It's Not Easy Being a Materialist

Egnor is still going strong against PZ Myers illogical claim that the mind is solely a product of the evolutionary process.

Atheism intrigues me to no end. It is the single most illogical conclusion about life that one can ever succumb to, IMHO.

Busy Summer

Posts will be very sparse for the next couple of weeks. Hopefully things will slow down around here soon.

Guillermo Article

It's been a busy week for me, but I hope to get back to bloggin' again next week.

Meanwhile, here's an excellent article that DaveScot linked to in one of my comment sections.

The article mentions the part Avalos played in GG's hanging...

For those unaware, Hector Avalos is an embittered apostate ‘Christian’ who now describes himself as ‘a secular humanist’, and believes that ‘the Bible has no intrinsic value or merit’.8 He achieved some infamy by being quoted in the journal Nature as advocating cutting out parts of the Bible which deal with ‘theologically inspired violence’.9 In answer to Bill Muehlenberg’s question as to just what should be cut, Avalos said,

‘In the first phase what I hope will be deleted is any endorsement of violence that cannot be proven by scientific means to be coming from God. In the final phase, we hope to persuade humanity that the entire Bible should be removed as an authority in the modern world.
‘Yes, that should include removing the repugnant idea that a god sent his son to be slaughtered for the “salvation of man.” It is apalling that in the 21st century anyone still thinks that slaughtering one’s son should become a basis for “salvation.” It is an idea that has a long pre-Christian history, anyway, and it is rooted in notions of blood/sacrificial magic that our world should leave behind.’10

According to John West of Discovery Institute, ‘Avalos has led the charge against Gonzalez and intelligent design on ISU’s campus, helping to draft a 2005 petition denouncing intelligent design that ultimately was signed by more than 120 ISU faculty.’11 Concerning this Avalos says, ‘We were starting to see Iowa State mentioned as a place where intelligent-design research was happening. We wanted to make sure that people knew the university does not support intelligent design.’2

...and, Behe's assessment of the situation:

Michael Behe, biochemist, prominent advocate of intelligent design at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and author of the ‘irreducible complexity’ book Darwin’s Black Box, says, ‘Academia seems to be in a rage about anything that points to any purpose. They are penalizing an associate professor who’s doing his job because he has views they disagree with.’2

The Edge of Evolution

I finally got around to ordering Behe's new book, The Edge of Evolution. Can't wait to dig into it.

The part Avalos played in GG's denial of tenure

Denyse O’Leary highlights an interesting commentary written by Ted Davis, a "scholar of religion and science in modern America", who is evidently not a supporter of ID.

Here it is in it’s entirety:

My views on the mugging of Guillermo Gonzalez are already well known. Now that the president of ISU has made his final ruling (though I understand that a further appeal to the Board of Regents is still possible), and now that Guillermo has also made a public statement that confirms the concerns I have had throughout this process, I am making public a portion of the letter I sent to the ISU president a couple of weeks ago. It should be seen as a commentary on his situation, from my point of view as a scholar of religion and science in modern America. I continue to think that an inappropriate form of viewpoint discrimination was a decisive factor in the decision not to grant him tenure. We may never know for sure if this is correct, just as we may never know many other things with certainty, but the evidence IMO strongly suggests that Avalos' completely inappropriate activities had a lot to do with Guillermo being denied tenure.

Here are my comments on this aspect of the situation, unedited, from the letter I sent ISU president

Geoffroy:

Let me be as clear as possible: Dr. Avalos’ activities were unwarranted. Dr. Gonzalez is hardly the only scientist to write books for the general public, giving religious interpretations of science. Whatever one may think of his book, it is not an appropriate response for a faculty member to organize a petition against Dr. Gonzalez, simply for adding his own religious opinion to those of many others. For example, when the late Carl Sagan presented his popular television series, Cosmos, more than twenty-five years ago, he began the first program with what can only be called a religious credo: “The universe is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” This is a religious credo, pure and simple (and many of his other statements are consistent with it), despite its incorporation into a series of programs that was used for many years in public high school and college science classes. Yet none of his colleagues at Cornell petitioned to dissociate the university from Sagan’s openly religious interpretation of cosmology.

