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Letter to The Villadom Times

9/25/02

Dear Editor,

Yet again I feel the need to respond to one of John Koster’s absurd ramblings (9/24/02). He has now moved from the field of religious fanaticism into the area of the paranormal (perhaps they are the same thing!). I will not comment on the people he mentions in support of his ideas, as I have never heard of them. I would also venture that most people in the scientific community have never heard of them either. I will comment on the backgrounds of the 3 people whose ideas he does not agree with, Carl Sagan, Stephan Jay Gould and James Randi.

James Randi is a magician, lecturer, researcher, author and the recipient of the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship grant in 1986 – the so-called “genius grant”. He currently runs the James Randi Education Foundation that does research into the paranormal. Currently they are offering a $1,000,000 (not $10,000 as Mr. Koster states) prize for anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. That is, under scientific testing methods. He was also a famous entertainer long before he started his quest for the paranormal and the debunking of spoon-bending phonies. He is also on the advisory board of Skeptics magazine.

Carl Sagan was a well-known scientist associated with Harvard, Cornell and the Smithsonian Observatory, among other major universities and research institutes. He was one of the most well known scientists of his era and perhaps ever. He has written hundreds of scientific articles and books along with a few novels. He was also Humanist Of The Year for 1981.

Stephan Jay Gould, who recently passed away, went to graduate school at Columbia University and was a professor at Harvard for many years. Strictly, his field is Paleontology. Like Sagan he has written hundreds of scientific articles and books, and, also like Sagan, has become a popularizer of science. Like Sagan he was also Humanist Of The Year (2001). (Just a note: other past Humanists Of The Year have been Salk, Sahkarov, Weinberg, Pauling, Dawkins, Montagu, Fuller, Galbraith, Asimov, Huxley, and Spock among others)

What I have outlined here is just a few lines about each of these brilliant men. One could easily fill the Villadom Times with short bios of each of them. One would need a small truck to carry all the things they have written! Actually, one night even need a small truck to carry all the things that have been written about them! Can the same be said for Mr. Koster’s (Pseudo) Scientific heros?

What Mr. Koster dislikes about these people is the fact that they demand that scientific methods be used. This entails not only using a strict methodology to produce results, but also account for the fact that other scientists working independently can reproduce those results again and again. Sadly, Mr. Koster, in his zeal, is adamant about staying in the realm of pseudo-science and not in the world of real science.  What Mr. Koster also objects to is that these people believe in Evolution and not the power of the supernatural like he does. Prof. Sagan and Prof. Gould were also Humanists (I am not sure about Mr. Randi, but his ideas fit in with those of the Humanists), this probably also does not sit well with Mr. Koster. 

Given the choice to be associated with and follow these three individuals or the people Mr. Koster seems to believe are the world’s great scientists I feel I have chosen wisely. Mr. Koster, if you have students, which in itself scares me, please have them read up on the works of Sagan, Gould and even Randi The Magician. They will learn a lot.

"We are here because one odd group of fishes had a peculiar fin anatomy that could transform into legs for terrestrial creatures ... We may yearn for a 'higher' answer—but none exists." 

“Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.”

 Stephen Jay Gould, Evolutionary Biologist