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From the National Center for Science Education
(http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2005/XX/247_royal_society_president_slams__11_30_2005.asp)
Royal Society President slams "intelligent design"
Lord May of Oxford, the president of the Royal Society of
London, criticized "intelligent design" -- which he described as a
"disguised variant" of creationism -- in the course of his fifth and
final anniversary address to the Society on November 30, 2005. His
address was webcast and also posted in PDF form on the Royal
Society's website. In the published version of his address, he wrote
(pp. 21-22, notes omitted):
Today, however, fundamentalist forces are again on the march,
West and East. Surveying this phenomenon, Debora MacKenzie
has suggested that -- in remarkably similar ways across countries and
cultures -- many people are scandalised by "pluralism and tolerance
of other faiths, non-traditional gender roles and sexual behaviour,
reliance on human reason rather than divine revelation, and
democracy, which grants power to people rather than God." She adds
that in the US evangelical Christians have successfully fostered a
belief that science is anti-religious, and that a balance must be
restored, citing a survey which found 37% of Americans (many of them
not evangelicals) wanted Creationism taught in schools.
Fundamentalist Islam offers a similar threat to science according to
Ziauddin Sardar, who notes that a rise in literalist religious
thinking in the Islamic world in the 1990s seriously damaged science
there, seeing the Koran as the font of all knowledge.
In the US, the aim of a growing network of fundamentalist
foundations and lobby groups reaches well beyond "equal time" for
creationism, or its disguised variant "intelligent design", in the
science classroom. Rather, the ultimate aim is the overthrow of
"scientific materialism", in all its manifestations. One major
planning document from the movement's Discovery Institute tells us
that "Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the
materialist world view, and to replace it with a science consonant
with Christian and theistic convictions". George Gilder, a senior
fellow at the Discovery Institute, has indicated that this new,
faith-based science will rid us of the "chimeras of popular science",
which turn out to be ideas such as global warming, pollution
problems, and ozone depletion.
Lord May has won a number of international awards, including
the 1996 Crafoord Prize for "pioneering ecological research in
theoretical analysis of the dynamics of populations, communities and
ecosystems". Between 1995 and 2000 he was Chief Scientific Adviser to
the UK Government and Head of the Office of Science and Technology.
He became a member of the House of Lords in 2001 and was appointed to
be a member of the Order of Merit in 2002. Founded in the 1660s, the
Royal Society is one of the most prestigious scientific societies in
the world.
--
Martin Weiss, Ph.D
Vice President, Science
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111 th Street
Corona, New York 11368
718 699 0005 x 356
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