|
Though he’s fairly prominent character, I admit James Le Fanu was not till recently on my radar screen or that of anyone else around here that I know of. A British medical doctor who publishes in peer-reviewed medical journals like the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and the British Medical Journal, a columnist for the London Telegraph, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for his book The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine (2001), Dr. Le Fanu turns out to be a flaming Darwin doubter, too. He comes out with a vengeance in his new book, Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves," which hammers scientific materialism to bits. It really is a book you shouldn’t miss buying and reading.
What’s so notable? First of all, the man writes like an angel. Second, his book appears under the imprint of Pantheon, a very mainstream venue that I’ve never associated with conservative, religious, unconventional, or other dangerous types of authors. Third, while in his Acknowledgements, Le Fanu thanks a bunch of fellow writers who will be well known to readers of ENV — Michael Behe, Jeffrey Schwartz, Jonathan Wells, Phillip Johnson, and others — again, as far as I know his acquaintance with them was not personal but through reading their books and then thinking his own thoughts.
Le Fanu doesn’t mention intelligent design or Discovery Institute, which is just as well. It probably explains how he flew under not only our radar but that of Pantheon Books.
Continue reading "Who Is James Le Fanu?
Part I: Darwin Doubter Signals Paradigm Shift in Evolution Debate" »
Why is it that Darwinian rhetorical strategies often remind me of a Monty Python sketch? In this case, the one about the philosophy department at the University of Wollamaloo, where every faculty member is called Bruce and the departmental rules include “Rule two: No member of the faculty is to maltreat the Abbos [aboriginal Australians] in any way a'all -- if there's anyone watching.”
So Michael Behe amusingly notes in his Amazon blog how public Darwinian responses to the main argument of his book The Edge of Evolution differ from responses in more technical forums. Or as Bruce might put it, Rule one: No member of the Darwin Lobby may admit that evolution poses seemingly unsolvable enigmas -- if there’s anyone watching.
When The Edge of Evolution came out, reviewers such as Sean Carroll at the U. of Wisconsin and Jerry Coyne at the U. of Chicago were full of reassuring noises for their readers in Science and The New Republic respectively. Behe had shown the insuperable difficulties evolution faces in explaining how multiple mutations can add up to results even as basic as the most elementary protein features, notably binding sites.
Continue reading "The Edge of Obfuscation: Darwinists Behind Closed Doors" »
From the new Zogby poll this week:
QUESTION: I am going to read you two statements about Biology teachers teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Please tell me which statement comes closest to your own point of view—Statement A or Statement B?
Statement A: Biology teachers should teach only Darwin’s theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it.
Statement B: Biology teachers should teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it.
Statement A 14%
Statement B 78%
Neither 5%
Other/Not sure 2%
 A large majority (78%) say Statement B, “Biology teachers should teach Darwin’s theory of evolution, but also the scientific evidence against it,” comes closest to their point of view, while 14% say Statement A, “Biology teachers should teach only Darwin’s theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it” comes closest to theirs.
The majority supporting teaching both sides of the evolution debate jumped by 9 points since 2006, when this question was last asked:
Results from Zogby nationwide poll in 2006
Statement A 21%
Statement B 69%
Neither/Other/Not sure 10%
Random sample of 1,004 likely voters. Conducted by Zogby International on Feb.27-Mar. 2, 2006. Margin of error +/-3.2%.
Continue reading "Dramatic Increase in Support for Teaching Scientific Evidence Both For and Against Darwinian Evolution" »
Dr. Steven Novella is a Yale neurologist with whom I have been having a blog debate about the mind-brain question. Dr. Novella asserts that neuroscience has proven the strict materialistic understanding of the mind — that the mind is caused entirely by the brain, and reducible entirely to it — is true. I disagree. Although the mind and brain correlate to a high degree, the mind is ontologically irreducible to the brain. I believe that some form of dualism is necessary for a satisfactory explanation of the mind.
I have written several posts about qualia, which is the subjective nature of sensory experiences, such the experience of the color red, or the smell of coffee, or the ‘hurt’ of pain. The neurophysiological correlates of these phenomena, such as the physiology of retinal mediation of color vision, or the olfactory nerves in the nose that mediate the smell of coffee, or the neurochemistry of C-fibers that mediate pain, can be explained materialistically, but the experience of color, smell, and pain — qualia — elides material explanation.
Here is my description of the problem that qualia poses, from a previous post:
Continue reading "Dr. Novella’s Evasion Is an "Emergent Phenomenon"" »
Distinguished scientist and professor James M. Tour will moderate a
debate next month in Texas about intelligent design and evolution featuring four prominent scientists and philosophers. What's interesting is that defending intelligent design are an agnostic who is skeptical of ID and an atheist philosopher. That would be Dr. David Berlinski and Dr. Bradley Monton, respectively. Defending evolution will be British theologian Denis Alexander and well-known physicist Lawrence Krauss.
Here's how the hosts at St. Andrews Episcopal church in Fort Worth, Texas describe the debate: The issue of the debate is one of the most emotionally-charged questions facing our country today. The debate seeks to present the audience with different perspectives and helpful insights to enable them to form better conclusions about faith and science. It will feature four world renowned participants who will address this significant issue from different viewpoints; specifically, a Pro-Intelligent Design Theist and Atheist, and an Anti-Intelligent Design Theist and Atheist. Our moderator, Dr. James M. Tour, is an individual of impeccable scientific standing and credentials. It should be pointed out that David Berlinski is not a theist but an agnostic, as was made clear in his recent, hot-selling book The Devil's Delusion. While he is a prominent skeptic of Darwinism, he is not a proponent of intelligent design. An interesting choice to defend the theory, to be sure.
Continue reading "The Great Debate on Evolution and Intelligent Design: Agnostics, Atheists, and Theists, oh my!" »
If you missed seeing Expelled in theaters last spring, relax. Expelled will be out on DVD Tuesday, October 21st.
"Big Science in this area of biology has lost its way," says Stein. "Scientists are supposed to be allowed to follow the evidence wherever it may lead, no matter what the implications are. Freedom of inquiry has been greatly compromised, and this is not only anti-American, it’s anti-science. Its anti-the whole concept of learning." Now that the legal issues swirling around Expelled have been mostly resolved, it will be interesting to see what "Big Science" Darwinists will try next to expel smart new science from labs and classrooms.
Go here for more on Expelled.
[Note: For a more comprehensive defense of Ben Stein's documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, please see: NCSE Exposed at NCSEExposed.org]
Those of you who read A.C. Grayling's arrogant and intellectually vacuous thrashing of Steve Fuller's new book, Dissent Over Descent: Evolution's 500-Year War on Intelligent Design, will want to know that Fuller now has a reply available at the New Humanist.
Grayling's method is to simplify opponents' arguments to the point of misrepresenting them. Just as bad, Grayling's "review" reveals a woefully disappointing grasp of the the origins of modern science and the history of Christianity. One begins to wonder whether the days of truly intellectual atheists are over. Perhaps it is no longer possible for atheists, uneducated in the history of Christianity and its doctrines, to level serious, challenging criticisms of the faith. It seems they just have too little knowledge. And in this case, this theological miseducation leads Grayling to misunderstand the history of modern science and spew 19th century clichés about "religion" the way Matt Damon regurgitates Maureen Dowd's anti-Palin talking points.
The review was so smug and flimsy that Fuller's smack-down reply is warranted. Do have a look.
Prof. Thomas Nagel, a self-declared atheist who earned his PhD. in philosophy at Harvard 45 years ago, who has been a professor at U.C. Berkeley, Princeton, and the last 28 years at New York University, and who has published ten books and more than 60 articles, has published an important essay, "Public Education and Intelligent Design," in the Wiley InterScience Journal Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 36, issue 2, on-line at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118493933/home (fee for access US $29.95).
Prof. Nagel's paper is a significant and substantial opening, at America's highest intellectual level, that encourages all intelligent, educated, informed individuals — particularly those whose interest in this issue derives from intellectual curiosity, not the emotional advocacy excitement for any side — that it is legitimate as a matter of data, science, and logic, divorced from all religious texts and doctrines, to consider that intelligent design may be a valid scientific approach to understanding how DNA and the complex chemical systems of life came to attain their present form. Prof. Nagel's article is well worth the price to put it in the library of any inquiring mind.
Continue reading "Prominent Atheist Professor of Law and Philosophy Thomas Nagel Calls Intelligent Design Scientific and Constitutional to "Mention" in Science Classes" »
If you missed "Flies In Danger Escape With Safety Dance," a story by NPR's Joe Palca, give it a listen. And don't forget to check out the videos which show how flies take off from a stationary position.
This kind of story puts a damper on the kind of rhetorical jabs commonly heard from Darwinists, such as, "Do we really want to make God responsible for flies and mosquitoes?" Every time someone takes the time to study one of these creatures — in this instance, scientist Michael Michael Dickinson — they come away awestruck, saying things like: "When you see a fly flitting around your hair, or your potato salad, you might see an annoyance," he [Dickinson] says. "But in my lab you really see a marvelous machine, arguably the most sophisticated flying device on the planet."
In case you missed this gem from The New York Times, you're going to love the logic: Nonetheless, Dowd’s views do bring solace to some, going by reactions from parishioners who claim that a scientific perspective has helped them come to terms with their follies of the past. For some at least, the recognition of genetic and biochemical frailty is a healing act. Last fall, for example, after Bob Miller, an 81-year-old man, heard Dowd’s sermon at a Unitarian church in Pensacola, Fla., he felt his guilt over a string of affairs from four decades ago melting away. “I could never quite understand why I had behaved that way,” says Miller, who was climbing the corporate ladder when his infidelities began, leading to the breakup of his marriage. When Dowd began talking about viewing moral lapses against the backdrop of evolution, “suddenly a light went on inside my head,” Miller says. His rising status at his company, he concluded, had probably contributed to increased testosterone. “I think the physical change in my body was so strong that it completely overpowered any moral teachings and religious beliefs I had,” Miller says. “It was still inexcusable, but it made more sense.”
An Evolution Academic Freedom Bill (HB 6027) was introduced today in Michigan by Rep. John Moolenaar. The bill is similar to academic freedom legislation introduce in several other states earlier this year and, if enacted, will provide public school teachers with academic freedom to present both the scientific evidence for and against Darwinian evolution.
“Often in this debate the issues at hand get misrepresented, and so our goal is to fully and straightforwardly explain that this is about science and helping prepare the best scientists of the future for our state and for our country,” said Rep. Moolenaar. “And a big part of that is enabling them to have the academic freedom to explore and critically examine scientific theories.”
Discovery Institute has long supported academic freedom for teachers and scientists to explore and explain the strengths and weaknesses of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
“In many states public school teachers, students, and even college professors have faced intimidation and retaliation when they attempt to discuss scientific criticisms of Darwinian evolution,” said biologist Jonathan Wells, a research scientist at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture who holds a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. “In educational institutions that receive taxpayer support, it is entirely appropriate for the government to ensure that teachers and students have the right to discuss freely the evidence and scientific arguments for and against evolutionary theory.”
Orlando Sentinel and Florida Baptist Witness report that the Evolution Academic Freedom Act was passed by the Florida Senate today.
In this week’s National Review (December 3, 2007), theoretical particle physicist Stephen Barr takes on those who claim that the findings of modern science have banished the ideas of mind or soul.
Barr, with whom many of us at Discovery have misgivings regarding his use of the word “random” in neo-Darwinian theory, nonetheless gives an excellent exposition of philosophy of mind’s intersection with contemporary physics in his article “The Soul and Its Enemies” (sorry: password required).
