Re: Clergy Letter Project exceeds 11,000 signatures

James Goetz <james.goetz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sep 25, 8:36 am, j.wilki...@xxxxxxxxx (John Wilkins) wrote:
Harold Saxon <saxon.har...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 25 Sep, 13:00, Ron O <rokim...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 25, 6:08 am, TomS <TomS_mem...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The Clergy Letter Project has now gone over 11,000 signatures for its
letter in support of evolution.


<http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/religion_science_collaboration.htm>

I applaud the effort, but it sounds like some of the clergy that are
signing on are basing their agreement on trusting science and
scientists. They don't know enough to understand why it is true,
and they aren't able to support that belief with personal knowledge.
This could backfire on the effort.

On what basis do you presume that a member of the clergy would not
have any personal knowledge regarding matters of science?

I know at least two who have physics degrees. But that aside, what is
wrong with accepting epistemic division of labour? I don't see why it is
somehow wrong to accept the scientists at their word - we all do this
all the time. I even trust programmers. Sometimes. Biochemists never, of
course, when they speak on evolution.



It may be easy for a biologist to scoff at the dishonest intelligent
design creationist scam, but these guys don't have that education, and
they don't have the resources or know how to access them to get the
information that they need.

On what basis do you presume that they would be unable to obtain or
gain access to resources to improve their understanding of science?

And indeed I think pretty well *all* evolution-accepters started out
accepting it on the basis of reading popular or introductory level
science. I accept the big bang, for example, but I have not the
slightest knowledge on which to base this apart from reading popular
science works. It may be some have later turned to the study of
evolution in technical detail, but I very much doubt that at any time
when they were acquiring their views that many were doing this.

Well, I accepted evolution while taking my first graduate level course
in molecular anthropology.

By the way, John, have you studied evolution in technical detail? For
example, can you defend the common ancestry of all primates? Can you
do it without assuming the legitimacy of random distributions?

I was defending you guys, not attacking, Jim. But what do you mean "the
legitimacy of random distributions"? Do I need to defend statistics
before I can defend anything else? I don't get your point.

I have studied some evolution in technical detail, but only as much as I
need to do philosophy. But I did read a fair bit on the phylogeny of
pinnipeds to ensure that I had a handle on some issues (and they are
monophyletic, so there). So I can give a reasonable account of the
phylogeny of primates in terms of their synapomorphies.

snip


--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."

.

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