Professor Dumped Over Evolution Beliefs

http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/3/112003a.asp ^ | March 11, 2003 | Jim Brown and Ed Vitagliano

[Remedy]

A university professor said she was asked to resign for introducing elite students to flaws in Darwinian thought, and she now says academic freedom at her school is just a charade.

During a recent honors forum at Mississippi University for Women (MUW), Dr. Nancy Bryson gave a presentation titled "Critical Thinking on Evolution" -- which covered alternate views to evolution such as intelligent design. Bryson said that following the presentation, a senior professor of biology told her she was unqualified and not a professional biologist, and said her presentation was "religion masquerading as science."

The next day, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Vagn Hansen asked Bryson to resign from her position as head of the school's Division of Science and Mathematics.

"The academy is all about free thought and academic freedom. He hadn't even heard my talk," Bryson told American Family Radio News. "[W]ithout knowing anything about my talk, he makes that decision. I think it's just really an outrage."

Bryson believes she was punished for challenging evolutionary thought and said she hopes her dismissal will smooth the way for more campus debate on the theory of evolution. University counsel Perry Sansing said MUW will not comment on why Bryson was asked to resign because it is a personnel matter.

"The best reaction," Bryson says, "and the most encouraging reaction I have received has been from the students." She added that the students who have heard the talk, "They have been so enthusiastically supportive of me."

Bryson has contacted the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy and is considering taking legal action against the school.

[Remedy]

Intelligently Designed Films The two videos complement each other well. Unlocking the Mystery of Life develops all of Intelligent Design's major molecular-based arguments for an "intelligent cause" of life's complexity, and thus presents the positive case. Icons of Evolution, on the other hand, spotlights the problems of Darwinism: its censorship of key scientific information in public schools, and the scientific misinformation it spreads through public textbooks.

• International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID)
• True.Origin
• Institute for Creation Research
• Christian Answers
• Creation Research Society
• CARM
• Revolution Against Evolution
• Discovery Institute
• Law, Darwinism, & Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of Intelligent Design."
• 'Intelligent Design' vs. Evolution
• Chapter 7 Thermodynamics of Living Systems, p113
• Chapter 8 Thermodynamics and the Origin of life, p127
• Chapter 9 Specifying How Work is to be Done, p144
• Media Bias Stifles Creationists' Scientific Findings, Perspective He explains that the secular media -- which he describes as atheistic and anti-Christian -- publishes most anything it can that appears to indoctrinate people and "hits against the Bible."
• Loosening Darwin's GripA poll released in May 2002 by Zogby International found that nearly eight out of every 10 Ohioans supported the teaching of intelligent design in classrooms where Darwinian evolution also is taught. A survey by The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland offered similar findings: 74 percent of Ohioans said evidence for and against evolution should be taught in science classrooms, while 59 percent said intelligent design should be included in origins study.
• Anti-Creationists Backed Into a Corner? Forrest Turpen, executive director of Christian Educators Association International, says it is obvious the evolution-only advocates feel their ideology and livelihood are being threatened.

[VRWCmember]

She should have declined his request.

[newgeezer]

Okay, it's time for one of those evolutionists to post their "Giant List Of Links Containing Allegedly Scientific Answers To Any And All Points Raised By Creationists (End Of Debate)."

[Remedy]

Giant List Of MISSING & MISINTERPRETED Links.

They must be at a FOSSIL THUMPERS convention.

[jlogajan]

I suppose if some professor advocates the moon is green cheese theory that they should not be fired either?

[VOA]

"The academy is all about free thought and academic freedom. He hadn't even
heard my talk," Bryson told American Family Radio News.

SOME evolutionists draw all sorts of hare-brained conclusions from nearly
non-existent evidence all the time.

Can you expect better from a university administrator?

Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Vagn Hansen asked Bryson to resign from
her position as head of the school's Division of Science and Mathematics.

If, in fact this lady became an over-the-top creationist, it's sort of fun to
notice that the faculty that couldn't predict she'd do this after being made the head of
an academic division...thinks they can tell us everything that happened
millions of years ago...

