Posted on 05/28/2007 5:44:20 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
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.
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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.
“Gonzalez is being persecuted for his beliefs; mainly by a atheist “religious studies” studies professor named Hector Avalos”
This is a state owned university. If the state politicians have any backbone they will lean on the university to grant Gonzalez tenor and to “defund” Avalos if necessary to stop his persecution of Gonzalez. The politicos hold the purse strings and can put a stop to this nonsense.
Normally that is what science does.
The problem is that true believers will not accept the disproof.
We still get arguments in favor of geocentricism on these threads! The idea of a global flood was abandoned by geologists by 1830, but we still see claims on these threads that the scientists don't know what they are talking about. Several branches of science have validated radiocarbon and other radiometric methods of dating, but we still see argument against those methods on these threads--no scientific data, but lots of arguments. Same for Atlantis and a bunch of other silly subjects.
So yes, unless somebody comes up with some evidence, a lot of those subjects should be ignored by science.
"The problem is that true believers will not accept the disproof."
The problem is that Coyote thinks that some things are proven when they are not. His standard of proof is defined 'a priori' so that only 'natural' explanations are acceptable and he accepts unfalsifiable arguments as 'proofs' when they are in his favor.
"We still get arguments in favor of geocentricism on these threads!"
Supported by quotes by Albert Einstein, yet Coyoteman still believes that heliocentrism has been 'proved'.
(Einstein and Infeld, 1938, p. 212): "Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? […] The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS."
“There is no way that Intelligent Design can be integrated into a scientific experiment, because it is irreproducible, invisible and unmanageable. I cannot add it to the experiment, or take it away, observe it in action or modify that action. Therefore by the rules of science, I have to ignore it in my experiment.”
If I understand your reasoning, you are saying that science cannot take a position on ID. That is, science can “officially” neither accept nor *deny* the possibility of ID in nature.
I’m not sure about that, but I will say that it makes more sense than simply denying the existence of ID as a *premise* of science — and then claiming it as a conclusion too!
Please note, however, that your rules would rule out much of the theory of evolution as “unscientific.” No one has ever done an experiment showing that a fish can evolve into a frog or a monkey, for an obvious example.
Note also the the current prevailing ideas about the origin of life are unscientific according to the “falsifiability” standard. The current “theory” (actually, hypothesis) is that all life derived from a single living cell that came together largely at random. How can the idea that such a cell came together at random possibly be disproved? It can’t.
That makes it unscientific according to the very rules that I constantly hear evolutionists tout. Yet this idea of the origin of life is widely studied at prestigious institutions, and it is certainly called “science” by the very same people who claim that ID is “not science.” Quite a breath-taking double standard!
What scientific evidence points to this?
None that I've ever seen.
The most that we have here is a compelling philosophical argument.
You'll never see it because you're not a scientist.
Statistically, life cannot exist on earth (or anywhere else) from random, naturalistic processes. This has been established beyond question from mathematical analysis of the complexity of the simplest life forms, to a confidence level of approximately ten to the fortieth power. The scientific answer to that is that since life does indeed exist, that life has been brought about by an intelligent, creative process. The atheist academician reacts to this in outrage. They say that it is unscientific to view the problem scientifically.
Actually, the randomness never even began.
Miller-Urey contained an amino-acid trap to prevent any amino-acids that were formed from disintegrating shortly after as would be the case in the 'natural' world.
Then, the amino-acids that were trapped were racemic for both left and right-handed versions while life uses the left-handed version.
Then, left and right-handed versions of amino-acids combine without preference so, no life-specific proteins can be formed.
Then, sugars do not spontaneously form RNA, so no 'templates'.
However, we can ask ourselves whether this process would actually produce a form of consciousness so credulous as to actually believe such nonsense? Apparently so. ;-)
So scientists setting up the correct conditions in a lab and controlling the factors involved demonstrated that some of the basic building blocks could be synthesized.
And this demonstrates that life arose without intelligence or design how?
So scientists setting up the correct conditions in a lab and controlling the factors involved demonstrated that some of the basic building blocks could be synthesized.
