpy mood today, but I find this quote from Strobel especially irksome:
the politically incorrect conclusion that there’s an Intelligent Designer
It implies that these poor ID & young earth creationists are cruelly silenced by the mean main stream scientists who have actual evidence for the theories they espouse.
I am so tired of the whining and complaining about imagined unfairness…..pffft market of ideas – give me a break!
“. . . I hope students will be able to consider all aspects of scientific evidence and not be unfairly prohibited from considering certain evidence just because some critics don’t like its implications.” –Lee Strobel
Hello! Scientists have already DONE that! It’s called peer review. What he really means is that all science should be handed over to the ignorant public for their approval.
None of these clowns is honest in what they are doing. They claim that there is a legitimate scientific controversy where there is not one. As a counter example, scientists who were critical of plate tectonics were arguing from what they thought were scientific findings, as I recall. When it became clear that the evidence for plate tectonics was stronger, they accepted it. I don’t see that happening with the ID people.
When I graduated with my Master’s degree in biology, one of my former [church] mentors gave me Strobel’s book “Case for Christ” and included a hand-written note asking me to promise to at least read it and “ask God to show you the Truth.” Strobel is highly popular in the evangelical circle, along with other creationist authors who present “science” or “evidence.”
“Behe discusses irreducible complexity.”
This is proof positive that facts and having been rebuked by nearly every credible thinker on the planet has absolutely no effect whatsoever on the morons who continue to push and/or accept this intellectual garbage.
Behe and his ilk are truly morons.
Robert M. Price wrote the excellent ” The case against the case for Christ ” as a rebuttal to ” The case for christ ” by Lee Strobel.
Also Price’s ” The reason driven life ” is a super reply to Rick Warren’s ” The purpose driven life ”
Strobel should study the La Brea Tar pits at Los Angeles, how could the fossils there possibly fit with Noah flood myth. There is a La Brea woman dated to 9000 BP – before Genesis has Adam & Eve – 6000 BP.. How would Strobel account for the mammoth, sabre tooth cats, ground sloths etc found there and dated between 40,000-11,000 BCE. How would the tar pits still be on the surface if there was a global flood 2300 BCE ?
It is thought there are so many fossils in the Tar Pits due to situations where a mammoth would get stuck in the tar, sabre tooth cats would try to get to it to eat it and also get stuck. The L.A. Tar Pits were mentioned in a good film on BBC2 Sun 19th May ” Ice age giants ” by Dr Alice Roberts
The film also mentioned the Rampart caves in
the Grand Canyon where there are mounds of fossilized Pleistocene ground sloth dung, also dated older than 11,000 BCE.
@TheTweetofGod explains this so well. If it weren’t for the Tweet of God and this site I’d be insane by now:
https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod/status/328709798772219905/photo/1
Hi Diana,
TheTweetofGod looks funny Thanks, I’m following that now.
Genesis 1v2 should have said, ” And then God
placed loads of uranium in the Earth’s crust so that 7000 years later humanity could destroy themselves with a nuclear war. ”
Genesis 1v3 should have said, ” And then God placed enough coal, shale, oil & gas deposits so that humans would be able to raise C02 levels in the atmosphere enough to cause run away global warming ”
Genesis 3v3 should have said, ” And then God placed a tree in the garden so that humans could be tricked into disobedience so he would have an excuse to make their lives more miserable ”
The almighty Fraud works in mysterious ways
Just FYI Lee Strobel takes the old-earth creationist position (which would account for the dating you propose.)
Has PZ ever really explained his position in detail? For example, does he disagree with the Dover decision? If not, why is this case different? Because it is college and elective? If public funds paying a teacher to promote a specific religion is a violation of the first
Sorry…keyboard error…picking up where I left off
…amendment, then why is it not a violation of the first amendment if the class is elective? If the high school class was AP Biology, and was elective for the high school students, would that be ok then with PZ?
Agreed! The idea that you can avoid a class that pushes religion doesn’t work, for nobody has to go to high school (you can be home-schooled) and, as you say, some high school classes ARE elective. P.Z. and Larry’s argument would imply that it’s okay to teach creationism in high school A.P. biology courses.
