I have collected an extensive, but hardly exhaustive, list of educators, scientists and religious people supporting evolution and/or speaking out against Intelligent Design.
I will move the list to PandasThumb once I finish the translation from HTML to BBCode and clean up the organization (such as alphabetizing the states and adding an index).
If you are aware of any additional links please add a comment and I will update the list to reflect the latest, most up-to-date list.
I think your list might benefit from the 125 or so University of Texas profs, and the 100 or so Rice University profs who signed letters urging intelligent design be left out of textbooks. The letters are in the transcripts of the 2003 textbook hearings at the Texas State Board of Education site.
Wow, that’s pretty cool. You didn’t tell us you had your owm blog!
Thanks Ed I will add the references. Steve, I finally caught up with the rest of the world, where everyone has their own personal blog. In my case I intend to use it for ‘Wedgie World’ postings not really relevant to PT but still of interest.
You could mine this page at Panda’s Thumb.
Botanical Society of America’s Statement on Evolution, including the example of wheat.
This listing might also be a good idea for The Talk.Origins Archive.
It should be possible to put these statements in an easy to edit format and use Perl or some other script to convert it to HTML or Kwickcode.
—- Anti-spam: Replace “user” with “harlequin2”
Syntax Error: not well-formed (invalid token) at line 7, column 12, byte 663 at /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.10.1/mach/XML/Parser.pm line 187
Isn’t ST Cordova the person who said that Intelligent Design has a falsifiable hypothesis whose truth a person can find out after he dies?
LOL
Appeals to authority grow ever so much more appealing as the authority grows in number.
Shall we then list by name the vast majority of people in the United States who do not fully believe in either creation science or naturalistic evolution?
In a democracy isn’t that majority supposed to decide matters like what is taught in public school classrooms?
Do we live in a democracy or some kind of scientocracy?
Democracy, which is why scientists, educators, and religious people are able to show support for the theory of evolution and oppose the teaching of intelligent design.
Creation science is a contradiction in terms by the way.
Salvador is the greatest thing that happened to those who oppose Intelligent Design. He often gets himself tangled up in his own arguments, believes that he has debunked Elsberry and Shallit but seems to be unable to really present an argument let alone a convincing one. He is unable to support the efficacy of the design inference, quickly returns to such concepts as quantum theory but fails to present anything scientifically relevant. In addition he has called for the ex-communication of Denis Lamoureux, is willing to take a grenade for Dembski and seems to be proud of having ARN ban ID critics. Salvador believes that genetic identification is an example of the design inference in action, conflating two distinct concepts. Through conflation and equivocation Sal manages to confuse pattern matching with the explanatory filter.
And when the going gets too tough for Sal, he used to delete the postings or even the threads involved. His standard response to scientific criticisms is to taunt with references to Shallit being Dembski’s teacher, or the opening of an IDEA club in someone’s neighborhood or other trivialities.
Perhaps Sal wants to address the comments by ID proponent Del Ratzsch who wrote the following about Dembski’s filter
and
Should Del be ex-communicated as well?
As I said, he is the best thing that ever happened to ID critics. Totally committed to defend ID at all cost, even when it involves ‘taking the grenade’ or losing credibility. Sal seems to have found a (partial) match in ID’s Bulldog who is barking a lot…
Science is NOT a democracy. Its findings really are not subject to debate and rhetoric.
Unfortunately, that’s what most ID leaders are subjecting science to; what’s even more unfortunate is that most ID followers see nothing wrong with this.
From a post at Internet Infidels:
The creationists are attempting to use meta-agreements to their advantage. We may not agree on exactly what curriculum a science course should have, but we agree that the curriculum is properly set be a State school board, and that the members of that board are politically elected. This in turn means that curricula are political footballs, and unavoidably so. If they were not, who would decide those curricula, and how would those people be chosen? And who would choose those who do the choosing? SOME political process ultimately is required, and we prefer one as open and transparent as possible. And so, rather ironically, it is the scientists who are attempting to subvert this political process, and *arbitrarily decree* what students should be exposed to, trust them, they are the experts! The scientists are attempting to substitute straight appeal-to-authority; making the bald-faced claim that their opinions are better than our opinions. This can legitimately be regarded as a violation of the meta-agreement to respect the political process. Scientists have adopted a sort of “medical model” used by doctors: That in domains of highly specialized knowledge, those possessing the knowledge are above questioning by those lacking it. This model backfires because creationists consider themselves ALSO to be in possession of appropriate specialized knowledge. And so they are!
DaveScot is correct in saying this is a political battle. The description of what constitutes a good education is a political and social description. It’s really quite necessary that we reserve the right as a political body to vote ourselves ignorant and superstitious if this is what we desire, even though the better-educated minority can easily foresee the consequences. But the alternative is worse, because if those undemocratic “proper” designators of our curricula should be wrong, we would have no recourse. The political system is ironically like science in this respect: it permits us to be wrong, and it ALSO permits us to correct errors.
And so I’ll defend our processes, even though I cringe when I see the likes of DaveScot gloating that ignoramuses each have one vote just like the educated, and there are more ignoramuses. Only education can cure this sickness, which is why it’s worth fighting to defend.