Science Talk

Jason Spaceman · Guest

From the article:
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Intelligent Design at Iowa State

By Chuck Colson
Christian Post Guest Columnist
Sat, May. 26 2007 11:46 AM ET

Proponents of intelligent design never know when they might be led
away to the ideological chopping block. Take, for example, biologist
Carolyn Crocker, who was banned from teaching evolution at George
Mason University after mentioning intelligent design. Or evolutionary
biologist Richard Sternberg, who was demoted by the Smithsonian
Institute after he approved an article that supported intelligent
design. Now add Guillermo Gonzalez to that list.

Last month, Gonzalez, assistant professor of astronomy and physics at
Iowa State University, was denied tenure. His supposed crime?
Believing something other than Darwinism.

Why else would he be denied? It certainly can’t be his lack of
academic accomplishments. Iowa State requires its faculty to publish
fifteen peer-reviewed articles in order to qualify for tenure.
Gonzalez has submitted sixty-eight. On top of that, Gonzalez’s
ground-breaking research in astronomy has led to the discovery of two
new planets.

And on his own time, Gonzalez produced The Privileged Planet, a
groundbreaking book and documentary film on intelligent design, in
which he explains that the earth is uniquely situated to sustain
complex life. Mathematically speaking, the probability of a planet
like ours with all of the necessary conditions to sustain complex
life, Gonzalez says, is 10 to the negative fifteenth power, or one
thousandth of a trillionth.

Random chance cannot explain the alignment of all of these conditions,
such as the optimal distance from the right kind of star, plate
tectonics, the size of a moon that can stabilize itself on its axis,
the shielding presence of larger planets nearby, the right amount of
oxygen and water . . . just to name a few.

The only thing that can explain this is intelligent design. It’s a
bold assertion, and a risky one.

After his film was released in 2005, three of Gonzalez’s colleagues,
including the faculty advisor for the campus Atheist and Agnostic
Society, began campaigning against Gonzalez. Since then, more than 400
faculty members at Iowa State, the University of Iowa, and the
University of Northern Iowa have signed a petition condemning the
presentation of intelligent design as science. Although Gonzalez’s
name is not mentioned in the petition, he is clearly the target of
this rank prejudice.
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Read it at
http://www.christianpost.com/article/20070526/27637_A_Career-Killing_Theory.htm

J. Spaceman

John Wilkins · Guest

Tom McDonald <kiltmac@gspammail.com> wrote:

Desertphile · Guest

On Tue, 29 May 2007 11:53:22 +1000, j.wilkins1@uq.edu.au (John
Wilkins) wrote:

John Wilkins · Guest

Desertphile <desertphile@nospam.org> wrote: