Dispatches from the Creation Wars

The Irony of Gonzalez’ New Job

Posted by Ed Brayton on July 10, 2008
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The DI blog reports that Guillermo Gonzalez has a new job teaching astronomy at Grove City College, a Christian liberal arts college in Pennsylvania:

Noted astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez whose academic freedom was trampled when he was drummed out of Iowa State University for being a proponent of intelligent design theory, has taken a new position as an associate professor in the physics department at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. Grove City College is a completely independent, Christian, liberal arts college that is ranked among some of the best colleges and universities in the nation.


Why is this ironic? Take a look at the Wikipedia entry for Grove City College:

Since 1963, the American Association of University Professors, an organization that represents the interests of college professors, has placed Grove City under censure for violations of tenure and academic freedom. In fact, Grove City has the distinction of having been on the AAUP’s list of censured administrations longer than any other college that is currently censured. In its report, the AAUP Investigative Committee at Grove City concluded that “the absence of due process [in the dismissal of professors at Grove City] raises…doubts regarding the academic security of any persons who may hold appointment at Grove City College under existing administrative practice. These doubts are of an order of magnitude which obliges us to report them to the academic profession at large.”

You can read the AAUP report on Grove City College here. As a private school, Grove City College doesn’t have to meet the same legal standards that public schools do. And truth be told, Grove City is actually pretty good as Christian schools go, with some excellent faculty on staff. But it’s still ironic that an alleged martyr to the gods of academic freedom would choose a school that doesn’t respect academic freedom.

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Comments

  1. #1 Jon Jon
    July 14, 2008

    RE: BUT IT IS. The people who make it so are the ID advocates hemselves. Make your point to them.

    I make my point to everyone. There is NOTHING philosophically stopping any good scientists from investigating even if he believes that there is an intelligence behind life on earth.

    RE: Here’s an idea…how about acually using this alleged scientific theory to actually find somthing out about nature.

    Well, Let’s turn the tables and ask, how could one falsify the claim that, say, the bacterial flagellum was produced by Darwinian processes? If a scientist went into the laboratory and grew a flagellum-less bacterial species under selective pressure for many generations and nothing much happened, would Darwinists be convinced that natural selection is incapable of producing a flagellum? I doubt it. It could always be claimed that the selective pressure wasn’t the right one, or that we started with the wrong bacterial species, and so on. Even if the experiment were repeated many times under different conditions and always gave a negative result, I suspect many Darwinists would not conclude that the claim of its Darwinian evolution was falsified. If a person accepts Darwinian paths which are not only unseen, but which we may be forever unable to envisage, then it is effectively impossible to make him think he is wrong.

    RE: Sorry, you can repeat this all you want. ID cannot separate itself from its cdesign proponentsists roots.

    OK, I’ll repeat it with gusto, ID is not the same as creationism.

    RE: Just God, or a Designer with the same skill set.

    Not really. The way I read their literature, The scientific theory of intelligent design cannot name the identity of the designer, but only detects the past occurrence of intelligent design in the natural world. Intelligent design theory cannot name the designer because it works off the assumption that all designers in general create a certain type of information when they act. While we can detect that type of information in the natural world to infer intelligent design, finding that type of information does not give us any more information about the designer other than that the designer intelligently designed the object in question.

    Intelligent design theory can only find the object containing high levels of Complex Specified Information and works backwards. While it can detect that the object was designed, it cannot discriminate what kind of designer designed the object, nor determine any specific properties about the designer, other than that it was an intelligent agent. All intelligent design theory can infer is that the object was designed. Intelligent design, as a scientific theory cannot identify the identity of the designer.

    Is it God ? Who knows ? It could be, it could be someone else.

    RE: Except this challenge is bereft of any scientific support.

    And the alternative has ?

    RE: Who says I want to impress you?

    You don’t have to. But I still am not impressed anyway.

    RE: OK…what’s your next experiment?

    Same experiment any good old scientist would make to study bacteria.

    Wheter you’re a Darwinist or ID proponent, nothing in the philosophy stops you from studying and investigating.

    RE: He’s an idiot. It’s totally irrelevant what his degree is in.

    And with that, the argument takes on another tone. No wonder Darwinists aren’t very good at convincing the general public. What is shown here is when push comes to shove, insult becomes the last refuge.

    RE: I think you need to retake a few logic classes. Believing in God does not mean you have to accept ID as a scientific endeavour.

    Then why believe in God when He is uncessary ? YOU ought to take a few lessons on logic.

    RE: Looks like you’ve already made your decisions, so why the agnostic act? Do you think it makes you appear more credible?

    I don’t know what data you’re looking at, but the data I’m looking at shows a definite warming over say the last 30 years.

    Nope, I haven’t made any decision at all. That is why I said let’s carefully study the data.

    We are now getting reports about Global Cooling.

    See here :

    http://www.newstatesman.com/print/200712190004

    and here :

    http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html

    and here :

    http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=287279412587175

    NASA has confirmed that a developing natural climate pattern will likely result in much colder temperatures. Of course, the climate alarmists’ favorite dubious data source was also quick to point out that such natural phenomena should not confuse the issue of manmade greenhouse gas induced global warming.

    According to NASA’s Earth Observatory, where you’ll also find satellite images and detailed explanations of the event:

    SEE HERE :
    http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=18012

    “A cool-water anomaly known as La Niña occupied the tropical Pacific Ocean throughout 2007 and early 2008. In April 2008, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that while the La Niña was weakening, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation-a larger-scale, slower-cycling ocean pattern-had shifted to its cool phase.”

    As usual ( as in ID vs Darwinism ), there are arguments made by both sides. I prefer to keep an open mind and not shit out one side against the other.