I.D. Rift Hits Baylor Again (Controversy surrounds University's Evolutionary Informatics Lab)

WACO, Texas (BP)--Baylor University officials ordered the shutdown of a personal website of one of a handful of the school's distinguished professors because of anonymous concerns that the site, hosted on the university’s server, supported Intelligent Design.

Robert Marks, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at Baylor, launched a website called the Evolutionary Informatics Lab in June to examine whether Darwinian processes like random mutation and natural selection can generate new information.

Marks' conclusions, as explained on the website, placed limits on the scope of Darwinism and offered scientific support for Intelligent Design.

In July, a podcast interview with Marks appeared on a website run by the pro-ID Discovery Institute, and a week later Benjamin Kelley, dean of engineering at Baylor, told Marks to remove the Evolutionary Informatics website immediately.

"This is a big story, perhaps the biggest story yet of academic suppression relating to ID," William Dembski, a research professor in philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Baptist Press.

"Robert Marks is a world-class expert in the field of evolutionary computing, and yet the Baylor administration, without any consideration of the actual content of Marks' work at the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, decided to shut it down simply because there were anonymous complaints linking the lab to Intelligent Design," Dembski said.

Dembski himself was at the center of a controversy involving Baylor and Intelligent Design in 2000 when he was removed from his post as director of the school's Michael Polanyi Center for Complexity, Information, and Design after refusing to rescind a statement supporting Intelligent Design as a legitimate form of academic inquiry.

Lori Fogleman, director of media communications at Baylor, told Baptist Press Sept. 5 that the school's objection to the website involves standards by which something can or cannot attach its name to Baylor.

"This isn't about the content of the website. Really the issue is related to Baylor's policies and procedures of approving centers, institutes, products using the university's name," Fogleman said. "Baylor reserves the exclusive right to the use of its own name, and we're pretty jealous in the protection of that name. So it has nothing to do with the content but is all about how one goes about establishing a center, an institute, a product using the university's name."

In response to the dean's order to remove the Evolutionary Informatics website, Marks requested a meeting with Baylor legal counsel to resolve the matter. Six days before the scheduled Aug. 9 meeting, Kelley entered Marks' Baylor webspace and, without his consent, removed all references to the Evolutionary Informatics Lab, according to a timeline Dembski sent to BP.

The Aug. 9 meeting involved John Gilmore, an attorney who advised Dembski in 2000 and now represents Marks, Baylor Provost Randall O'Brien, Kelley and Baylor attorneys including Charles Beckenhauer, chief counsel for the school. Baylor officials asked that Marks add a disclaimer to his website and remove anything that could imply the lab is a Baylor initiative.

"Randall O'Brien signs off on the EIL site going back up and closes the meeting with prayer," Dembski's timeline states.

An Aug. 21 e-mail from Beckenhauer to Gilmore included what the Baylor chief counsel called his "proposed fixes" to the website, which by then existed only as a mirror site, not viewable by the general public. Gilmore responded by saying the matter had been settled at the Aug. 9 meeting with the provost and that Beckenhauer's recommendations were out of line.

On Aug. 30, Beckenhauer told Gilmore via e-mail that "there is now a long trail of information that inappropriately links independent research to the Baylor name," and he said the website issue centered on "misleading representations of your client and his collaborator (Dr. Dembski)."

Research papers that Dembski and Marks wrote jointly were on the website, and Dembski said his connection with the lab had been evident from the start.

Beckenhauer said the Aug. 9 meeting was not meant to be a final agreement, and he expressed concerns that Marks and Dembski had created a "trail of inaccuracies" that would lead people to believe Baylor had given direct support for what in reality was an independent project.

"All the circumstantial evidence points to John Lilley, Baylor's president, as being behind this effort to stamp out ID at Baylor," Dembski told Baptist Press. "The provost was at the crucial Aug. 9 meeting; the president wasn't. Lilley is the only one with the authority to overturn what the provost agreed to at that meeting."