Barr concludes: We see, then, that those who confidently assert that scientific discoveries have banished the soul to the realm of myth offer only a limited view of the evidence. Indeed, the very possibility of scientific discoveries points to man’s openness to truth and his ability to grasp meaning. One does not really need a scientist to confirm that one has a spiritual soul, however. Its powers are daily on display in our lives as rational and free creatures. Of course, there are those who disagree with this. And they are quite free to disagree. But their very freedom to disagree is proof that they are wrong. For further reading in this area, see Part I of Moreland and Rae's Body & Soul and Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary's The Spiritual Brain.
For those of you who missed Dr. John West's lecture at The Heritage Foundation this week in Washington, D.C., it is now available online (look for November 6, 2007).
West had a strained voice that day, yet he spoke eloquently on "The Abolition of Man? How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science." In this lecture, he covers what he sees as five impacts of scientific materialism on public policy.
If you like what you see, don't forget to check out Darwin Day in America.
Eminent evolutionist James Watson, winner of the Nobel Prize for co-discovering the structure of DNA, is sparking controversy in Great Britain for suggesting that blacks are inferior to whites due to evolution. But there is nothing particularly extraordinary about Watson's views. As I document in chapter 7 of my forthcoming book Darwin Day in America, there is a long history of evolutionists using Darwinism to justify racism—including Darwin himself.
Watson is past director and current Chancellor of the prestigious biological research lab at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. Ironically, that lab has deep connections to Darwinian racism of years gone by. Early in the twentieth century it was the headquarters for one of the most virulent American eugenics groups, the Eugenics Record Office, which promoted forced sterilization and opposed immigration to America by ethnic groups considered lower on the evolutionary scale than Anglo-Saxon whites. Back then the lab was directed by Harvard-trained geneticist Charles Davenport. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Davenport held views about blacks and evolution hauntingly similar to Watson's.
Continue reading "Leading Scientist Stirs Controversy by Invoking Darwin's Theory to Argue for Inferiority of Blacks" »
“Baylor University has proven yet again that academic freedom has been thrown off campus and academic persecution is now the norm,” said Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin in reaction to Baylor University’s deletion of a professor's research website, which focused on evolutionary systems and informatics. “It is simply unconscionable that a major university would so trample a scientist’s right to freedom of scientific inquiry,”
Baylor University has taken offline the Evolutionary Informatics Laboratory website that had been administered by Robert Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, because the administration claimed there were anonymous complaints linking the lab to intelligent design.
Continue reading "Baylor University Denies Research Scientist's Academic Freedom" »
Expelled is a disturbing new documentary that will shock anyone who thinks all scientists are free to follow the evidence wherever it may lead.
Two years ago when we hosted an event at the National Press Club to raise the alarm about the persecution of pro-ID scientists and educators, I was quoted as saying: “There is a disturbing trend of scientists, teachers, and students coming under attack for expressing support in the theory of intelligent design, or even just questioning evolution. The freedom of scientists, teachers, and students to question Darwin's theory, or to express alternative scientific hypothesis is coming under increasing attack by people that can only be called Darwinian fundamentalists.”  Well, it is nearly two years later and it’s sad to say, but the Darwinist inquisition is spreading. Things have gotten worse, not better. Academic freedom is under intense attack by Darwinists across the country.
Finally someone is fighting back, and that someone is Ben Stein. Stein is perfectly situated to weigh in on this issue, as he is an actor, a pop-culture icon, and at the same time a serious economist who has worked in academia and the government.
Today the website was launched for Stein’s next film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, due out in theaters nationwide next February.
Continue reading "New Ben Stein Flick, Expelled, Blows the Whistle on the Darwinist Inquisition" »
Recently the Boston Globe ran a letter to the editor by Stephen Meyer, responding to Sally Lehrman's ridiculous claim that the Explore Evolution textbook "uses psuedoscience to attack Darwin's theories."
Meyer's response? There's nothing "psuedo" about saying what the evolutionists themselves admit, even citing the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. Perhaps Lehrman judges our book pseudoscience because we also describe current scientific criticisms of evolutionary theory. Perhaps she is unaware that skepticism about the creative power of natural selection and random mutation is common in peer-reviewed scientific literature and in the scientific community. No less an authority than the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences published a recent paper stating: "Natural selection based solely on mutation is probably not an adequate mechanism for evolving complexity."
"Explore Evolution" not only tells students about such skepticism, but offers the evidential basis for it. But it does so alongside a thorough discussion of the strengths of evolutionary theory. That isn't pseudoscience, that's good science education.
Science writer Denyse O’Leary is the latest to weigh in on The Edge of Evolution over at her popular blog, Post-Darwinist. She actually has three insightful posts related to Behe, and of course Behe’s constributions to the overall debate over Darwinism.
She sums up The Edge of Evolution this way: Behe calculates that, based on the available evidence of observed Darwinian mutations, events less likely than ten to the twentieth power are generally beyond the edge of (Darwinian) evolution (145).
There is the main argument in a nutshell, minus the supporting material. Many people, of course, will feel the need to argue for or against the thesis of The Edge of Evolution without bothering to read it. Despite the fact that it is very clearly written - a masterpiece of simple explanation, accessible to anyone who can read National Geographic or Scientific American.
Continue reading "Behe’s Edge of Evolution Continues to Attract Attention" »
Michael Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution, continues to garner attention. Not surprisingly, Darwinists are not making the same mistake they made with Darwin's Black Box, only now they are working overtime to ensure EoE suffers crib death. They simply can't afford for another Behe book to get any traction. So, Behe is having to work overtime as well, responding to his critics. Today he has the first of two responses to a recent review in Nature magazine by Ken Miller. His full Amazon author's page has all of his responses thus far to Jerry Coyne, Sean Carroll, and Michael Ruse, as well as answers to some common questions about the book.
Pro-intelligent design astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez is appealing his denial of tenure at Iowa State University to the Iowa State Board of Regents. Dr. Gonzalez's first appeal was rejected by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy on May 31. On June 19, Gonzalez filed notice with the ISU President's office that he would make a further appeal to the Board of Regents. Gonzalez's current appeal will play out over the next couple of months as the record in the case is forwarded by the university to the Board of Regents and both Gonzalez and the university file their written arguments in the case. If Gonzalez's denial of tenure is not overturned, he will be out of a job at the end of the 2007-08 academic year.
Continue reading "Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez Appeals Tenure Denial to Iowa Board of Regents" »
 Let the rewriting of history begin. The Chronicle of Higher Education’s blog recently carried a post claiming that Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure by Iowa State University (ISU) largely because “Mr. Gonzalez’s publication record has dropped off considerably since he was hired at Iowa State.” But this statement is a gross distortion of Dr. Gonzalez’s real publication record.
A simple decrease in publications is meaningless without reference to expected standards of publication for teaching faculty, departmental publication standards, or the publication rates of similarly situated faculty. A fair assessment would ask how Gonzalez compared to other astronomers in his department since the year he joined ISU (2001), especially compared to those astronomers that have already been granted tenure. And the answer to that question is clear: According to the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System, Gonzalez has published 34 publications since 2001 and his normalized publication score is 2nd among all astronomers in his department. (Click here for the methodology on his absolute publication count.) In fact, he beats out all tenured astronomers in his department in the normalized number of publications since 2001! We’ve already highlighted that Gonzalez has the highest normalized citation count among ISU astronomers over the same time period. Moreover, even if one counts only the refereed articles Gonzalez published after coming to ISU, he significantly exceeded his own department's stated standard of the number of peer-reviewed publications needed for tenure. These significant comparisons show just how unfair (and irrelevant) the claim is that Gonzalez's publication rate “dropped off” compared to his pre-ISU days. The "drop off" claim is additionally unfair for reasons previously outlined by John West:
Continue reading "Chronicle of Higher Education Promotes Misinformation about Guillermo Gonzalez’s Publication Rate" »
 The current issue of the Montana Law Review features a lively exchange of views about the Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design decision, and the articles are now available online at the law review’s website. The lead article on the Dover decision (“Intelligent Design Will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover”) is co-authored by David DeWolf, me, and Casey Luskin. A second article by Peter Irons (“Disaster in Dover”) responds to our article, followed by a short rebuttal by DeWolf, me, and Luskin. There is also an editors’ introduction with a timeline of the Dover case (currently not available online).
Continue reading "Montana Law Review Features Exchange over Kitzmiller Intelligent Design Decision" »
In a weekend essay in the Des Moines Register, Iowa State Physics Professor John Hauptman explains that ISU astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure because Gonzalez argued that a purposive cause is the best explanation for certain features of our cosmic habitat. By this standard, Hauptman will also need to fire many of the most esteemed physicists and astronomers of our day, as well as the founders of modern science. Hauptman and his fellow thought police at Iowa State have their summer work cut out for them.
Continue reading "Guillermo Gonzalez, Nobel Laureates and Founders of Modern Science See Purpose as Best Explanation for Fine-Tuned Cosmic Habitat" »
The Des Moines Register has published two differing views on ISU's denial of tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez.
The first, by Discovery senior fellow David Klinghoffer, looks at the current state of academic freedom at ISU and finds few defenders left there.
The second is by a colleague of Gonzalez's, professor John Hauptman, who admits that intelligent design was the reason he voted against giving Gonzalez tenure, yet somehow doesn't perceive that as a violation of Gonzalez's academic freedom.
Continue reading "ISU Professor Mistakes Prejudice for Academic Freedom" »
Ames, IA – Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet and an advocate of the scientific theory of intelligent design, has lost his first appeal to overturn the decision to deny him tenure at Iowa State University (ISU).
President Gregory L. Geoffroy announced the decision yesterday to deny Dr. Gonzalez's appeal, despite the fact that Dr. Gonzalez published 350% more peer-reviewed journal articles than is "ordinarily" supposed to show research excellence in his department.
“It’s a sad day for science and free inquiry when tenure is denied to a scientist of Guillermo Gonzalez’s caliber,” said Dr. John G. West, associate director of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, where Dr. Gonzalez is a senior fellow. “President Geoffroy has clearly demonstrated that academic freedom is not as important to Iowa State University as passing an ideological litmus test.”
Continue reading "University President Denies Appeal in Tenure Case of Intelligent Design Astronomer at Iowa State University" »
The President of Iowa State University, Gregory Geoffroy, has issued a statement defending his denial of the tenure appeal of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez. In the statement, Geoffroy claims that he concluded that Gonzalez “simply did not show the trajectory of excellence that we expect in a candidate seeking tenure in physics and astronomy.”
Ah, yes, President Geoffroy has such high standards of excellence that only the most outstanding professors are allowed to achieve tenure at ISU.
Geoffroy’s high standards must be why he approved 91% of the tenure applicants at ISU in 2007 (and why the tenure approval rate has gone up each year at ISU for the past five years).
Geoffroy’s high standards are presumably also why he promoted to full professor this year Hector Avalos, the ISU faculty member who argues in his “scholarship” that the Bible is worse than Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Yes, according to President Geoffroy’s exalted standards, only the best and brightest are allowed to stay at ISU!
But there’s more.
Continue reading "ISU President Geoffroy and the Elephant in the Living Room" »
Guillermo Gonzalez has issued a statement about the rejection of his tenure appeal by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy:
I learned on the morning of June 1, 2007 that President Geoffroy has denied my tenure appeal. I understand that this was a very difficult decision for him to make given its far-reaching implications. It is now clear to me that this decision, in effect, had been predetermined by August 2005, when Hector Avalos and other ISU professors began circulating a petition statement condemning Intelligent Design. At the same time several of the same ISU faculty spread misinformation about me and the nature of my Intelligent Design research in the local press. These events poisoned the atmosphere among the faculty and administration on campus towards Intelligent Design, and, ultimately, impacted negatively on my tenure evaluation. It is unfortunate that the personal religious and ideological beliefs of some faculty have been so influential on this issue.
Ultimately, the decision to deny or grant tenure is a subjective one, based not only on published objective academic criteria, but also on such ill-defined criteria as the perceived standing among peers and whether the mission of the university is advanced. My publication record must be balanced against other aspects of my professional research. It is in the way the separate factors are weighted that personal biases and political pressures can influence the final decision. I continue to believe that I have met my department's and the university's criteria for tenure. I have not yet decided whether I will appeal the decision to the Board of Regents.
