tsig
Posts: 339
Joined: Aug. 2006
|
| Quote (sparc @ Oct. 15 2011,00:32) | Being William Dembski means a life of bitterness: | Quote | 1
William Dembski October 14, 2011 at 12:52 pm
Thanks for this post, Caroline. Even though my research professorship pays for memberships to professional societies, I decided to let my membership in the ASA lapse last year (after more than 20 years a member) because I simply could no longer get behind the direction in which the organization was going.
Let me urge that you start your own professional society through AITSE to fill that gap that the ASA is leaving — may some deep pockets reading this post provided you with the needed start-up capital! |
| Quote | 5 Ted Davis October 14, 2011 at 3:04 pm
Now, as for the larger ID/TE issue, relative to the ASA, I have some things that need to be said, and this is a good place to say them.
I have heard many ID supporters (some who are ASA members and many who are not) say that the ASA is a TE organization that is unfriendly to ID. A few isolated facts might be seen to support that conclusion–a given article or review from our journal or web site, or a particular comment in a session at our annual meeting, or something that was said in a conversation at a meeting. I won’t list any examples of such, but I have no doubt that there are some. (I also have no doubt that others, including some here, have said highly negative things about either the ASA as an organization or about specific members in connection with the ASA. On at least two occasions, highly derogatory language was aimed in my direction here at UD.)
As far as the ASA as an organization is concerned, let me review some facts–all of them easily verified.
(1) Our refereed journal (the oldest science & religion journal in the USA), Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, frequently publishes articles taking a pro-ID stance. I challenge anyone to take a period of several consecutive years (somewhere in the past 20 years), count the number of articles that favor ID (keeping in mind that a large number of articles are entirely unrelated to ID), and compare that number with any other refereed journal of their choice. Unless you pick a journal that is intended specifically to promote ID, I bet we do pretty darn well.
Nevertheless, well known proponents of ID rarely submit papers to our journal, despite the fact that we do publish pro-ID articles.
(2) Most of the papers submitted for our annual meeting — and that process is always open to anyone — end up on the program somewhere. Not a large percentage are rejected (unlike our journal, which is pretty selective, the annual meeting program process is not very selective). Most pro-ID papers are accepted. If the number of such papers on the program in any given year is low, it almost certainly means that only a few such papers were submitted. I have been involved in setting the program several times, and the information in this paragraph accurately describes all of those years.
(3) ASA Council members, who are elected by the whole membership, have included a number of well known ID supporters in the past several years: Walter Bradley, Bob Kaita (who will be VP next April), and Ken Touryan all come to mind. In addition, another current council member is a Southern Baptist theologian (Hal Poe). There has been no effort to exclude pro-ID members from becoming Council members. For an organization that is alleged to be pro-TE, we sure have elected our share of pro-ID presidents. I challenge anyone to find a comparable degree of open-mindedness elsewhere.
(4) ASA Council members must (according to our own by-laws) be Fellows fist. To become a Fellow, a current Fellow must nominate a person; that person must then respond to a request to confirm their interest in being named a Fellow and send in some information (basically a short c.v. and some other information); and, the current Fellows must then affirm that person by voting for them on a ballot they are sent.
Sometimes people whose names are put forth do not respond to the request for information. This happens with at least one person in most years, and I can recall one year in which 3 people did not respond.
I will now share a piece of information that has not been publicly shared before: during my time on Council, I placed in nomination as Fellows multiple people who support ID, yet the two most prominent names did not confirm their interest and their names did not move forward. Everyone here would know those names, but I will have to keep you guessing about their specific identities.
So, what exactly am I saying? Simply this: relative to ID and TE, the ASA is what its members make it. I am (as you all know) not an ID proponent myself (although I am not without interest in ID or without sympathy for aspects of ID), but I always acted to keep the ASA what it has always been: an open forum on issues related to science and Christianity. I cannot submit papers to our journal or to the annual meeting on behalf of others; I cannot respond to requests for information on behalf of others.
Here is my frank advice to anyone within the ASA who believes that we are unfriendly to ID: look in the mirror. Have you submitted a top-notch paper to our journal? have you submitted a decent proposal for a paper at our annual meeting? did you respond to a request to confirm a nomination to be an ASA Fellow? We are who our members make us. What more can I say? |
| Quote | 5.1 William Dembski October 14, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Ted,
Walter Bradley contacted me in January or February of 2006, asking me to collect a CV and other supporting materials to propose me as fellow of the ASA. He didn’t spell out a strict deadline, so I sent the supporting materials in, as it turned out, two weeks late. Unfortunately, the deadline was strict and my nomination was put in cold storage — at least so I understood from Walter, who indicated that my nomination would be delayed a year. All the materials were in place to confirm my nomination — so Walter gave me to understand. And yet I was never ratified as a fellow, not the following year, not the three additional years that I still remained an ASA member.
In any case, what finally got to me with the ASA was not the refused fellowship, but the condescension toward ID, the overwhelming (though not exclusive) view of the leadership that ID has no scientific integrity (I believe that Randy Isaac has said as much), and the sense that ID proponents will always be second-class citizens in the ASA.
–Bill |
Doc Bill got even expelled from a Christian science society. And of course it was not his fault.
Interim results from an ongoing ASA survey will not make him any happier. |
Somehow this seems appropriate:
Minever loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.
http://www.poemtree.com/poems....evy.htm
|