And this demonstrates that life arose without intelligence or design how?
There is a long way from “demonstrating that some of the basic building blocks could be synthesized” to demonstrating that a living cell could be synthesized.
I could go out to the beach and say that “some of the basic building blocks” of computers (silicon particles) formed naturally. That is a long way from saying that computers formed naturally.
I urge you to read chapter 11, The Enigma of Life’s Origin, from the book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, by Michael Denton. This should help you to understand how far we are from explaining the origin of life by purely naturalistic mechanisms with no ID.
And please, please, don’t tell me that some evolutionist declared that Denton’s book is not worth reading.
The simplest known living cell is amazingly complicated, consisting of several subsystems, all of which must be functioning more or less perfectly for the cell to be alive. Those systems could not be developed independently, as in an engineering lab, for later integration. They all had to be there at once, yet each depends critically on the other.
In the early days of Darwinism, before the cell was understood, many evolutionists believed that bacterial cells would form “spontaneously.” They were eventually proven wrong by Pasteur and others. So now that have pushed the great spontaneous cell formation off into the distant past, where it can’t be challenged and is “unfalsifiable” — hence unscientific.
“The creationists/IDers want science to look at it and all we get is the mantra, “But it’s noooot sciiiieeeeence.””
So if its not science then it doesnt exist?
So if its not science then it doesnt exist?
If there is no evidence for it how do you know it exists?
That between natural but lifeless conditions and meteorites, all the basic building blocks for life were available, along with a two-part mechanism that created more complexity and acted as a model for accurate replication of that complexity.
From that point on, no ID is necessary. Before that point, it is debatable.
And while a complex cell is complex, every stage of development from simplicity to complexity exists, and natural selection alone is enough for that evolution to have occurred.
In other words, ID might have started it, but it is on autopilot, it needs no additional ID as an evolving system.
So it seems. Least most of what I’ve seen debated here is that if it can’t be reduced to a lab experiment, it’s not natural, which makes it supernatural, which means that it falls in the category of mythology, fairy tales, folklore, etc. and so isn’t worth considering.
That makes it kind of hard to explain things like beauty, society, art, music, emotions, thoughts, will, consciousness.....
How can you measure the appreciation of a beautiful sunset? Is that not real?
Art is more than wavelengths of light reflecting off pigments and the chemical composition of the paint.
Music is more that sounds waves bouncing off eardrums.
Thoughts and emotions more than electrical impulses zipping around the brain.
Reducing every thing in life to it’s simple mechanical processes reduces life to a sterile, cold existence, and robs life of everything that gives it meaning.
“And while a complex cell is complex, every stage of development from simplicity to complexity exists, and natural selection alone is enough for that evolution to have occurred.”
Wrong. Sorry, but you are really showing your abysmal ignorance here. The simplest living cell is extremely complex, and cells of “intermediate” or “low” complexity have never been observed.
Furthermore, natural selection does not work until reproduction is possible, and it isn’t possible until a cell exists. Hence, natural selection won’t bail you out on this one.
You have to be the most gullible person to ever touch a keyboard!
The deeper problem is that Coyoteman thinks there is no truth in science, and hence, no truth in Darwinism. Ask him about it. You'll see.
Still misrepresenting what I say, I see. Is your argument so weak that you can't rely on facts?
Here is the definition of "truth" I have posted to you several times. It is pretty standard in science.
Truth: This is a word best avoided entirely in physics [and science] except when placed in quotes, or with careful qualification. Its colloquial use has so many shades of meaning from ‘it seems to be correct’ to the absolute truths claimed by religion, that it’s use causes nothing but misunderstanding. Someone once said "Science seeks proximate (approximate) truths." Others speak of provisional or tentative truths. Certainly science claims no final or absolute truths. Source.See my FR homepage for more definitions. Note particularly the definition of "theory."
That is particularly appropriate, as creationists are still bashing the theory of evolution for being a theory. Well, what else would it be?
“If there is no evidence for it how do you know it exists?”
Think that sounds like a cop-out? Alright- prove you exist, scientifically, to me.
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