I am done. Upon review I am no longer sure your analogy is an apt analogy for your previous position. In fact it might support a conclusion of design. It acknowledges the need for other universes ( billions and billions according to some) of other universes to combat the conclusion of design. You may wish to note that you need a high ratio of universes which can't sustain life to universes which are fine tuned to argue that our universe is not here by design.
LOL! First you say you're done, and then you revise your previous post in the post that contains your statement that you're done. So, please let me know when you're actually done.
No problem. Ya know, I was gonna rip you to shreds, mathematically speaking. But, the truth is, that in the real world, we would probably be friends and get along pretty well, and I'm not really in the mood to start another long rehashing of the chance v. design issue. And who, knows -- one of these days I might want to buy a foreclosure in Florida. So, I think I'll just let your comments stand unopposed (by me, anyway), and get off this site, because I really don't like the forum. Have a good one.
Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez Appeals Tenure Denial to Iowa Board of Regents By John West on July 11, 2007 Pro-intelligent design astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez is appealing his denial of tenure at Iowa State University to the Iowa State Board of Regents. Dr. Gonzalez's first appeal was rejected by ISU President Gregory Geoffroy on May 31. On June 19, Gonzalez filed notice with the ISU President's office that he would make a further appeal to the Board of Regents. Gonzalez's current appeal will play out over the next couple of months as the record in the case is forwarded by the university to the Board of Regents and both Gonzalez and the university file their written arguments in the case. If Gonzalez's denial of tenure is not overturned, he will be out of a job at the end of the 2007-08 academic year. An outstanding scientist and scholar, Gonzalez has had his scientific work featured in Science, Nature, and on the cover of Scientific American. He is co-author of a major college astronomy textbook published last year by Cambridge University Press. But he has been viciously attacked by Darwinists and various atheists for co-authoring with Jay Richards The Privileged Planet, which makes a scientific argument for the intelligent design of the universe based on the empirical evidence from physics and astronomy. It should be noted Gonzalez's book does not discuss the evidence for design in biology, and thus it does not deal with Darwin's theory of evolution. That hasn't spared Gonzalez from persecution. Gonzalez was denied tenure despite the fact that he has published 68 peer-reviewed scientific articles, exceeding by 350% his own department's stated standard for demonstrating the research "excellence" needed for tenure. Moreover, Gonzalez's articles published since 2001 (the year he arrived at ISU) have the highest normalized citation count among all of the astronomers in his department according to the authoritative NASA/Smithsonian Astrophysics Data System. Gonzalez also has the second highest normalized number of publications among all the astronomers in his department. Incredibly, ISU's President Geoffroy denied tenure to Gonzalez while approving 91% of those applying for tenure this year. Geoffroy also promoted to full professor one of Gonzalez's chief persecutors at ISU, atheist religion professor Hector Avaloz, who believes that the Bible is worse than Hitler's Mein Kampf. Geoffroy, it seems, has a very perverse view of academic freedom. The Gonzalez affair is one of the most outrageous examples of academic discrimination and abuse targeting scholars who are supportive of intelligent design. ISU's spin-machine has tried to create the impression that the denial of tenure to Gonzalez isn't about intelligent design, but the day after ISU's president announced his rejection of Gonzalez's first appeal, a member of ISU's Department of Physics and Astronomy published an article in the Des Moines Register openly admitting that Gonzalez's support for intelligent design was the only reason he voted against tenure for Gonzalez. Two other members of the department have acknowledged that Gonzalez's intelligent design views played a role in their deliberations, and still other members of the department have been tied to national statements condemning intelligent design. In short, the claim that ID had nothing to do with Gonzalez's tenure denial at ISU is preposterous. This is a clear case of discrimination against an outstanding scientist based on his support of intelligent design. Let's hope that members of the Iowa State Board of Regents are more supportive of academic freedom than the faculty and administrators at ISU. While Gonzalez continues his tenure appeal, Discovery Institute has filed multiple public records requests with ISU in order document in detail what actually happened to Gonzalez. You can expect a significant amount of additional information to come out about the Gonzalez case in coming weeks and months.
