Michael Egnor

Dear President Obama,

I note with dismay your appointment of Dr. John Holdren as Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. Although Dr. Holdren’s experience in academia and administration may be adequate, his publicly expressed views regarding population control disqualify him from holding office.

I will set aside objections to Dr. Holdren’s scientific competence. Despite his strong scientific credentials, he advanced theories in the 1970’s and 1980’s that have become the paradigm of ideologically motivated junk science. He and his collaborators (such as co-author Paul Ehrlich) predicted world-wide famine as a consequence of over-population by the late 20th century, and they advocated radical coercive public policies to avert catastrophe. These predictions were explicit, public, and were published under professional imprimatur. Obviously, the predictions were wrong. Dr.Holdren’s predictions are an exemplar of scientific incompetence.

But it is the spectre of Dr. Holdren’s competence, not his incompetence, that concerns me. In 1977 Dr. Holdren and his colleagues Paul and Anne Ehrlich published the book Ecoscience. In it, Holdren and his co-authors endorse the serious consideration of radical measures to reduce the human population, particularly third world populations, such as India, China and Africa. The measures include:

In medical ethics, there is a growing conflict between two important principles: autonomy and dignity. In an important way, autonomy and dignity are virtues derived from different worldviews. Autonomy owes much to the secular/materialist view of man, whose very existence is the product of an autonomous struggle for existence. Dignity owes much to the Judeo-Christian understanding of man, who is created in the image of God. Certainly there is overlap; advocates of autonomy obviously have some respect for dignity, and advocates for dignity have some respect for autonomy. But the differences in approaches to ethics are real, and are of great consequence.

The differences are particularly clear and important in the issue of physician-assisted suicide. Oregon has passed a law allowing physician-assisted suicide, and a similar statute was recently passed in Washington State. Physician-assisted suicide is even more common in Europe, with some nations such as Switzerland attracting “suicide tourists”. Bioethicist Jacob Appel has even endorsed physician-assisted suicide for some healthy people who request it.

Blogger David T. at Life’s Private Book has a good post on our modern priesthood. David quotes Baron d’Holbach from the18th century:

“Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity; nothing has been offered to his mind, but stories of invisible powers, upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the mercy of his priests, who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him, and directing his actions.”

David notes that we still have priests, but they are secular priests–Experts–and they provide us with a semblance of meaning and healing:

…the referents have changed. The “invisible powers” offered to man today are not angels and demons, but obscure material forces…

He observes that modern man, in the place of priests of old,

…[has] “experts” who dispense therapy and pills to relieve his depression, other experts who construct government education and welfare programs, without which obscure social forces will inevitably turn him into a criminal, and yet other experts who inspect his genetic code like tea leaves and tell him that he is doomed to be a loser anyway. Instead of confession, we have therapy; instead of the sacrament of baptism, we have the sacrament of abortion; instead of Calvinism, we have genetic determinism.

We need priests because the fundamental state of man is our contingency. We are in a state of ‘primitive stupidity’ in the sense that we do not intrinsically know metaphysical truth, the answers to such questions as ‘why is there anything’ and ‘why are we here’. Much of our lives are implicitly or explicitly devoted to answering these questions, and we depend, and have always depended, on priests. Our answer is to worship. We differ in the priests we consult, and by what we worship.

Dr. Jeffery Shallit has a post on his blog Recursivity that really caught my eye. He comments derisively on an essay by McGill University ethicist Margaret Somerville titled, “Facing up to the dangers of the intolerant university: Bird on an ethics wire.” Somerville argues that universities are increasingly becoming intolerant of viewpoints that fall outside of a narrow leftist-atheist ideology. She notes that healthy democracies depend on respectful sharing of opinions, and university censorship and exclusion of competing opinions — especially opinions on ethical issues that derive from religious traditions — leaves our public discourse dangerously impoverished.

Dr. Shallit agrees with some of her criticism of suppression of speech on campus, but he finds her essay “very shoddily argued.” He mainly objects to her suggestion that religious views be given a place in the public forum and her view that ethical decisions based on religious faith be accorded respect. Dr. Shallit asks:

With respect to religion, why should religious dogma, which maintains ridiculous and unverifiable claims, be treated in the same way as science and rational thinking?

Dr. Shallit’s view on the relationship between religion and rational thinking is notably short on rational thinking. The existence of God is not a “ridiculous and unverifiable claim;” it’s the conclusion reached by the vast majority of human beings living today and who have ever lived, and is a viewpoint held by most of the best philosophers, ethicists and scientists in history. While there are thoughtful arguments that can be made for atheism, the arguments advanced by Shallit and his comrades like Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Myers, and Hitchens are puerile. For example, the assertion that Christianity is disproven by assertions such as ‘If God created the universe, who made God?’ or ‘some bad things have been done by Christians, therefore Christianity is untrue’ would get a failing grade in any respectable introductory philosophy course. You’ll get more genuine insight from a paragraph of Aristotle or Aquinas than from a library of Dawkins and Dennett.

Subtle arguments about God being the ground for existence and about the role of Christianity in Western politics and culture aren’t “ridiculous and unverifiable;” these arguments are central to philosophy and to any informed understanding of history. New Atheist boilerplate trivializes the profound issues that religious belief raises, and the New Atheist contribution to meaningful discussion of these fundamental issues is …well… nil. For New Atheists, ‘rational thinking’ takes a backseat to ideological spittle.

