Academia's Assault on Intelligent Design

There is evidence for intelligent design in the universe." This does not seem like an especially radical statement; many people believe that God has revealed himself through creation. Such beliefs, however, do not conform to politically correct notions in academia, as Professor Guillermo Gonzalez is learning the hard way. An astronomer at Iowa State University, Professor Gonzalez was recently denied tenure—despite his stellar academic record—and it is increasingly clear he was rejected for one reason: He wrote a book entitled The Privileged Planet which showed that there is evidence for design in the universe.& nbsp; Dr. Gonzalez's case has truly distressing implications for academic freedom in colleges and universities across the country, especially in science departments.

Dr. Gonzalez, who fled from Cuba to America as a child, earned his PhD in astronomy from the University of Washington. By academic standards, Dr. Gonzalez has had a remarkable career. Though still a young man, he has already authored sixty-eight peer-reviewed scientific papers. These papers have been featured in some of the world's most respected scientific journals, including Science and Nature. Dr. Gonzalez has also co-authored a college-level text book entitled Observational Astronomy, which was published by Cambridge Press.

According to the written requirements for tenure at the Iowa State University, a prospective candidate is required to have published at least fifteen peer-reviewed scientific papers. With sixty-eight papers to his name, Dr. Gonzalez has already exceeded that requirement by 350%. Ninety-one percent of professors who applied for tenure at Iowa State University this year were successful, implying that there has to be something seriously wrong with a candidate before they are rejected.

What's wrong with Dr. Gonzalez? So far as anyone can tell, this rejection had little to do with his scientific research, and everything to do with the fact that Dr. Gonzalez believes the scientific evidence points to the idea of an intelligent designer. In fact, as World Magazine has reported, at least two scientists in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the Iowa State University have admitted that intelligent design played a role in their decision. This despite the fact that Dr. Gonzalez does not teach intelligent design in any of his classes, and that none of his peer-reviewed papers deal with the subject. Nevertheless, simply because Gonzalez holds the view that there is intelligence behind the universe, and has written a book presenting scientific evidence for this fact, he is considered unsuitable at Iowa State.

What is the state of academic freedom when well qualified candidates are rejected simply because they see God's fingerprints on the cosmos? Isn't the Academy supposed to be a venue for diverse views? Aren't universities supposed to foster an atmosphere that allows for robust discussion and freedom of thought? Dr. Gonzalez's fate suggests that anyone who deigns to challenge conventional orthodoxy is not welcome in the club.

In the future, will scientists who are up for tenure be forced to deny that God could have played any role in the creation or design of the universe? Will Bible-believing astronomers be forced to repudiate Psalm 19, which begins, "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands"? Will faithful Catholics be required to reject the teaching of Vatican I, which said that God "can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, by the natural power of human reason..." Just where will this witch hunt lead?

The amazing fact is that, even as many science departments are working overtime to forbid professors from positing that there is evidence for intelligent design in the universe, more and more scientists are coming to this conclusion. The Discovery Institute has compiled a list of over seven-hundred scientists who signed the following statement: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged." The list of scientists who find good reason to doubt the strictly materialistic Darwinism that is currently scientific orthodoxy is growing every day.

It seems that many scientists and academicians who hold views contrary to Dr. Gonzalez have concluded that the best way to avoid debate about the evidence for intelligent design is to simply deny jobs to those who will not affirm their atheistic worldview. The fact that these scientists, who are supposedly open to following the evidence wherever it leads, have resorted to blatant discrimination to avoid having this conversation speaks volumes about the weakness of their position. They realize their arguments are not sufficient to defeat the intelligent design movement and they must, therefore, shut their opponents out of the conversation. All the evidence suggests that it is unjust that Dr. Gonzalez was denied tenure and that this ruling should be overturned on appeal. Nevertheless, what happened to Dr. Gonzalez is a reflection of the growing strength of the intelligent design movement, not its weakness.

Ken Connor is Chairman of the Center for a Just Society in Washington, DC and a nationally recognized trial lawyer who represented Governor Jeb Bush in the Terri Schiavo case.

A few thoughts come to mind.

Was the purpose of the article to act as a trial balloon to see how prof. G would fare in a lawsuit?