Dembski, in comments to the Southern Baptist Texan newsjournal Sept. 4, underscored the hypersensitivity surrounding Intelligent Design in scholastic institutions these days.

"You have to understand, in the current academic climate, Intelligent Design is like leprosy or heresy in times past," he said. "To be tagged as an ID supporter is to become an academic pariah, and this holds even at so-called Christian institutions that place a premium on respectability at the expense of truth and the offense of the Gospel."

Dembski said he knows of several faculty members at Baylor who support Intelligent Design, but they are mostly younger faculty who don't have tenure and don't speak up on the topic. An old guard at Baylor, he said, supports secularization.

"John Lilley, in attempting to pacify that old guard, and perhaps because of a sense of foreboding about how Baylor might be perceived in the wider university culture if it were seen as supporting Intelligent Design or as even allowing it merely a presence, has therefore decided to come down hard against it," Dembski said.

Intelligent Design "in a sense became a poster child" of what immediate past president Robert Sloan tried to accomplish at Baylor, seeking to rescue the Baptist General Convention of Texas-affiliated school from its slide into secularization before he resigned under pressure in 2005, Dembski noted.

Aside from the hot-button issue of Intelligent Design, Dembski said the way the Baylor administration has dealt with Marks in this case is "inexcusable by any standard, certainly Christian but even secular."

"I've been at MIT, Princeton University, Notre Dame, Cornell, Northwestern and the University of Chicago, and at none of these schools have I ever have witnessed the shameful treatment that Baylor has accorded to Robert Marks," Dembski said.

"... [Marks] was a star in his department at the University of Washington in Seattle for 26 years before Baylor recruited him, and now Baylor is subjecting him to treatment that even so 'liberal' and 'secular' a place as UW would find unconscionable," Dembski added. "Yes, there are academic freedom issues here, but at this point the issue is one of plain decency."

Robert Crowther of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture told Baptist Press the institute is watching the Marks situation from an academic freedom standpoint.

"We're deeply concerned that the administration at Baylor University has really not shown any support for academic freedom or freedom of scientific inquiry in shutting down a website and a research project of one of their distinguished faculty," Crowther said. "We find that very troubling. It does show a certain trend at Baylor."

Crowther said he believes Intelligent Design has become such a controversial issue in academia because of the scientific threat it poses. The Scopes Trial should have settled the issue, he said, but discoveries since then have altered the discussion.

"What has changed is the science. We know things now and there are new discoveries being made all the time that are leading a number of scientists to not just question Darwinian evolution but to actively pursue research into Intelligent Design," Crowther said. "The thing that is driving this really is the science. We wouldn't be having the debate if there wasn't something going on in science that was causing a lot of questions to rise from most of the scientists."

No, he is likening ‘suppressing’ HIS message (by denying the authority of Baylor University) DIRECTLY to an ‘Offense of the Gospel’; because to them he wishes to represent the “DEFENDER OF THE FAITH” against that nasty Science that ‘Offends the Gospel’ i.e. his interpretation of the Gospel.

When a Scientist falls back on the Gospel as his authority for the authenticity of his data or conclusions he has lost his way. He is doing Apologetics not Science. Moreover Dumbski has signed on to a PR outfit that seeks to overturn the very nature of Science itself (see the “wedge” document).

To Dumbski opposing him is opposing the Gospel. This makes him an egotistical twit as a theologist (syn theologian) and someone doing apologetics not Science.

You can try to spin it all you want. His words are there in black and white. Denying the name of Baylor to his ID work is an ‘offense of the gospel’ in his wrongheaded way of thinking.

No, he is likening ‘suppressing’ HIS message (by denying the authority of Baylor University) DIRECTLY to an ‘Offense of the Gospel’;

If you read his comments on his blog ( where people like you are also free to register and post ), you will see that you are MISTAKEN.

He is likening what Baylor did to what the early Christian suppressors did.

And no, he is NOT DENYING Baylor's authority to do it. Of course he submits to their authority and is STILL on friendly terms with the school. He is simply registering his DISAPPROVAL and DISAPPOINTMENT with what they did.

