UnCon 06: Intelligent Design vs Evolution

[sam]

As promised, this is a brief resume of the debate yesterday at Fortean Times UnConvention.

Just to clear up any misapprehensions UnCon is a broad church with hard core sceptics and real science as well as colourful believers in a variety of credible and crackpot theories.
Many of the speakers are academics supported by august institutions and talks ranged from Rat Scabies on Rennes le Chateau, Jan Bondeson on The Olaf Palme Conspiracy to Malcolm Gaskill on Witchfinders (punk rocker, consultant rheumatologist, Cambridge history lecturer) by way of UFOs and the Hippy Movement, Angels and Fairies, the Mongolian death worm and much more.

Ian Simmons talk on ID vs Evolution covered a lot of ground but was basically about the schisms within the Creationist communities about Darwin.
In short advocates of Intelligent Design seek to find scientific proof of a 'designer' through a variety of means that look for loopholes in the Darwinian model. Many of their theories derive from a misunderstanding of evolution and genetics in particular according to Simmons but most interesting from my point of view was the fracture between literalist Creationeers and ID proponents, the latter favouring interventionist models of biological advancement the former believing fossils arrived with The Flood and generally flying in the face of evidence.

It was pointed out that some religions such as the Cof E and Roman Catholics saw no contradiction between faith and evolution with encylicals on the subject while Southern Baptists and followers of Islam among others, found the two world views impossible to assimilate. Entertainment was provided by one person in the following Q and A who declared herself a Mid-Westerner resenting the depiction of some of her countrymen as ignorant philistines before launching into a defense of ID.
There was explanation of the difference between scientific theories and those proposed by The General Public and by close of play the boy from the Beagle came out smelling of roses. Tony Blair raised much ire for being an ID wedge through his obsessive even handedness rather than any respect for the theory.
I admit the debates are of purely academic interest to me but my wife tells me two of her biology teachers resigned over having to advance evolutionary theories in school whereas my priestly mentors got the boot over Vatican II and a spat with Pope Paul.

In truth, while he's a splendid chap and an excellent scientist Ian Simmons is not one of nature's communicators and the Ums and Ars threatened to overtake the meat and veg at times.
On a similar subject, the Scopes monkey trial, Doug Skinner a New York writer composer was more entertaining. A laconic Frazier Crane with a ukulele and some marvellous period comics he described the difficulties of being a liberal in contemporary America. With an administration that mistrusted nuance, the intellect and europeanism, the yank felt himself wholly out of place admiring all three.
We got to see power points of his 'crap', a splendid collection of political memoralilia and hear some dusty county tunes on the evolutionary theme.
Sitting through every lecture for the entire weekend I'm still mentally battered so apologies for over editing the experience but it is one I'd recommend to everyone.
Roll on Uncon 07