Nor has anyone at Oxford, Texas, Harvard, or Brown petitioned against the views of Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg, Edward Wilson, or Kenneth Miller, who have all given religious interpretations to aspects of modern science in popular books. Is there something about Dr. Gonzalez’ design interpretation that makes it any less acceptable than Dawkins’ atheism, Wilson’s materialist reductionism, or Miller’s Roman Catholic interpretation of evolution? It is not hard to understand why Dr. Avalos, who advises a campus atheist group, would find Dr. Gonzalez’ book less acceptable than those of Dawkins or Weinberg; but that type of viewpoint discrimination should not be acceptable to the larger academic community at Iowa State, and I urge you to underscore that conclusion by overturning this decision.

From where I sit, the impact of Dr. Avalos’ deeds is not hard to see: he poisoned the environment for Dr. Gonzalez, by undermining his academic reputation and isolating him at Iowa State*and all based on a book that is actually one of the best popular books about science in recent years. I am an expert on the history of religion and science in the United States (my current project on modern America has received significant support from the National Science Foundation), and in my opinion Dr. Gonzalez’ treatment of historical topics in The Privileged Planet is far superior to the treatment of comparable topics in Sagan’s famous series. His debunking of the so-called “Copernican principle,” associated with the late Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley, is an excellent corrective to the false view of Shapley, Sagan, and many other scientists that Copernicus somehow “demoted” humanity by moving us out of the center of the universe. As Dennis Danielson has shown decisively (in an article in American Journal of Physics and in The Book of the Cosmos), Copernicus and his followers believed no such thing, and Gonzalez’ clear explanation of the details helps the record straight for many in the general public. A leading historian of astronomy, Owen Gingerich of Harvard (a former student of Shapley), justly praises Dr. Gonzalez for this in his recent book, God’s Universe (Harvard University Press, 2006), itself yet one more example of a scientist offering a religious interpretation of his work to the general public. I have to wonder*if Professor Gingerich were also a junior faculty member at Iowa State, would Dr. Avalos now be organizing another petition drive against this particular book, for its defense of a designed universe?

Ted

Guillermo Gonzalez's Tenure Appeal Denied

I’m too shocked by this decision to even blog about it. Tom Gilson addresses the decision over at Thinking Christian. You can read more about it there.

Weigh-in week 20, June 4

We've completed week 19, and God only knows what our total weight loss is at this point. Starving & I are at a stand still and seem to lose a pound one week and gain it back the next.

Dieters, please use the comment section to post how much you lost (or gained) this week, and your ~total~ weight loss since day 1 of dieting. When everyone has done so, I’ll post the results.

Evolutionary Informatics Lab at Baylor

Baylor University has a new "Evolutionary Informatics" Lab at Baylor University, and William Dembski has collaborated on three papers with Prof. Marks, who heads the lab.

Golly...this sounds like an ID lab!!! Far out.

Read more about it at Uncommon Descent.

More thoughts on the Deace Piece

Okay, I’m getting all kinds of comments due to my last post in regard to the article in which Steve Deace has quite the little rant about Hector Avalos, the religion professor at ISU who has headed up some pointed petitions. I started to respond to yet another comment and got entirely carried away. I’m making it into a separate post because it’s getting to long for the comment section [besides that, I’ve been too busy to post much this week so this rambling post will have to do.]

The comment was as follows:

“my point was that you seem to dismiss the ideas of people who don't agree with you for reasons very similar to "they're angry materialists" or "scientists are only faith-based materialists" and other such unsupported nonsense.”

I believe that, *overall*, scientists are just scientists, atheists are just atheists, and theists are just theists. Period. Some are “angry”, some aren’t. But, individually, scientists have various worldviews that may on occasion affect their work, and there are certain fields of science that would obviously be more affected by a person’s worldview than others.

I don’t think most scientists give these religious or philosophical issues much thought in their day to day work, but there are those who do (both theists and atheists) due to the nature of their work. There is a point where science and theology merge, and there is absolutely no way to get around that issue, IMHO. There is also no way we are ever going to be able to eliminate either materialism or the question as to whether there is a supernatural component to our existence. So, all this anger directed toward each other is, in a sense, a waste of time and leads to nothing more than further hatred between groups of people. Beating each other up every day is getting us no where. FAST.