But that’s not what caught my eye in Shallit’s post. Here’s what did.

Timothy Sandefur is an atheist legal commentator who believes that it is unconstitutional to teach the weaknesses, along with the strengths, of evolutionary theory in schools. His reason: he believes that evolutionary theory has no weaknesses: …to teach the (non-existent) “weaknesses” of evolution in a government classroom is almost always (a) contrary to the lesson plan–and therefore a violation of a teacher’s employment contract–or (b) in reality an attempt to teach creationism to school children as true…[t]he Establishment Clause forbids the government from declaring any religious viewpoint to be true. [emphasis mine] Sandefur is particularly upset by the participation of Christians in the public square. His view of the Establishment clause is, even by his own admission, “extreme”: I believe Read More ›

Atheist constitutional commentator and attorney Timothy Sandefur and I have exchanged blog ripostes about his bizarre assertion that teaching public school students that the theory of evolution has weaknesses as well as strengths is a violation of the Establishment Clause.

Mr. Sandefur asserted:

…to teach the (non-existent) “weaknesses” of evolution in a government classroom is almost always (a) contrary to the lesson plan–and therefore a violation of a teacher’s employment contract–or (b) in reality an attempt to teach creationism to school children as true…To teach a religious viewpoint–such as that God created life–in government classrooms, taught by government employees, is to put the government’s imprimatur on that religious viewpoint and in violation of the Establishment Clause.

Mr. Sandefur believes that the weaknesses of evolutionary theory are non-existent, and to teach the weaknesses (as well as the strengths) of evolutionary theory is to teach a religious viewpoint.

!

I replied that evolutionary theory obviously has weaknesses, as all scientific theories do, and that is not a religious viewpoint. It’s a scientific viewpoint. All theories in science have strengths and weaknesses. Weaknesses of scientific theories are the basis for scientific research. The weaknesses of evolutionary theory are the basis for evolutionary research. It’s just as constitutional to use public funds to teach students about those scientific weaknesses as it is to use public funds to conduct scientific research on those scientific weaknesses. It’s just good science.

Atheist legal commentator Timothy Sandefur believes that the discussion of the weaknesses (in addition to the strengths) of Darwin’s theory of evolution in public schools is an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment Clause. Yet he sees no Establishment Clause problem with the public funding of research in evolutionary biology that asks the same questions that he believes are constitutionally proscribed in public schools.

For example, Mr. Sandefur apparently believes that teaching public school students that there are large inadequately explained gaps in the fossil record is a violation of the Establishment Clause. Yet, as it happens, there is substantial publicly funded ongoing research being conducted by evolutionary biologists on these large inadequately explained gaps. Mr. Sandefur has no Establishment Clause objections to the public funding of the research on this topic; he only objects to publicly funded teaching on this topic. Yet the teaching and the research both address the same premise — that there are large unexplained gaps in the fossil record.

Mr. Sandefur asserts:

Timothy Sandefur has been waiting anxiously for my reply to his most recent post. He and I disagree on this point: I believe that teaching the strengths and weakness of Darwin’s theory in public schools is constitutional and is good science. He believes that teaching the strengths and weaknesses of Darwin’s theory is unconstitutional, and that only the strengths of Darwinism may be taught to schoolchildren.

In his most recent post, he begins with three points.

First, Mr. Sandefur asserts:

Timothy Sandefur, a Panda’s Thumb contributor and an atheist, is a leader in the Darwinist crusade to censor balanced discussion of evolutionary theory in science classrooms. Mr Sandefur responded to my open letter to the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, a Darwinist organization that lobbies for censorship of discussion of the weaknesses of evolution in public schools and has boycotted the citizens of Louisiana because they recently passed legislation protecting academic freedom in public schools.

Mr. Sandefur begins his post with a sneer:

With the possible exception of Casey Luskin, no Discovery Institute fellow seems more eager to embarrass himself in public than Michael Egnor…

I always strive to be more embarrassing than Casey, but now it seems I’ll have to try harder. Here goes.

Mr. Sandefur asserts:

The problem with creationism is precisely that creationists like Dr. Egnor want their religion to be taught in government classrooms.

Mr. Sandefur misrepresents my views, which I have explained at length on this blog for several years and will now explain again.

This is my viewpoint on evolution:

I am a Christian and I believe that God created man and the universe. The Bible isn’t a science textbook, although it does offer insight into truth about the natural world. Reason, one form of which is science, can lead us to important truths about nature. I believe that faith and reason cannot ultimately be in conflict, because God is the source of both.

I believe that the earth is ~4.5 billion years old, and the universe is ~14 billion years old. Universal common ancestry is a reasonable inference from the evidence, and life evolved over several billion years. Some aspects of life arose by random variation and natural selection, and some aspects of life (e.g. the genetic code, molecular nanotechnology) show evidence for design by intelligent agency.

Oklahoma State Representative Todd Thomsen has filed a resolution in the Oklahoma State Legislature asking the University of Oklahoma to dis-invite Richard Dawkins, who was invited to speak at the university as a part of the university’s Darwin 200th birthday celebration. The proposed resolution reads: