Denyse O'Leary

Here’s columnist Ken Connor (Terry Schiavo lawyer) on the Gonzalez tenure denial:

It seems that many scientists and academicians who hold views contrary to Dr. Gonzalez have concluded that the best way to avoid debate about the evidence for intelligent design is to simply deny jobs to those who will not affirm their atheistic worldview. The fact that these scientists, who are supposedly open to following the evidence wherever it leads, have resorted to blatant discrimination to avoid having this conversation speaks volumes about the weakness of their position. They realize their arguments are not sufficient to defeat the intelligent design movement and they must, therefore, shut their opponents out of the conversation. All the evidence suggests that it is unjust that Dr. Gonzalez was denied tenure and that this ruling should be overturned on appeal. Nevertheless, what happened to Dr. Gonzalez is a reflection of the growing strength of the intelligent design movement, not its weakness.

My sense is that he is right about Gonzalez’ tenure denial demonstrating strength, not weakness. The one thing that the materialist CANNOT abide right now is a frank assessment of the evidence.

Connor’s byline describes him as

Ken Connor is Chairman of the Center for a Just Society in Washington, DC and a nationally recognized trial lawyer who represented Governor Jeb Bush in the Terri Schiavo case.

Other Gonzalez case news: Read More ›

I just put up an alphabetized list of topics covered by British physicist David Tyler, who blogs on a number of issues raised in the science literature that impact the intelligent design controversy – along with some of my own compilations (animations of life inside the cell, columnists discussing the issues, et cetera.). This is a one-stop shop if you are trying to track down information in the growing controversy, that is written from a design perspective. Here are some examples of items you might want to look up: Animal evolution (Tyler) multicellular animals and need for complex information Cambrian era (Tyler) Ancestors largely missing Cambrian era(Tyler) Comb jellies well developed Cell development (Tyler) and complex specified information Chimpanzees(Tyler) Common Read More ›

A friend writes to say, “Guillermo [Gonzalez] has three (not two) papers exceeding 100 citations each. An updated list is attached that includes a few more of his publications. This is really impressive.” (If you are just joining us today, Guilllermo Gonzalez is the gifted ID-friendly astronomer who was recently denied tenure under suspicious circumstances at Iowa State University.)

From the screen capture my correspondent attached, I assume he means, for example, papers like GONZALEZ G ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS, Title: Spectroscopic analyses of the parent stars of extrasolar planetary system candidates, cited 153 times.

He also draws my attention to the AA (Atheists and Agnostics) meeting posted on the ISU Web site, attacking Gonzalez by name.

Now, I am all for vigorous debate at a university and despise political correctness, but note that the university itself also has the spin machine whining 24/7 on the site, announcing that a poisoned environment was never an issue.

I guess one page doesn’t know what the other is doing. But so much for the claim that there was no underlying anti-ID component. I would love to see that tested in court, and maybe I will.

The major lesson from all this, I think, is that Read More ›

Recently, I reported on an experiment with fruit flies that showed that the flies are not robotic, but can engage in spontaneous behavior.

In a recent Daily Telegraph article, Roger Highfield explains:

“The point here is that the people claiming that free will doesn’t exist say that one day we will be able to show exactly why a murderer must necessarily have acted the way he did by looking closely at his brain. We can show that you cannot even do this in fly brains, as a matter of principle.”

That’s the key, of course. It is a matter of principle (actually, fact) that flies do not behave like robots.

Also,

These results caught computer scientist and lead author Alexander Maye from the University of Hamburg by surprise: “I would have never guessed that simple flies who otherwise keep bouncing off the same window have the capacity for nonrandom spontaneity if given the chance.”

Great fly graphics too.

