[escepticos] La evolución en Estados Unidos otra vez

["Ramón Díaz-Alersi" <rda@...>]

Esta noticia viene en el último número de Nature Medicine.

Saludos.

RDA
------

June 2000 Volume 6 Number 6 p 613
Baylor faculty upset over science and religion center
Tinker Ready
Boston

One year after a Kansas Board of Education banned the study of evolutionary
biology in its public schools, the latest clash between evolutionists and
creationists-those who believe God created life-has erupted at Baylor
University in Waco, Texas. At issue is the establishment of the new Michael
Polanyi Center, which aims to be an "an active participant in the growing
dialogue between science and religion."

Critics say Baylor's president, Robert B. Sloan Jr., set up the program with
no formal input from the faculty, and they are perturbed that it will be
dominated by proponents of 'intelligent design', a theory that draws on
physics, mathematics and philosophy to argue that living things are so
complex, evolution could not have produced them. Thus, life had to have been
the work of a higher power. The center's director, William Dembski, is one
of the theory's chief proponents.

Unlike creation science, which holds that scientific evidence proves the
Bible's creation story, 'intelligent design' stops short at giving God
credit and shies away from biblical references. Still, some Baylor science
faculty argue that 'intelligent design' is a fringe theory that doesn't have
any real standing in the academic community. "We are mainstream scientists
and we're concerned that the Polanyi center casts us as something than other
than that," says Charles Weaver, an associate professor of neuroscience and
psychology.

"The directors of the center claim to be doing science; that is, they argue
for introducing intelligent design into science as an explanatory category,"
Robert Baird, chairman of the Faculty Senate, wrote in the senate's
newsletter. "Yet the Center was created without consultation with colleagues
in the sciences."

Sloan rejected a 26-2 vote by the senate to dissolve the center, and instead
is putting together a review committee to study the issues raised by
faculty. In an official statement, Sloan says he rejects creation science
and would never bar anyone at Baylor from teaching evolution. He does,
however, believe that God created the world.

Baylor, which houses an Institute of Biomedical Studies in affiliation with
Baylor College of Medicine, is the country's largest Baptist university. The
school's commitment to the sciences includes plans for a new $60 million
science building and $20 million in renovations to existing laboratories.
The director of the biomedical institute, Darden Powers, who is also
chairman of the physics department, says he supports the president's
position on the Polanyi center but declined to comment further.

The clash comes at a time when an increasing number of universities are
revisiting the uneasy relationship between religion and science. Programs
range from the American Association for the Advancement of Science's
decidedly pro-evolution "Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion," to the
three-year-old God and Computers course and lecture series at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to the graduate school program at the
Institute for Creation Research in southern California.