Science Reporting

When I go to the dog park, my 4 year old lab retriever Kali shows some obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) tendencies. No matter how tired she is, how thirsty she might be, or how out of breath, when I throw the tennis ball she races off after it at top speed. She can’t not chase the ball.
Darwinists can’t not claim that that intelligent design is an argument from ignorance. In fact, not only are they fond of insisting this, they show OCD-like tendencies about it. No matter how much information you provide showing that ID is not an argument from ignorance, like Kali with her tennis ball, they switch into high gear.

Last week on ID The Future, we featured a short video clip of Dr. Jay Richards discussing the Darwinist’s favorite question for ID theorists, so who designed the designer? Inevitably in any lengthy discussion of ID with a Darwinist, they resort to asking that question as if it makes some ultimate point that will settle the issue once and for all. The video of Richards’ answer to this is short and definitive.

Still it raised hackles over at The Panda’s Thumb.

Tom Bethell of The American Spectator was present at the recent debate on Darwin and conservatism held at AEI. I am delighted that he was there or we would not have his droll, apt description of the event in the July-August number of the Spectator.

We are watching the Darwinists launch bold and deceitful attacks on all critics of their man’s theory. And they go farther–as witness Cornelia Dean, queen of The New York Times Science Page, in her assault Tuesday on the Catholic Church and the Christian effort to reserve the soul, at least, as something more than material expression.

A recent study in American Scientist should ignite a blaze of research in evolutionary psychology. In Evolution, Religion, and Free Will, Gregory Graffin and William Provine report their survey of the religious beliefs of eminent evolutionary scientists. The results are striking. Evolutionary scientists hold views about God and religious belief that are radically at odds with those of most Americans. To evolutionary scientists such extreme variance from the mainstream views would normally raise fascinating questions about selection factors associated with atheist adaptation. Graffin and Provine’s study should give rise to scores of papers about the evolutionary origins of atheism.
But it won’t.

Let the rewriting of history begin. The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s blog recently carried a post claiming that Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure by Iowa State University (ISU) largely because “Mr. Gonzalez’s publication record has dropped off considerably since he was hired at Iowa State.” But this statement is a gross distortion of Dr. Gonzalez’s real publication record. A simple decrease in publications is meaningless without reference to expected standards of publication for teaching faculty, departmental publication standards, or the publication rates of similarly situated faculty. A fair assessment would ask how Gonzalez compared to other astronomers in his department since the year he joined ISU (2001), especially compared to those astronomers that have already been granted tenure. And the Read More ›

Links with more Information:Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of DodosHaeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings (Clip on YouTube) There is a thread at Telic Thoughts discussing the Flock of Dodos [FOD] film where I posted a comment last week. I posted the comment after a commenter named “Randy” asked a question about Discovery Institute’s responses to the film. I repost the comment below because it clearly explains my position regarding the film, and also provides various useful links for interested readers to visit for more information:

The current issue of the Montana Law Review features a lively exchange of views about the Kitzmiller v. Dover intelligent design decision, and the articles are now available online at the law review’s website. The lead article on the Dover decision (“Intelligent Design Will Survive Kitzmiller v. Dover“) is co-authored by David DeWolf, me, and Casey Luskin. A second article by Peter Irons (“Disaster in Dover”) responds to our article, followed by a short rebuttal by DeWolf, me, and Luskin. There is also an editors’ introduction with a timeline of the Dover case (currently not available online).

The President of Iowa State University, Gregory Geoffroy, has issued a statement defending his denial of the tenure appeal of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez. In the statement, Geoffroy claims that he concluded that Gonzalez “simply did not show the trajectory of excellence that we expect in a candidate seeking tenure in physics and astronomy.”

Ah, yes, President Geoffroy has such high standards of excellence that only the most outstanding professors are allowed to achieve tenure at ISU.

Geoffroy’s high standards must be why he approved 91% of the tenure applicants at ISU in 2007 (and why the tenure approval rate has gone up each year at ISU for the past five years).

Geoffroy’s high standards are presumably also why he promoted to full professor this year Hector Avalos, the ISU faculty member who argues in his “scholarship” that the Bible is worse than Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Yes, according to President Geoffroy’s exalted standards, only the best and brightest are allowed to stay at ISU!

But there’s more.

The Ames Tribune has reported that the tenure appeal of Iowa State University (ISU) astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez has been denied by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy. It’s a sad day for academic freedom. A statement by Geoffroy defending his decision can be found here, while a statement by Gonzalez disputing the decision can be found here.

Links of Interest: Hoax of Dodos, a response to inaccuracies in Flock of DodosHaeckel’s Bogus Embryo Drawings (Clip on YouTube) As noted recently, we are presently highlighting some textbooks that use Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo drawings to promote evolution. These textbooks use Haeckel’s drawings to assert that they represent factual evidence for evolution in the present-day. “Flock of Dodos” film producer Randy Olson has claimed that either (A) the fraudulent drawings haven’t been used in any modern textbooks, or alternatively, if that argument fails, then (B) when they are used, it isn’t to promote evolution, but simply to demonstrate some kind of historical perspective on the development of evolutionary thought. This post will discuss one recently-published textbook, Peter H Raven & Read More ›