I am not sure, however, that the researchers have discovered in flies what humans mean by free will. Read More ›

I’ll have plenty more to say on this very topic later (as I had intended to write about it), but – coming on the heels of the Guillermo Gonzalez case – here is a post I just received: Hi, some minutes ago I postet something on my blog that might interest you: We also made an english abstract as you can see: Here we present an investigative report about how the German branch of the so called „brights” movement tried intentionally (and partly successful) to stifle free speech on german universities. We had the luck to have access to websites where their concerted actions got prepared and afterwards commented. Their actions and comments show that they are not far from Read More ›

Here, for example, from Science Question of the Week from the Goddard Space Flight Center, on the position of the North Star, ever the friend of mariners:

Polaris or the North Star is nearly directly above the North Pole (it’s actually about 1 degree away from the celestial pole). You might think that with all of the stars in the sky, it shouldn’t be that unusual for a given star to rest above the pole, but really, it’s an extremely unlikely occurrence. It’s even more unlikely that our pole star would be relatively bright – second order magnitude. If you divided the night sky into squares that are one degree latitude by one degree longitude in size, there would be 41,253 square degrees in our night sky. There are approximately 2,000 stars that we can see on the clearest night, and perhaps 6,000 different stars are visible to us throughout the year, but only 50 of these are as bright or brighter than Polaris. The chances of a star like Polaris occupying a place over the pole are about slim indeed – about 1 in 1,000. Nevertheless, Polaris defies the odds and has become our guiding light.

Anybody know the odds on that? Read More ›

I have posted much more information about the denial of tenure to ID-friendly astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez here. For example, If you are a Christian or theist or anyone who thinks that the universe shows evidence of meaning, purpose, or design, listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: You need to think carefully about wasting time, energy, and money in the Western academic system IF, by chance, whatever you are doing undermines materialism. and Come to think of it, here’s a business op for Gonzalez’s U: Just think what your official astronomers could charge for naming a planet after some airhead! [or blockhead]

Guillermo Gonzalez, Privileged Planet astronomer and longtime target of atheist materialists, has been denied tenure. Fact sheet folllows.

Update:

For some background on the Gonzalez case (I will update more later), visit Bipod at Telic Thoughts:

So let’s get this straight. Hector Avalos, an atheist at Iowa State University, is leading a crusade of Scientific McCarthyism against Guillermo Gonzalez. The stated reason by Avalos: “”We certainly don’t want to give the impression to the public that intelligent design is what we do.” Now Avalos and the other 120 signers of the document will deny that they’re doing anything inappropriate, but let’s be serious. This is Scientific McCarthyism in a cheap tuxedo;-)

“Mr. Avalos said the statement was not intended to silence Mr. Gonzalez, or to get him fired…”

Sure. Then why single him out?

To respectfully protest this decision:

Dr. Gregory L. Geoffroy
President, Iowa State University
1750 Beardshear Hall
Ames, Iowa 50011-2035
(515) 294-2042

president@iastate.edu

It is barely conceivable that the Iowans have shame, even if “evolutionary psychology” has not discovered it yet. Heck, if I were a contributor to their alumni fund, I would be overwhelmed with shame.

Now back to the fact sheet: 

 Here is a fact sheet I have just received:

Biography of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University (ISU).

Born in Havana, he and his family fled from Cuba to the United States in 1967, where he earned a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Washington in 1993. Author of nearly 70 peer-reviewed scientific papers and co-author of a major college-level astronomy textbook, Dr. Gonzalez’s work led to the discovery of two new planets, and he has had his research featured in Science, Nature, and on the cover of Scientific American. Read More ›

It now emerges that retired Australian political science prof Hiram Caton, relentless exposer of ridiculous Darwin hagiography, is an associate of the National Center for Science Education, the American Darwin education lobby. He tells me that they know about his article trashing the Darwin Exhbition. Caton, who is not affiliated with any religion, wonders what they think of it. So do I. But then, he’s Down Under, remember? And a day apart. Go here for more.

I was out doing errands today, and what do you know? The Toronto city parking pay kiosks in my neighbourhood were plastered with signs advertising, “Intelligent Design: War on Science”, and a whole bunch of other stuff we should supposedly all rush down to see at the Brunswick Theatre. Yeah really. Intelligent design’s war on science? How about: Creeps’ war on public property? That’s more like it! If anyone catches these people, they should be made to remove all that stuff at their own trouble and expense. If they can’t afford regular advertising, that’s most likely because their cause isn’t popular. Unpopularity does not give them a right to deface public property. Or am I whistling down the wind here? Read More ›

Just today, I received a most interesting note from a retired Australian poli sci professor Hiram Caton, late of Griffiths University, noting that the Darwin exhibition, developed at the American Museum of Natural History, is hitting the road, and may stop at a museum near you.

