Exemplary Blogging: Alonzo Fyfe's Open Letter to Ben Stein: A Must Read

The "documentary" Expelled has been much in the news, because on March 20, noted evolutionary biologist PZ Myers was refused entry to a showing, while his guest, the equally noted atheist Richard Dawkins, was allowed in.

I mentioned l'affaire Myers here, where this comment by JennyAlice sent me over to Atheist Ethics, the blog of Alonzo Fyfe, who wrote A Better Place. 

Back in August, 2007, Fyfe wrote an open letter to Ben Stein, on Stein's assertions in the  the documentary Expelled:

1. Belief in a  a being greater than man is basic to science
2. There is an "anti-religious dogmatism" active in "Big Science" and
3. "scientists and educators are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator."

Fyfe's letter reads in part:

However, the film (or at least descriptions of it) bring up the issue of freedom of speech, which is a moral issue, and that is the sphere that I write in.

The rest of the post is a patient refutation of Stein's three claims,  of how science actually works, and how Intelligent Design (ID) and creationism fail the test of science.

 

Fyfe refutes the third claim  most succinctly in the comments, where he writes:

If ID were science then it can get into the classroom the way every other scientific theory has gotten into the classroom - by showing that it can explain and predict real-world observations.

Plate techtonic theory got into the classroom by being the best theory for explaining and predicting earthquakes, volcanoes, and geological formations. Plate techtonic theorists did not need to cry, "But we're being treated unfairly!" They kept collecting evidence until the evidence became overwhelming.

Einstein did not get his theories into college physics classes by lobbying the government for special permission to be given equal time. Einstein and his collegues showed that it explains the motions of planet, the behavior of light, and a number of other observations.

That is how a scientific theory gets into the classroom.

ID cannot earn its way into the classroom because it can do none of these things. So, instead, it wants to bully itself into the classroom by passing legislation where scientists are forced to ignore the criteria by which scientific theories are evaluated.

You should also go read the comments.  Fyfe repeatedly, patiently, refutes the arguments advanced by ID enthusiasts

 

Comments

[CrypticLife]

Alonzo Fyfe is one of my favorite bloggers -- he has a sharp mind and is polite and patient. I particularly enjoyed his "Perspective on the Pledge" book.