Guillermo Gonzalez (astronomer) From Wikipedia Guillermo Gonzalez (born 1963 in Havana, Cuba) is an astrophysicist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University. He is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, considered the hub of the intelligent design movement, and a fellow with the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, which also promotes intelligent design. ... a closer look at Mr. Gonzalez's case raises some questions about his recent scholarship and whether he has lived up to his early promise. The Chronicle observed that Gonzalez had no major grants during his seven years at ISU, had published no significant research during that time and had only one graduate student finish a dissertation. On June 1, 2007, Gregory Geoffroy, President of Iowa State University, rejected Gonzalez's appeal and upheld the denial of tenure. In making this decision, Geoffroy states that he "specifically considered refereed publications, [Gonzalez's] level of success in attracting research funding and grants, the amount of telescope observing time he had been granted, the number of graduate students he had supervised, and most importantly, the overall evidence of future career promise in the field of astronomy" and that Gonzalez "simply did not show the trajectory of excellence that we expect in a candidate seeking tenure in physics and astronomy "Essentially, he had no research funding," said Eli Rosenberg, chairman of Gonzalez's department. "That's one of the issues." According to the Des Moines Register, "Iowa State has sponsored $22,661 in outside grant money for Gonzalez since July 2001, records show. In that same time period, Gonzalez's peers in physics and astronomy secured an average of $1.3 million by the time they were granted tenure." Intelligent Design Is creationism hiding behind misleading misdirecting misinformation.
The Truth about Research Grants, Gonzalez and ISU by John West June 1, 2007 As evidence has mounted that intelligent design played a role in the denial of tenure to gifted astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez at Iowa State University, efforts to distract attention from that fact have also increased. The latest salvo is a one-sided article in today's Des Moines Register that implies that inadequate research funding must have been the key factor. Reading like it was produced by ISU's press office, the article distorts Gonzalez's actual research funding as well as the published standards at Iowa State. The article follows unfounded speculation at various websites and blogs where some people have falsely claimed that Gonzalez had no research funding at the time he was at ISU. Here are the facts: 1. As we have reported previously, outside research funding is not a published criterion for earning tenure in Dr. Gonzalez's department. Indeed, it isn't even mentioned in the departmental standards for tenure and promotion. So if this factor was considered key in his tenure denial, Gonzalez's department was applying a criterion outside of its own stated standards. (The primary standard according to the departmental policy on tenure and promotion is peer-reviewed publications, and 15 articles are "ordinarily" supposed to "demonstrate excellence sufficient to lead to a national or international reputation." Dr. Gonzalez has 68 peer-reviewed publications, or 350% more than the departmental standard. Twenty-one of these articles were published since 2002, the year after Dr. Gonzalez arrived at ISU.) 2. Contrary to some reports, Dr. Gonzalez did receive outside grant funding during his time at ISU: From 2001-2004, Dr. Gonzalez was a Co-Investigator on a NASA Astrobiology Institute grant for "Habitable Planets and the Evolution of Biological Complexity" (his part of the grant for this time period was $64,000). From 2000-2003, Dr. Gonzalez received a $58,000 grant from the Templeton Foundation. This grant was awarded as part of a competitive, peer-reviewed grant process, and his winning grant proposal had been peer-reviewed by a number of distinguished astronomers and scientists. Earlier in 2007, Dr. Gonzalez was awarded a 5-year research grant for his work in observational astronomy from Discovery Institute (worth $50,000). 3. Using selective figures provided by ISU, the Register implies that one was expected to bring in an average of $1.3 million in grant funding to get tenure in Dr. Gonzalez's department. Again, there is nothing in the departmental standards about this, and it is hard to know how accurate or comparable this figure is without seeing the specific data for all of the astronomers in the department, and without seeing comparable data from other departments at ISU. Unfortunately, ISU has thus far stonewalled efforts to get grant and publications data for those considered for tenure during the past several years. On May 16 Discovery Institute filed a public documents request for the grant and publication data of those considered for tenure in Dr. Gonzalez's department since 1997 and for faculty in other departments considered for tenure since 2002. Thus far the university has provided no data in response to these requests, nor as of today has it responded to repeated requests about when the materials will be provided. It is worth pointing out again that 91% of ISU faculty considered for tenure this year received it. Did they all receive more than a million dollars in grants in order to get tenure? Did they all exceed by 350% their departmental standards for publications? We are trying to find out, but ISU apparently doesn't want people to know the answers to these questions.
