
The very fact that Darwinism flourishes so readily where intellectual freedom is absent is a good reason to question it.
Here are some excerpts from John West’s chapter in The Comprehensive Guide to Science and Faith: Exploring the Ultimate Questions About Life and the Cosmos (2021).
If you are a scientist:
Biology professor Caroline Crocker at George Mason University was “barred by her department from teaching both evolution and intelligent design” after committing the crime of mentioning intelligent design in a course on cell biology. “It’s an infringement of academic freedom,” she told the journal Nature.2 Subsequently her contract was not renewed.
Oregon community college instructor Kevin Haley was terminated after it became known that he criticized evolution in his freshman biology classes. Haley’s college refused to state why his contract was not renewed, but some of Haley’s colleagues were upset that students who took his biology class were starting to challenge evolution in their classes.4 Before the controversy over evolution, Haley had been regarded as an excellent teacher.
John G. West, “Do Scientists Have Freedom to Question Darwinism?” at Evolution News and Science Today (March 11, 2022)
Question? Why does anyone suppose that the Woke care whether someone is a good teacher or not? That isn’t what they are About.
If you are a non-scientist:
College professors are not the only targets in academia who face discrimination because of their skepticism of Darwinism. Students can be even more vulnerable. Ohio State University doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard had his dissertation defense put in limbo after three pro-Darwin professors filed a spurious complaint attacking Leonard’s dissertation research as “unethical human subject experimentation.” Leonard’s dissertation project looked at how student beliefs changed after students were taught scientific evidence for and against modern evolutionary theory. The complaining professors admitted that they had not actually read Leonard’s dissertation. But they were sure it must be unethical. Why? According to them, there is no valid evidence against evolutionary theory. Thus — by definition — Leonard’s research must be tantamount to child abuse.4
John G. West, “Do Non-Scientists Have Freedom to Question Darwinism?” at Evolution News and Science Today (March 14, 2022)
Sadly, many people think the Woke aren’t coming for them. They, they assure us, never provoke the Woke.
Actually, most of them just haven’t stumbled on one of the Wokester’s sensitive patches yet.
The very fact that Darwinism flourishes so readily where intellectual freedom is absent is a good reason to question it.
Are teachers contractually and ethically bound to teach the set curriculum or not? Are teachers free to teach their own religious views in a science class or not?
According to the Wikipedia entry on the movie Expelled Caroline Crocker
Sev, you included the following, “telling them that Nazi atrocities were based on Darwin’s ideas and on science.”
The Nazis were eugenicists, which originates in Darwin and was considered science. Eugenics is rooted in Darwin’s second book, where it makes clear there is a distinction between races. With some being privileged and others being savage. He wrote that the civilized should bring about the extinction of the savage for the benefit of his perceived superior races.
BobRyan – even if all that was true, how would it bear on whether something that in Not Cell Biology should be taught in a Cell Biology class?
Honestly, the university should have acted in the same way if she had decided to teach population genetics.
Darwinism is great science but just genetics. By all means teach that in Cell Biology class.
There is just no evidence it has anything to do with the Evolution debate. Teach that too in Cell Biology class.
Bob O’H
You’re joking, of course. The professors can teach political, environmental, social, cultural, literary, philosophical and historical views (over-and-above without avoiding the curriculum itself) and nobody is going to get fired.
In fact, atheism can be taught in the biology class – as a number of textbook entries show it has been.
But the science of Intelligent Design cannot be mentioned because it’s too dangerous.
SA – nope, I’m not joking. She was hired as an adjunct to specifically teach cell biology. Had she been hired to teach whatever she wanted you might have a point.
Bob O’H holds that Caroline Crocker was rightly ‘let go’ because, “She was hired as an adjunct to specifically teach cell biology”, and she was apparently bringing up things that did not deal directly with cell biology (and which, apparently, reflected badly on Darwinian evolution).
The trouble for Bob O’H is that, number one, Darwinian evolution itself has nothing to do with biology,
And since Darwinian evolution itself has nothing to do with cell biology, then, according to Bob O’H’s own line of reasoning, anyone who mentions Darwinian evolution is a cell biology class should be ‘let go’ from teaching cell biology since he/she is not adhering to teaching only ‘strict’ cell biology..
The second, more pressing, problem for Bob O’H, (in wanting only ‘strict’ cell biology to be taught in the classroom), is that “it is virtually impossible to speak of living beings for any length of time without using teleological and normative language”.
In short, it is impossible to speak about biological processes without using teleological words that directly imply ‘Intelligent Design’,
As this working biologist honestly confessed, “in our work, we biologists use words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design in biology–we simply cannot avoid them.”
And in the following article, Stephen Talbott challenges Darwinists to, “pose a single topic for biological research, doing so in language that avoids all implication of agency, cognition, and purposiveness (i.e. teleological language)”
As Talbott noted in his article, it “cannot be done”.
As the following 2020 article found, “teleological concepts cannot be abstracted away from biological explanations without loss of meaning and explanatory power, life is inherently teleological.”
Thus in conclusion, although Bob O’H is apparently in favor of ‘letting go’ of anyone in cell biology who dares to mention doubts about Darwin in the classroom, and who does not teach ‘strict’ cell biology, the fact of the matter is that ‘strict’ cell biology itself is one of the greatest witnesses against Darwinian evolution.
So my question for Bob O’H is this, since cell biology itself screams ‘Intelligent Design”, “Should we also ban teaching cell biology in cell biology classrooms?” 🙂
Verse: