Ozzie and Harriet

By Jason Satek - Columnist

In the middle of an admittedly busy period, Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen found the time to bring attention to another topic aside from the World Series, one with a farther reach than baseball. Major League Baseball, along with Chevrolet, a corporate sponsor, named a All-Time Latino Team on the night of Game 4 in Houston .

This action, along with a Chevrolet commercial aired entirely in Spanish on Fox, signaled a large marketing effort to get in front of the largest single minority group in America .

One problem (well, two if you count an over-reliance on modern players; Vladimir Guerrero over Orlando Cepeda, puh-leease.); Guillen is not buying it. Quoted in the Chicago Tribune, he expanded,“I don't know exactly what Latino means to people that aren't Hispanic. If you speak Spanish, should you be Latino?”

Much of this springs from the posthumous inclusion of Ted Williams, the non-Spanish speaking Boston great whose mother was born in Mexico and current Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez, Spanish-speaking but born in New York . All this parsing may lead to higher vehicle sales, but the end result is more confusion.

More than ten years ago, the selfsame pot-stirring Chicago Tribune reprinted an article in its “What other newspapers are saying” section detailing the travails of one Raymond Tittman. Mr. Tittman applied to Georgetown Law School as an “African-American,” citing his family ancestry in Tanzania . He was accepted but upon arrival on the campus, he was denied admittance and accused of misleading the school because he was white.

In not denying his lineage, Georgetown made a non-geographically based decision in refusing Tittman, combining race and ethnicity to enforce an undoubtedly well-intentioned but poorly resulting social screening program.

All of this gets me to thinking of Harriet Miers. President Bush's second nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor withdrew for consideration for the post, citing executive privilege protection in a refusal to provide White House documents sought in her vetting by the Senate. She was replaced by Appeals Judge Samuel Alito, a second-generation Italian immigrant who possesses a far better resume on paper.

The previous arguments made in support of Miers, concerning diversity, nominating women and non-judges seems to have evaporated. If Bush was determined to follow through, he could have nominated my mother. She is a public defender in Chicago, is decidedly more liberal than he is used to consorting with but likes robes, has never been a judge and could be counted on to perform on the court with the utmost solemnity, competence and diligence when not clipping out newspaper articles to send to me.

These struggles of “ethnicity-nationality” versus “nationality-ethnicity” or the unerring promotion of one trait to the demotion of others seem to me to be a sure recipe for further difficulty and cultural splintering.

Rosa Parks recently became the first woman and 29 th person since 1852 to lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda in Washington D.C. This had been an honor accorded thus far to politicians and war heroes, of which Parks was neither, but her place was assured by a historic act of civil disobedience on an Alabama bus in 1955. This monumental deed, woven into the American tapestry, was not a call for special treatment but rather for equality with those around her. Though she is now gone, the actions of Mrs. Parks will remain as an excellent parable: acknowledge and celebrate those factors that differentiate humans, but be mindful that the end goal is a society that judges and promotes all citizens uniformly, as the rising tide lifts all ships.

An open letter to Dr. Keenan Dungey

By Ron Felten - Columnist

First, I'd like to express to you, Professor Dungey, my sincere gratitude for taking the time to read my column on Intelligent Design (“Intelligent design theory is anything but”) which was published in the Journal last month, and for thinking enough of it to compose a rebuttal, which ran in the October 26 edition.

One of the reasons I joined the Journal staff was because I wanted to help facilitate an exchange of ideas between individuals on campus and among those in the greater community. And, even though your letter was critical of my column, I want to thank you for engaging me (and our readers) in a debate of sorts.

Something that concerns me, however, is that you labeled my view as “uninformed.” Now I hope you truly believe that to be the case, and that you're not simply resorting to the polite equivalent of name-calling just because you and I hold different opinions. The only reason I perceive this to be an issue, mind you, is because your letter took several liberties in critiquing my argument, what I would call a "loose interpretation." That intrigued me, though, so I did a little investigating.

In your letter, you “challenged” me to read “ Darwin 's Black Box,” a book about biochemistry as it relates to the science of evolution, written by Michael Behe. You wondered if I, after reading this book, would still maintain that the Intelligent Design theory, which insists that all of creation is too complex to have occurred and evolved naturally (or without the help of a god), is “anything but intelligent.” Well, I have an answer.

What's troubling about and ultimately discredits Behe's argument is that he, like many ID advocates, refuses to approach the question of a Creator empirically; that is, he starts out with his answer (that cells are so complex, they must have been “made”) and, only afterwards, tries to stitch together supporting evidence. Interestingly enough, though, the evidence he cites is really a lack of evidence – I'll explain in a moment.

It surprises me that you, as an academic and a scientist (a fact you mention in your letter), would be so willing to accept such an utterly unscientific conclusion. I then discovered that you're also the faculty sponsor of the Christian Student Fellowship, a relevant bit of information – to this debate, at least – that you failed to include. Of course, your involvement with this group doesn't make your argument inherently biased; it does, however, bring into question your willingness to accept evidence that might challenge your adopted theological position.

To continue with Behe, though, his argument is relatively simple. He claims that because scientists and students, after hours and hours of joint research, haven't been able to answer some of biology's remaining questions, the scientific community has collectively released “a loud, clear, piercing cry of ‘design!'” To say Behe's assertion is an exaggeration would be an under-statement. Scientists who support the ID theory are but a small minority of all scientists and, while this alone doesn't mean they're wrong, it certainly helps to lend a little perspective to Behe's spun, propagandist claim.

To insist on the existence of a Creator simply because science hasn't yet answered all of our questions is, at best, the result of faulty logic - not to mention premature. (After all, for how long did humans believe the earth to be flat?) Yet Behe says the lack of an explanation, what he quixotically calls the “result,” is so “unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science. The discovery,” which is really a lack of evidence, he desperately continues, “rivals those of Newton and Einstein.”

Most leading scientists and academics, it seems, have correctly labeled Intelligent Design as what it truly is: A guess, as there is no evidence to support this theory and, in turn, no way to test its claims (the fourth and arguably most important step of the scientific method, as I'm sure you well know, Dr. Dungey). Hunter Rawlings, Cornell University 's interim president, for example, has gone on record as saying ID is nothing more than a “religious belief masquerading as a secular idea.” In addition, a Kansas professor has called it “creationism in a cheap tuxedo.”

Their point is clear. The lack of scientific evidence to support some aspects of evolutionary theory does not somehow prove the existence of God. Aspects of evolutionary theory, after all, can at least be tested; ID requires faith alone, in turn making it an illegitimate scientific theory.

What I am arguing is that baseless theories of faith, such as ID and creationism, should not be taught alongside scientific theories (or those that can be tested, analyzed and studied) as though the two are equal.

Finally, you indicate in your letter that you feel my insistence that President Bush supports the teaching of ID in public schools was inaccurate because “no federal funds are being used to develop Intelligent Design curricula.” Well, for starters, federal funds are being sent to the Dover , Pa. school district, which requires its teachers to inform students about ID. Further, Bush, as quoted in the Washington Post, New York Times and other newspapers, has said in reference to ID, “Both sides ought to be properly taught ... so people can understand what the debate is about.” I hope that clears up any misconceptions.

Perhaps, if you would like to join forces, we could organize some type of moderated panel discussion, which could feature UIS students and faculty, on the legitimacy of ID and whether or not it, as a theory, has any place in our nation's public schools or in our universities.

Phoning it in

So Ron it's Right