It’s pretty brutal.
“I am inclined to believe that he might actually not have bothered to understand how evolution works”
Her response to the Axe book could be summarized as, “wait…what?!?”
For the record, I do think it would have been helpful to have an ID (or better yet, OEC or YEC) Christian participate in the symposium. I’m a big fan of evolutionary creationists, but not sure why other views are not reflected.
I think so, too. When Adam and the Genome was reviewed on Sapienta, there were “pro” and “not pro” voices.
That said, when I was invited to participate, I was not told about any of the other reviewers. As far as I know we all worked in isolation and ignorance of each other. @Joel_Duff was that your experience as well?
Cara’s review is also interesting because she has no prior history with ID or Axe’s arguments. (That obviously can’t be said for me.) So, she went into the review as open-minded as a scientist can be.
Dennis, yes, that is my experience as well. I asked if there would be any coordination with respect to preventing the reviewers from having too much overlap in their responses. I was told the editors would take whatever was given to them and didn’t expect that to be a big problem. After reading the two published reviews I can tell you that my review is not going to represent a wholly different different voice but will very much echo many of the same concerns though with different examples. Not knowing who else was a reviewer I had thought it was possible I might be one of the most critical but now I think I might be the most muted in my review.
What exactly would have an ID advocate have added other than quoting and agreeing with Axe?
I think the purpose is to engage Axes arguments. I think the good thing about this effort is that it shows why most scientists do not find his arguments compelling.
I totally agree. But if an EC book was being reviewed by the symposium and only anti-evolution Christians were writing responses, I’d feel like part of the conversation would be missing. I’m trying to see it from the perspective of other views.
Also, I think a YEC response to Axe could have been very interesting, because young-earthers have a weird relationship with ID.
There seems to be a difference.
Two Christians who affirm evolutionary science are much more likely to be open about their disagreements with one another. Similarly, they are much more likely to add some useful addendums. Look at Venema’s symposium for clear evidence of this.
Right now Doug Axe, for good reason, is the golden boy of the ID movement. The ID movement, however, does not really allow for public self-criticism. So any ID person who responds is going to toe the line. Rhetorically, they are best posed to arguing against the responses, but without responses to look at, they do not have much to say. Even if they are unconvinced by any of Axe’s arguments, they would face @vjtorley’s fate for explaining that publicly.
I just cannot imagine what an ID proponent would add as a response, except to just swallow it whole and bash on evolutionary science. Once again, contrast that with the symposium on Adam and the Genome. There was real responses by the scientists, that (it seems) took us forward.
I think a review by Michael Behe would be interesting, if - and it’s a big if - he was willing to engage Axe on common ancestry. Not too likely, of course.
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