I don’t get the “electivity” argument at all.
Unfortunately, it does matter that Hedin’s courses are electives at a university level, and it does matter that he is a university instructor, and not a teacher in a public middle school or high school.
Establishment Clause case law DOES include some fouled-up or confused concepts. Although precedents evolve (piecemeal, in fits and starts, and through ad hoc tinkering) like other aspects of human culture, there are elements that have stuck around for quite a while (e.g., the three-part test from Lemon v. Kutrzman(1971), even though several members of the current Supreme Court have said it should be ditched.)
The Lemon test, which is generally applied to statutes and specific government appropriations, does not have an explicit “coercion” element. There is a separate “coercion” test that was probably first articulated in Lee v. Weisman (1992). On the other hand, it’s possible for an Establishment Clause violation to occur in the absence of governmental compulsion (see Engel v. Vitale (1962) the first Warren-era school prayer case).
Finally, there is a “governmental endorsement” test, often applied in cases involving courthouse displays of Nativity creches or the 10 Commandments. Lynch v. Donnelly (1984) and County of Alleghany v. ACLU (1989). Confused or frustrated yet? Many federal judges and litigators admit that they are.
The trouble is (and not necessarily for any logical reasons), there are no reported csaes, to my knowledge, in which a student plaintiff successfully sued a public college or university for an Establishment Clause violation on the grounds of the religious content of an elective science course. I’ve also seen no csaes in which a college student was a plaintiff and in which a college professor was held to be an “agent of the state” in the same way that a high school teacher is.
If I did this sort of litigation work and if one of Hedin’s students came to me, wanting to sue Ball State, I’d recommend a suit based on a claim of misrepresentation. If I did include an Establishment Clause “count” in my student client’s complaint, surviving a motion to dismiss that count would be a long shot.
On the other hand, ample precedent supports Ball State’s right to require Hedin to remove the religious apologetics from his course. For FFRF, the path of least resistance toward the goal was and is to hector and encourage the university to take action against Hedin . . . action that a federal court would be most reluctant to take.
While that answer is helpful to understand the law in this situation, I sincerely doubt that that’s what PZ was thinking.
THIS description of some related decisions is very informative. Many of the comments here (including my own) are focused on thoughts about what should be determined based on a few ideas about absolutes. But what needs to be considered, as you lay out, is the balance of factors like precedence and their interpretation for the case at hand. That is what a judge will likely do after all.
Let’s go ahead and apply the Lemon test to Hedin’s class. We will assume that Hedin is a government agent in his official capacity acting on behalf of Ball State University, an arm of the government.
1. The government’s action must have a secular legislative purpose;
This one could go either way.
2. The government’s action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion;
There is no question but that is exactly what Hedin is doing. ID is religion, and his course has the primary effect of advancing it over the science he is ostensibly supposed to be teaching.
3. The government’s action must not result in an “excessive government entanglement” with religion.
Again, by promoting religion (ID) as a reasonable “alternative” on a par with peer-reviewed science, Hedin is, in his official capacity as an agent of the government, interjecting religion into the heart of science. It don’t get any more entangled than that.
So, unless you wanted to argue that Hedin isn’t a government agent, even though he’s being paid by the government to teach this course on government-owned property using government-owned equipment and supplies for the purpose of applying government-sanctioned endorsement (grades and diplomas and transcripts) of those who successfully complete his course of religious sponsorship…well, even that clearly doesn’t hold water, either.
Cheers,
b&
Ben,
Your application of the Lemon test here illustrates the problem that a federal court (and a student plaintiff’s lawyer) would have: A public university, although partially supported with tax dollars, is not an “arm of the [state] government,” and a university professor (tenured or non-tenured) is not an “agent of the government” to the same extent as a teacher in a public secondary school. Those assumptions are not warranted under the existing case law.
Ball State University, like other public universities and colleges, is a tax-exempt educational organization, not a government agency. Under Indiana law, it is labeled a “state educational institution” (along with Purdue, I.U., Indiana State, Vincennes, etc.) because it was in existence on a key date in 1971. Its buildings, facilities and equipment are not “government-owned.” Public universities get accreditations from other independent accrediting organziations, and not (to my knowledge) from state government.