The Ames Tribune has reported that the tenure appeal of Iowa State University (ISU) astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez has been denied by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy. It's a sad day for academic freedom. A statement by Geoffroy defending his decision can be found here, while a statement by Gonzalez disputing the decision can be found here.
UPDATE (12:45 pm): Within the hour of our posting of this story, we received a communication from ISU's university counsel that states: "We believe we can start sending some material to you early next week, but since we don't have most of the submissions from the departments yet, I don't know how long it will take to complete the process." Well, better late than never. The power of the blogosphere is demonstrated once again! We will be interested to see how many documents we actually do receive next week.
For the past two weeks, Discovery Institute has attempted to obtain data from Iowa State University (ISU) about the record of publications and grants of those considered for tenure by the university over the past several years. Unfortunately, ISU has thus far stonewalled these requests for information, even when submitted pursuant to Iowa's open records act.
Why?
Continue reading "Iowa State University Thwarts Open Records Law in Gonzalez Case: What Does It Have to Hide? (Updated)" »
As evidence has mounted that intelligent design played a role in the denial of tenure to gifted astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University, efforts to distract attention from that fact have also increased. The latest salvo is a one-sided article in today's Des Moines Register that implies that inadequate research funding must have been the key factor. Reading like it was produced by ISU's press office, the article distorts Gonzalez's actual research funding as well as the published standards at Iowa State. The article follows unfounded speculation at various websites and blogs where some people have falsely claimed that Gonzalez had no research funding at the time he was at ISU. Here are the facts:
Continue reading "The Truth about Research Grants, Gonzalez and ISU" »
 Observational Astronomy, a peer-reviewed astronomy textbook by D. Scott Birney, Guillermo Gonzalez, and David Oesper (2nd. ed., Cambridge University Press, 2006). |
|
The The Chronicle of Higher Education began its recent article on Guillermo Gonzalez’s tenure case by admitting that Dr. Gonzalez "has amassed a better publication record than almost any other member of the astronomy faculty," and that, "[a]t first glance, it seems like a clear-cut case of discrimination." But the article was desperately looking for a way to attack Gonzalez. They managed to find one astronomer (who admitted he "has not studied Mr. Gonzalez's work in detail and is not an expert on [Gonzalez’s] tenure case") who was willing to make the argument that Dr. Gonzalez’s production has "slowed down considerably" at Iowa State University (ISU), alleging that "[i]t's not clear that he started new things" since joining ISU. What an incredibly false pair of accusations against Dr. Gonzalez.
One of Dr. Gonzalez’s recent accomplishments at ISU that has received less attention is his co-authorship of a prestigiously published astronomy textbook, Observational Astronomy. Published by Cambridge University Press and also peer-reviewed, the textbook is used in Dr. Gonzalez’s own department to teach astronomy. Aside from his own department, universities internationally use Observational Astronomy, including University of Toronto, New Jersey’s Science & Technology University, University of Manitoba, Valparaiso University, and Franklin and Marshall College. Prestigious textbook authorship is a new avenue of scholarship for Dr. Gonzalez since he joined ISU. How can his critics sustain the claim that he has not "started new things" at ISU?
Continue reading "Does Leading Your Department & Co-Authoring a Peer-Reviewed Cambridge University Press Textbook Mean You’ve "Slowed Down"?" »
Not so fast, say disabilities advocates Andrew J. Imparato and Anne C. Sommers of the American Association of People With Disabilities. In their Washington Post article, "Haunting Echoes of Eugenics," the two authors describe, among other things, the terrible campaign to eliminate persons with Down syndrome before they ever arrive.
Continue reading "Eugenics is over...right?" »
Action Item:
Help Guillermo Gonzalez in his fight for academic freedom. Contact ISU President Gregory L. Geoffroy at (515) 294-2042 or email him at president@iastate.edu and let him know that you support academic freedom for Dr. Gonzalez to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Guillermo Gonzalez, the pro-intelligent design astronomer recently denied tenure by Iowa State University (ISU), ranks the highest in his department according to a key measure of the scientific impact of his work calculated using the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS), a widely used database tracking published scientific research in astronomy.
How frequently a scientist’s work is cited by other scientists is an important indicator of the impact the scientist is having on the scientific community. The Smithsonian/NASA data system allows one to compute a "normalized" citation count that corrects for inflated citation rates caused by articles with multiple authors. In the normalized citation count, an article published by a scientist with many co-authors is weighted less than an article authored by the scientist alone.
Continue reading "Pro-Intelligent Design Astronomer Denied Tenure Ranks Top in His Department According to Smithsonian/NASA Database" »
An extremely important measure of a scientist's reputation is the impact his or her research is having upon a field as measured by the number of citations to that scientist’s work in research articles by other scientists. In short, the more times a scientist’s work has been cited by others, the greater the impact of his work on his particular field. By this standard, Iowa State University (ISU) astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez has performed incredibly well, despite his denial of tenure by ISU.
Gonzalez joined ISU in 2001, and for his publications since 2001 he has the highest normalized citation count of all astronomers in his department, including both tenured and untenured faculty! Moreover, despite the fact that he is much younger than many of the tenured faculty members in the department, he has the second highest lifetime normalized citation count among all astronomers in his department.
Normalized citation counts for ISU astronomers are reflected in the graphs below:
Continue reading "Guillermo Gonzalez Has Highest Normalized Citation Count among ISU Astronomers for Publications Since 2001 " »
It’s clear from the ideologically motivated attacks on Dr Guillermo Gonzalez, an assistant professor of astronomy and co-author of The Privileged Planet, that scientists who acknowledge the evidence for design in the universe are not welcome as tenured members of the Iowa State University faculty.
Anti-design scientists and bloggers have admitted publicly that they will continue to exclude intelligent design scientists from academia. Yet in the 20th century many of the advances in the understanding of our universe were accompanied by vigorous open discussion of the design implications of cosmological theories.
Continue reading "Dark Matter: Blacklist at Iowa State" »
Action Item:
Help Guillermo Gonzalez in his fight for academic freedom. Contact ISU President Gregory L. Geoffroy at (515) 294-2042 or email him at president@iastate.edu and let him know that you support academic freedom for Dr. Gonzalez to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Here is a recap of the major developments this week in the Guillermo Gonzalez tenure case:
1. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Gonzalez ranks first among his astronomer colleagues at ISU according to the "h-index" statistic, which seeks to measure how widely a scientist's articles are cited by other scientists. According to the Chronicle, “Mr. Gonzalez has a normalized h-index of 13, the highest of the 10 astronomers in his department. The next closest was Lee Anne Willson, a university professor who had a normalized h-index of 9.”
2. It was revealed that at same time ISU denied tenure to Gonzalez this past spring, the university promoted to full professor his chief academic persecutor, atheist professor Hector Avalos, who believes that the Bible is worse than Hitler's Mein Kampf.
3. The world's preeminent science journal, Nature, featured the Gonzalez case in an article in its news section. In the article, Gonzalez's former post-doctoral advisor at the University of Texas, Austin, is quoted as saying: "He is one of the best postdocs I have had” and "I would have said he was a serious tenure candidate."
4. U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Sam Brownback issued a statement defending Gonzalez's right to academic freedom, while Darwinist academics vociferously advocated blacklisting pro-intelligent design scientists from academia.
5. ISU spokesman John McCarroll continued to invent facts in his effort to defend the tenure denial, this week claiming that a professor's publications prior to being hired by ISU aren't considered during the tenure process. Asked to provide documentation for this latest claim, McCarroll declined to respond.
If you have just heard about this story, you should check out the key developments from last week, which included the admission by two members of Gonzalez's department that intelligent design played a role in his tenure denial, and the release of tenure statistics showing that ISU approved 91% of its tenure applications this year. In addition, tenure standards for ISU's Department of Physics and Astronomy revealed that outside research funding was not a stated criterion for tenure decisions in the department.
Since Randy Olson’s film “Flock of Dodos” was shown on Showtime this week, we thought it worth re-highlighting material discussing Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings. "Flock of Dodos" and Randy Olson’s statements have tried to rewrite history by claiming that Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings have never been used in modern textbooks to promote evolution in the present day. His argument is that either (1) the drawings were never in textbooks, or, when that argument doesn’t work, he falls back on his old claim that (2) the drawings were in textbooks, but they were used only to provide a historical context of evolutionary thought. Both arguments are easily demonstrated to be false.
Continue reading "The Textbooks Don’t Lie: Haeckel’s Faked Drawings Have Been Used to Promote Evolution: Miller & Levine (1994) (Part I)" »
Readers of Evolution News and Views will no doubt be familiar with the decision by Gregory L. Geoffroy, the president of Iowa State University, to deny tenure to Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, an assistant professor and pro-I.D astronomer. It is obvious that Dr. Gonzalez, who was extraordinarily qualified for tenure, was denied tenure because of his pro-I.D. views.
One hundred and twenty Iowa State faculty members signed a petition denouncing Dr. Gonzalez’ viewpoints, and he was opposed by his department chairman and several faculty members who have made their bias against intelligent design scientists clear in public statements.
Ironically, we owe much of our modern understanding of the universe to pro-intelligent design astronomers. Georges Lemaitre was the astrophysicst who pioneered the Big Bang Theory. Fr. Lemaitre (above, with Einstein) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, honorary prelate, and a professor of physics and astronomy. He famously described the moment of the Big Bang as “the day without yesterday”, referring to the first day of creation in Genesis, and he was explicit in his belief in the evidence for God’s design in the universe. His Big Bang theory met with considerable opposition because of its religious implications.
Would a young Georges Lemaitre get tenure at Iowa State today?
Continue reading "Would Georges Lemaitre, Catholic Priest and Father of the Big Bang Theory, Be Denied Tenure at Iowa State?" »
Fundamental to the argument of many Darwinists against intelligent design theory in biology is the assertion that design in biology is undetectable. Darwinists argue that biological design is undetectable because, while we have experience with ‘designers’ in archeology, forensic science, etc., we have no experience with designers in biology, and thus cannot reliably detect the work of a biological designer. Intelligent design proponents reply that there are reliable criteria that indicate design, regardless of whether we have actual knowledge of the designer.
Continue reading "The Antikythera Mechanism and Intelligent Design Theory" »
He's a young astronomer with dozens of articles in top journals; he has made an important discovery in the field of extrasolar planets; and he is a proponent of intelligent design, the idea that an intelligent force has shaped the Universe. It's that last fact that Guillermo Gonzalez thinks has cost him his tenure at Iowa State University. So begins Nature magazine's story. Reporter Geoff Brumfiel goes on to lay out Gonzalez’s stellar professional credentials. Gonzalez's early career was far from controversial. He graduated with a PhD from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1993 and did a postdoc at the University of Texas in Austin. "He proved himself very quickly," says David Lambert, director of the university's MacDonald Observatory. He and Gonzalez co-authored several papers on variable stars, and Lambert says that while there, the young Cuban immigrant was an impressive scientist. "He is one of the best postdocs I have had," he says.
