Guillermo Gonzalez, Nobel Laureates and Founders of Modern Science See Purpose as Best Explanation for Fine-Tuned Cosmic Habitat by Jonathan Witt June 5, 2007 In a weekend essay in the Des Moines Register, Iowa State Physics Professor John Hauptman explains that ISU astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez was denied tenure because Gonzalez argued that a purposive cause is the best explanation for certain features of our cosmic habitat. By this standard, Hauptman will also need to fire many of the most esteemed physicists and astronomers of our day, as well as the founders of modern science. Hauptman and his fellow thought police at Iowa State have their summer work cut out for them. Hauptman equates Gonzalez's design inference with the ancient pagan habit of attributing every mysterious natural phenomenon to the direct activity of some god, concluding that Gonzalez was denied tenure because the astronomer failed to understand that scientists aren't allowed to draw such conclusions. Thus, Hauptman and his colleagues essentially fired Gonzalez for articulating an impermissible thought. And never mind that ISU tacitly endorsed Gonzalez's work on The Privileged Planet by administering his Templeton grant for the book project while he was writing it. And never mind that the Templeton proposal was persuasive enough to convince prominent researchers to select it for funding, including Max Tegmark, John Barrow, and atheists Peter Atkins and Michael Ruse. And never mind that several other prominent scientists endorsed the book, including Cambridge's Simon Conway Morris, Harvard's Owen Gingerich, and a vice president of the Royal Astronomical Society, David Hughes. Hauptman's op-ed invokes Galileo against Gonzalez, but Galileo stands with Gonzalez. The great 17th century astronomer insisted that "the great book ... the universe ... is written in the mathematical language," and that the author of that book was God. Another founder of modern science, Johannes Kepler, said that in discovering his three mathematically elegant laws of planetary motion, he was simply âthinking Godâs thoughts after Him.â If Hauptman had read Gonzalez's book, The Privileged Planet or even watched the one hour documentary based on the book, he would have some idea that the founders of modern science believed nature was discernible to rational inquiry precisely because they were convinced it was the work of a rational mind. As Privileged Planet co-author Jay W. Richards comments in the film: Renowned theoretical physicist Paul Davies, who is neither a Christian nor a traditional theist, offers a similar assessment in the documentary: Nor did this approach fade after the founders of modern science. Many world renowned contemporary scientists from various points on the spectrum of belief, including George Ellis, Owen Gingerich, John Polkinghorne, John Barrow, Frank Tipler, Allen Sandage, Paul Davies, and Nobel Laureates George Smoot and Arno Penzias have pointed to a creative intelligence as the most reasonable explanation for things like the Big Bang and the fine tuning of the laws and constants of physics. Berkeley physicist and recent Nobel Laureate Charles Townes says: "Intelligent design, as one sees it from a scientific point of view, seems to be quite real. This is a very special universe: it's remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren't just the way they are, we couldn't be here at all. The sun couldn't be there, the laws of gravity and nuclear laws and magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on have to be just the way they are for us to be here." Some scientists argue that "well, there's an enormous number of universes and each one is a little different. This one just happened to turn out right." Well, that's a postulate, and it's a pretty fantastic postulate â it assumes there really are an enormous number of universes and that the laws could be different for each of them. The other possibility is that ours was planned, and that's why it has come out so specially. As Hauptman makes clear, and as two other ISU professors confirmed in comments to World magazine, Gonzalez was denied tenure because he made a case for the second option. Even Hauptman's insinuation that Gonzalez misunderstood the importance of testability fails since Gonzalez and Richards went to considerable lengths to show how the Privileged Planet argument could be empirically tested and falsified. And in the same essay where Hauptman explains why Gonzalez was denied tenure, Hauptman concedes that Gonzalez is "very creative, intelligent and knowledgeable, highly productive scientifically and an excellent teacher." Indeed, Gonzalez exceeded the university's peer-reviewed publication standards by 350% and led his entire department in a key indicator of professional scientific success, his normalized citation count. Gonzalez's citation count during his time at ISU is the highest in his department during this period. The question now becomes, how many people, scientists and non-scientists alike, will sit idly by while Gonzalez's academic and intellectual freedom is denied by a taxpayer funded public university. Hauptman offers lip service to the value of academic and intellectual freedom but then justifies the tenure denial by concluding that "a physics department is not obligated to support notions that do not even begin to meet scientific standards." Whose standards? Certainly not the standards of the founders of modern science. Is Hauptman's complaint that Gonzalez neglected experimental science that focuses on material causes? No. Both Hauptman's praise and Gonzalez's record demonstrate that Gonzalez led his department in this kind of work. Indeed, Gonzalez never even introduced his Privileged Planet hypothesis into the classroom. Is it that no reputable scientists in physics and astronomy see a purposive cause as a reasonable and even compelling explanation for things like the fine tuning of the laws and constants of physics? No. As we saw, the list of scientists who see evidence for purpose at the cosmic level reads like a who's who of theoretical physics and astronomy. What is at stake is intellectual and academic freedom, twin values at the heart of the scientific enterprise. Townes makes this point emphatically: "We should explore as much as we can. We should think about everything, try to explore everything, and question things. That's part of our human characteristic in nature that has made us so great and able to achieve so much."