In Indiana, at least, the state commission on higher education has no powers with respect to curricula or state university operations; state government gets involved only in regulating how tuition and mandatory fees are increased, and in regulating some scholarships and grants and deciding the amounts of state (tax money) support.
In any other context, that level of involvement would obligate the institution in question to comply with all sorts of federal regulations, especially including EEO and FHA and other civil rights and non-discriminatory practices and generally prohibited from doing things the government itself is prohibited from doing.
So why on Earth should they get a free pass on the first and most fundamental prohibition on government activity?
If Hedin wants to preach Christianity, he’s more than welcome to do so. He just can’t do it on the government’s dime or in the government’s name or on the government’s clock. That’s all this is about.
Cheers,
b&
I’m replying to Ben’s message below because there was no link button under his reply.
In a rational legal system, state universities arguably would be held to more numerous and more stringent standards. They ARE subject to state and federal laws in general, including the federal civil rights laws. There are numerous cases in which state universities were required to be “content neutral” toward religious and non-religious student organizations and on-campus speakers with respect to the use of university facilities, university printing of publications, etc. It is unfortunately not easy to successfully state a claim for an Establishment Clause violation against a state college or university merely because of the content of a course.
Ben, if what I’m saying on these various threads dissatisfies you, I encourage you to get a second opinion from another lawyer, or from a bartender. Or you could lobby Jeff Flake or John McCain to introduce or support federal legislation to prohibit state colleges and universities from allowing religious content in their science courses.
Cheers
Man, I wish I could have told that to my aerodynamics professor back when I was in school. Kutta–Joukowski theorem?! Everyone knows wings work because of Bernoulli. Teach the controversy! Oh wait, I have to design planes that actually fly.
But honestly, that’s what gets to me about these people – their seemingly fair minded insistence on being open with students about multiple possibilities when we all know these types of arguments wouldn’t hold any water in other fields. It’s just special pleading for religion.
Oh well – I’m not saying anything most commenters here haven’t heard already.
Oh I know – teach the controversy: aliens made the pyramids, homunculi can be found in sperm, regular leechings keep you healthy, women aren’t as smart as men, cranium size is directly correlated to intelligence.
If students can draw their own conclusions can they also make up their own answers to math problems and make up answers to history questions?
haha once I got partial credit for making up total baloney answers for a world history course for which I hadn’t studied. This was sophomore year in high school and the teacher taught almost nothing but world history. We had essay tests and he had graded a couple hundred of them when he got to my answer. I think I said that Napoleon was a circus performer or something. He told me he needed the laugh but I shouldn’t try to get away with it twice.
Maybe it depends where you are on the gradient of knowledge. If you are a child who has been brought up in an environment where the Bible is the unquestionable literal truth & facts of the world , period, then it could be helpful to read Lee Strobel’s ” The Case for Christ “. This is because at least it is looking at the wider debate. Strobel mentions some of the big names in the debate on each side. If you were to look up these names on Youtube you would soon hear them in debate & be getting even more of the whole argument.
Strobel mentions Karen Armstrong, Dan Barker, W. L. Craig, Anthony Flew, Jesus Seminar, C.S. Lewis, David Strauss, Barbara Thiering among others.
It’s about engaging in complexity & developing your own interpretation to the issues. Well try fitting all the evidence into the model of evolution by natural selection. Culture evolves. It makes a good fit IMO.
An apologist once sent me a copy of The Case For The Real Jesus. I still haven’t read it. I’m tossing up whether I’m obligated to read it on the basis that it was sent to me, or that I shouldn’t waste my time on nonsense (90% of everything is crap – I shouldn’t waste my time on the bad)
It is interesting to look through the index of a book to see what other authors & key ideas get mentioned. I think that is maybe the best place to start reading a book.