Continue reading "World’s Premiere Scientific Journal Reports on Iowa State’s Denial of Tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez " »
In my previous post on bloggers who were intolerant of ID-proponents in the academy, I highlighted University of Minnesota biologist P.Z. Myers’ admission that, "if someone comes up [for tenure] who claims that ID 'theory' is science, I will vote against them." But Myers isn’t the only example; other influential Darwinist scientists and other academics have made similar comments. Jason Rosenhouse, assistant professor of mathematics at James Madison University, asks, if we "assume that Gonzalez's ID advocacy played a significant role in the school's decision," then "[i]s that a bad thing?" His answer is clear: "No, it isn't." Rosenhouse explains how he believes it is reasonable to be intolerant of ID-proponents in the academy:
Continue reading "Gonzalez Tenure Case Highlights Intolerance of Darwinist Academics" »
At the heart of the attacks on Iowa State University astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez is the book The Privileged Planet, which he co-authored with Jay Richards. We now know that Gonzalez's authorship of this book played a role in his denial of tenure. It also provoked more than 120 of Gonzalez's faculty colleagues to sign a petition in 2005 denouncing intelligent design and urging all other faculty members to do the same. Ironically, the book has garnered praise from an impressive list of scientists, including some prominent supporters of biological evolution. Consider just a few of The Privileged Planet's endorsements and ask yourself whether the ideas raised in this book presented any kind of valid reason for removing Gonzalez from his university:
Continue reading "Praise from Scientists for The Privileged Planet" »
United States Senator and Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback (R-KS) has issued a forceful statement expressing alarm over the denial of tenure to pro-intelligent design astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University. According to Sen. Brownback, “such an assault on academic freedom does not bode well for the advancement of true science.”
Continue reading "Breaking News: U.S. Senator Expresses Alarm Over Denial of Tenure to Gonzalez at Iowa State" »
Action Item:
Help Guillermo Gonzalez in his fight for academic freedom. Contact ISU President Gregory L. Geoffroy at (515) 294-2042 or email him at president@iastate.edu and let him know that you support academic freedom for Dr. Gonzalez to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Pity John McCarroll, the poor PR person for Iowa State University: He has so little to work with in the Guillermo Gonzalez case, he apparently has to invent his facts in order to defend his university. Last week, for example, McCarroll put out a document claiming that tenure standards at ISU were “so high, that many good researchers have failed to satisfy the demands of earning tenure.” Then it turned out that ISU approved 91% of those who applied for tenure this year. Oops. McCaroll also insinuated that research grants are a major factor in tenure decisions at ISU. Then it came out that grants aren’t even listed as a criterion in the tenure standards for ISU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy.
This week McCarroll is being quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education asserting that "Tenure review only deals with his [Gonzalez’s] work since he came to Iowa State."
Wrong again. There is nothing in ISU’s applicable tenure standards that says that articles published prior to coming to ISU somehow don’t count. (By the way, even if McCaroll’s claim happened to be true, it shouldn’t matter, because Gonzalez has produced 21 peer-reviewed journal articles since coming to ISU, which is still significantly more than the 15 peer-reviewed articles that are supposed to demonstrate research excellence in his department). ISU is obviously getting desperate in its effort to discredit Gonzalez. If I were in their shoes, I guess I would be too. How do you defend the denial of tenure to someone who has produced 68 peer-reviewed journal articles, exceeding by 350% his own department’s standard for excellence in research needed for tenure?
Yesterday we sent an e-mail to Mr. McCarroll asking him to justify his latest bogus claim by citing for us the applicable language in the Faculty Handbook or departmental tenure standards. He has not responded.
 While Iowa State University denied tenure this spring to gifted pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, it turns out that it decided at the same time to promote to full professor outspoken atheist Hector Avalos, religious studies professor and faculty adviser to the ISU Atheist and Agnostic Society. Avalos has led the charge against Gonzalez and intelligent design on ISU's campus, helping to draft a 2005 petition denouncing intelligent design that ultimately was signed by more than 120 ISU faculty.
Apparently ISU professors who are horrified by the supposed mixing of metaphysics and scholarship on the part of ID proponents have no qualms about supporting Avalos's explicit anti-religious propaganda, including his effort to equate the Bible with Hitler's Mein Kampf (for more on Avalos's view of the Bible, see below). It is worth pointing out that ISU issued a press release a few years ago boasting about Avalos's appointment as the executive director of a group affiliated with the Council for Secular Humanism that seeks to debunk religion.
Avalos's promotion to full professor comes just in time for the publication of his new book on the Bible later this month. According to the publisher's description, Avalos argues in the book
Continue reading "Iowa State Promotes Atheist Professor Who Equates Bible with Mein Kampf While Denying Tenure to ID Astronomer" »
An article today by Chronicle of Higher Education reporter Richard Monastersky reveals new evidence that further strengthens the case that pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure at Iowa State University on illegitimate grounds, although Monastersky does his best to downplay the evidence through spin and speculation.
According to Monastersky, data from a prestigious Smithsonian/NASA astrophysics database show that Gonzalez has the highest rating for citations to his work of anyone in his department: “Mr. Gonzalez has a normalized h-index of 13,” the second highest in his department. The fact that Gonzalez—an Assistant Professor—is ranked higher than almost every other member of his department, including full tenured professors, is incredible.
Continue reading "Chronicle of Higher Education Unearths New Evidence in Support of Gonzalez, But Tries to Discount It" »
I recently read Carl Zimmer’s response to my critique of his November, 2006 article in National Geographic. In this post I will discuss Zimmer’s response to me regarding embryology and developmental biology. The embryonic hourglass is the idea that vertebrate embryos (like those of fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) start off developing very differently, converge with some similarities at the pharyngular stage, and then again diverge. I stated in my original article that “vertebrate embryos start off quite differently,” but that “Zimmer's diagram selectively displays embryos from the encircled stage where they are most similar.” The implication is that this falsifies the idea that evolution proceeds by tacking on new stages of development because these vertebrate groups start off with different forms of development from their very beginning.
Continue reading "A Reply to Carl Zimmer on Embryology and Developmental Biology" »
Action Item:
Help Guillermo Gonzalez in his fight for academic freedom. Contact ISU President Gregory L. Geoffroy at (515) 294-2042 or email him at president@iastate.edu and let him know that you support academic freedom for Dr. Gonzalez to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
As reported last week, two members of the department that denied tenure to astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University (ISU) have publicly admitted that Gonzalez's work on intelligent design played a role in his denial of tenure. Two additional members of the department have been connected to a National Center for Science Education statement denouncing intelligent design as "creationist pseudoscience." Yet these new facts haven't stopped Iowa State or its defenders from continuing to promote the idea that nothing was amiss in Gonzalez's tenure process.
ISU's spin is conspicuous for its avoidance of what should be a central question in the Gonzalez case, namely: Given the poisoned atmosphere regarding intelligent design on the ISU campus, what specific steps did the ISU administration take to ensure that Prof. Gonzalez was treated fairly during the evaluation and promotion process?
Continue reading "Iowa State Avoids Key Question in Gonzalez Tenure Case" »
Following his May 16 piece, Lawrence Selden has more incisive commentary on the Guillermo Gonzalez denial of tenure scandal at Iowa State University:
Is the faculty at Iowa State University intellectually insecure? The statement of two years ago signed by 120 members of the faculty perhaps suggests that, especially when compared with the actions of other schools and faculties. I wonder if they are afraid that others will think they are backward country bumpkins for allowing someone who is interested in exploring intelligent design on the faculty.
Harvard University is not ashamed of Owen Gingerich, who had this to say about Gonzalez' book The Privileged Planet:
Continue reading " Intellectual Insecurity at Iowa State?" »
Action Item:
Help Guillermo Gonzalez in his fight for academic freedom. Contact ISU President Gregory L. Geoffroy at (515) 294-2042 or email him at president@iastate.edu and let him know that you support academic freedom for Dr. Gonzalez to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
The big story this week was the denial of tenure to widely-published pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University, despite the fact that he exceeded by 350% his department’s standard for research excellence in peer-reviewed publications. Here is a recap of the key developments in the case during the past week:
1. Two tenured professors in Gonzalez’s department publicly admitted that his work on intelligent design played a role in his tenure denial.
2. Two additional faculty members in Gonzalez’s department were found to be connected to a national statement denouncing intelligent design as “creationist pseudoscience.”
3. Tenure statistics were obtained showing that 91% of faculty who applied for tenure this year at ISU received it, refuting the university’s claim earlier in the week that its tenure standards are “so high, that many good researchers have failed to satisfy the demands of earning tenure” at ISU.
4. Tenure standards for ISU's Department of Physics and Astronomy were released showing that outside research funding was not a stated criterion for tenure decisions in the department.
All too predictably, during the past week various Darwinists have been trying to divert attention away from the Guillermo Gonzalez tenure case through a campaign of misinformation about both Dr. Gonzalez and intelligent design. Whether they do so knowingly—as a calculated attempt to defame Gonzalez and smear his professional record—or through ignorance isn't always clear. Either way, the truth about Dr. Gonzalez's work and achievements is readily available. (A great place to start is the Biosketch of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, Astronomer and Asst. Professor at Iowa State University.)
Let's take a look at some of the false facts being tossed around.
Continue reading "Darwinists Spread Misinformation about Guillermo Gonzalez's Denial of Tenure" »
With the Guillermo Gonzalez controversy as the background, blogger Lawrence Selden at Darwinian Fundamentalism has written an insightful comparison of Iowa State University and Arizona State University. He concludes:
While Iowa State is trying to shut down creative thinking, Arizona State is reveling in it.
Where would you rather go to school?
An excellent question.
There has been much unfounded speculation this week about the specific standards governing astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez’s application for tenure at Iowa State University. Some have claimed, for example, that outside research grants must be a primary criterion for tenure at ISU. Unfortunately, the specific tenure and promotion standards adopted by the Department of Physics and Astronomy at ISU have not been available online. So we have decided to make them available for download here so that people can read the standards for themselves. These standards make clear that the key criterion for research excellence in Dr. Gonzalez’s department is the number of refereed papers, not the level of outside funding:
Evaluation of research ability is based primarily upon published papers in refereed journals.... (p. 4)
Continue reading "ISU Department: “Evaluation of research ability is based primarily upon published papers in refereed journals”" »
According to a story to be published in the May 26 edition of World Magazine (already available online here), two faculty members of the department that denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzales at Iowa State University have admitted that his work on ID played a role in the denial. While Prof. Eli Rosenberg, Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, insisted to the magazine that intelligent design "was not an overriding factor" (emphasis added), he then conceded according to the magazine that Gonzalez's pro-ID book The Privileged Planet "played into the decision-making process. He also explained that the reputation of a professor among others in his field is a significant factor." Of course, if "reputation" is used as a code word for whether one's views are popular among fellow scientists, then this is another way anti-ID bias entered into the decision.
But Rosenberg is not the only department member who admitted that intelligent design played a role in the tenure decision.
Continue reading "Breaking News: Iowa State Department Faculty Acknowledge ID Played Role in Gonzalez's Tenure Denial" »
It seems like just yesterday that University of Minnesota biologist P.Z. Myers, who runs what Nature declared to be the #1 science blog, admitted, "I get to vote on tenure decisions at my university, and I can assure you that if someone comes up who claims that ID 'theory' is science, I will vote against them."
As Iowa State University (ISU) has denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, possibly due to his views on intelligent design, pro-ID biologist Mike Gene has provided insightful commentary on the situation: "[T]his issue has become larger than Guillermo Gonzalez's situation, so it won't matter when the official reasons for denial are eventually supplied. What matters is that the academics have gone on record and given you a peek behind the closed doors and how they would handle someone who took ID seriously." Gene quotes various pro-Darwin-only voices expressly stating that ID-proponents do not deserve tenure. The intolerant undergraduate I recently highlighted now appears to have been merely the tip of the iceberg.
Let me begin by highlighting the widespread intolerance for intelligent design advocates among the general science community, in this case regular participants at popular science blogs. Later I’ll examine more closely the same sort of intolerance coming from credible scientists and scientific scholars.
Continue reading "Guillermo Gonzalez’s Denial of Tenure Brings out Widespread Intolerance among Rank and File Darwinists" »
My friend and colleague John West wrote an essay recently commenting on my post about the link between Darwinism and eugenics. He raised some very important points, with which I agree, and I’d like to clarify my view and clarify our fundamental agreement.