Do not conflate the two issues.

because to them he wishes to represent the “DEFENDER OF THE FAITH” against that nasty Science that ‘Offends the Gospel’ i.e. his interpretation of the Gospel.

Nope, he wishes to present what he believes to be LEGITIMATE RESEARCH which ought not to be suppressed, not especially by a Christian school that believes in God.

When a Scientist falls back on the Gospel as his authority for the authenticity of his data or conclusions he has lost his way.

That would be true if Dembski was doing that in his scientific work. I challenged you before to show me where in his papers he actually invoked the gospels, thus far, I get nothing from you. Which of course shows you're deliberately misinterpreting what he said.

He is doing Apologetics not Science.

You have it backwards. He and Prof. Marks are doing Science. Apologetics is something he can do in another setting.

Moreover Dumbski

There ya go, bias showing again.

has signed on to a PR outfit that seeks to overturn the very nature of Science itself (see the “wedge” document).

Can you show me where he is a signatory ?

To Dumbski

Bias showing again.

opposing him is opposing the Gospel.

Nope, he never said that. That's you putting words in his mouth.

This makes him an egotistical twit as a theologist (syn theologian) and someone doing apologetics not Science.

Not at all. I've heard Dembski speak and I've seen him on TV and in debates, he is cool, calm, collected and never egotistical.

You can try to spin it all you want.

Actually it is obvious -- *YOU* are doing the spinning here. I am CORRECTING YOU.

His words are there in black and white.

Yes, and the meaning you want to put into it are your own, not his.

Denying the name of Baylor to his ID work is an ‘offense of the gospel’ in his wrongheaded way of thinking.

Nope, in his right headed way of thinking, denying Dr. Marks his desire to pursue research on evolutionary informatics smacks of academic suppression and does Baylor's prestige no good. *THAT* is how it ought to be seen. As it should be.

He has to be a signatory of the ‘wedge’ document? Please. Does a Communist have to have been an author of the Communist Manifesto in order to be a Commie? When one signs on to the Discovery Institute one buys into their goals aspirations and philosophy. Their goal is nothing less than an overthrow of methodological naturalism (i.e. natural explanations for natural phenomenon) to be replaced by “Isn’t it lovely that the Designer made everything so well designed, yet not well designed enough to change on its own without the guidance of the designers hand.”

Please name for me another Scientist who intimates that disagreement with his findings and conclusions is an “Offense of the Gospel”, or that ANY Science could possibly be an “Offense of the Gospel”.

Saint Thomas Aquinas’ point was quite simply that when Science and your interpretation of the Bible are in conflict, it is your interpretation of the Bible that must give way; or one makes Christians the object of ridicule to those who know the facts of the situation. Dumbski Dembski’s position is that he expects better of a Baptist University than to allow Science to ‘Offend the Gospel’.

No discovery about the reality of the Universe and the laws that govern it could possibly be an affront to the creator of the Universe. That is why Dembski is a shoddy theologist (still a cromulent word), he thinks that the Gospel needs to be defended at a Baptist University against facts and theories. He is a fool, although an entertaining one. I especially liked how your supposed mathematical genius didn’t realize that the data set he cited was already normalized so he Renormalized it and found out that Australians are REALLY into Incompetent Design (what I call ‘Intelligent Design’ because it posits a Designer who creates a universe that cannot subsist without him plugging up the cracks and filling in the holes).

He has to be a signatory of the ‘wedge’ document? Please. Does a Communist have to have been an author of the Communist Manifesto in order to be a Commie? 1) Again, show me where he signed it.

2) You can support the Discovery Institutes' goal of advancing intelligent design research without subscribing to every single detail of their so called manifesto.

I personally believe ( but have no hard proof of it ) that Dembski is sympathetic to the Wedge Document, but so what ? How does that invalidate the work that he does ? Being symathetic to a cause does not mean you shouldn't be doing the hard work to present a scientific case for what you believe. Richard Dawkins ( who wrote that those who believe in God and teach their children to fear Him are child abusers ) is an honoree and a supporter of the materialistic Atheist Alliance International (AAI), an alliance of 58 atheist organisations around the world, 48 of which are located in the United States. Does this then mean that his being a member of a group that wants to promote materialism and the non-existence of God somehow now INVALIDATES the science he presents ?

