I'm at the Center for Inquiry 12th World Congress in Washington D.C.
Last night I attended a session on "The Influence of Darwin." The four panelists were: Michael Ruse, a philosopher, Barbara Forrest, a philosopher, David Contosta, a historian, and Edward Tabash, a lawyer.
Ruse presented his usual distorted view of evolutionary biology only this time he added a comment in his defense. He said, "90% of scientists are selectionists, and the other 10% are selectionists 90% of the time." This was obviously a response to people who have criticized Ruse for being too much of an adaptationist.
Incidentally, Ruse made it clear that he is an atheist, even though he is strongly opposed to the idea that science/evolution leads to a loss of faith. I mention this because I've seen numerous references to Ruse implying that he is religious.
I asked the panel why there was no scientist on the panel and whether they thought that they could represent science accurately. I added, provocatively, that in my opinion three of the four panelists did not do a good job of describing science
The panel didn't think this was problem. I assume Darwin had a great influence on law, philosophy, and history but not much of an influence on science.
No comments:
Post a Comment