Continue reading "Darwin’s Theory, Darwinism, and Eugenics " »
A distinguished science professor at a major American university has weighed in on Iowa State University's denial of tenure to pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, expressing astonishment at the result. According to Dr. Robert J. Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University:
I went to the Web of Science citation index which is the authority on citations. Only journal papers, not conference papers, are indexed. There are lots of Prof. Gonzalez's papers listed. My jaw dropped when I saw one of his papers has 153 citations and 139 on another. I have sat on oodles of tenure committees at both a large private university and a state research university, chaired the university tenure committee, and have seen more tenure cases than the Pope has Cardinals. This is a LOT of citations for an assistant professor up for tenure. The number of citations varies with discipline and autocitations are included in the tally, but this is a LOT of citations for an Assistant Professor. A lot.
The Iowa State U. Astronomy department is here. Their big star is Lee Anne Willson, University Professor. A University Professor is a rank more prestigious than a full Professor. She is their star. Her top two papers are cited 99 and 86 times. And she has been at this for 33 years.
And then there's Steven D. Kawaler, a full Professor who is the Current Program Coordinator for astronomy. He has a nice citation record with tops of 243 and 178.
There may be reasons I don't understand for denying Prof. Gonzalez tenure, but scholarship is absolutely not one of them.
Two of the five active tenured astronomy professors in the department that denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University are connected to a widely-publicized statement that denounces intelligent design as "creationist pseudoscience."
Professor Steven Kawaler, the Program Coordinator for astronomy in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at ISU, actually signed the statement, and he provides a link to both the statement and an article about it on his website.
University Professor Lee Anne Willson, meanwhile, is married to ISU mathematics professor Stephen J. Willson, who also signed the anti-ID statement.
Known as "Project Steve," the anti-ID statement was the brainchild of the pro-Darwin National Center for Science Education. The statement declares that "it is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including… 'intelligent design,' to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools."
Iowa State University has made much of the fact that Dr. Gonzalez's tenure application was rejected starting at the level of his department. Now we know that at least 40% of the tenured faculty in astronomy in his department are connected to a statement that regards intelligent design as "creationist pseudoscience" and insists that "it is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible" for it "to be introduced into… science curricula."
Typically it is the tenured faculty in one's own area who have the most weight in a department when it comes to tenure recommendations. And, of course, only the tenured faculty of a department are allowed to vote on a tenure recommendation.
Can any fair-minded person still believe that the denial of tenure to Gonzalez had nothing to do with his views on intelligent design?
The Ames, Iowa Tribune is now calling for an explanation from Iowa State University's president about the recent denial of tenure to pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. It seems clear that the hard questions being raised about Gonzalez's case aren't about to go away.
Iowa State University has attempted to defend its denial of tenure to widely-published pro-ID astronomer Guillmero Gonzalez by insisting earlier this week that tenure is hard to get at ISU. Indeed, according to a statement about the Gonzalez case posted on ISU’s home page, tenure
is a high standard of excellence and achievement -- so high, that many good researchers have failed to satisfy the demands of earning tenure.
So just how “many” is “many”? Not very many, it turns out. We requested data from ISU on the number of tenure applications and rejections at the university for the past five years, and here is what we found out:
Continue reading "Tenure Statistics Contradict Iowa State’s Claim that “many good researchers have failed to satisfy the demands of earning tenure” at ISU" »
Bill Dembski has posted an excellent riposte to John Derbyshire's recent comments at the AEI conference on Darwinism and conservatism in which George Gilder and I participated. Eventually I plan to write my own reflections about some of Derbyshire's comments, but in the meantime Dembski hits the nail on the head.
The powers-that-be at ISU seem to be a little vexed by the attention they’re getting for denying tenure to astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. Yesterday they released a statement regarding Dr. Gonzalez’s case, “Facts regarding the status of tenure case at Iowa State,” an unusual move on their part.
Continue reading "ISU sends a vexed message" »
Showtime Networks will air filmmaker Randy Olson's fanciful evolution film Flock of Dodos, apparently not realizing that key parts of the film are so wildly inaccurate that they amount to a hoax. In response, Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman has sent a letter requesting air time to respond to the film’s various false claims.
Flock of Dodos makes a number of false assertions about scientists and institutions researching the theory of intelligent design, and has drawn fire from scientists and scholars for its misrepresentations and outright inventions. Discovery’s Center for Science & Culture (CSC) has launched a webpage, www.hoaxofdodos.com, detailing the false facts in the film.
Discovery Institute sent a letter last week to Showtime Networks Chairman and CEO Matthew C. Blank outlining just a few of the film’s numerous errors.
Continue reading "Showtime Falls for Filmmaker’s Hoax: Will Air Fraudulent Flock of Dodos" »
So what is the Darwinist Amen-chorus saying about Iowa State University's refusal to grant tenure to ID-proponent Guillermo Gonzalez? Predictably, they are in denial. According to them, intelligent design proponents may be evil and deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth, but of course Darwinists aren't engaging in persecution when they deny them jobs, harass them, and vilify them. They are merely engaging in normal academic behavior!
This seems to be the point of Darwinist Ed Brayton's escape-from-reality blog complaining about what he calls the "ID Persecution Complex." In truth, however, it's not ID proponents who suffer from a failure to accept reality, it's the Darwinists. Darwinists like Brayton exhibit symptoms of what might be called Darwinist Denial Syndrome: When confronted with evidence of discrimination against an ID proponent, they deny, deny, deny.
Continue reading "Darwinist Denial Syndrome Rears Its Head in Gonzalez Tenure Case" »
The Associated Press is now covering the denial of tenure Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University, filing a fair-minded and generally accurate article that mentions some of Dr. Gonzalez's scientific accomplishments and discusses the surrounding context of intolerance.
Today's Des Moines Register has an article highlighting the growing controversy over the denial of tenure to gifted astronomer Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University (ISU). The story is remarkably fair and accurate as far as it goes, and it reveals that the approval rate for tenure applications in Gonzalez's department over the past ten years has approached 70%! So much for the claim that tenure at ISU is particularly hard to get. Unfortunately, what the article doesn't do is give any information about Dr. Gonzalez's outstanding scholarly record--such as the fact that his work has been recognized in Science, Nature, Scientific American, and many other top science publications; or the fact that he is co-author of a major college astronomy textbook published last year by Cambridge University Press; or the fact that he exceeded by 350% the stated standard for research excellence adopted by his department. For a list of Dr. Gonzalez's extensive peer-reviewed journal articles, click here.
Editor's Update: Discovery Institute has just issued a press release about Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez's denial of tenure.
Iowa State University has denied tenure to astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, co-author of The Privileged Planet, which presents powerful scientific evidence for the intelligent design of the universe. You can read about the situation in today's Ames Tribune here.
This is a very sad day for academic freedom. Dr. Gonzalez is a superb scholar and a fine human being. His research has been featured in Scientific American, Science, Nature, and many other science journals. Iowa State's decision to deny him tenure is a travesty, and the university should be held to account for its action. This deserves to be an even bigger story than the persecution of evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg at the Smithsonian.
Ironically, Dr. Gonzalez arrived in America as a child refugee from Castro's Cuba. Unfortunately, he seems to have discovered that the Darwinist ideologues in America's universities can be nearly as unforgiving as the Marxist ideologues of his home country.
Stay tuned for more information as this story develops.
So just why was gifted astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University denied tenure? Certainly not because he hasn't fulfilled his university's tenure standards for excellence in research. According to his own department's standards, to be promoted to associate professor (with tenure),
excellence sufficient to lead to a national or international reputation is required and would ordinarily be shown by the publication of approximately fifteen papers of good quality in refereed journals.
So how many refereed articles has Gonzalez published? Ten? Twelve? Fifteen? Twenty? Actually, he has published 68 articles in refereed journals, thus exceeding his own department's normal standard for research excellence by 350%! (Unfortunately, the Ames Tribune story about the denial of tenure to Gonzalez wrongly reports that this standard is a "minimum" requirement for tenure in his department. In fact, it is offered as the usual and ordinary benchmark for meeting his university's research excellence standard.)
Since Gonzalez clearly far exceeded his university's stated standard for research, the question again arises: Why was he denied tenure? It seems obvious that it was due to ideological bias against intelligent design--which has been on clear display at Iowa State during the past few years, as Gonzalez has been publicly attacked and demonized by faculty colleagues for his support of ID.
“If conservatives want to address root causes rather than just symptoms they need to join the debate over Darwinism, not scorn it or ignore it," said CSC's John West at an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) debate earlier this week about whether Darwinism can be aligned with conservatism. He's exactly right, and conservatives are starting to agree--at least that the discussion needs to take place. Case and point, the AEI event itself. The New York Times took the event seriously enough to send Patricia Cohen to cover the event and pen this report on it, which appears on the front page of today's paper.
Continue reading "New York Times Highlights Debate on Darwinism and Conservatism on Front Page" »
The Florida state legislature has passed legislation that would allow school districts that excell to have unprecedented control over their own schools, textbooks and curriculum.
Continue reading "Florida School Districts May Get More Local Control over Textbooks and Curriculum" »
Michael Shermer and Paul Nelson will meet for their third debate over intelligent design and
evolution (they've interacted previously at the University of Alabama and Penn State) this Thursday, April 26, at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. The debate will be held in the University Union's Chumash Auditorium and begins at 8 pm (doors open at 7:30). The event is free to Cal Poly students; $10 at the door for the general public.
Continue reading "ID & Evolution Debate at Cal Poly" »
Was eugenics a misapplication of Darwin’s theory to society? I must respectfully disagree with part of neurosurgeon Michael Egnor’s recent post at ENV, which seemed to suggest that it was. Egnor correctly pointed out that eugenics is based on artificial selection, whereas Darwin’s theory is premised on natural selection. But that fact doesn’t get at why eugenics was in reality a reasonable deduction from Darwin’s theory and is properly described as “Darwinian.” As I point out in Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest, Darwin believed that human progress was ultimately based on the struggle for survival, and he further maintained that civilized societies were courting disaster by continually counteracting the law of natural selection through vaccinations, welfare programs, and the like. Eugenics was framed explicitly as an effort to remedy these violations of Darwinian natural selection.
Continue reading "Darwinism and Eugenics Revisited" »
In recent years, a number of states have apologized for their role in promoting the Social Darwinist crusade known as “eugenics” through forced sterilization laws. In “It’s never too late to say you’re sorry,” writer Knute Berger of the internet newspaper Crosscut is calling on Washington state to apologize for its forced sterilization law, noting that Washington was the second state to adopt such a law. He’s right. Washington state—and other states—should apologize for their role in promoting eugenics. This is a sad and disturbing chapter in American history, and citizens need to know about it (although the new Kansas State Board of Education seems to think otherwise).
Continue reading "Apologizing for Eugenics: A Good Idea" »
A student at Southern Methodist University (SMU) has provided more evidence for why there needs to be events like tonight’s Darwin v. Design conference on college campuses. In today's campus newspaper, anthropology student Ben Wells offers a jeremiad against the purported evils of Discovery Institute and intelligent design. Unfortunately, his article is so incredibly off-base that all he ends up doing is displaying his complete ignorance of the topic. Not that he is alone. Last week, journalist Lee Cullum wrote a similarly ill-informed opinion piece for the Dallas Morning News. The problem for many critics of intelligent design is that they are so sure they are right, they don’t bother to read the people they are denouncing. As a result, they end up attacking a straw man rather than refuting the actual claims made by ID proponents.
Continue reading "Ignorance Is Bliss When It Comes to Many Opponents of ID" »
There have been a couple of stories out in recent days about the pope’s views on science and religion as revealed in a new book. Given their bias and preoccupation, it probably was inevitable that some in the media would try to discern more than is present in a 2006 paper of the Holy Father’s that runs in a new German language book. Largely missing is the context. In case you forgot, last September, as he does each fall, Pope Benedict XVI met with his former theology students and discussed a topic of mutual interest. Two years ago the topic was Islam and the West; this year it was science and religion. The meeting, held at Castel Gondolfo, was well-covered in the media and the papers that were delivered were later turned into the present German language volume. (Almost all the meeting participants, understandably, were German speakers, having studied under the pope when he was Fr. Dr. Ratzinger.)