Having said that, I do believe that those heavily involved in this debate are fighting for the scientific theories that they feel are best supported by the evidence. I don’t think anyone is lying, but I do think that those of us fighting the hardest can’t get around the fact that our worldviews have an impact on how our minds perceive the information that we digest in regard to science and theology. Fr’instance, those who oppose my views regarding the issues in this debate believe that I am shunning reality. They feel that I am insincere in my quest for truth since I have stated many times that I feel Creationists and IDists have extremely compelling arguments for the scientific theories they put forth. They tell me “Creationism” is not science and that to accept it as such requires a blindness to science that is both willful and powerful.

Funny thing is that their belief that I am blinded may be spot on. For the absolute life of me, I cannot in my wildest imagination come to the realization that some of the theories these ardent evolutionists state as being a “fact” are indeed “factual”. I’ve considered the ToE from every freaking angle, and it is seriously lacking in many respects. And, when they tell me that “Creationism” is unscientific and proceed to explain why they feel that way, I truly believe they are the ones who are willfully blind. The work put out by Creationists and IDists (completely separate ideas) is science, and that is as plain as day. You can disagree with the interpretation of the evidence, but you can’t claim it isn’t science. Granted, there are some Creationists who state that if something doesn’t coincide with a particular interpretation of the Bible, we must dismiss it regardless of how compelling it may be. That doesn’t sound very scientific to me, but not all Creationists come at their work in this manner, and IDists certainly don’t.

Sometimes when I hear some of the statements that are thrown at me about willful ignorance, etc., it seems to me that some of those people have made science into their form of theology. They make it sound as if science is their only path to truth, and anything else is insignificant. There is almost a reverence for science in their tone, and they simply and quickly dismiss theology with a wave of their hand.

Truth be told, I consider their beliefs in the exact same way the perceive mine. They seem completely and utterly blind to anything other than their philosophical beliefs which they feel correspond with their scientific beliefs.

So, IMO, this is where that all popular term “tolerance” comes in, and let’s be honest...there really are only three options in the running that anyone takes seriously in regard to our origins. Those are philosophical naturalism, creation, and ID. We need to be “tolerant” of those who hold each view, and realize that they aren’t “evil” or “lying for Jesus”, but that due to their particular worldview, they seem to be “blinded” by any other interpretation. It appears we are all in the same boat, IMO. Materialists conclude that our blindness is due to ignorance or religious indoctrination, theists conclude that the materialists are blind to the truth due to their ignorance or rejection of theological truth and understanding. Then we have a whole array of those who fall somewhere in the middle and are so wishy washy that it’s hard telling what they believe, and I’m not sure they know themselves.

“Then, you simultaneously put for as an example of "good points to ponder" a rant from someone who clearly makes the same sort of argument. You can't have it both ways; are we supposed to take this guy seriously? If we are, why can the whole of science be dismissed with the same sort of bogus "scientists are immoral materialist" argument?”

Here’s the deal. Deace let lose with a heck of a rant, and while I don’t agree with everything he said...he makes some good points. Personally, I would have chosen to eliminate the overall tone of his rant. He might want to consider his last name and replace that D with a P.

BUT, he makes some points that I’ve been thinking about recently, and his presentation in no different than that of numerous evolution blogs I read every day...in fact, it was quite tame compared to some. Sometimes, I think a mirror placed in a person’s face might help them realize how they are acting, how it feels, and the affect it has on their readers. Although, I don’t think all evolutionists and atheists are how Deace describes them, I do feel that are those who fit Deace’s description to a tee. They are a small, but very loud crowd that gets a lot of attention because of their megaphone’s and their attitudes. They are an intolerant group, and nothing good will come of their constant nasty confrontations with those who disagree with their opinions. Both sides have individuals like this, and I have no patience for them. They are accomplishing nothing other than creating intense hatred for their fellow man. There are ways to be firm and state your point without tearing people apart as individuals.

You asked, “Why can’t the whole of science be dismissed with the same sort of bogus “scientists are immoral materialists” argument?” Personally, I think that is an absurd question. Of course, no one would ever conceive of dismissing “the whole of science” because there are scientists who adhere to materialism. But, on the other hand, when we witness supporters of ID being blackballed in the scientific community because of their connection with ID, it doesn’t sit well. What the heck are we suppose to think? It would seem that anything that doesn’t fit within the materialistic paradigm is halted by the Darwin police. They have a monopoly on what can and cannot be considered in regard to the origin of life and how that may affect various fields of science.