When one signs on to the Discovery Institute one buys into their goals aspirations and philosophy. Their goal is nothing less than an overthrow of methodological naturalism Uh huh and when men like Dawkins signs in to Atheist International, one buys into their goals aspirations and philosophy. Their goal is nothing less than an overthrow of belief in God. so what's your point ? How does being personally sympathetic to the goals of one organization validate or invalidate your work ? Shouldn't your work stand on its own apart from your sympathy to any cause ?

“Isn’t it lovely that the Designer made everything so well designed, yet not well designed enough to change on its own without the guidance of the designers hand.”

On the other hand we have "“Isn’t it lovely that the chance made everything look so well designed, yet not well convincing enough for those it produced to be convinced that it has creative powers all on its own ?”

Please name for me another Scientist who intimates that disagreement with his findings and conclusions is an “Offense of the Gospel”, or that ANY Science could possibly be an “Offense of the Gospel”.

No one I can think of. Certainly not Dembski. Dembski wasn't refering to disagreements with his findings (as you continue to misinterprete it ), he was refering to suppression of the work of Prof. Robert Marks. Of course you continue to spin it the wrong way, therefore I have no choice but to continue to call you on it.

Saint Thomas Aquinas’ point was quite simply that when Science and your interpretation of the Bible are in conflict, it is your interpretation of the Bible that must give way;

And my point is this -- Intelligent Design and people who continue to do research on it do not refer to the Bible IN ANY WAY when they do their work. Bringing the Bible up is a red herring and shows how you simply want to insist on putting your own definition of what ID ought to be when its proponents already said it isn't what you say it is.

No discovery about the reality of the Universe and the laws that govern it could possibly be an affront to the creator of the Universe.

This, I agree with, and so I believe would Dembski and even Behe.

That is why Dembski is a shoddy theologist (still a cromulent word), he thinks that the Gospel needs to be defended at a Baptist University against facts and theories.

That is why I have to call you on your SHODDY MISINTERPRETATION of his remark. Dembski work with ID never mentions the Bible or the Gospel, nor does it mention God at all.

He is a fool, although an entertaining one.

Actually, I would say that Dawkins is the fool and an even more entertaining one at that. Your interpretation of ID is foolish as well ( although I wouldn't call a misinterpretation (and a deliberate one even after countless clarifications) entertaining though ).

I call ‘Intelligent Design’ because it posits a Designer who creates a universe that cannot subsist without him plugging up the cracks and filling in the hole

Well, look who's playing God here. By this statement, you are telling us what an intelligent designer OUGHT TO DO. Listen, you come up with a design as intelligent as the human eye and we'll see how authoritative you are in pronouncing what ought and ought not be designed.

Yes, you'd rather believe that chance can do it all even when we've never OBSERVED it happen, that's very scientific of you.

Dogkins is just as wrong in thinking Science supports atheism as Dumbski is in thinking that ‘suppressing’ his work (by denying the imprimatur of Baylor University) is somehow an “offense of the Gospel”.

Let's put things in proper perspective... BTW before I continue, let me correct you again --- Dembski NEVER SAID nor did he ever mean that suppressing his work is an offense to the gospel. He meant that their suppression is SIMILAR to what the authorities in the first century did when they tried to suppress the spearing to the gospel. I have to call you on this and if you repeat this, I'll repeat this as well.

Now on to the perspective. I happen to agree with the spirit of what you said regarding Dawkins and Dembski.

Their personal motivations are a side issue to the SCIENCE they present. If being sympathetic to the Wedge Document and being sympathetic to the Atheist Alliance disqualifies the evidence you try to present, then I guess it disqualifies say, Republicans from presenting evidence about Joe Wilson's lies about the circumstances behind his trip to Niger simply because their agenda is to support President Bush.