The media, of course, wanted to know what the pontiff and others had said about intelligent design, but ID was not the topic of the meeting. Philosophy, rather, was the focus. Hence, the breathless report by Reuters now that the paper by the pope fails to back ID is, well, silly.
Continue reading "Pap about the Pope" »
Noted novelist Kurt Vonnegut died on Wednesday at age 84. Although Vonnegut described himself as a secular humanist, last year on NPR he voiced his skepticism of Darwinism. Calling our human bodies “miracles of design,” he faulted scientists for “pretending they have the answer as how we got this way when natural selection couldn’t possibly have produced such machines.” When asked whether this meant he “would favor teaching intelligent design in the classroom,” he replied:
If I were a physics teacher or a science teacher, it’d be on my mind all the time as to how the hell we really got this way. It’s a perfectly natural human thought and, okay, if you go into the science class you can’t think this?
For a transcript of his remarks and further information, see this post by Jonathan Witt from last year.
A helpful correspondent directed us to the following statement on the website of Southern Methodist University, the location of the upcoming Darwin v. Design conference this Friday and Saturday:
Founded in 1911 by what is now The United Methodist Church, SMU opened in 1915 with support from Dallas leaders. The University is nonsectarian in its teaching and committed to freedom of inquiry. (emphasis added)
SMU faculty who want the Darwin v. Design conference banned from their campus might benefit from re-reading--and heeding--this statement.
The May-June 2007 issue of American Scientist contains John Dupré’s review of Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology by Alex Rosenberg.
Dupré fears that Rosenberg’s adherence to strict physicalist reductionism (“Darwinian Reductionism”), where “everything is ultimately determined by what happens at the physical level—and that this entails that the mind is ‘nothing but’ the brain,” is based upon a failure to understand why most philosophers of biology have abandoned such reductionism rather than a new revelation. As Dupré points out, most philosophers have abandoned this view because, among other reasons, genes have a “many/many” relationship with phenotype.
More specifically, his [Rosenberg’s] portrayal of the genome as a program directing development, which is the centerpiece of his reductionist account of biology, discloses a failure to appreciate the complex two-way interactions between the genome and its molecular environment that molecular biologists have been elaborating for the past several decades.
Dupré excoriates Rosenberg for thinking of natural selection as an actual physical law rather than mere differential death. (Natural selection is, of course, the latter and much more akin to the "Stuff Happens" bumper sticker on the TV version of Forrest Gump.) Finally, Dupré also goes after Rosenberg for thinking “genes literally embody a program that produces development,” for seemingly adhering to the notion that 95% of DNA is “mere junk,” and for not keeping very current on molecular biology. For more, see the rest of Dupré’s excellent but tough review “Is Biology Reducible to the Laws of Physics?”
In an over-the-top op-ed in today's Dallas Morning News, journalist Lee Cullum attacks the upcoming "Darwin v. Design" conference at Southern Methodist University (SMU) as "intellectually confused," complains that ID proponents "refuse to understand who and what they are," and asserts that Southern Methodist University "needs to rethink its policy regarded future use of its facilities" in order to prevent intelligent design proponents from expressing their views on the SMU campus in the future.
However, if anyone is "intellectually confused," it is poor Ms. Cullum, whose article displays her own breathtaking ignorance of both intelligent design and the principles of a free society.
Continue reading ""Intellectually Confused" Journalist Calls on Southern Methodist University to Censor Intelligent Design (ID) Supporters" »
Science Daily reports: Researchers from the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) today announced the publication of several studies from the Sorcerer II Global Ocean Sampling Expedition (GOS) in PLoS Biology detailing the discovery of millions of new genes, thousands of new protein families and specifically the characterization of thousands of new protein kinases from ocean microbes using whole environment shotgun sequencing and new computational tools. This is extraordinary and exciting research, but what does any of this have to do with evolution news?
Continue reading "UV-Ray-Damage-Repairing Protein Evolution Proves Shy" »
DALLAS—Darwinists at Southern Methodist University issued a demand this week that the university withdraw permission for a scientific conference about intelligent design to be held on campus.
Discovery Institute and the SMU Christian Legal Society obtained permission to rent McFarlin Auditorium for a two-day conference on “Darwin vs. Design,” featuring presentations by the nation’s leading intelligent design scientists. The Departments of Anthropology, Biological Sciences, and Geological Sciences reacted with a letter objecting to the university’s agreement to host the conference. The Institute described the letter as an effort to censor scientists and stifle debate.
Continue reading "Entrenched Science Departments Call for Censorship at Southern Methodist University" »
Some Darwinists have a tendency to assume that anything coming from the ID camp must be a mistaken attack on them. This can lead to a Darwinist choosing not to read the pro-ID article, then responding to the (still unread) article by misconstruing basic facts, like the name of the website hosting the article, pro-ID books discussed in the article, or even the central argument of the article. Joseph Campana of ResearchID.org exposes these errors in the responses from Pamela Thompson of the John Templeton Foundation and William Grassie of Metanexus to his article, which demonstrated that the New York Times invented claims that Templeton asked for research proposals which “never came in.”
Continue reading "Templeton and Metanexus Darwinists Decide to Attack the Messenger" »
Late last year senior fellow Jonathan Wells visited Japan to deliver two speeches on intelligent design and evolution.
Dr. Wells' first lecture (in English, with simultaneous translation into Japanese) was to an international philosophy conference. More than 150 people attended, including scientists and scholars from Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, India, Taiwan, Greece and Mongolia. A few Americans were present, along with participants from Bangladesh, France, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic (who brought along a copy of the new Czech edition of Icons of Evolution). According to Wells, the audience was polite, the questions were penetrating and the Q&A was lively.
Continue reading "Japanese Scientists Growing More Interested in Intelligent Design" »
On February 24, an audience of approximately 500 students, journalists, scholars and scientists gathered to hear five speakers present an international perspective on intelligent design in Instanbul’s Cemal Resit Rey Concert Hall. The conference, which was sponsored by the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, featured speakers from Turkey, Britain, and America. Already recognized as a success by the local leadership, the conference introduced intelligent design to the people of Turkey and was covered by mainstream Turkish media.
Continue reading "ID Conference a Success in Turkey" »
A 2005 New York Times article asserted that ID proponents failed to respond to a call for research proposals from the John Templeton Foundation, a group that funds research dealing with origins. The New York Times reported that Templeton’s Charles Harper claimed that he had requested research proposals from ID-proponents, proposals which "never came in.” A new report now calls the veracity of the New York Times’s story into “grave doubt.” According to both ResearchID.org and UncommonDescent, Harper now claims that the New York Times completely invented this story.
Continue reading "UncommonDescent and ResearchID.org Report: New York Times Falsely Claimed ID Theorists Failed to Respond to Call for Research Proposals" »
In Think, a philosophy journal published by The Royal Institute of Philosophy, Phillip Johnson has published an article entitled "Intelligent Design in Biology: the Current Situation and Future Prospects" which assesses the current state of the debate over intelligent design. The full article may be read here.
Johnson explains that, despite the advances of the 20th century, many Darwinists still use old arguments that merely reflect microevolution. Johnson writes regarding the Galapagos finches:
Continue reading "Phillip Johnson Gives State of the Debate Report in Think Philosophy Journal" »
[Edited] Bilbo of Telic Thoughts ... [references] an early, notable use of the term "intelligent design," this one by one of the 20th century's leading scientists, agnostic Fred Hoyle: On January 12th, 1982, Sir Fred Hoyle delivered the Omni Lecture at the Royal Institution, London, entitled "Evolution from Space," which was later reprinted in a book by the same title ... In it he discussed the overwhelming improbability of getting the enzymes needed for even the simplest form of life to function by chance.... The difference between an intelligent ordering, whether of words, fruit boxes, amino acids, or the Rubik cube, and merely random shufflings can be fantastically large, even as large as a number that would fill the whole volume of Shakespeare's plays with its zeros. So if one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design [my emphasis]. No other possibility I have been able to think of in pondering this issue over quite a long time seems to me to have anything like as high a possibility of being true. (27-28)
Continue reading "Hoyle Uses the Term "Intelligent Design" in a 1982 Work Making a Design Inference for the Origin of Life" »
Note: This post has been updated to reflect the fact that the Sacramento Unified School District has not yet officially acted on the name change to its middle school.
Like most mainstream American newspapers, the Sacramento Bee is a strong and uncritical proponent of Darwin's theory of evolution. The Bee recently demonstrated its devotion to the Darwinist cause with two news articles spotlighting the celebration of Darwin Day in Sacramento.
Ironically, the day after Darwin Day, the Bee included an editorial that rightly condemns the American eugenics movement and that rightly supports a proposal to remove a famous Sacramentan's name from a school based on his enthusiastic support of eugenics.
Continue reading "Sacramento Paper Misses Connection Between Darwin and Eugenics" »
As was expected, earlier today the Kansas State Board of Education voted 6-4 to adopt dumbed-down science standards that delete any mention of scientific data that might be perceived as critical of Darwinian evolution. But that's not all. The board also gutted a history of science standard that called on students to study both the abuses and the successes of science in history. The history of science standard had encouraged students to learn about such tragedies as the eugenics movement and the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment. But studying the misuses of science was apparently too much of a downer for the Darwin-only crowd, so they rewrote the standard to ensure that students would be exposed only to the triumphs of science in history. When asked to defend this Orwellian rewriting of history, the main backer of the change offered phony excuses.
Don't expect the "mainstream" media to notice the biting irony here: The people they like to portray as the champions of free inquiry and scientific literacy are the very ones trying to dumb-down science curricula in order to suppress information they find uncomfortable. Fortunately, Americans still have the freedom to investigate the truth for themselves, which is why the Darwinists' current strategy will be such a loser over the long term. Trying to stamp out the discussion of ideas you don't like is a sign of insecurity, and thoughtful people will eventually see through such tactics.
The Associated Press is reporting on the Kansas State Board of Education's proposed deletion of the Tuskegee experiment, eugenics, and other abuses of science from the state's existing science curriculum standards. The only complaint I have about the article is that it does not make clear that the existing history of science standard, which I favor, asks for students to study the positive achievements of science as well as the abuses of science. The purpose is to give students a balanced understanding of the history of science. It is the Darwinists who are trying to suppress the coverage of both sides, not ID proponents.
It is interesting to look at the tortured explanations offered by Darwinists trying to defend this change.
Continue reading "AP: "ID backer knocks Tuskegee deletion from Kansas standards"" »
Text of the letter sent to the Kansas State Board of Education today by Discovery Institute:
February 12, 2007
Kansas State Board of Education
Kansas State Department of Education
120 SE 10th Avenue
Topeka, KS 66612-1182
Dear Members of the Board:
It has come to my attention that one of the changes to the Kansas Science Curriculum Standards that the Board is intending to vote on would delete the following language from Standard 7 (Grades 8-12), Benchmark 3:
Continue reading "Letter to Kansas Board of Education Protesting Deletion of History of Science Language" »
The day after "Darwin Day," the Kansas State Board of Education plans to vote on whether to delete from its science curriculum standards the study of the abuses of science as well as the successes. This incredible proposal by Darwinists in Kansas to sanitize the real history of science shows the lengths to which they will go to promote their dogmatic views. We have just sent a letter to the Board protesting the proposed change. The proposal is part of a package of revisions to the science standards that will also delete any discussion of scientific data critical of Darwinian evolution. Below is the text of the press release describing what is going on:
TOPEKA--A national group is urging the Kansas State Board of Education to reject on Tuesday a plan to delete coverage of the historical misuses of science from state curriculum standards, including a reference to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiment targeting African-Americans.
