Category: Culture
Secret ISU Faculty E-mails Express Vitriol Towards Intelligent Design, Disregard for Academic Freedom, and attempts to Hide a Plot to Oust an Outstanding Scientist
Public document requests under Iowa’s Open Records Act have obtained revealing correspondence of key faculty members within ISU’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Various e-mails show that Dr. Gonzalez’s department was concerned about the “embarrassment” that intelligent design (ID) caused the department’s reputation and unconcerned about protecting his academic freedom–despite the fact that ISU’s faculty handbook claims that “[a]cademic freedom is the foundation of the university.” Uncritical bias against ID on the part of ISU physicists and astronomers that voted on his tenure, and unreflective ridicule of Gonzalez’s position on ID come out repeatedly. The faculty considered releasing a statement condemning ID in hopes that it would send a message to Dr. Gonzalez that he was unwelcome at ISU, but Read More ›
Design Was the Issue After All: ISU’s official explanation in Gonzalez case exposed as a sham (Updated)
Documents show Gonzalez was denied fair tenure process by hostile colleagues who plotted behind his back, suppressed evidence, and then misled the public. Click Here To See a PDF Version of this Document with Citations Included. Executive Summary. Internal e-mails and other documents obtained under the Iowa Open Records Act contradict public claims by Iowa State University (ISU) that denial of tenure to astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez was unrelated to his writing on the theory of intelligent design. According to these documents: Dr. Gonzalez was subjected to a secret campaign of vilification and ridicule by colleagues in the Department of Physics and Astronomy who explicitly wanted to get rid of him because of his intelligent design views, not his scholarship. Dr. Read More ›
Q & A with a friendly Darwinist about Discovery Institute’s Amicus Briefs in the Kitzmiller case
Some Darwinists are presently making the false assertion that Discovery Institute wanted Judge Jones to rule broadly on whether ID is science in the Kitzmiller case. All this comes in the wake of Judge Jones’ recent admissions regarding the activist nature of the Kitzmiller ruling. The Darwinist response to Judge Jones’s admissions is revealing: Rather than defending the Judge Jones activist behavior in the Kitzmller ruling, Darwinists have implicitly conceded the activism by changing the subject, and attacking us for allegedly encouraging its activism. As is the usual case when ID proponents make a good point, Darwinists try to deflect the issue by changing the subject and launching into personal attacks. This tells you that we have done something right Read More ›
Meet the Materialists, part 6: Lydston, Hoyt, and the Miracle Cure of Castration
Note: This is one of a series of posts adapted from my new book, Darwin Day in America. You can find other posts in the series here. From the 1890s into the early years of the twentieth century, a growing number of American doctors advocated castration as a solution for habitual criminals as well as rapists and murderers. Proponents of castration like Frank Lydston derided the failed rehabilitation efforts of the “sentimentalist and his natural ally, the preacher,” and argued that “asexualization” surgery would produce results by preventing criminals from passing down their criminal tendencies to their children, by striking fear into non-castrated criminals, and by changing the personality of the castrated criminal. “The murderer is likely to lose much Read More ›
Bah! Humbug! From the Cranky Sounds of Darwinists, It Must Be Christmas
You can tell when the Christmas season is approaching — by the nip in the air, and by the jump in the level of crankiness exhibited by Darwinists in the blogosphere. This year Christmas apparently has come early for internet Darwinists, who have been raising a kerfluffle on their blogs about Discovery Institute Senior Fellow William Dembski’s usage of a clip of some Harvard-commissioned animation of the cell in a few of his lectures. In typical high dudgeon, Darwinists have accused Dr. Dembski of all sorts of nefarious violations of intellectual property law. Some have even claimed (as usual, without an iota of evidence) that Discovery Institute supports the disregard of copyright laws or even had something to do with Read More ›