In conclusion, I guess there will always be those who consider me to be willfully ignorant until I abide by their particular version of truth.

HOLY SMOKERS!!

Someone at Iowa State is seriousy fired up! It seems that Hector Avalos, the religion professor at Iowa State who started a petition against Guillermo Gonzalez due to his connection with ID, has started another petition against the football coach at Iowa State University. The writer of the article lets 'ol Hector have it with both barrels. Just WOW!!

See, this is the type of thing that really worries me. I understand the importance of church and state issues, but when we have a guy like Avalos storming the halls making sure that everyone tows the line and adheres to his particular view of what religion should be, there is going to be a backlash. There has to be a happy middle ground here folks. The hatred is growing....and I hate that.

Okay, I have a plan...

I'm gonna charter a bus and make my way to the new Creation Museum.

I was going to fire up the hippy van to make the trip, but then decided I need something much bigger to make room for a whole bunch of evilutionists!

We need something very unique to traipse across the nation in, and I think I've found the perfect vehicle that would be enticing to the inner souls of my atheist/evolutionist friends. Check it out!




I’ll load the back of that sucker with a variety of yummy alcoholic beverages and keep the gang lit the entire time so they stay happy and don’t cry mutiny or have a change of heart about the tour and attempt to jump ship.

Richard Hughes and Kristine are definitely on the A list of atheist evilutionists to invite along mainly for entertainment.

Kristine’s an accomplished belly dancer and a witch to boot! She even recently hung out with Richard Dawkin’s on her trip the Galapagos Islands...check it out!



Richard Hughes is a DaveScot impersonator and evidently a warlock in his spare time. I like his sense of humor so he gets to ride up top with me and keep me laughing rather than thinking about the insanity of driving across the nation with a bus full of evilutionists.

If KSU Dave goes along for the ride, I’ll have to keep him hooked up with some sedatives cuz he’s so darn mean. He’s one of those who feels that the only way to deal with “creationists” is to “ridicule, or perhaps pity" them. Nice guy, that one. If Jeremy is still around, he can certainly go...he’s cool.

Hmmm...who else? I guess we could make a special cage for PZ Myers and let him tag along, but I don’t want him milling around the bus on his own because he might get carried away with the pirate theme and unleash on me.

Oh, and Wesley Elsberry can come along for the ride and play his guitar...



Hopefully, he’ll play some soothing hymns about creation to keep us all calm...whoops, that may not be appropriate for this particular trip. Does the Flying Spaghetti Monster have a theme song?

Hey! Christopher Hitchens would certainly be an appropriate choice for the bus bartender....



And, I have the perfect captain/driver for the trip...DaveScot! Dave & PZ on the same trip together...it just doesn’t get better than that. Dave will also be the keeper of the key to PZ's cage. But, just in case Kristine decides to put a spell on Dave or lure him away from his duties with her feminine wiles, we better be sure he brings his dogs! That way, while Kristine is springing PZ free and Dave is under her spell, I'll call out the dogs to fetch back my key and chase PZ back to his cage!

Gosh, I better have a few other backup plans in case that occurs because if he escapes, I’m sure mutiny will occur and I’ll be walking the plank.

I know none of you will want to miss out on the ride, so sign up soon while there are still seats available!!!

[Note to PZ just in case you ever get a glimmer of this post: I'm totally joking around, and I actually love you to death so I wouldn't put you in a cage. Promise...so don't hurt me. Please.]

Museum Pictures

The more I read about the Creation Museum, the more curious I become. PZ et. al. have absolutely worked themselves into a frothing frenzy about the joint. I’ve seen quite a few pictures floating around now, and it actually looks and sounds like an interesting place to visit. Here are a few pictures I found while surfing around various blogs:

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The latest on the Creation Museum

Here's an interesting report:

First time visitors to Creation Museum say they're impressed with the attention to detail and God-honoring exhibits. The 60,000 square foot museum features animatronic displays, a replica of a portion of Noah's Ark and a planetarium, all designed to bring the Bible to life.

Ohio resident Nancy Mary said the museum exceeded her expectations. "I like the way they wove the quotes from the Bible through the exhibits. And the exhibits just illustrate what is stated so plainly in Scripture. That's what really stood out to me," she said.

