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 academics who are not materialists Do. Not. Know. What. Time. It. Is.
Why is it way later than these academics think?
A fine Christian in science said to me a couple of months ago, “I support what the intelligent design researchers are doing, but they have got to come up with more evidence.”
I wonder what he thinks now. Gonzalez did research and assembled evidence and has an ID-friendly “privileged planet” hypothesis to test, perhaps falsify. Indeed, that was precisely the problem, wasn’t it?
Consider: Materialism is an absolutist position that can be wrecked by a single, accepted contrary finding. Hence, non-materialists cannot be permitted tenure if they research anything sensitive for materialism.
Why do academics who are not materialists have difficulty facing up to the reality of their situation?
One political scientist commented to me that many Christian/theistic academics who contacted him about the Gonzalez case were in denial, blaming the victim. They were eager to give every benefit of the doubt to the institution. They very much wanted to hear and speculate that Gonzalez must have done “wrong” – and to spread the word.
I have covered controversies for decades and have seen that pattern repeat endlessly in groups subject to discrimination.*
It’s easy to understand how the pattern develops. Christians/theists/non-materialists daren’t grapple with the fact that the materialists in academia are now a ruling class which assumes that its power is the outworking of natural law. In reality, its power has come mostly from the compliance, complacency, or cowardice of the ruled. People suffer or disappear and everyone rushes to identify the “mistake” the disappeared allegedly made.
So they all feel safer. In the same way and for the same reasons, little girls avoid the cracks in the sidewalk.
What should these academics face up to?
Observation 1: It is NEVER possible to prove discrimination to those who do not wish to address it. For example, there are people out there slandering Rick Sternberg to this day. Convincing such people is not a goal.**
Observation 2: In a genuine case of discrimination, it is always possible to find another, incorrect explanation that – sort of – fits the facts. The mere fact that such an explanation can be dissembled demonstrates nothing except human ingenuity. (One is reminded of the lawyer who “proved” that a Native American’s horse was a bird, because it had been decorated with feathers.)
I flag possible discrimination as follows: a consistent pattern of denial that discrimination EVER occurred. Nope. Not in a single case. All those people are just deluded crybabies. As a matter of course I tune out the spin machines.
What does the future hold?
Well, suppose Christian/theist/non-materialist academics, alumni, and tuition payers choose to do nothing but fret and insist that G. must have done something wrong?
– Obviously, materialists will see to it that research that might provide support for intelligent design cannot be done and any accidental favorable findings must be obscured or spun.
– Darwinist materialists are beginning slowly down the path blazed by the Marxist, Freudian, and fascist materialists – to medicalize dissent and treat it as a social problem. For example, in a recent paper in Science, a team of psychologists defined belief that the universe shows evidence of purpose or design as arising from childish mistakes, and constitutes “adult resistance to science.” The opposite belief is, of course, assumed to be the “correct” one.
How do they know?
Because they are materialists, that’s how. And materialists rule.
Why does it matter?
Now, what these psychologists are doing is of much more significance than some readers may realize. If their view becomes generally accepted, non-materialism is not only career ending in the sciences but career limiting in the professions. It becomes an argument against parental competence in custody hearings and personal competence in mental health hearings. It can override the normal protections and defenses of an accused person when “protection of children” is allegedly an issue.
Also, by medicalizing dissent, such papers also lay the groundwork for proposals for explicit anti-meaning-and-purpose teaching at the elementary school level, much as Communists explicitly taught atheism in their school systems. So even if you escape, your children don’t, and you will pay to have them indoctrinated, on pain of seizure of your property.
Exaggerating? Who, me? In the last seven decades, materialists east and west have done all these things in the name of their blind watchmaker. And, as evidence mounts against them, they are now working against the clock. There is little doubt they would do it again – if unopposed.
And, make no mistake, such tactics are very effective. They render many subjects undiscussable EVEN in private life (because you don’t know whether you can trust the other party. He always has something on you ever after). That’s their purpose.
