Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 15:20:55 -0600 (CST)
From: Dr. Robert Sheldon 
To: PFolger@agu.org
Subject: AGU session EP41

Dear Peter,

 I attended the session on Creationism, and was greatly disappointed that
despite my warnings, the entire session devolved into a socio-political
statement, as I had feared, rather than the balanced scientific debate so
desperately needed by our society and our country. This is not to say that
scientists work in a vacuum. On the contrary, our funding and students and
classrooms are all very much a part of society. No, it is because we are
air-breathing that we need a real recognition of the scientific
atmosphere, its constituents and its effects. Instead, the speaker list
was loaded, and the discussion geared toward setting up a straw man and
torching it, adding one more source of air pollution into an increasingly
strident and acrimonious debate. I hope your man with the tape recorder in
the front row caught the questions from the floor, because they were proof
positive to me that no debate was encouraged or even allowed in this
session.

  What you and your colleagues have done is potentially fatal, not just to
AGU but to scientists as a whole. You have taken the bait proferred by
Creationists and swallowed it, hook, line and sinker. Surely you do not
believe that Creationists are as stupid and as naive as all the cartoons
reproduced for us in that session? Don't you see that once AGU or any
scientific organization can be compelled to make position statements about
"theories", they have placed themselves in the self-same position as the
Catholic Church when it condemned Galileo? What if AGU had a position
statement, say, 40 years ago, affirming that plate tectonics was not a
valid theory? Do you see how such statements can be used against you? Once
AGU can be cajolled into making creedal statements, affirming or denying
essentially unprovable dogmas, then it has left its role as an arbiter and
judge in matters of truth, and become a participant in the wars of
religion. If you don't understand how serious this move is, consider what
destroyed the Superconducting Super Collider (other than a bad name), it
wasn't the science, or even the envy of other scientists. It was politics,
pure and simple. Now imagine what might happen to AGU if a conservative
Republican, say, from Kansas were elected to office. Might there not be
repercussions? Nor does it take even this, for conservatives number
perhaps 30% of the voting public.

   But this is perhaps trivial compared with what is waiting on the Left.
You, like most of your colleagues in that panel, feel hostile toward the
conservative Right, and would willingly trade blows with it, but are you
prepared to take on the radical feminists, the revisionists and the
post-modernists who fill chairs at Harvard, Yale and Princeton?  Are you
willing to say that you can simultaneously "discover Truth" and "dictate
Truth"? Can you be both high priest of Truth and objective seeker? Will
not your duplicity destroy your credibility, your willingness to
politicize your position undermine your neutrality? What will you answer
the sociologist who ridicules you?

   Science is under tremendous siege, from both the Left and the Right.
Even now I wonder if the gates have not already fallen. Law courts
routinely find so-called scientific experts who parrot their contradictory
findings to whomever will fund them.  In this climate, is it no wonder
that Creationists can find support for their position? The truth of the
matter is, both Creationists and radical feminists are post-modern, for
neither of them care a penny about evidence. And you have just played into
their hands. If Science is to survive into the next century (much less the
next millenium!), it must not lose sight of its foundation and basis in
reality. And it must not fend off attacks with ridicule, but with sound
epistemology and metaphysics. And I'm sorry, saying "I am not a
supernaturalist!" ten times with successively louder intonation will not
garner any respect from either side. To quote an ancient book, "Your
maxims are proverbs of ashes;  your defenses are defenses of clay." I was
again, embarassed to see AGU with mud on its face. No, we do not pursue
our calling in a vacuum, nor should we spit into the wind.

yours Truly,
Rob Sheldon