March 2009
March 10, 2009
Dear Friends,
I just returned from a hurried, packed visit to Princeton University, where I was invited by Dr. Tom Woodward, President of the C. S. Lewis Society, to speak to students and faculty on intelligent design (ID) in a program sponsored by the CSLS. Tom and Steve Fuller, Professor of Sociology at the Univ. of Warwick in England 
(one of the scientists interviewed in the movie, EXPELLED, and author of fifteen books) were the featured speakers. My role, a modest one, was to give a response to Dr. Fuller's primary lecture at Princeton Seminary, and both there and at another gathering at Princeton University, to address the increasingly famous (really infamous) "Kitzmiller Story."
The "Kitzmiller Story" is a fabricated story that was sold to the judge at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial, where Of Pandas and People was attacked with no meaningful way for FTE to defend it in court. This same story will be told to students and the public countless times this year, the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species. The conveyers of this story are using it throughout the nation to intimidate ID advocates, to prevent curious and interested students and teachers any opportunity to explore it in their science classrooms, and to generally undermine, even suppress, the vital right of free inquiry.
The flight up to New Jersey provided unexpected preparation. Before settling back in my seat to finish Fuller's book, I pulled from my briefcase the current issue of Scientific American. What timing! There it was, an article entitled "The Latest Face of Creationism," not only echoing the Kitzmiller Story, but spicing it up with a favorite jab that ridicules ID proponents for alleging that from what we observe in nature, we can see the work of intelligence, but cannot identify who or what the intelligence is. Well now, says the article wryly, ID proponents say "The designer . . . might be God, but it might be space aliens or time-traveling cell biologists from the future."
What irony, then, to be traveling to Princeton, where Albert Einstein once taught, and where his office at the Math Department remains locked and untouched, protected as an historical monument. For it was Einstein who famously said, "I cannot believe that God would play dice with the universe." More importantly, though less well known, Einstein gave reluctant assent to "the necessity for a beginning," and "the presence of a superior reasoning power." Hmmmm.
Dr. Fuller was terrific. Although he calls himself a secular humanist, he believes ID is here to stay, and he analyzes the people behind the Kitzmiller Story with brutal honesty. He is one of the friendliest secular humanists I've ever met! He sees a connection between ID and the insight of Isaac Newton for whom the universe was an intelligible, unified system created by a Mind vastly greater than, and yet like the human mind. Without this foundational confidence, modern science as it arose in the West would not have been possible. But as a result the universe repays our efforts to tease it apart, to understand how it works. In short, Fuller points to ID — the assumption of the intelligibility of the external world — as the opening insight that launched science in the West.
In his latest book, Dissent Over Descent, Fuller observes, "It is scandalous that historians, philosophers and sociologists of science have not been publicly forthcoming on a point that we easily grant in the classroom, namely that ID has provided the clearest justification for the respect and resources that science has enjoyed" [emphasis added].
Enter an Even Bigger Bombshell. In an article appearing in the Wiley InterScience Journal, Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 36, Issue 2 1 Thomas Nagel, a prominent atheist and Professor of Law and Philosophy at NYU calls ID scientific and constitutional to mention in science classes!
Writing about this article, Washington attorney Ed Sisson elaborates:
Prof. Nagel's paper is a significant and substantial opening, at America's highest intellectual level, that encourages all intelligent, educated, informed individuals – particularly those whose interest in this issue derives from intellectual curiosity – that is legitimate as a matter of data, science, and logic, divorced from all religious texts and doctrines, to consider that intelligent design may be a valid scientific approach to understanding how DNA and the complex chemical systems of life came to attain their present form. Prof. Nagel's article is well worth the price to put it in the library of any inquiring mind.
What does Prof. Nagel say about the identity of the "designer"? Sisson reports that Nagel uses TV's CSI series as a familiar example of forensic science to draw the comparison: "Thus it is obvious that scientific methods can lead to the conclusion that an intelligence did something, even if those same methods cannot tell you who specifically did it, or why they did it. Everyone who has read or watched a Sherlock Holmes story knows this."
Got time for more good news?
- Barnes & Noble just placed an order for 850 copies (53 cases) of The Design of Life.
- Ingram, a giant book distributor to libraries and bookstores, just ordered 27 cases.
- ISI, our business partner, ordered another 22 cases today.
- E. Stan Lennard, M.D., Sc.D., formerly in the Dept. of Surgery and Division of Nephrology, University of Washington, emailed Bill Dembski to say, "I have just completed reading your outstanding book, The Design of Life, and am now reading the CD that accompanies it. I want you to know that I will be incorporating your text into some of the ten online courses I instruct/facilitate [courses offered through "Reasons to Believe"]. I often refer to your work in my courses as I dialogue with my students, and I have referenced some of your articles in my articles that are posted online."
- Here is how Bill Dembski described his debate — sponsored by the O.U. IDEA Club — with the renowned Darwinist, Michael Ruse at the University of Oklahoma on February 27th: "The debate went well. About 900 were in attendance. It was cordial throughout and I trust a lot of people left thinking there is more to ID than they at first suspected (in part because Michael kept praising my work on The Design Inference, though he wanted to deny that it applies to biology)." A write up on the debate appeared on the front page of the O.U. student newspaper the next day. 2
Thank you for the important role you play in opening doors to our culture. As you can see, momentum continues to build. But the need is still very great for the insights of ID to gain a larger presence at the table and to pique the curiosity of millions.
And I must be very down-to-earth in describing how that can happen. Your partnership is absolutely indispensable. We know you are aware that the downturn in the economy has driven giving down dramatically. But even before that occurred, we had fallen far behind in receiving salaries in order to back our powerful books and programs, which we must continue to do.
Please pray about what you can do to help. Thank you so much.
Sincerely,
Jon Buell
President
P.S. Why not scroll to the very bottom and forward this letter to a good friend?
1 http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118493933/home
2 http://oudaily.com/news/2009/mar/02/design-debate-draws-crowd-laughs-catlett/