Caton explains,

You are well aware of my former colleague Dave Stove’s critique of Darwinism. We are alike in that we have no religious affiliation; also in that we do not believe that Darwinism can provide a basis for ethics or for ‘conservative’ politics, in the manner of Larry Arnhart.

At his site, Caton offers a most useful anti-docent, “Getting Our History Right: Six Errors about Darwin and His Influence,” documenting the following six errors: Read More ›

Our own Gil Dodgen has written some interesting posts on how he ceased to be an atheist, and now I see that columnist Frank Pastore weighs in on the same theme. He lists four challenges to atheism, as follows:

1. Origin of the universe

2. Origin of life

3. Origin of the mind

4. Origin of morality

What I found while researching By Design or by Chance? and The Spiritual Brain is not that materialists have no answers but that their answers are based mainly on promissory materialism (hey folks, we’re still working on it. Give us another few centuries …), when they are not based on merely Read More ›

Recently, I received an e-mail from someone well known in the American Scientific Affiliation, an American organization of Christians in science, asking me to mute my criticism of its worse-than-useless policies in dealing with the current anti-religious materialist agenda. The note followed on the heels of “Public questions for Denyse O’Leary” (and eventually an “open letter to Bill Dembski and Denyse O’Leary”)

Incidentally, while I am here, anyone know what’s with the “Public” questions and “open” letter stuff?

Usage note for composers of public questions and open letters: Dearest muffintins, if you put something on theWorld Wide Web, it IS public and open. That’s what putting it on the Web means. So you don’t need to tell me or anybody else that it is public or open.

Well, anyhow, below follow some “public” answers. It is a longish post in which I say things like,

Message to American Association for the Advancement of Science: In a country where individuals have civil rights and the majority of people who work to pay your bills are professing Christians, it would be very unwise to be “inherently hostile” to the Christian faith. So we will assume, for now at least, that whatever happened was only a misunderstanding or a mistake.

About the American Scientific Affiliation: Is it possible that the ASA types are just bright guys living in fear? The whole sense I get from years of monitoring the ASA list is of a bunch of people who act as if they really think that materialism has won and they must live in the ruins, and hope materialists will behave respectfully toward them.

The trouble is, as I realized while researching The Spiritual Brain, materialism has lost. Lost big time. Materialists sense it and they are frantic. …

But first, a brief summary: Read More ›

In “American Scientific Affiliation – whatever happened to its mission?”, Bill Dembski alludes to an earlier post of mine:

I write this post to put into perspective Denyse O’Leary’s recent remarks about the “gutting of a spiritual tradition from within” (see here — the relevance of her remarks to the ASA cannot be missed) and to highlight that with the efforts by Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris to ramp up their propaganda for atheism since this letter by Jack Haas was written suggests that the ASA was mistaken in shifting its emphasis away from “the sweeping tide of scientific materialism.”

He addresses something I find truly shocking:

About three years ago I received the following mass mailing from the ASA’s Jack Haas (I’ve known Jack since 1990 and our exchanges have always been cordial). In this letter he describes how the ASA had, in times past, been concerned to address “the sweeping tide of scientific materialism,” but had recently decided to change its emphasis to combat young-earth creationism.

adding,

If the problem with young-earth creationism is that it is off by a few orders of magnitude about the age of the earth and universe, the problem with scientific materialism is that is off by infinite orders of magnitude about what is ultimately the nature of nature.

appending the relevant letter.

Well, that sheds considerable light on why the 2000-member organization of Christians in science has been AWOL from the main battle for so long. In an age when the non-materialist taxpayer has been compelled to fund materialist propaganda in science textbooks, when science textbooks routinely promote long-exploded errors in order to advance Darwinism, and key Darwinists promote a widely publicized anti-God campaign, this premier organization of Christians in science has chosen to largely (or entirely) ignore these problems and instead … conduct a war against the doctrinal position of some fundamentalist denominations. (The belief that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.)

It beggars belief, but it is apparently true. Read More ›

Here are some animations of the machinery of living cells, which I have encountered from various sources and put in alphabetical order for convenience. You might want to bookmark the file, as I plan to add to it, Read More ›