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Anyone who was awed when they watched Jurassic Park and saw realistic-looking dinosaurs walking around on the big screen for the first time should take a moment to remember Michael Crichton. Crichton, a famous science-fiction author, wrote the books that became the Jurassic Park movie series, as well as many other popular novels. He also had an appreciation for the importance of dissenting views within the scientific community and was a keen observer of how some in the scientific community use rhetoric to quash minority scientific viewpoints. Crichton passed away earlier this month after losing a battle with cancer, so in remembrance of Michael Crichton, I’d like to re-post this quote from a speech he gave that was recently reprinted Read More ›

Tenure votes at the earliest levels are made by a faculty member’s department, and they typically set the tone for whether that faculty member will ultimately receive tenure. Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez was first denied tenure by his Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University (ISU) in November 2006, and he soon thereafter received a letter from the Eli Rosenberg, Department Chair, asserting that intelligent design (ID) played only a minor role in tenure deliberations. As Dr. Rosenberg stated: “Your co-authorship of ‘The Privileged Planet’ and related activity was raised by several of the external and internal letter writers and discussed briefly in the faculty meetings where your promotion was under consideration.” Tenure notification letter from Dr. Rosenberg to Read More ›

Why did religion arise in the human species? Stanley Fish has a blog post at the New York Times observing that Richard Dawkins, “finds that the manufacturing and growth of religion is best described in evolutionary terms: ‘[R]eligions, like languages, evolve with sufficient randomness, from beginnings that are sufficiently arbitrary, to generate the bewildering — and sometimes dangerous — richness of diversity.’” Dawkins isn’t the only scientist who takes this kind of approach. David Sloan Wilson is getting a lot of attention these days regarding his views on the evolutionary origin of religion. Wilson is much more serious in his approach than Dawkins, but Wilson has been frank regarding how many academics view religion through an evolutionary perspective. In his Read More ›

We’ve recently discussed Iowa State University physicist John Hauptman’s prejudice against ID-proponents which was printed in the Des Moines Register. In response to our article observing misrepresentations of Guillermo Gonzalez’s arguments, David Deming, geologist and geophysicist and associate professor at the University of Oklahoma, sent some enlightening comments that further respond to Hauptman’s op-ed against Guillermo Gonzalez. Part of Dr. Deming’s comments are reprinted below: It certainly must have been a profound embarrassment for the Iowa State president to issue a press release stating ID had nothing to do with the tenure decision on the same day that Hauptman published a confession that it was the essentially the only reason he voted against Gonzalez’s tenure. I saw your most recent Read More ›

At the heart of the attacks on Iowa State University astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez is the book The Privileged Planet, which he co-authored with Jay Richards. We now know that Gonzalez’s authorship of this book played a role in his denial of tenure. It also provoked more than 120 of Gonzalez’s faculty colleagues to sign a petition in 2005 denouncing intelligent design and urging all other faculty members to do the same. Ironically, the book has garnered praise from an impressive list of scientists, including some prominent supporters of biological evolution. Consider just a few of The Privileged Planet’s endorsements and ask yourself whether the ideas raised in this book presented any kind of valid reason for removing Gonzalez from his Read More ›

I don’t necessarily believe that religion has to always be incompatible with evolution, but it’s always amusing when unreligious people try to convince the religious that Darwinism is highly compatible with religion. The famous example is of course Eugenie Scott, a signatory of the Third Humanist Manifesto, who recommends that biology teachers discuss pro-evolution theological viewpoints in public schools. This past week has revealed two more examples of attempts by unreligious scholars telling the public that religion and evolution are compatible: H. Allen Orr In an article in the latest issue of New York Review of Books, evolutionary biologist H. Allen Orr attacks Dawkins for fighting against religion and says, “it’s far from certain that there is an ineluctable conflict Read More ›