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Sunday, April 27, 2008

The miracle of the disappearing prof

Nancy Bryson taped a recent podcast with Discovery Institute about how she got Expelled from Mississippi Women's U because she told students evidence against Darwin's theory of evolution. I had covered her story back in 2005, as part of a group of similar stories. Here's the excerpt on her situation:
Mississippi University for Women: 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."

Well, Dr. Bryson, St. Charles Darwin's fanatics are really into the "Miracle of the Disappearing Prof" these days. And I can tell you this much for sure - the prof really does disappear - though many such profs do turn up later at other U's or in the Expelled movie, and increasingly in the public eye.

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Thursday, October 06, 2005

Academic freedom watch: Here's the real, ugly story behind the claim that "intelligent design isn’t science."

Baylor University: "Twenty-nine members of the J.M. Dawson family have called on Baylor University to remove the associate director of the institute that bears Dawson's name. Beckwith topped the list of candidates for the Dawson Institute during a national search, Jeffrey said. Among Beckwith's credentials, Jeffrey cited his academic accomplishments, including a doctorate from Fordham University and a master's degree in juridical studies from Washington University, as well as publication of articles in numerous scholarly periodicals, including the Dawson Institute's own Journal of Church and State. He has been a research fellow in the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and he is a fellow in the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. He has held full-time faculty appointments at Trinity International University, Whittier College and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas." Beckwith's sin was that he is associated with the intelligent design hypothesis.

George Mason University Carolyn Crocker of George Mason University was barred from teaching both Darwinian evolution and intelligent design. What blows me away is the belief that students will not soon realize that this is all happening because the Darwinists have not made a good case, and are therefore enforcing their philosophy of origins by authority alone.

Iowa State University: Dr. Gonzalez, a senior fellow of Discovery Institute, is internationally known among astronomers and cosmologists as an expert on the astrophysical requirements for habitability and on habitable zones. He is a co-founder of the concept of Galactic Habitable Zones (GHZ). He and his colleagues captured the cover of Scientific American for their foundational and defining work on the very idea of GHZs. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed science papers, the latest being “Habitable Zones in the Universe” forthcoming in the journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres.

He is also a leading scientist who has put forward a testable argument for intelligent design--drawing on research from cosmology, astronomy, chemistry, and physics--and it is this that has spurred attempts to stifle scientific inquiry and academic freedom.

The Des Moines Register reports that faculty members have "accused Gonzalez of having a hidden religious agenda" and "fingering him as an academic fraud." Gonzalez has commented that the incident has made his work environment less than collegial.

"A small group of narrow-minded and intolerant faculty members have started a petition to rule out intelligent design as inherently unscientific; and are seeking to essentially ban it from being researched, taught, even discussed, at ISU," said Chapman. "In so doing they have targeted the only person on the campus who publicly is known to defend intelligent design in his work."

(Note: I will be blogging on Gonzalez in more detail later. I think that the Darwinists have really blown it this time. To get the picture, consider the Patterson campaign at Iowa State. What's this guy wasting his time in the United States for? The Glorious People's Republic of Dungeon beckons.)

Mississippi University for Women: 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."

Ohio State University: "Discovery Institute has filed a public records request with the Ohio State University (OSU) seeking all documents related to Darwinist attacks on OSU doctoral candidate Bryan Leonard. The request was submitted under the Ohio Public Records Act.

"In June, Leonard's dissertation defense in the area of science education was suddenly postponed after three Darwinist professors at OSU attacked Leonard's dissertation research because it analyzed how teaching students evidence for and against macroevolution impacted student beliefs. According to a news report in The Columbus Dispatch, the professors admitted at the time that they had not read Leonard's dissertation.

"We are concerned that Leonard is being targeted for unfair and possibly illegal treatment because of his viewpoint about evolution, in violation of his First Amendment rights," said Dr. John West, Associate Director of the Center for Science and Culture at Discovery Institute.

"We are further concerned that university officials may have been improperly influenced in their actions by outside Darwinist pressure groups who are trying to destroy Leonard's career because of his support for teaching scientific criticisms of Darwin's theory."

San Francisco State University: "That a man of Mr. Kenyon's stature should now be forced to lobby for the right to teach introductory biology, whatever his current view of origins, is absurdly comic. Mr. Kenyon knows perhaps as much as anyone in the world about a problem that has stymied an entire generation of research scientists. Yet he now finds that he may not report the negative results of research or give students his candid assessment of it."