Continue reading "Kansas Board of Education Urged to Reject Proposal to Delete Tuskegee Experiment and Other Science Abuses from State Curriculum" »
Scott Adams of Dilbert fame asks: Suppose we found a blob on Mars that moved under its own power and wasn’t a carbon-based life form. How could we tell if it was intelligent?
....What if the blob authored a book?
Don’t answer too quickly because it’s a trick question. Remember, a trillion monkeys with typewriters can write a book if you wait long enough. So let’s up the ante and say that the blob on Mars writes lots of different books. And let’s say it composes some music, designs some evening gowns, and paints some lovely pictures too. Now do you conclude that the blob is intelligent?
It’s a trick question because atheists believe that the Big Bang did all of those things and more. The Big Bang caused the sequence of events that culminated in the Bible, the Koran, and most important – Dilbert comics. If the blob on Mars created literature, we would surely consider it intelligent.
Continue reading "Dilbert Designer Looks at Intelligent Blobs and the Big Bang " »
The documentary Flock of Dodos depicts biologist Jonathan Wells as a fraud for claiming in his book Icons of Evolution (2000) that Haeckel’s bogus embryo drawings were used by modern textbooks to misrepresent the evidence for Darwinian evolution. But at a screening last Wednesday night at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, Olson essentially admitted that it was his film that was wrong, not Wells. In answer to an audience question about whether he still maintained that "there are no Haeckel's embryos in modern textbooks," Olson replied:
Continue reading "Filmmaker Randy Olson Backtracks on False Claim in Film, Admitting: “apparently there are a few textbooks that have traces of Haeckel’s embryos....”" »
Professor of Design and Nature Stuart Burgess of Bristol University (UK) was interviewed in yesterday's The Independent. This is a man who knows something about design. He is worth heeding: I've been designing systems like spacecraft for more than 20 years. One of the lessons I've learnt is that complex systems require an immense amount of intelligence to design. I've seen a lot of irreducible complexity in engineering. I have also seen organs in nature that are apparently irreducible. An irreducibly complex organ is one where several parts are required simultaneously for the system to function usefully, so it cannot have evolved, bit by bit, over time. See the article here.
As reported earlier this week (see here and here), filmmaker Randy Olson presented fiction as fact in his anti-ID documentary Flock of Dodos. But rather than apologize for his film’s repeated bloopers and misrepresentations, Olson is now digging himself a deeper hole in recent comments posted to a Darwinist blog.
Continue reading "Flock of Dodos Filmmaker Digs the Hole Deeper in His Hoaxing of Viewers" »
In a speech last night in New York City, Roman Catholic Cardinal Cristoph Schoenborn of Vienna sharply criticized efforts in America to prevent students and the public from learning about the debate over Darwin’s theory. According to the Associated Press report:
Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna said in a lecture that restricting debate about Darwin's theory of evolution amounts to censorship in schools and in the broader public.
"Commonly in the scientific community every inquiry into the scientific weaknesses of the theory is blocked off at the very outset," Schoenborn said of Darwinism. "To some extent there prevails a type of censoring here of the sort for which one eagerly reproached the church in former times."
Continue reading "Cardinal Condemns Suppression of the Darwin Debate in America: "A truly liberal society would at least allow students to hear of the debate."" »
Note: This is the second of two blog posts responding to the errors and misrepresentations in the film Flock of Dodos. For more information, visit www.hoaxofdodos.com.
 In Flock of Dodos, filmmaker Randy Olson tries his best to discredit Discovery Institute (DI), the leading think tank supporting scientists and scholars researching intelligent design (ID). But he only ends up discrediting himself by showing how far he is willing to stretch the truth. This article looks at some of the film’s most egregious errors about DI, starting with its claims about the Institute’s budget.
Continue reading "Hoax of Dodos, pt. 2: Flock of Dodos Filmmaker Uses Fuzzy Math and Falsehoods to Distort the Truth about Discovery Institute" »
Note: This is the first of two blog posts responding to the errors and misrepresentations in the film Flock of Dodos. This post is co-authored with Casey Luskin. For more information, visit www.hoaxofdodos.com.
Were Ernst Haeckel’s bogus embryo diagrams ever used in modern textbooks to prove evolution? Not according to filmmaker Randy Olson, who in his film Flock of Dodos portrays biologist Jonathan Wells as a fraud for claiming in the book Icons of Evolution (2000) that modern biology textbooks continued to reprint Haeckel-based drawings.
But it turns out that Olson is the one who is promoting a fraud. The diagrams in question were unquestionably used in modern textbooks, and Olson himself knows that fact.
Continue reading "Hoax of Dodos, pt. 1: Flock of Dodos Filmmaker Wrongly Claims Haeckel’s Embryo Drawings Weren’t in Modern Textbooks" »
The most recent Nobel prize for physics recently was awarded to John Mather and George Smoot for their contribution to the big bang theory of the origin of the universe. Smoot is a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley. He has no ties that I'm aware of to the Intelligent Design community, and I know that he doesn't have ties to Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.
However, like several other prominent contemporary physicists (e.g., Arno Penzias, Owen Gingerich, and Paul Davies), Smoot has made remarks that suggest he considers the best explanation for certain features of the natural world to be a teleological or purposeful cause—what we in the ID community refer to as intelligent design and what the pope recently described as creative reason.
Continue reading "Does George Smoot, Nobel Laureate, See Evidence of Design in the Cosmos?" »
This is the final installment of a four-part series responding to Larry Arnhart’s comments about my book, Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest. The first three installments can be found here, here and here.
5. Darwinism and Economic Liberty
Arnhart contends that Darwinian theory supports economic freedom, but in my book I argue that efforts to apply Darwinism to economics are misleading and based on false analogies. In particular, I criticize the claim that F.A. Hayek’s idea of “spontaneous order” is in any important sense analogous to Darwin’s idea of unguided evolution. I also dispute the claim that “spontaneous order,” properly understood, is incompatible with intelligent design. I further point out that in the history of ideas, Darwinism has been used much more often to stigmatize capitalism than to support it.
Continue reading "A Further Response to Larry Arnhart, pt. 4: Darwinism, Capitalism, and Limited Government" »
After posting about the law review article in the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion which argued that Judge Jones went too far, I was sent an unsolicited e-mail by someone I'll call SGB with the subject, "Intelligent Design is Not Science." The e-mail was sent as a letter to the Editor-In-Chief and Managing Editor of the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion, apparently intended for public consumption. I was cc'd on it, along with Richard Dawkins and Glenn Branch (of the NCSE). It's a long letter, which largely misunderstands ID and Mr. Italiano's legal arguments. But SGB's conclusion was most interesting:
Continue reading "The Fruit of Richard Dawkins' Efforts on the Intelligent Design Debate" »
[Editor's Note: This blog post was mistakenly listed as the last in a four part series, when in fact it is the third. The fourth and final installlment will be published in the near future.]
This is the third installment of a four-part series responding to Larry Arnhart’s comments about my book, Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest. The first and second installments can be found here and here.
3. Darwinism and Religion
In the section of my book on religion, I make clear that “evolution” can be compatible with theism in general and Biblical theism in particular—depending on how one defines the term “evolution.” If all one means by “evolution” is “change over time,” or “microevolution” through natural selection, or even biological “common descent,” then evolution would seem perfectly compatible with most forms of theism. Only if one insists that evolution is an undirected Darwinian process of chance and necessity, with no particular end in view, does there seem to be a serious problem with traditional theism. But even here there are at least two potential solutions.
Continue reading "UPDATED: A Further Response to Larry Arnhart, pt. 3: Darwinism, Religion, and Intelligent Design" »
A student note in Rutgers Journal of Law & Religion agrees that Judge Jones overextended the judicial arm when he decided on the question of whether ID is science. Observing that Judge Jones correctly found that the Dover School Board members had religious motives, Philip A. Italiano then explains that the ruling should have stopped its analysis there and not extended into broad questions about the definition of science. Italiano recognizes that the Kitzmiller facts did not present the appropriate case in which to decide whether ID is science:
Continue reading "Law Review Article Agrees That Judge Jones Went Too Far" »
An article in Murfreesboro, Tennessee’s Daily News Journal, ironically titled “American history slips into oblivion,” shows just how dramatic the media’s misconceptions of intelligent design are. Ed Kimbrell writes "look at Kansas and Georgia, where the boards demanded that intelligent design be taught along side evolution." But neither Kansas nor Georgia taught intelligent design.
Continue reading "The Daily News Journal Rewrites American History" »
In the New Scientist profile last month of the new intelligent design research lab, there was discussion of two technical articles published in the Journal of Molecular Biology by protein scientist Doug Axe (for abstracts, see here and here). As the New Scientist acknowledged, funding for the research underlying these peer-reviewed articles was provided by Discovery Institute's research fellowship program—thus disproving the twin canards that Discovery Institute does not support scientific research, and that pro-ID scientists do not publish peer-reviewed research. Yet the New Scientist tried its best to downplay the relevance of the articles to the theory of intelligent design, contrasting the positive interpretations of Axe's research offered by intelligent design theorists William Dembski and Stephen Meyer with the dismissive views of unnamed "scientists." The implication seemed to be that Dembski and Meyer have misrepresented Axe's research by claiming that it provides evidence against neo-Darwinism and corroboration for intelligent design. Interestingly, the one person whose voice is left out of the New Scientist's discussion of Axe's research is Dr. Axe himself. One might have hoped that the New Scientist would be interested in what Dr. Axe thought of the relationship between his own research and intelligent design. It turns out that the reporter for the New Scientist did ask Dr. Axe for his view, but she then chose not to disclose Axe's response to readers.
Continue reading "Scientist Says His Peer-Reviewed Research in the Journal of Molecular Biology "Adds to the Case for Intelligent Design"" »
Casey Luskin recently highlighted the mocking, anti-religious attitude expressed by Darwinists promoting the so-called "Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster." Now in an interview with the Toronto Star, Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has defended such mocking of traditional religion by Darwinists as "light hearted fun" that is "probably healthy." Indeed, according to Branch, such mockery seems to be a perfectly legitimate activity for Darwinists "who need the chance to blow off steam" after engaging in the "tiring and often thankless chore" of battling "creationist activity." Branch further suggests that criticism of anti-religious Darwinist propaganda by Luskin and others affiliated with Discovery Institute is illegitimate, asking: "Why would mocking traditional religion be of concern to a purely scientific organization?"
There is a perfectly obvious answer to Branch's question, which I will get to in a moment. But first I have a question of my own: Why is mocking traditional religion in the name of science apparently OK for the NCSE?
Continue reading "Why Does National Center for Science Education (NCSE) Spokesman Think "Mocking Traditional Religion" is OK?" »
This is the second installment of a four-part series responding to Larry Arnhart’s comments about my book Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest. The first installment can be found here.
2. Darwinism, Free Will, and the Soul
In my book I pointed out that leading Darwinists and Darwin himself drew implications from Darwinism contrary to human free will and moral responsibility. In response, Arnhart says that he regards “human moral freedom as an ‘emergent’ product of the evolution of the human brain.” But it is highly questionable whether the Darwinian account of evolution can account even for the emergence of human intelligence let alone the emergence of human moral freedom. After all, how does intelligence “emerge” from a completely unintelligent material process of chance and necessity? If you begin with unintelligent matter and energy alone, how do you magically get mind somewhere later in the process?
Continue reading "A Further Response to Larry Arnhart, pt. 2: Darwinism, Free Will, and the Soul" »
John Derbyshire, the vitriolic anti-ID crusader over at National Review Online, must have had a really bad Christmas. Or something. In his post-Christmas column at NRO, he is more shrill and bombastic in his denunciations of ID than ever, if that's possible.