Is the purpose of any media-action by Discovery Institute related personnel simply an attempt to fire up discussions like this, as a strategy of "creating controversy," so that they can then turn around and use these very discussions as excuses in another attempt to push Creationism/ID into public school biology classes, under the guise of "teach the controversy?" I admit that's kind of paranoid to think, but I'm starting to wonder due to the repetitiveness of many of the arguments made every time this comes up.

The notion that the whole evolution/creationism thing neatly fits into liberal/conservative categories: It doesn't. William Jennings Bryan (noted Creationist) was a "progressive" Democrat, he was practically the Dennis Kucinich of his day on economic issues. Any such alignment is only incidental and temporary. Likewise, the labeling of academia with a broad brush. It is true that many academic fields have been ideologically "captured" by leftists. But this is least true in the sciences and other technical fields. Yes, there's PC everywhere, but the technical fields are still the most ideologically free. So it's simply inaccurate to try to make a "science professors are PC" argument out of this.

Blaming things some people do, on other people, who are dead: For example, blaming Darwin, by some "chain of ideas" for the Holocaust. Darwin was dead before Hitler was born, let alone before he became Chancellor of Germany. As Thomas Jefferson said, "the earth belongs to the living, not the dead." He meant that humans present in a time must be responsible for what they do and how they live. There is no "Darwin defense" for a genocidal maniac who ruled long after Darwin was gone. You might as well blame Peter the Great for what Stalin did. Sorry, that meme is nonsense.

There was an earlier reference to Lord Kelvin (William Thomson). Wikipedia offers this FWIW:

Thomson believed in an instant of Creation but he was no creationist in the modern sense.[27] He contended that the laws of thermodynamics operated from the birth of the universe and envisaged a dynamic process that saw the organisation and evolution of the solar system and other structures, followed by a gradual "heat death". He developed the view that the Earth had once been too hot to support life and contrasted this view with that of uniformitarianism, that conditions had remained constant since the indefinite past. He contended that "This earth, certainly a moderate number of millions of years ago, was a red-hot globe ... ."[28]

After the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859, Thomson saw evidence of the relatively short habitable age of the Earth as tending to contradict an evolutionary explanation of biological diversity. He noted that the sun could not have possibly existed long enough to allow the slow incremental development by evolution — unless some energy source beyond what he or any other Victorian era person knew of was found. He was soon drawn into public disagreement with Darwin's supporters John Tyndall and T.H. Huxley. In his response to Huxley’s address to the Geological Society of London (1868) he presented his address "Of Geological Dynamics", (1869)[29] which, among his other writings, set back the scientific acceptance that the earth must be of very great age.

Thomson ultimately settled on an estimate that the Earth was 20-40 million years old. Shortly before his death however, Becquerel's discovery of radioactivity and Marie Curie's studies with uranium ores provided the insight into the 'energy source beyond' that would power the sun for the long time-span required by the theory of evolution. Though Thomson continued to defend his estimates, privately he admitted that they were most probably wrong.[citation needed]

So he favored a "middle-aged earth" (meaning, between a Biblical "young earth" and a modern geologically "old earth") because his understanding of the sources of heat for the sun were limited to things like coal and natural gas, because he lived most of his life before the discovery of radioactive decay.

Not enough coal to power the sun for long enough to support a 4.5 billion year old earth, is now still being brought up in 2007, as some sort of reason to hold up Thomson as a "Darwin critic"?? AFTER we know how nuclear fusion works? The mind reels.

Quotes attributed to Thomson Lord Kelvin:

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

Radio has no future.

So apparently Thomson Lord Kelvin got some things right and some wrong.

But my own favorite quote attributed to Thomson is this:

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of Science, whatever the matter may be.

This is an essential aspect of science: measurement and quantification. Lacking those, whatever good works you may be doing, it ain't science.

Where is the instrument that measures the supposed interaction between the supernatural and the natural?

Divining rod? Ouija board? Perhaps something made by Perkin-Elmer or Hewlett-Packard? Fluke meter? (Pun, sorry, and with apology to Daniel Dennett.) How do we measure and quantify the continuing influence of the supernatural in the natural world without such an instrument? Or, what statistical algorithm do we use, when analyzing DNA sequences, to find the parts that "couldn't have happened by evolution," and therefore had to have been added in by supernatural forces? What statistical test to we apply, to show which sequences are due to natural evolution and which are due to supernatural intervention?

sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thomson%2C_1st_Baron_Kelvin
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Thomson%2C_1st_Baron_Kelvin

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