I looked on Amazon at ” The last Testament, a memoir by God ” revealed through the prophet David Javerbaum. It could have been improved a lot by mentioning Jerry Coyne, PZ Meyers, Robert M. Price, John W. Loftus, Sean Carroll, Steve Jones etc even Francis S.Collins, John F. Haught, Kenneth R. Miller in the index.
I wonder if God could be encouraged to tweet more about these authors.
On amazon i could only see up to the start of the Noah myth and it didn’t mention that Bible genealogy, as calculated by Rev Ussher, puts it at 2300 BCE. I wonder if God will admit that there was no mention of a significant Hebrew slave presence in Egyptian records. I think ” The last testament of God ” should be either a confession of all the things he got muddled up about [ He forgot to take notes during the 4.5 billion years of helping evolution along and then it hadn’t seemed so long because he was having fun etc ] or maybe God should come storming in outraged that the writers of Bible & Koran made up so much crap about him. The fact was that he didn’t realize life had occurred on Earth until just now or he didn’t realize that consciousness would become so advanced in animals. His great experiment got totally out of hand.
I see God does mention in the index some names worth looking up : Code of Hammurabi, Dan Brown,’ Da Vinci Code ‘, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Ricky Gervais, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, tectonic plates, Monty Python, Mark Twain
I started reading Strobel back in the late 90s, and just couldn’t slog through more than about the first 50 pages. (A Case for A Creator? I forget which one, because I was also trying to read another similar book around the same time.)
Anyway, I did a little searching around, and found several good articles reviewing Strobel and similar apologetics on the old Internet infidels site. (Now secularweb.org). Much more interesting reading, and better written, by far.
Wait, what!? Giving the equivalent of astrologers describing astronomy room is “scientifically rigorous”?
And, being neutral is “scientifically rigorous”? The whole idea with science is to not be neutral and find out the non-neutral facts beyond neutral null hypotheses and use of “he said, she said” ideas!
Strobel, you stupid oaf, now you have made ceiling cat weep.
sub
I can remember the classes on evolution at school when I was 15. I remember being in turmoil about it because church had filled my head with, ” if you believe evolution then you will go to hell, you need to witness to the biology teacher, take a stand for christianity, defend the bible, make converts or be damned “, etc but I hated the idea of threatening anyone with hell and i had a lot of misgivings about christianity too so I just kept quiet about it. I was tied in knots about the whole thing not knowing if i wanted to go toward christianity or away from it. However I think i missed my chance to get help from the teacher, although he might have been too afraid to comment on religion in case somebody’s parents complained. Partly I couldn’t think what to say or ask.
Maybe from that position I should have just said to the teacher, ” But the bible says God created the world, so how can it have been by evolution ? What about the difference between the Bible & evolution? ” What might his reply have been ?
Would he have recommended some books for me to read.
Would he have said in front of the class that Genesis was the best guess of those writers 2500 years ago but that evolution by natural selection was a much better theory & had much more evidence to support it?
Would he have said, ” Well if evolution is true then there probably is no hell so you can’t go there “.
Would he have said , ” You need to study history & comparative religion & higher criticism of the bible “.
What is the standard response for teachers to hand out now a days ? How many teachers say, ” Well for a start you should study ” Why evolution is true ” by Jerry Coyne. Get to understand the case extremely well before you make a decision about whether it is plausible or not.
I don’t remember my teacher asking, ” Now has anyone got issues with the theory of evolution because if you do then read x,y,z and if you still have issues write me a question and I’ll try to answer ”
Maybe if I’d had a chance to voice my doubts I would have been reassured & learned the details . Doubts like, ” Aren’t most of the fossils just tiny bits like 1% of the skeleton and a whole load of guessing is going on? The fossils aren’t clear what they are, they need expert interpretation , so then you are trusting the scientist ?
Why would anyone trust a priest ?
If I found myself in the situation of the teacher you describe, if it wasn’t something I could quickly dismiss and steer the class back on topic, this is the sort of thing I’d do.