Continue reading "John Derbyshire at NRO Had a Bad Christmas… or Something" »
Political science professor Larry Arnhart, author of the book Darwinian Conservatism, is probably the most thoughtful and articulate proponent of Darwinism as a support for conservatism. My recent book Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest is largely framed as a response to Arnhart's arguments. I appreciate how seriously Arnhart takes the debate over the implications of Darwin’s theory, and also how committed he is to a civil discussion. Arnhart has now responded to my book in two posts (here and here) on his Darwinian Conservatism blog, and in a four-part series over the next several days I will be offering my response to his comments. After some initial clarifications, today's post will focus on the issue of Darwinism and traditional morality.
Continue reading "A Further Response to Larry Arnhart, pt. 1: Darwinism and Traditional Morality" »
Over at ID The Future, Casey Luskin has a year-end interview with Access Research Network's Dennis Wagner who has compiled a list of the top intelligent design stories of the past year. His list spans the globe and includes such highlights as: - 60% of U.S. Medical Doctors Doubt Macroevolutionary Theory
- Fly Eye Important Blueprint for Creating Better Video Systems
- Europeans Question the Value of Teaching Macroevolution
- Over 600 Scientists Express Skepticism of Darwinian Evolution
- Scientists Conduct New Research Using Intelligent Design Theory.
Click here to listen.
Continue reading "2006 Was a Busy Year in the Darwin vs. Design Evolution Debate" »
TVW here in Washington state has chosen to rebroadcast Seattle's Townhall debate on intelligent design between Discovery Instiute's Stephen Meyer and University of Washington's Peter Ward as part of their "Best of 2006."
For those who missed this debate, it is available on our website here.
We debate. You decide.
Congress's recent report documenting the harassment of evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg at the Smithsonian reveals a shameful lack of respect for the free speech rights of scientists skeptical of Darwinian evolution on the part of federal officials. It is important to emphasize that pro-Darwin officials at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) tried to punish Dr. Sternberg for his activities outside of the museum.
Continue reading "Congressional Report Exposes Federal Officials' Contempt for Free Speech of Scientists Skeptical of Darwinian Evolution" »
A year ago today, Judge John E. Jones issued his 139-page ruling denouncing intelligent design in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. At the time, the ruling was hailed by defenders of Darwin’s theory as a knock-out blow against intelligent design and scientific skepticism of Darwin’s theory.
What a difference a year makes.
A year after Dover, Darwinists seem increasingly disillusioned as well as shrill, the central part of Judge Jones’ “brilliant” decision has been found to be riddled with errors and copied nearly verbatim from the ACLU, a research lab has been launched for scientists to pursue intelligent design-inspired scientific research, and states and localities are continuing to adopt public policies to encourage students to study the scientific evidence for and against Darwin’s theory. At the same time, the stereotype that all critics of Darwin's theory are religiously-motivated zealots while all defenders of the theory are dispassionate scholars who are neutral toward religion has started to implode.
Here are the top developments during the past year in my view:
Continue reading "A year after Dover, the scientific debate over Darwin is as vigorous as ever" »
An article in the latest issue of New Scientist highlights the exciting work of scientists at the Biologic Institute, a new research lab conducting biological research and experiments from an intelligent design perspective. While writer Celeste Biever can't suppress her visceral pro-Darwin bias from the story (which carries the dismissive title "Intelligent design: The God Lab"), Biever's article is going to make it very difficult for Darwinists to continue to assert that scientists who support intelligent design aren't conducting scientific research.
As Biever's article grudgingly makes clear, "researchers [at the Biologic Institute lab] work at benches lined with fume hoods, incubators and microscopes--a typical scene in this up-and-coming biotech hub." The article also reports on some of the research projects underway, and even describes Darwinian biologist Ken Miller as conceding that the topics being explored "are of interest to science":
Continue reading "Intelligent Design Research Lab Highlighted in New Scientist" »
Last week, Rob Crowther reported evidence suggesting that Judge John Jones of Kitzmiller v. Dover fame plagiarized from a scholar's book in his commencement address last summer at Dickinson College. Well, consider the report confirmed. Quote marks and even a footnote have now magically appeared in the text at the Dickinson College site. If you are quick, you can still find the archived version of the original text using an internet search engine. Ironically, the hastily added quote marks now have Judge Jones slightly misquoting the book he was using, because his unattributed copying included a couple of errors.
Recently Edward T. Oakes reviewed Richard Weikart's From Darwin to Hitler :
As Richard Weikart proves in his magnificently written monograph From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection released a veritable Pandora's box of evil vapors and demonic spirits, which, once unleashed on an eager European public, poisoned discourse on war, race, sex, nationality, diplomacy, colonization, economy, and anthropology—especially, it would seem, in Germany.
In a letter he wrote to the German Wilhelm Pryor in 1868, Darwin averred that "the support which I receive from Germany is my chief ground for hoping that our views will ultimately prevail," a line that could well serve as the epigraph to Weikart's riveting tale of how Germany led itself (and thereby the rest of the world) into the abyss of internecine war and savagely applied eugenics, naïvely thinking all the while that it was helping to produce Darwin's "higher animal" from his eagerly anticipated "war of nature."
Continue reading "From Darwin to Hitler: A Pathway to Horror (Updated)" »
As might be expected, Darwinists are in a tizzy about the discovery that Judge John Jones copied virtually verbatim 90.9% of his analysis of whether intelligent design is science from ACLU laywers. Of course, most are rallying valiantly around Judge Jones, that “outstanding thinker” who produced a “masterpiece of wit, scholarship and clear thinking” and who “is as deserving of the title ‘great thinker’ as someone who writes a great mathematical proof or a great work of music criticism.”
But not everyone has joined the party. Pro-Darwin biochemist Larry Moran has noted his disillusionment with the over-the-top praise fellow Darwinists lavished on Judge Jones:
Continue reading "Judge Jones and the Shattering of Darwinist Illusions" »
The egregious case of copying text from plaintiffs’ attorneys by federal judge John E. Jones has drawn additional criticism from legal scholars who explain that such copying should be scrutinized and carefully examined.
Yesterday Discovery Institute released a report revealing that the key section of the widely-noted court decision in the Kitzmiller vs. Dover intelligent design case was copied nearly verbatim from a document written by ACLU lawyers.
“Discovery Institute is on solid ground in pointing out Judge Jones’ highly questionable practice in this case," said Bruce Green, an attorney with the Center for Law and Policy. “While having no legal bearing at this stage, it is highly frowned upon by the federal judiciary for a judge to adopt wholesale the findings and conclusions of a party without making a case for independent investigation demonstrated in the record.”
Continue reading "Judges' Copying of ACLU “Highly Frowned Upon” by Courts" »
WorldNetDaily is covering the Judge Jones’ copying story, as is the Associated Press, The York Dispatch, and the AgapePress (note: the last article inacurrately states that we are faulting Judge Jones for “plagiarism,” which we aren’t; he copied extensively from the ACLU, but in judicial circles that would not be called plagiarism).
Continue reading "Media Round-Up on Judge Jones" »
The key section of the widely-noted court decision on intelligent design issued a year ago on December 20 was copied nearly verbatim from a document written by ACLU lawyers, according to a study released today by scholars affiliated with the Discovery Institute.
"Judge John Jones copied verbatim or virtually verbatim 90.9% of his 6,004-word section on whether intelligent design is science from the ACLU's proposed 'Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law' submitted to him nearly a month before his ruling," said Dr. John West, Vice President for Public Policy and Legal Affairs at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.
Continue reading "Study Shows Federal Judge Copied ACLU Text in Dover Intelligent Design Ruling" »
As we recently reported, the Ouachita Parish School Board in Monroe, Louisiana, has passed a policy protecting Academic Freedom to Teach Scientific Evidence Regarding Controversial Scientific Subjects. The policy observes that "some teachers may be unsure of the district's expectations concerning how they should present information on such subjects" and guarantees teachers the academic freedom to teach both scientific strengths and weaknesses of controversial scientific subjects:
Continue reading "Darwinist Groups Stumbling Over Academic Freedom in Ouachita" »
Monroe, LA – The Ouachita Parish School Board in Louisiana drew praise this week for adopting a Resolution on Teacher Academic Freedom to Teach Scientific Evidence Regarding Controversial Scientific Subjects. The policy states in part that “teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught.”
“We’re very happy to see them take a stand protecting the academic freedom of teachers to answer student questions and discuss scientific issues in the classroom,” said Casey Luskin, an attorney and education policy specialist with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. “Teachers are the real winners in this case because they now have clear protection to help their students analyze all aspects of controversial scientific issues without worrying whether or not they will be fired or censored by their school district.”
Continue reading "Local Louisiana School Board Praised for Adopting Policy to Protect Teachers" »
The Associated Press has a story on the Kansas Science Standards which repeats the rhetoric of Kansas Darwinists. It states, “While Kansas public schools are likely to get their fifth set of science standards in eight years, the officials who want to ditch the anti-evolution ones now in place aren't planning to act immediately.” But the present standards are not “anti-evolution." The present standards teach more about evolution than do most statewide science standards and include extensive sections discussing the evidence both for and against evolution.
Continue reading "Associated Press Regurgitates Darwinist Rhetoric" »
Yesterday I blogged about my correspondence with New York Times reporter Cornelia Dean, who covers the evolution debate for the Times. Today I thought I would remind readers that this is not the first time we’ve reported about editorializing by Ms. Dean on the evolution issue. Last year, Dean wrote an op-ed advising evolutionists on what they should do to win the public debate over evolution. But the Times still assigns Ms. Dean to cover the evolution debate. Question: Would the Times assign a reporter to cover the abortion debate who had written an op-ed advising the pro-life movement on what it needed to do to in order to prevail? Conflicts of interest apparently don’t matter when the issue is evolution.
A few days ago, I took New York Times reporter Cornelia Dean to task for putting words in the mouth of Ohio Board of Education member Deborah Owens Fink. According to an article by Dean, “Dr. Owens Fink...said the [Ohio] curriculum standards she supported did not advocate teaching intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism.” But as I pointed out, Dr. Owens Fink did not call intelligent design “an ideological cousin of creationism,” even though Dean’s wording makes this appear to be the case. Those words represent Dean’s own editorial evaluation (in what was supposed to be a news article, not an editorial). According to Dr. Owens Fink, “the reporter... put words in the article that may represent her view but not mine.”
I contacted Ms. Dean to give her a chance to respond to my criticisms, and she graciously replied. What ensued was an exchange of views that helps illuminate the mindset of many reporters who cover the evolution issue. Here is Dean’s first response:
Continue reading "Inside the Mind of the New York Times: My Exchange with Cornelia Dean, Evolution Partisan" »
We notice a trend on the left to denounce scientists who disagree with a social policy objective of the left as “anti-science.” It’s a major theme on the evolution issue. Now it is true, too, on the issue of whether global warming is as big a danger as the Al Gore sorts say and what contribution human activity makes to the problem. And as a Washington Post article shows, the materialist left have decided that medical professors who promote reproductive medicine that doesn’t include abortion or test tube fertilization because of moral scruples are being denounced as “anti-science,” too.
At the same time we hear, a la Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion are properly “non-overlapping magisteria,” that one is about facts and the other values. But it seems that whatever science can do it should do and values ignored. When someone tries to guide science with moral values he is attacked as “anti-science.”
Slowly, the ultimate claims of materialism are made plain, and scientism—the ideology—bares its teeth.
Continue reading "“Anti-Science” is the New Left Wing Smear" »
Earlier today, Rob Crowther speculated that wording attributed by New York Times reporter Cornelia Dean to Ohio State Board of Education member Dr. Deborah Owens Fink was in fact wording that came from Ms. Dean, not from Dr. Owens Fink. We have just received confirmation of that fact from Dr. Owens Fink herself.
Continue reading "New York Times Reporter Did Put Her Own Words in Ohio Board Member’s Mouth" »
|