Absent evidence, therefore you make a conclusion. Logical fallacy at its finest. We have more than ideas on how non-intelligent forces enabled non-complex organisms to evolve over billions of years into complex ones. You are looking down the telescope from the wrong end. Don't you mean panspermia, and it doesn't require Intelligent Design. If someone is proposing a theory that life on earth originated from organisms coming from outer space, which were created by Intelligent Design, then that is creationism. Many theists agnostics and atheists do not require Intelligent Design as explanation for that. If what you say about the ID movement were true there would be no reason to have Intelligent along with Design. You would be called the Design movement. But then all that natural Design observed to be going on in the Universe, would become a big problem to your agenda.
I don't see you making any headway with the (non)Discovery Institute's discrimination propaganda. It makes no difference. Guillermo Gonzalez's track record did not impress any of the faculty, AND he had no grant funding. They who make the decisions have every right to evaluate who would best fit those posts. Ask The (non)Discovery Institute to gift $10 mil or so. Without the necessary qualifications Gonzalez needed, that should get him in there.
Stu wrote: Sure, you can call it creationism but if you do most persons are going to think you mean this: Definition of creationism from Dictionary.com: 1. the doctrine that matter and all things were created, substantially as they now exist, by an omnipotent Creator, and not gradually evolved or developed. 2. sometimes, the doctrine that the true story of the creation of the universe is as it is recounted in the Bible, esp. in the first chapter of Genesis. The above definition is what most persons think of when they hear the term creationism and this doesn't accurately describe intelligent design. So why refer to ID as creationism if it's going to misrepresent ID in the eyes of most persons? In 1973 British molecular biologist Francis Crick and chemist Leslie Orgel published a paper in the journal Icarus suggesting that life may have arrived on Earth through a process called 'Directed Panspermia.' Their abstract in the 1973 Icarus paper reads: Crick and Orgel further expanded on this idea in their 1981 book, 'Life Itself.'. They believed there was little chance that microorganisms could be transported between planets and across interstellar distances by random accident. But a technological civilization could direct panspermia by stocking a spacecraft with a genetic starter kit. They suggested that a large sample of different microorganisms with minimal nutritional needs could survive the long journey between worlds. According to Stu's definition of ID, Crick and Orgel are creationists. When you broaden the definition of creationism to the point that it includes atheistic evolutionists then you've obviously gone too far.
Stu wrote: Let's see your evidence for a non-teleological origin of life. Cell biologist Franklin Harold published a book with Oxford University Press titled The Way of the Cell. In it he says:
Stu wrote: It is absolutely false that Gonzalez had no grant funding. Besides, outside research funding is not a published criterion for earning tenure in Dr. Gonzalez's department. Here are the facts. The Truth about Research Grants, Gonzalez and ISU by John West 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.