Real reasons why Guillermo Gonzalez didn't get a job. " 'The University has issued a FAQ concerning the situation saying that 'The consensus of the tenured department faculty, the department chair, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the executive vice president and provost, was that tenure should not be granted. Based on recommendations against granting tenure and promotion at every prior level of review, and his own review of the record, President Gregory Geoffroy notified Gonzalez in April that he would not be granted tenure and promotion to associate professor.' The denial of tenure for Gonzalez resulted in one of the Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns, with the Institute encouraging its followers to call and email Geoffroy and urge him to reverse the decision. 'I believe that I fully met the requirements for tenure at ISU,' said Gonzalez, to which intelligent design critic PZ Myers replied... 'Complaining that one met all the requirements is like proposing marriage, getting turned down, and then protesting that one has a nice apartment, and excellent personal hygiene. All that may be true, but it's irrelevant.' Gregory Geoffroy, President of Iowa State University noted, âOver the past 10 years, four of the 12 candidates who came up for review in the physics and astronomy department were not granted tenure.â " ................ Four of those who also didnât get a job, unsurprisingly donât attract like attention. Apparently they are't into intelligent design fantasy the way Gonzalez is promoted to be, therefore would not warrant support under the (non)Discovery Instituteâs bogus discrimination campaigns. Gonzalez simply didn't come up to standard for a post. If they consider particular astronomers to be so worthy, why doesn't the Intelligent Design which IS creationism Institute produce the goods for once and stump up 2 or 3 $mil to finance a tenure for him.
Iowa State Department Faculty Acknowledge ID Played Role in Gonzalez's Tenure Denial by John West on May 18, 2007 According to a story to be published in the May 26 edition of World Magazine, two faculty members of the department that denied tenure to Guillermo Gonzales at Iowa State University have admitted that his work on ID played a role in the denial. While Prof. Eli Rosenberg, Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, insisted to the magazine that intelligent design "was not an overriding factor" (emphasis added), he then conceded according to the magazine that Gonzalez's pro-ID book The Privileged Planet "played into the decision-making process. He also explained that the reputation of a professor among others in his field is a significant factor." Of course, if "reputation" is used as a code word for whether one's views are popular among fellow scientists, then this is another way anti-ID bias entered into the decision. But Rosenberg is not the only department member who admitted that intelligent design played a role in the tenure decision. ISU astronomy professor Curtis Struck told World that he was not surprised at the denial of tenure to Gonzales because "[h]e includes some things in his astronomy resumé that other people regard as taking a coincidence too far." Struck was obviously referring to Gonzalez's arguments for intelligent design. Struck's comments mean that at least three of the five tenured astronomers in Gonzalez's department have now been tied to anti-ID bias. As noted earlier this week, another tenured astronomer in the department signed a statement circulated by the National Center for Science Education denouncing intelligent design as "creationist pseudoscience," while the husband of a third astronomy professor signed the same statement. Despite his own admission, Prof. Rosenberg tried to do damage control by claiming that there was something deficient about Dr. Gonzalez's sterling research record: "You take a look at somebody's research record over the six-year probationary period and you get a sense whether this is a strong case. Clearly, this was a case that looked like it might be in trouble." Really? Was Gonzalez somehow derelict in publishing 350% more peer-reviewed publications than his own department's stated standard for research excellence? Or in co-authoring a college astronomy textbook with Cambridge University Press? Or in having his research recognized in Science, Nature, Scientific American, and other top science publications? It is worth pointing out that in early 2004 Gonzalez's department nominated him for an "Early Achievement in Research" award for an outstanding record in research. So what changed between 2004 and 2006 when Gonzalez submitted his tenure application? Well, 2004 was the year The Privileged Planet was published. Dr. Gonzalez continued to publish peer-reviewed journal articles, and even co-authored the Cambridge University Press textbook in 2006, but his department seems to have soured on him just as the controversy over intelligent design heated up on the ISU campus and around the nation. Coincidence... or design? Isn't the answer obvious?
All completely irrelevant. The faculty gave numerous reasons for not accepting Gonzalez, all of them justifiable and to do with ordinary standards required of all applicants. Gonzales failed, just as so many others have, because he did not reach the mark. If he had failed to get in because he did not reach ordinary standards, and was a Druid , would the Institute of Drudisim and Design be able to plead victimization for Tenure Denial. Likewise is "it's because he's Cuban" , always legitimate grounds for appeal. Make up any controversy and use it as grounds for appeal on any Tenure Denial , it makes no difference. They are irrelevant. once Gonzalez hadn't make the grade in the first place Yes, the answer is obvious. Intelligent Design is not scientific, it IS creationism. It isn't important a subject for science to be concerned about. It is a wholly political/religious movement trying to generate any simulated controversy it can to use as argument in hope of creating figments of credibility for its cause. All because ID has nothing else going for it.