Michigan residents Ray Ogden and his son Alex were also impressed. "Mainly I think what was impressive was the extreme focus on the Gospel message as the core meaning of the whole operation and not just meant to wow you with special effects, but to get across the message that the Bible is God's Word and there's a purpose for existence."

"It's probably the best place I've been to in my entire life," 10-year-old Alex Ogden said. "The animatronic dinosaurs looked really real."

Ministry officials expect more than 250 thousand visitors annually to the Creation Museum.

Road trip anyone??? Darwinists invited!!

Weigh-in week 19, May 28

We've completed week 18, with our total weight loss at 110 lbs..


Dieters, please use the comment section to post how much you lost (or gained) this week, and your ~total~ weight loss since day 1 of dieting. When everyone has done so, I’ll post the results.

Answers in Genesis Creation Museum

The Grand Opening of Ken Ham's Creation Museum is tomorrow. Gotta wonder how many evolutionists will be waiting out front with picket signs.

It would be quite interesting to see what they've put together, but I think it would REALLY be a blast to take a tour of it with about a half dozen die-hard evolutionists (atheist evolutionists would be even better).

Yes, I have a sick sense of humor, but it would be an absolute riot. Some of them have so much pent up hatred for anything that puts their philosophical position at risk that I'm afraid a few of them might actually go postal if they decide to take a little tour.

I can just imagine PZ Myers making his way through the museum. He'd probably run up to small children squealing at them and calling them "creationist kooks" or "IDiots" (two of his favorite labels).

I hope they have lots of security...

Another strike against dino to bird evolution

Are dino “feathers” a farce?

But a new study, published by a team led by South African academic Theagarten Lingham-Soliar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, sweeps away the proto-feathers claim.

The two-branched structures, called rachis with barbs, that were proclaimed as early feathers are quite simply the remains of a frill of collagen fibres that ran down the dinosaur's back from head to tail, they say.

The evidence comes from a recently discovered specimen of Sinoauropteryx, also found in the same Yixian Formation at Liaoning, that Lingham-Soliar put to the scrutiny of a high-powered microscope.

And then, of course, there is that dratted problem with all those missing links...

What is missing are the links between Archaeopteryx and other species that would show how it evolved. But fossil record is frustratingly small and incomplete and this is why debate has been so fierce.

But, we must not question the evolutionary “fact” that birds evolved from dinos...

Lingham-Soliar's team do not take issue with the [dino-to-bird] theory itself.

LOL, yeah, they better not or the Darwin police will come down on them with hell's fury.

Recent reports have also found that the early history of birds was much more diverse than previously thought.

Weigh-in week 18, May 21

We've completed week 17, with our total weight loss at 108 lbs..


Last week we didn't post our loss/gain because we were considering whether we want to stop posting our results for the summer, but there are still three of us who are trying to lose or maintain so we're going to keep working on it for a while.

Dieters, please use the comment section to post how much you lost (or gained) this week, and your ~total~ weight loss since day 1 of dieting. When everyone has done so, I’ll post the results.

UPDATE

Joe is going to join us in our quest to take off the pounds.

Davescot -2 this week, -44 total
Starving -0, -19
Ftk +2, -10
Joe -0, -6

Unbelievable

From here:

A distinguished science professor at a major American university has weighed in on Iowa State University's denial of tenure to pro-ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, expressing astonishment at the result. According to Dr. Robert J. Marks, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor University:

I went to the Web of Science citation index which is the authority on citations. Only journal papers, not conference papers, are indexed. There are lots of Prof. Gonzalez's papers listed. My jaw dropped when I saw one of his papers has 153 citations and 139 on another. I have sat on oodles of tenure committees at both a large private university and a state research university, chaired the university tenure committee, and have seen more tenure cases than the Pope has Cardinals. This is a LOT of citations for an assistant professor up for tenure. The number of citations varies with discipline and autocitations are included in the tally, but this is a LOT of citations for an Assistant Professor. A lot.

The Iowa State U. Astronomy department is here. Their big star is Lee Anne Willson, University Professor. A University Professor is a rank more prestigious than a full Professor. She is their star. Her top two papers are cited 99 and 86 times. And she has been at this for 33 years.

And then there's Steven D. Kawaler, a full Professor who is the Current Program Coordinator for astronomy. He has a nice citation record with tops of 243 and 178.