Really, this phony ID discrimination farrago is surely doing Guillermo Gonzalez's future career no good. He surely can't be thanking you for it. Many people get denied tenure for all sorts of reasons. Many far more worthy than Gonzalez. By all accounts his record was pretty abysmal by standards required. His case for tenure was lost prior to the irrelevancy of any ID question being brought up. Major funding is an important issue, one in which Gonzalez again, substantially lacked. He has no real funding. Gonzales would have mentioned it (would be required to and it would help his prospects) in what there is of his published work. What is recorded, and what you use to spin as funding when it isn't (not being funds applicable whilst at ISU), is very small anyway, and as far as I can tell, was provided by his co-authors in any case. A few grand won't cut it. There are millions of $$'s out there. The successful get hold of it. By all accounts he was treated no differently than any one else. Others who could be said to have far better careers, also failed admission. Your protestations on his behalf are both a sham and the display of yet another jumped up ID paranoia fake conspiracy campaign.
I agree with that dictionary definition of creationism. My argument is, definition 1. and 2. does accurately describe Intelligent Design . There are numerous documents published by the so called 'Discovery' Institute of which you collect most of your cut & paste from to represent your ID arguments. So here is the detail of one of them, their manifesto, at the center of their agenda, which THEY say represents Intelligent Design Wikipedia will describe it for me... The wedge strategy is a political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document, which describes a broad social, political, and academic agenda whose ultimate goal is to "defeat [scientific] materialism" represented by evolution, "reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions" and to "affirm the reality of God." Its goal is to "renew" American culture by shaping public policy to reflect conservative Christian values. Intelligent design is the belief that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not a naturalistic process such as natural selection. Implicit in the intelligent design conjecture is a redefining of science and how it is conducted. Wedge strategy proponents are dogmatically opposed to materialism,naturalism,and evolution,and have made the removal of each from how science is conducted and taught an explicit goal. The strategy was originally brought to the public's attention when the Wedge Document was leaked on the Web. The Wedge strategy forms the governing basis of a wide range of Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns. Now you may not agree Intelligent Design is represented by that, but then you would be swimming against the ID tide. Or you may agree with it, then in doing so , you are being purposely deceitful by denying ID is anything to do with religion. If the former, you will be a voicing the ideas of a minor fringe at the perimeter of the main intelligent design club. Not the mainstream nor supporting the modus operandi of it. If the latter, I suspect you wil drop God for as long as you think it might take to get the Wedge in place, then as if by magic, dictionary definition #1. 1. the doctrine that matter and all things were created, substantially as they now exist, by an omnipotent [Intelligent] Creator [God], and not gradually evolved or developed. ...will abruptly expose itself. Soon followed by definition #2 should there be half the chance of it. If you honestly believe Intelligent Design has something going for it teleologicaly in the most basic meaning of that word ie the philosophy of explaining phenomena by their ends or purposes, then do so. You don't need all the nonDiscovery Institute's propaganda bullshit, which you keep using, to do that. I make no misrepresentations in any way when I say, Intelligent Design IS creationism.
Stu wrote: My ID views go above and beyond the Discovery Institute. I merely quote them when they are being misrepresented. Letting them defend themselves as it were. Would you consider it valid if I attempted to discredit evolution by focusing on the anti-ID movement (i.e., the Secular Movement)? The secular movement hands out decrees, networks extensively, spreads propaganda, injects innuendo into the public domain, and sees itself as part of a Revolution. Are we supposed to pretend that doesnât exist and that all of the critics of ID have no "wedge" and no higher political/atheistic agenda? I have the ability to tease apart the concept of ID from the ID movement. I also have the ability to focus on ID without consideration of theology. If someone lacks this ability, they will succumb to the type of thinking that you are entrapped in. If every person with religious concerns were to suddenly disappear from the face of the earth tomorrow, intelligence would still be required to create language and symbolically encoded information. The problem of language-based, information-rich life was recognized completely apart from religious concerns, and it will take something other than an unguided process to solve it. The fact that many scientists involved with ID (or many people in general) have religious thoughts and concerns is true, but that is beside the scientific issue. There is nothing wrong, for example, with ID advocates having an opinion about the origin of life that goes beyond what the science of ID can indicate. ID'ers have been repeatedly clear that they are incorporating considerations beyond science to reach those additional conclusions. There is nothing disingenuous about the fact that oneâs views are (hopefully) larger than what science alone can tell us.
Stu wrote: Nonsense. ID doesn't invoke an omnipotent Creator, is not based on the Genesis account and isn't anti-evolution.