Re: Privileged Planet was Re: [asa] Global Warming, Ethics, and the Precautionary Principle

So what you consider to be outrageous is that the petition was
organized by an atheist or by someone who is a faculty advisor to a
campus atheist organization? Remember that intelligent design is
making the (erroneous) claim that it is scientific and that these
scientific findings point to a 'designer' (wink wink). Many science
organizations have rejected ID as scientifically relevant. So what if
Avalos had been a Christian? Would that have made a difference to the
petition?
When atheists start a movement which insists that science can show the
absence of a designer, it is time to object similarly to such an abuse
of science.
Privileged Planet has become an important marketing tool for the
Intelligent Design movement, intent on 'teaching the controversy'
which is mere code language.
So what about Avalos's academic freedom to expose bad science?

Gonzalez

<quote>"I didn't expect this level of vitriol," he says after hanging
up. "This level of intense hostility, just knee-jerk emotional
response from people.
People have strong convictions that you can't bring God into science.
But I don't bring God into science. I've looked out at nature and
discovered this pattern, based on empirical evidence. . . . It
obviously calls for a different explanation."</quote>

And Gonzalez claims that this explanation is 'God' based on the
arguments of Intelligent Design. Or is that not obvious? So the
question is: Are these arguments based on science and scientific
arguments. Many scientists have come to the conclusion that these
findings are vacuous and that intelligent design fails to be
scientifically relevant. Combine this with the attempts by the
Discovery Institute to promote this 'research' as evidence why
intelligent design should be taught or could be taught in schools and
one can either ignore this or take a stance. Many scientific
organizations and even universities have done so.

A witchhunt? I am not sure.

On 1/26/07, Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu> wrote:
> Let's be clear about my reasons for thinking that what happened to Gonzalez
> was the intellectual equivalent of a witch hunt.
>
> So the petition didn't address the book or professor by name--so what? Was
> anyone at all in doubt about which professor and which book was being
> referred to? Was anyone at all in doubt about why this took place at Iowa
> State rather than (say) the U of Iowa or Grinnell College or somewhere else?
> One could read transparently between the lines.
>
> It's outrageous, simply outrageous, for Prof Avalos -- the faculty advisor
> to a campus atheist organization -- to organize a petition drive against
> what *everyone knows* were Prof Gonzalez' responsibly voiced dissents from
> scientific orthodoxy in his field. Simply outrageous. Let's propose the
> analogous situation, Pim. Suppose that the faculty advisor to InterVarsity
> Christian Fellowship at (say) Oxford organized a faculty petition, without
> naming names or book titles, that publicly disowned Richard Dawkins' book(s)
> -- you pick which one, it doesn't matter. Wouldn't nearly everyone on
> pandasthumb raise a hue and cry about the religious motivation of such an
> attack on Dawkins' academic freedom? Wouldn't they say that people were
> creating a hostile work environment for Dawkins? Would this not be esp
> true, if he were a recently hired professor without tenure? What do you say
> to this, Pim? I would like to hear your view.

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Received on Sat Jan 27 03:48:30 2007