Author Not Optimistic About Cornell Univ. Giving ID a Fair Shake
by Jim Brown
April 19, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A leading proponent of intelligent design predicts a new course on the subject being offered at Cornell University this summer will attempt to undermine the theory.Cornell professor Allen MacNeill will be teaching a four-credit course called "Evolution and Design: Is There Purpose in Nature?" The course will reportedly be a history of biology class that examines ethics and philosophy. Among the books the course will use is Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA by Dr. William Dembski and Michael Ruse.
Dembski, a former professor at Southern Seminary in Louisville, doubts the course will accurately portray intelligent design. "Given that I regard myself as a fair-minded person -- and given that I understand the professor of the class has called me a bald-faced liar -- I would guess that [it's] probably not going to be a fair treatment," Dembski offers. "But who knows?"
The author offers another "given" -- that taking into account a claim by Cornell president Hunter Rawlings that ID is a "religious belief masquerading as a secular idea," the class will likely have a strong pro-Darwinist bias.
"I would think that [for] the president of Cornell, this is not a way of him endorsing it or thinking there's anything of intellectual merit there," Dembski conjectures. If anything, he adds, "the academic mainstream ... is hunkering down, stonewalling, [and] wanting to say there's nothing of merit here, we've got to shut this down -- and if we're going to teach a course on it, it's purely to debunk it."
Dembski believes the Cornell course is a concession to a "wider cultural movement" that is more sympathetic to intelligent design.
Another book by Dembski -- The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities -- is also among the recommended readings for the course, as are Darwin and Design: Does Evolution Have a Purpose? by Michael Ruse and Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael Behe. Dembski says regardless how Professor MacNeill may "skew" the discussion about ID in class, students will benefit from reading the books being used as the basis for class discussions.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