Whether or not Joe Wilson lied about his trip SHOULD BE VALIDATED OR INVALIDATED BY THE EVIDENCE AND NOT WHETHER OR NOT REPUBLICANS SUPPORT BUSH.

Similarly, being sympathetic to the Wedge or the Atheist society is a SIDE ISSUE that should not obscure the EVIDENCE for or against Darwinism and/or Intelligent Design.

That has always been my point when someone tries to bring up the Wedge issue. My reply is still the same SO WHAT ?

If you want to convince people, critique the scientific study and don't sidetrack us with peripheral issues. And while we're at it, don't suppress work being done to present evidence. If you want what you believe is an ill-conceived theory or idea to die a deserved death, there is no better way to do it than to hear what the proponent has to present and then critique it using EVIDENCE, OBSERVATION and REASON. Supporting suppression only INCREASES suspicion that your opposing idea might not have as much merit after all.

Does this mean that Dumbski thinks his work IS the Gospel?

Here is an easy answer to this strawman -- NO. And I am 100% certain of that.

Or that his work supports the Gospel?

Not necessarily. Even if we were to prove that the Intelligent Designer is a god, that is thousands of miles from showing that Jesus Christ is God. That's why Dembski doesn't even go there. It is people like you who insist on going there for reasons I think I know but would rather not discuss.

The new testament and Revelations of Dumbski?

Nope, the imaginative interpretative musings of some people regarding what they believe are the revelations of Dembski.

That guy is an absolute joke who cannot even figure out when data has been normalized.

Well, let's see your detailed critique of his papers and see where the joke lies. We'll be waiting for the meantime.

I think we will have to disagree to disagree.

On the issue of Dembski equating his suppression to suppressing the gospel ? ABSOLUTELY.

But I am not one who disagrees with someone simply for the sake of disagreeing. If I agree with what you said and believe it is reasonable, why should I say I disagree ?

Where in the preceding quote does he say SIMILAR or intimate that he is making an analogy? No he DIRECTLY says that tagging him as an ‘academic pariah’ is at the ‘expense of truth’ and an ‘offense of the Gospel’.

Where in the above statement does Dembski equate suppression of his work with suppression of the Gospel ?

He is simply saying that Baylor, being a Christian School ( which supposedly believes in God ( the intelligent deisgner ) is more interested in gaining acceptance from others than finding out about the truth. If Dembski were working in a secular university he would never have even mentioned the term ( something foreign to people who don't care one whit about the Bible ).

Let's talk about the term : "Offense of the Gospel", it is a term taken from St. Paul. See here :

"In a well-known passage, St. Paul speaks of the ‘offense’ of the gospel. What did the Apostle mean in saying this? Certainly not that the gospel is intellectually offensive, even if it was nonsense to the proud Greek mind and absurdly wrong to the Jewish mind -- to the former it spoke mistakenly of the personal loving-kindness of God for humans; to the latter it was preposterous to think that somebody who had been crucified and therefore condemned by Jewish religious teaching could be so important as to be called Lord, Saviour, Life-bringer. What St. Paul was saying was quite different. He was insisting, as Rudolf Bultmann has emphasized in discussing Pauline thought, that the gospel of God’s generous love enacted in Jesus Christ offends human pretension to self-sufficiency, human sinful pride, and human dislike for being recipient of divine grace rather than able to earn by good works an eternal salvation.

The Gospel was an OFFENSE to the people who heard about it from apostles like Paul, therfore he was being made an outcast for it. But he was NOT ASHAMED to present it anyway. Baylor, a Baptist school that hires Christian faculty, still have teachers that pray at the beginning of classes, a school that professes to believe in God as the intelligent designer, is suppressing work that might actually support this belief indirectly, yet, they suppress it because they fear being pariahs like St. Paul. Unlike the courageous St. Paul, they do not dare to stand on their supposed convictions.

THAT was the context of Dembski statement.

That is different from saying --- Dembski equates opposing his work to opposing the gospel ( your spin ).

SPIN SPIN SPIN.

YES, YOURS.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.