I’d first start by reminding the class that it’s a science class, and, as such, the valid topics for discussion are only those that have survived the peer review process. I’d take a quick moment to remind the class of the significance of the peer review process: that anonymous submissions are sent to anonymous reviewers who ensure that the methodology used to gather the evidence was sound and that the conclusions are supported by the evidence — and that this includes mundane things such as double-checking the math and the like. Papers are either rejected with suggestions for improvement or accepted for publication; once published, the community as a whole then performs a similar analysis and anybody interested in confirming the results by repeating the experiments and analyses is welcome to do so. As a result, mistrakes and frauds are caught sooner rather than later, as there’s nowhere to hide — especially since there’s at least as much glory in proving somebody worng as there is in coming up with something new in the first place.
I’d then dryly note that the truth claims of the Bible have not made it into the peer-reviewed literature and, as such, whatever their merits, they are not suitable topics of discussion in a science classroom. I’d remind the student that there are many very appropriate venues for such topics, including seminaries and Bible study groups, but that discussions of theology are as unwelcome in the science class as discussions of semiconductor bandgap resistance are in a class on eighteenth century Russian poetry.
If the student then had objections to specific claims of modern evolutionary biology, such as the completeness of the fossil record or whatever, I’d hopefully already have planned on covering those topics (assuming it was an introductory class). As such, I’d either suggest that the student save those objections until after I’d had a chance to cover the relevant material, or I’d use it as an opportunity to jump right into said relevant material right away. And, at that point, we should be right back on topic and the crisis should be averted.
Of course, there’s only so much depth one can cover in any class. If a student started attempting to snowball me with, for example, some of Behe’s blather about biochemical complexity and started tossing out polysyllabic chemical names, I’d stop the student, suggest that that topic is a bit more advanced and off-subject than is suited for the prerequisites of the course, and offer to meet the student and all others interested at my favorite cheap restaurant where we could continue the conversation over dinner…but, in the mean time, can we continue with the subject of today’s lecture?
Or, in short: remind the student that this is a science class; remind the student what science is and why it works; note that religion isn’t science; treat objections relevant to the course materials just like any other non-religious objection; and offer to address extracurricular concerns in an appropriate extracurricular venue.
Cheers,
b&
Hi Ben Goren,
Thanks for that excellent professional answer.
With the “Why evolution is true ” & internet & wikipedia & Youtube it is easy to get lots of information on evolution now a days. I was reading p 106 of WEIT about Glossopteris and found a helpful map on wikipedia showing distribution of fossils of Glossopteris, Lystrosaurus, Cynognathus, Mesosaurus :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Snider-Pellegrini_Wegener_fossil_map.svg
I’m still hunting for more information – diagram / photos – of how the glacial striations point away from Antarctica. I found Kelley’s island, Ohio on my travels. Wouldn’t the striations mostly just follow the valley or were there some across enough mountain tops to be able to tell ? Were there many valleys running north to south ?
Wikipedia article doesn’t actually say which direction the striations on Kelley’s island run. I expect north south. Checked several other sites but they don’t care to say either.
It would be good if wikipedia quoted ” Why evolution is true ” on more occasions.
Sorry, noticed the diagram 21 on p 102 of WEIT with arrows indicating direction of glacial striations – embarrassment – note to self, pay attention to details.
Wonder if there are links to the patches of striation those arrows refer to. I’ll probably find it in the book if I read more carefully.
A good detailed animation of continental drift can be seen on Youtube South Atlantic Digital Geological Atlas- South Atlantic Openings
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25Vhjl3u_Dk
Wonder how Lee Stobel is going to deny all that data ? What is his alternative theory anyway ? It all happened by magic over 7 days ? Or maybe
yes we evolved and all that but there is still a God to take us to happy ever after. He’d be better to say, ” God helped at the difficult bits of evolution, now just what were those very gradual transitions which enabled things like the evolution of carnivorous caterpillar, Eupethecia staurophragma to eat drosophila on Hawaii , what tinkering did God need to do”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5qijI–v9E
If people are prepared to admit that caterpillars etc evolved after a fall of Adam & Eve 6000 years ago then why not accept that evolution is the explanation for all life. Are religious people going to say that Satan made animals carnivorous after the fall, well how did he do it then. Yet fossils show carnivores always existed.