There may be reasons I don't understand for denying Prof. Gonzalez tenure, but scholarship is absolutely not one of them.[my emphasis]

Just Wow...there is only one reason why Gonzalez was denied tenure, and I think Wesley Elsberry, who was at one time employed by the Darwin police, pretty much sums that up right here:

"A tenure committee should take note of someone advocating a scam as if it were legitimate science."

Elsberry et. al. intend to preach that everyone who questions the evolutionary paradigm is religiously motivated and a threat to science as well as a threat to the nation due to what they insist is a nation wide conspiracy among "fundamentalists" (and ID supporters) to establish a "Christian theocracy".

They also intend to lead the public into thinking that scientists, like Gonzalez, who are interested in further examination of the controversial issues surrounding the ToE and ID, are liars and con men.

There is also another tactic which anti-ID professors are going to eventually start using in order to put a stop to ID. "Dr.GH" puts it quite succinctly right here:

"Faculty have a proper concern about the reputation of the school and the consequent effect this has on their students. I would be more likely to accept a student from schools without creationists teaching than schools where they do."

Academic freedom be damned, the Darwinists have made it clear that those who dare consider the quite logical inference that a designer may, in fact, be responsible for the "illusion" of design we find in nature will be persecuted for following the evidence wherever it may lead.

Interesting, really, that Darwinists have go to these extremes...stifling academic freedom because their theory can't take the heat is pretty telling.

The Exodus from Homosexuality

I was surfing around yesterday and fell upon some interesting blogs. One in particular, Randy Thomas, Everyday Thoughts Collected, stood out.

Randy is the Executive Vice President of Exodus International, which is an organization that addresses same sex struggles and evidently provides help for those who are looking to make an “exodus” from the lifestyle.

After following a few links, I came upon his testimony. It’s really worth the read.

Statement by Dr. Gonzalez

From a 2005 transcript:

My name is Guillermo Gonzalez. I’m an assistant professor of astronomy at Iowa State University. Also at Iowa State is an outspoken atheist and religion professor named Hector Avalos. Imagine if a Christian professor at the university began circulating a petition targeting Avalos, a petition stating that atheism is not a proper part of a religion program and that, moreover, any professor who offers scientific or philosophical evidence for atheism taints the university and, by implication, should be prevented from doing so?

Would any of you sign the petition? I would never sign it. It was Voltaire who said, “I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.” I, however, was targeted by such a petition, and it all occurred shortly before I am scheduled to come up for tenure.

Another ISU professor, John Patterson, also campaigned against me. In a letter to the Ames Tribune he pointed to a funder of Discovery Institute to argue that I was plotting to establish a theocracy. He even implied that I am linked to the Taliban.

When I was a child, my family and I fled Cuba with little more than the clothes on our backs. We came to the United States in search of freedom, so I find Patterson’s slander that I’m plotting with others to establish a totalitarian government deeply offensive.

What did I do to evoke these attacks on my career? Jay Richards and I wrote a book entitled The Privileged Planet, in which we build a case for design in the cosmos from scientific evidence, not by appeals to Scripture or some private mystical experience. Our argument is also testable. While the notion of a cosmic creator isn’t falsifiable, our particular design argument is, subject to the river of data about extrasolar planets, galaxies, and the larger universe now flowing in from scientific research. But I've never taught this design argument in the classroom, because it's too new for undergraduate astronomy students.

So I have done nothing in my role as a teacher to warrant the attacks on me. I ask only for the freedom to follow the scientific evidence where I think it leads, and to offer arguments for my conclusions in the public square.

I notice the "theocracy" card has been used against Gonzalez in the past. I don't know how many times I've been accused of supporting a Christian "theocracy" due to my support of ID. The fact is that a "theocracy" is the very last thing in the world that I would ever support. Christian or otherwise, it sounds absolutely dangerous. This is one accusation that has got to stop because it is completely off target.

This link provides information on how you can voice your support for Gonzalez and his application for tenure. You can also read more about his accomplishments.

It would be nice if the Darwin crowd would step forth and do the right thing by providing support for someone who is deserving of his tenure. Academic freedom should be something that is allowed for all, and denial of tenure will certainly be looked upon as a threat to those who support ID in the future. If this is what it takes to silence ID advocates, the science supporting Darwinism must not be strong enough to stand on it's own merit.

It is interesting that an atheist religion professor has been giving Gonzalez grief. Gosh, where have I heard that scenario before?