[Right Wing Professor]

The next day, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Vagn Hansen asked Bryson to resign from her position as head of the school's Division of Science and Mathematics.

Your post is misleading. She was (according to my reading) asked to resign as head; this is generally an administrative position, and is separate from her tenured professorship. She'll likely lose little or no salary, and will continue to be a faculty member; she just won't be running the division.

Fair enough, IMO. I wouldn't want a department chair who didn't believe the laws of thermodynamics.

[Remedy]

>> If, in fact this lady became an over-the-top creationist, it's sort of fun to notice that the faculty that couldn't predict she'd do this after being made the head of an academic division...thinks they can tell us everything that happened millions of years ago...<<

L.O.L. Guess, they didn't have enough missing papers or files for the prediction. They could have at least used Murphy's law.

[Remedy]

Guess you tripped over the Thermo links in post #1.

[Notwithstanding]

With billion year gaps in the so-called "evolutionary chain", I posit that the yet unproven but somewhat plausible theory of evolution is not much more solid than the "moon is green cheese theory" depending on which moon one is talking about.

Clearly, all evidence supports intelligent design, a theory which does not deny that evolution may have occured.

Sadly, believers in evolutionism (fossil thumpers masquerading as "scientists") claim - with absolutely ZERO PROOF - that intelligent design is an impossibility.

[Notwithstanding]

Excuse me: which actual science did this woman reject?

[Right Wing Professor]

I looked at them; they're the usual dreck. They say nothing about evolution; they merely argue that a completely unrealistic model of abiogenesis is indeed completely unrealistic.

I was arguing by analogy; that seems to have skipped right by you. She's a chemist. I'm in a chemistry department. If my department chair was teaching students an entirely erroneous theory of chemistry, I'd want him out. She's a chemist, running a science department, teaching garbage in a field that isn't her own.

[LeeMcCoy]

"Fair enough, IMO. I wouldn't want a department chair who didn't believe the laws of thermodynamics."

Absolutely correct. Irrespective of my devotion to God, the preponderance of evidence is in the evolutionists favor. Given that, this department chair should be a scientist or mathematician familiar with the concept of scientific research, and as ID and Creationism don't seem to be founded on those principals, her removal as chair is justified.

Notice I did NOT say that her questions shouldn't be asked, but they must be asked within the context of the scientific method. Simply saying, "God did it", or "Evolution does not have all the answers" does not qualify as evidence. The theory of natural selection does have flaws, and scientists are constantly seeking new data and information to further refine the theory. That's how science works. I do not see any evidence that the same is being done in ID or Creationism.

[f.Christian]

Alien abductions ... nothing you can say --- some kind of mental epilepsy --- evolution !

Main Entry: ep·i·lep·sy
Pronunciation: 'e-p&-"lep-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -sies
Etymology: Middle French epilepsie, from Late Latin epilepsia, from Greek epilEpsia, from epilambanein to seize, from epi- + lambanein to take, seize -- more at LATCH
Date: 1543
: any of various disorders marked by disturbed electrical rhythms of the central nervous system and typically manifested by convulsive attacks usually with clouding of consciousness

[Right Wing Professor]

Excuse me: which actual science did this woman reject?

What science did I say she rejected?

[Notwithstanding]

you analogize that she is like someone who rejects the law of thermodynamics - and thus she ought not chair the dept

but what actual science is she rejecting?

[Remedy]

>>teaching garbage<<

Exactly what spontaneous generation macroevolution is.

[Remedy]

>>Irrespective of my devotion to God, the preponderance of evidence is in the evolutionists favor.<<

Stay outta court.

[oldfart]

I suppose I will be branded as 'wishy-washy' or some such thing, but since there are no living witnesses willing to testify on the subject (God hasn't spoken to me on the subject lately) I just assume both theories are just that--- theories. One is just as good as the other until God does decide to say something.
And don't tell me that the Bible is the word of God. At best, it's filtered through countless generations and translations.

[ml/nj]

I'm in a chemistry department. If my department chair was teaching students an entirely erroneous theory of chemistry, I'd want him out.

Ah. But chemistry is a science.

ML/NJ