Rising biology enrollments parallel the rise of ID, Alters is dead wrong

If you're a young person, and you know a particular field is dominated by a philosophy/dogma that is hostile to your worldview, it doesn't make for an appealling career path. Most people in that situation would look elsewhere for their life's work. On the other hand, if a particular field of study is becoming open to opposing worldviews, and there's some prospect of a debate and new discovery, than that can be very exciting. russ

Sal, Thank you for pointing out that correlation is not causation. I also think that the significant media coverage of ID related issues and events may have affected biology admissions and degrees positively, but it is hard to disentangle from the general background of exciting discoveries such as the Human Genome Project. It would be interesting to study more detailed statistics (from Kansas, say) to see if students receiving more media coverage than the national average on ID had a greater increase in interest in biology. David vun Kannon

The idea of blind forces creating things actually makes me more interested. It makes me want to understand what's going on, how that power can be applied in other ways. The idea of descent with modification has actually increased my desire to study biology. Doing genetic analysis across a variety of species is actually pretty cool. If all this stuff is designed, then it looses some of it's luster - there's no reason to expect species to have phylogenically patterned variations of genetic information, some of the information probably just appeared out of nowhere (from our perspective), and biology reverts back to the "stamp-collecting" role that it had hundreds of years ago. While ID may be interesting when considering the origins of man, and some theological questions, naturalistic evolution is a lot more interesting from the percespective of exploring and learning new things about mechanisms of information creation. BTW, any numbers on the other sciences? Is biology enrollment increasing because other sciences are declining (I think computer science has been declining for some time). There may be some movement of science people to biology because other areas are closing. Additionally, I have to wonder what role the whole field of genetics has played in increasing biology enrollment. We're doing a lot more exciting things with biology/computation crossovers in terms of brain analysis, PCR, genetic analysis, genetic effects on cancer rates and other diseases, and the future possibility of screening individuals genomes on a large scale for genetic diseases. Overall, I'm skeptical that ID has played much of a role in increasing biology enrollment except in the "raising the profile of biology" kind of way (and any controversy does that). BC

Steveh, Parallels and correlations do not necessarily imply causation. My point is Alters will not be able to argue his case from the evidence since even if one argued correlation implies causation, it would favor my thesis over his. Furthermore the responses to the question I pose show there is little reason to think acceptance of ID would hinder progress in science. scordova

The prospect of a designing intelligence would bring a fresh approach to the study of natural phenomena.

The prospect of a designing intelligence has always been there, so why do you say "would" instead of "has"? If you meant "has" then some examples would be in order. My income started to increase in 1984 and the trend has continued to the present day. Thanks ID! steveh

C. The materialistic outlook is one of tunnel vision. It arbitrarily restricts the explanatory possibilities. The prospect of a designing intelligence would bring a fresh approach to the study of natural phenomena. crandaddy

I went from an interest in nanotechnology to an interest biology to an interest in ID (I didn't notice Behe or Dembski or any of the major ID authors until years after they had published their first works). Patrick

I just added a link above to the study above (sorry I omitted it earlier). The url for the study pointed to a location on the National Academy's Press site called "Darwin.edu" http://darwin.nap.edu http://darwin.nap.edu/books/0309094275/html/19.html Does this say something about the prejudices of the National Academy? Just speculation :-) scordova

C. And I would be particularly interested in how life was designed, that would be my focus. EJ Klone

I'm actually more interested in ever in studying science, when before I thought it sounded like the most boring thought ever to study it. ID has been the sole factor in this change of heart. JasonTheGreek

"C" all the way. My interest in biology began after reading Denton's "Evolution: A theory in Crisis" in high school. Atom

FYI: the modern ID movement's beginning has been perceived by some as beginning in 1984 with the publication of Mystery of Life's Origin by Thaxton, Bradley, and Olsen in 1984 and Evolution a Theory in Crisis by Denton in 1985. PS I would personally add Anthropic Cosmological Principle by Barrow and Tipler in 1987. scordova