University of Idaho "The University of Idaho's statement does not simply ban discussions of evolution that are unrelated to the subjects of courses being taught,” explained DeWolf. “Nor does it merely forbid religious-based views of evolution from being taught in science classes. The statement offers a blanket prohibition on any 'views that differ from evolution,' no matter how scientific, and no matter how related to the courses under study."

All these situations have one common factor: Put simply, accumulating or disseminating evidence against Darwinism, the creation story of materialism - or against materialism itself - is an offense. By definition, no amount or type of information can be evidence. So these people have no business being in possession of it.

Years ago, I predicted that the intelligent design controversy was going to explode, principally because the intolerance of any criticism whatever of Darwinism would come ot a head, drawing more and more people in, and eventually drawing the government in.

All of these people need an organization like The Fire (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), an academic freedom movement.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Still can't sleep?: A few brief notes to make wakefulness fun

Clearing out the inbox here,

- Herre's an interview with physicist Freeman Dyson, where Dyson says a number of bad things:
Yes, the western academic world is very much like Weimar Germany, finding itself in a situation of losing power and influence. Fortunately, the countries that matter now are China and India, and the Chinese and Indian experts do not share the mood of doom and gloom. It is amusing to see China and India take on today the role that America took in the nineteen-thirties, still believing in technology as the key to a better life for everyone.

Freeman is so bad that he actually doesn't hate or fear the intelligent design guys.

- I haven't said much about the big uproar, pro and con around an ID conference to be held at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, this weekend. This item written by a limited section of the professorate demanding that Darwin be affirmed on faith and this one by some ID guys wanting a discussion of ideas give you a general picture. I just hope no one arrives there to find the conference arbitrarily cancelled. Most universities nowadays must protect themselves strenuously from ideas, information, and evidence that challenge materialism, and they can't be too careful because there is so much of that out there. Religious universities must be more careful than most. I expect we will be hearing from many a dog-collar, reassuring us that "religion" is entirely compatible with a universe that shows no evidence of design. And incompatible with a universe that does show evidence of design. But least compatible with the idea of looking for evidence.

- A while back, I mentioned lecturer Nancy Bryson's troubles after she introduced students to biology-based criticisms of Darwinism, and here is a podcast of her account. I don't think she quite grasped that it doesn't matter if the critics have good evidence or not. Unguided Darwinian evolution is now held as an article of faith, and is at present among the most intransigent religions in the world.

- Here's an interesting item on the rise of eugenics in the United States. As I have said lots of times, the Darwinian component of eugenics was fundamentally incoherent because if you really believe that natural selection can create all the forms of life, why couldn't it take care of minor present problems like the alleged excess of Irish in Darwin's day?

- When Antony Flew converted from atheism to deism in 2004 because of the apparent design of the universe, it is interesting how hard some atheists worked to undermine the significance of that fact. Just as interesting is the way in which some alleged Christians in science need to undermine any suggestion that design is real. Go here, here, and here, for example. Why do I care? Well, I don't really, but institutionally supported treachery fascinates me. It explains so much. It would make a good novel really ... I mean, the general idea.

Finally, apologies to those whose comments were delayed in moderation - I was out of town. As you will see, I have just posted a whack of stuff below. Here are links so you do not have to scroll down so far:
Origin of life: Tangled skein continues to tangle

Intelligent design and popular culture: Psychiatrist tries analyzing ID folk en masse

Nancy Pearcey, author of Total Truth, offers some insight into why Darwin's theory was controversial and how long it took most evangelicals to actually "get it":
The tragedy is not just that evangelicals failed to meet the challenge: For the most part they did not even recognize it. As good Baconians, evangelicals denied the role of philosophical assumptions in science - and thus they were powerless to critique and counter the new assumptions when they appeared on the intellectual horizon. A great many of them simply took the facts that Darwin presented and inserted them into the older philosophy of nature as an open system - not realizing, apparently, that the older philosophy was precisely what was under attack.


Great news! ID theorist Mike Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution, following up on Darwin's Black Box, has already attracted a profoundly negative review - and it is not even published yet.

Re the recent accusations that the ID guys are in denial: Here's a link to an interesting column on the origin of "denial" as an alleged problem in the wilds of therapy talk. You'd think sci guys would want to steer clear of that goop, but hey.
If you want to understand why the intelligent design controversy cannot go away, read By Design or by Chance?.

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