Literature

A discussion of ID-related Reading

Post details: Is Intelligent Design exempt from the protection of academic freedom?

05/24/07

by David Tyler 07:16:32 am, Categories: Literature - Articles, 406 words

Is Intelligent Design exempt from the protection of academic freedom?

"He's a young astronomer with dozens of articles in top journals; he has made an important discovery in the field of extrasolar planets; and he is a proponent of intelligent design, the idea that an intelligent force has shaped the Universe." His academic credentials are impressive; Guillermo Gonzalez has an international reputation. David Lambert, director of the MacDonald Observatory, has an assessment that should carry some weight: "I would have said he was a serious tenure candidate."
However, others think differently. "I would have voted to deny him tenure," says Robert Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park. "He has established that he does not understand the scientific process." Also, "in 2005, Gonzalez's rising profile led a group of 131 faculty members to sign a petition disavowing intelligent design."
Others, looking on, have real concerns about academic freedom. "There is a pattern happening to everybody who's pro intelligent design," says one pro-design biologist, who declined to be named because his own tenure process has just begun. "The same thing could happen to me," he says. "I don't want to get into trouble."
There are deep and significant differences here about the philosophy of science, and the hostile deniers are convinced that ID is incompatible with science. This is a battle that has to be fought, because this "academic hostility" is fundamentally wrong. These people conveniently forget that the pioneers of science were all advocates of ID. There are numerous philosophers of science who recognise the legitimacy of ID within science - the recent high profile case involving Professor Anthony Flew is witness to that. Those who claim that ID advocates do "not understand the scientific process" are nearly always advocates of the philosophy of naturalism: nature is all there is. They are using their version of the scientific process to ram atheistic philosophy into our minds. We must ensure that science does not become an ideological weapon, and this is why we need university leaders and other opinion formers to defend academic freedom and allow the issues to be explored openly and honestly.

Darwin sceptic says views cost tenure
Geoff Brumfiel
Nature 447, 364 (24 May 2007) | doi:10.1038/447364a

Abstract: Astronomer blames setback on his support of intelligent design.

See also:
Crowther, R. World's Premiere Scientific Journal Reports on Iowa State's Denial of Tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, Evolution News & Views. May 23 2007.
Excerpt: "I am not appealing the tenure decision on the grounds of religious discrimination" (Guillermo Gonzalez).

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Access Research Network
Discovery Institute
Evolution News Blog
Evolution has become a favorite topic of the news media recently, but for some reason, they never seem to get the story straight. The staff at Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture started this Blog to set the record straight and make sure you knew "the rest of the story".
Intelligent Design Network (IDNet)
Intelligent Design Undergraduate Research Center
Intelligent Reasoning
A blogger from New England offers his intelligent reasoning.
International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID)
Telic Thoughts
We are a group of individuals, coming from diverse backgrounds and not speaking for any organization, who have found common ground around teleological concepts, including intelligent design. We think these concepts have real potential to generate insights about our reality that are being drowned out by political advocacy from both sides. We hope this blog will provide a small voice that helps rectify this situation.
The Design Inference - The Writings of William A. Dembski
The Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA)
www.themonkeytrial.com
Website dedicated to comparing scenes from the "Inherit the Wind" movie with factual information from actual Scopes Trial. View 37 clips from the movie and decide for yourself if this movie is more fact or fiction.

Links - Of General Interest

A Brief View of Time and Those That Live There
Don Cicchetti blogs on: Culture, Music, Faith, Intelligent Design, Guitar, Audio
A Quick Guide to Sequenced Genomes
ARN Related Web Links
Creation/Evolution Quotes
Australian biologist Stephen E. Jones maintains one of the best origins "quote" databases around. He is meticulous about accuracy and working from original sources.
CreationEvolutionDesign
Most guys going through midlife crisis buy a convertible. Austrialian Stephen E. Jones went back to college to get a biology degree and is now a proponent of ID and common ancestry.
Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove
Complete zipped downloadable pdf copy of David Stove's devastating, and yet hard-to-find, critique of neo-Darwinism entitled "Darwinian Fairytales"
ID The Future
Intelligent Design The Future is a multiple contributor weblog whose participants include the nation's leading design scientists and theorists: biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician William Dembski, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, philosophers of science Stephen Meyer, and Jay Richards, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, and science writer Jonathan Witt. Posts will focus primarily on the intellectual issues at stake in the debate over intelligent design, rather than its implications for education or public policy.
John Mark Reynolds Blog
A Philosopher's Journey: Political and cultural reflections of John Mark N. Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds is Director of the Torrey Honors Institute at
Biola University.
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day