How about it, SMU profs?

The Discovery Institute's president has sent the following letter to the heads of the geology, biology and anthropology departments at SMU:

I am writing to invite you or a representative from your faculty to participate in a dialogue about the theory of intelligent design on Friday night, April 13th, ahead of the formal commencement of our conference that evening on your campus.
We noted with interest the comment of one of your SMU faculty colleagues, Dr. Bretell, who stated in the Dallas Morning News that the science faculty plan to use the conference “as a teaching moment.”

As educators ourselves, we applaud you for this and would like to enhance the teaching opportunity for your students by creating a forum in which your faculty can participate in an open dialogue with proponents of intelligent design—in particular, with our three conference speakers, Dr. Michael Behe, Dr. Stephen Meyer, and Dr. Jay Richards.

If you accept our invitation, I will arrange for the first portion of our Friday night program to be devoted to this discussion. We propose the following format: one of our speakers would make a fifteen-minute presentation explaining the merits, from our point of view, of the theory of intelligent design. Then we would invite one of you to make a presentation explaining your main criticisms of the theory. We would then allow your panel to ask us a series of challenging questions of your own choosing. After that we would open the discussion to a few questions from the audience.

We are all committed to respectful scholarly dialogue and to the use of scientific methods of reasoning in the investigation of nature. In our view, science progresses in part as scientists and scholars discuss and evaluate competing interpretations of scientific evidence. We think that the format we are proposing will allow for such discussion and will, therefore, create a teaching moment for all who participate and observe the discussion.

We hope you will join us. May I ask you to respond at your earliest convenience by contacting Robert Crowther in our Seattle office at [deleted], or [e-mail address deleted].


Yours sincerely,

Bruce Chapman

President, Discovery Institute

Sounds good to me. Will the professors agree to participate in this teaching moment? I'd love to hear both sides make their presentation, and I bet I'm not the only one.

UPDATE: A colleague of mine at the paper e-mails to say:

I completely disagree. The SMU scientists should not take the bait. Framing this as a debate puts evolution and ID on equal footing -- "On the one hand, some experts believe THIS. On the other hand, other experts believe THIS." This is precisely the fraud that the Discovery Institute wants to perpetrate. Because if both "theories" are considered valid, well, then, why not teach both in science classes? Why exclude one? Is that fair?

ID and evolution are not two scientific theories to be weighed against one another, as if on a balance scale. One is a scientific theory, supported so massively and consistently by empirical evidence as to be virtually unassailable. The other is an interesting notion -- rather like reincarnation, or ESP - that is intriguing to ponder, but absolutely without scientific support.

There is, in other words, no experimental evidence -- none -- to support the idea that the world is so wondrously complex that some intelligent designer "must have" created it. Maybe that's true. As a matter of theology, I happen to believe that it's true. But it isn't science.

We don't teach "alternative theories" of gravity in physics class, or "alternative theories" of neurology in medical school. And we shouldn't.

I see his point, but I see this controversy as akin to a debate about global warming. To me, the evidence for man-made global warming is overwhelming, and those who disbelieve in it are operating primarily on faith, not evidence. But there are significant numbers of people who do hold those views, and I think it would be in the public interest to see a critical exchange between the two sides. I would hope that it would educate the disbelievers, or at least open some minds. Or maybe the other side would come up with facts or logic that caused me to reconsider some of my positions.

About ID: I believe that God created us, and evolution was the method he used to do it. But I simply don’t know enough about the case for ID to say conclusively that I disbelieve it -- and I certainly was unfavorably impressed by the sneering, over-the-top presentation the anti-ID folks made to the DMN editorial board a couple of years ago. Which doesn't make the case for ID any more or any less valid, but it did make me more curious to hear that case. There's something about ID that reduces opponents to sputtering, which creates the impression that they're trying to make you feel like an idiot for asking questions.

Here’s something from Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science who’s written about the struggle between ID and Darwinism. I interviewed him last year for the Sunday commentary section of the DMN. Ruse calls ID "creationism lite," but says scientists are making a mistake by refusing to engage the debate:

More scientists should get involved in this debate. There's a very strong negative force among young scientists not to get involved in the public domain. If you're trying to get tenure, you don't spend your summer fighting ID. Many people are not good at public involvement, but I'd like to see more of it.

I see evolution and creation as very much the top end of the iceberg. It's a litmus test of this whole red-blue division in America. I'd like to see the left, the Democrats or whatever we call ourselves, be more open to people's concerns. I mean, it's not helpful, and certainly not in America, when Richard Dawkins says all religion is evil. We have got to talk about moral values. We people of the left, we people of the Enlightenment, if you like, have got to start talking about broader issues. I would like to see science teaching, including the teaching of evolution, to be part of this, rather than something we isolate.

I think Ruse is right: people are thinking about this and talking about it, so why not meet them where they are? As disgusting as I think "Loose Change," that 9/11 conspiracy film is, if there were to be a debate about it on SMU’s campus, given how widespread the belief in a conspiracy is (a Scripps poll found that one-third of the American public believes the US government was involved in killing 3,000 of its own citizens), it’s worth dignifying the conspiracy nuts by sharing the podium with them, just to refute their case with facts and logic. Mind you, I don't at all equate the ID folks with conspiracy nuts. I'm just saying that it'd be smarter for the SMU professors to engage the ID people in a public forum and show the audience why the ID people are wrong. Refusing even to talk to them is not causing any fewer people to believe in ID. If ID is as dangerous as the SMU profs say, then they should not hesitate to take it on and try to debunk it.