Others have noticed the trend. Ronald Numbers, certainly no friend to intelligent design hypotheses, notes regarding key American Darwinist Daniel Dennett,
If Dawkins played the role of point man for late-twentieth-century naturalistic evolutionists, Tufts University philosopher Daniel C. Dennett gladly served as their hatchet man. [ … ] Displaying a degree of intolerance more characteristic of a fundamentalist fanatic than an academic philosopher, he called for “caging” those who would deliberately misinform children about the natural world, just as one would cage a threatening animal. “The message is clear,” he wrote: “those who will not accommodate, who will not temper, who insist on keeping only the purest and wildest strain of their heritage alive, we will be obliged, reluctantly, to cage or disarm, and we will do our best to disable the memes [traditions] they fight for” Dennett 1995, 519-20). With the bravado of a man unmindful that only 11 percent of the public shared his enthusiasm for naturalistic evolution, he warned parents that if they insisted on teaching their children “falsehoods — that the earth is flat that ‘Man’ is not a product of evolution by natural selection — then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity” (Dennett 1997). Those who resisted conversion to Dennett’s scientific fundamentalism would be subject to “quarantine.”
(Numbers R.L., “Darwinism Comes to America,” Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1998, p.13) This was put up here by Stephen E. Jones.
Dennett is hardly the only one; on the contrary, his views are a logical outworking of the establishment of materialist atheism.
How successful can the Darwinists/materialists be?
That depends. Treat the Gonzalez case as a gauge. If the response among non-Darwinists/non-materialists is to identify reasons why G. should have been dumped and go holler aimlessly for Jesus in a tabernacle somewhere, the Darwinists/materialists will smell the weakness.
By contrast, whatever slows them down until they are crushed by the weight of contrary evidence is worth doing, whether or not a given case is won. So my advice has been: Try to win every battle but assess progress by the extent that each encroachment is strongly resisted.
What can be done right now that would make a difference?
Dissenting scientists should use the opportunity of Gonzalez’ battle to put together resources and coalitions to defend the next person/situation. I’ve seen good legal opinions in this area, for example.
Non-scientists can:
1. Quit giving money to universities that do things like this and reevaluate sending your kids there. You are not as dumb as they think.
2. Get tough with religious authorities, pop religion authors, and poster boys for “Gawd-and-science” who burble happily about the “compatibility of faith and science.”
When science is being redefined, for all practical purposes, as applied atheism and when an atheistic religion prof is permitted to launch a genuine persecution against a working scientist like Gonzalez – with almost NO sense of scandal in the academic community – tell those people to go burble somewhere else. It’s late, but it’s not too late.
By the way, the search string “Guillermo Gonzalez” + tenure that turned up 34 500 mentions on May 19 has hit 40 000 last night. Now (9:15 EST), it is 72, 600. And just think, only around 600 a week ago … ) Another “silent scream” heard round the world?
– – – Notes – – –
*What I told the poli sci prof in reply was this,
It is – at first – disconcerting to see how many people with everything to lose will actually support the establishment in such cases. Their behaviour helps explain how completely rotten establishments manage to survive as long as they do. ..
I am NOT saying that the establishment is always wrong either. If even a stopped clock is right twice a day, even a crummy establishment must sometimes be right too, though less reliably, in my experience.
[ … ]
Essentially, what I learned over the years is that most groups that are subject to discrimination need a revolution in thinking patterns, after which they no longer accept discrimination as normal. Instead of finding a reason why the targeted person deserves his fate, they identify with him. Then you see less of this easy accommodation and adoption of the viewpoint of the establishment, and more creative resistance. Only creative resistance is worthwhile.
**Indeed, I have started to get comments over at the Post-Darwinist announcing that there is no discrimination in the Gonzalez case. None whatever. Just like there was no discrimination in the Sternberg case (the government thought otherwise), and Frank Beckwith was alleged to have misrepresented himself (he didn’t), and Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler misrepresented the Nazis in his careful study of their admiration for Darwin’s theory (he didn’t). What is it about the air of academia that breeds such an explosion of jackals?