Baylor Prez Spins Expelled Worries: God of Bible is God of genome ... but not of Bob Marks's Evolutionary Informatics Lab

While Imagining no heaven, no hell, no Yoko Ono, and no delay till the Expelled DVD comes out, I note where John Lilley, Baylor’s president, has seen fit to defend his institution in the light of the unflattering portrait provided in Expelled.

Read more here.

Baylor evo info lab shutdown: New Lilley correspondence publicized, plus film crew on scene

From Uncommon Descent

Peter Irons, it appears, has been corresponding about me with President Lilley of Baylor. In the last month Irons has forwarded to me a dozen or so emails in which he lays out for someone just what an execrable character I am; and then, usually without the other party’s knowledge or permission (at least from what I can tell), he forwards to me their response confirming that I am indeed an execrable character. I suppose if I were built differently I would be stung by these emails, but my usual reaction is amusement.

Having read some of the correspondence, I was amused too. How long do these people think they can keep the public from finding out that Darwinism is a bankrupt ideology? The one thing the Darwinists can do, in revenge, is keep an institution like Baylor from the honor and satisfaction of actually sinking it.

Read Lilley's reply to Irons here. Irons, apparently, has a long history as an activist.

However, Ben Stein's film crew, for the Expelled movie, headed by Mark Mathis, was on scene at Baylor, listening to bafflegab from educrats:

"With both of them it was really limited because they have a certain line they are holding, which the issues are all about procedures and not about the content," Mathis said, "and all the information we have seen says that that's not true."

Put it this way, Mark: It's the same old "overwhelming evidence" as supports the Darwinism, rammed down students' throats.

The Great Escape A tribute to Bob Marks

What does Bob Marks want? He wants the right to run computer simulations at Baylor that might (possibly) reduce confidence in Darwinian evolution.

That is, the simulations might show that Darwinian evolution is not nearly as probable as professional Darwinists claim.

Actually, the Wistar meetings showed that way back in the 1960s, but Darwinism is just too good a creation story for materialism to pass up. So otherwise respectable scientists have been lying for Darwin ever since, and snuffing out the careers of anyone who breaks rank.

Contrary to popular belief, you need NOT be a creationist or an ID guy. All you have to do is stop believing in magic - Darwinian magic - and ask for evidence.

That's a Big Sin because the evidence does not support Darwinism.

Well, that explains the role of the Darwinist, who can hardly help suppressing evidence, but what about Baylor, the alleged Christian university? Elsewhere, I have pointed out that institutions like Baylor essentially protect Christians from a world that favours materialism. The justification for their existence would be revolutionized if word got out that materialism is largely disconfirmed over a broad area. As I said there,

In a trice, the harsh reality from which the institution protects its dumb sheeplike students is - a harsh UNreality. The students are not meat puppets who foolishly imagine that they have immortal souls and must therefore be humoured by their silly little campus groups. They are people who actually do have immortal souls who are being trained by the institution to accept a culture that lies to them that they are meat puppets. And the institution essentially brokers the lies in the interests of the materialist culture - and to its own prestige.
Now do you see the threat posed by an intellectually rigorous inquiry into intelligent design?

Last night, my mom and I were watching a video of one of my favourite movies - The Great Escape. Suddenly, some of the dialogue seemed startlingly relevant to the struggle of scientists like Marks.

Listen, as the German Colonel Von Luger explains to the Allied prisoners of war:

We have in effect put all our rotten eggs in one basket, and we intend to watch this basket carefully. Very wise. You will not be denied the usual facilities. Sports, a library, a recreation hall, and for gardening we will give you tools. We trust you to use them for gardening. Devote your energies to these things. Give up your hopeless attempts to escape. And, with intelligent cooperation, we may all sit out the war as comfortably as possible.

What institutions like Baylor want is precisely that - faculty who will just "sit out" the war between rampant materialist atheism and all non-materialist traditions, in the comfort of a Christian environment.

But Group Captain Ramsey responds,

Colonel Von Luger, it is the sworn duty of all officers to try to escape. If they cannot escape, then it is their sworn duty to cause the enemy to use an inordinate number of troops to guard them, and their sworn duty to harass the enemy to the best of their ability.

Ramsey's reply is the proper duty of the Christian (or other non-materialist) academic in these times.

It is also the only safe one. There is no surprise, really, in the fact that today's academic environment is quickly losing touch with the goal of intellectual inquiry. As Mario Beauregard and I show clearly in The Spiritual Brain, materialists do not believe in the reality of the mind. In that case, it is more humane as well as easier to just program the young meat puppets to be whatever is needed, and sideline any mis-programmed puppets who interfere.

Only a non-materialist tradition - in which intellect functions as a cause of events - can responsibly support intellectual freedom.

A Christian you say? Well then, do not be a good prisoner of your Christian campus. Be a Bob Marks. BE a problem!

Intelligent design and popular culture: Beckwith, Dembski maul Baylor Bears' football chances?

Just to show how crazy it was all getting, by the time Beckwith was finally granted tenure, sportswriter J. V. Holland at cougfan.com put in a slightly confused-sounding piece, "Baylor aiming for Intelligent design on field", implying that the ID controversy (in which Beckwith played a minor role) was costing Baylor its status in American college football. Noting that the Baylor Bears are playing the Washington State Cougars and that the Discovery Institute (ID central) is located in Washington States, he writes,

Once upon a time, the name Baylor conjured images of a giant slayer in the Southwest Conference. In the late 70s and early 80s, Bears All-American Mike Singletary, tenacious on the field and a scholar off it, was the exemplar of all that was good about college football.

Nowadays you mention Baylor and you're more likely to get a blank stare or a reference to Charles Darwin rolling over in his grave.

Indeed, on the gridiron, the Bears of the last decade could have used a heavy infusion of intelligent design. They’ve gone 10 straight seasons without a winning record. Last year’s 5-6 showing marked the first time in eight campaigns they won more than three games.

An infusion of intelligent design indeed. Some of us would think that Baylor had better not leave the development of its football team to evolution. But it shows how much the notion of ID has become embedded in popular culture that Dembski, Beckwith and such are supposed to be somehow linked to the Bears' recent woes. How many rpm's did you say Darwin was doing down there?

Baylor's Francis Beckwith: Granted tenure!

In a development that is certain to reduce the cost of being pro-life, sympathetic to ID, or skeptical of the materialist establishment, law prof Francis Beckwith has been granted tenure after a long, heated struggle with political correctness and clan politics. He learned the good news on Friday afternoon.

Actually, Beckwith's main offence was TWS - teaching while smart. As I have pointed out elsewhere, there is nothing wrong with having non-materialist opinions, as long as you are a pleasant Jesus-hollering dum dum, who cannot challenge materialists on their own turf with contrary evidence and convincing arguments. It's when they have to take you seriously that you can expect trouble.

If you like this blog, check out my book on the intelligent design controversy, By Design or by Chance?. You can read excerpts as well.

Are you looking for one of the following stories?

A summary of tech guru George Gilder's arguments for ID and against Darwinism

A critical look at why March of the Penguins was thought to be an ID film.

A summary of recent opinion columns on the ID controversy

A summary of recent polls of US public opinion on the ID controversy

A summary of the Catholic Church's entry into the controversy, essentially on the side of ID.

O'Leary's intro to non-Darwinian agnostic philosopher David Stove’s critique of Darwinism.

An ID Timeline: The ID folk seem always to win when they lose.

Why origin of life is such a difficult problem.

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