Discovery Institute
05-27-07
Dark Matter: Blacklist at Iowa State
It’s clear from the ideologically motivated attacks on Dr Guillermo Gonzalez, an
assistant professor of astronomy and co-author of The Privileged Planet,
that scientists who acknowledge the evidence for design in the universe are not
welcome as tenured members of the Iowa State University faculty.
Anti-design scientists and bloggers have admitted publicly that they will continue
to exclude intelligent design scientists from academia. Yet in the 20th century
many of the advances in the understanding of our universe were accompanied
by vigorous open discussion of the design implications of cosmological theories.
From the Enlightenment to early the 20th century, virtually all astronomers
believed that the universe was eternal. When solutions for Einstein’s tensor
equations were proposed in the first decades of the 20th century, it was evident
that they were compatible with an expansion (or contraction) of the universe.
With Edwin Hubble’s observation of the redshift that showed evidence for an
expanding universe, some astrophysicists proposed that the universe had a
moment of creation. Many other astrophysicists were troubled by the theological
implications of a “moment of creation,” and proposed a Steady State (eternal)
model of the cosmos.
There was a vigorous free discussion of the scientific, philosophical and
theological implications of the expanding universe by scientists in the early and
mid 20th century. A “moment of creation” — the Big Bang — implied a creator,
and implied design. Based on the evidence, design won, and the advocates of
the steady state model showed integrity and grace in acknowledging that the Big
Bang theory, despite its design implications, was the best theory to explain the
emergence and structure of the universe.
As agnostic astrophysicist Robert Jastrow famously said:
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story
ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to
conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by
a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
As the blacklist at Iowa State shows, 21st century atheists lack the integrity and
grace of their predecessors. This time, they intend to make sure that theories that
invoke even the possibility of design in the universe are excluded, and theorists
who are open to the possibility of design are blacklisted.
Modern atheists know that they lost the scientific debate about the Big Bang in
the 20th century. This time around, they are making sure that there will be no
debate.
Please contact Iowa State University President Gregory L. Geoffroy (515-294
-2042 or president@iastate.edu) and ask him to grant tenure to Dr. Gonzalez,
and to end the blacklisting of scientists who support intelligent design at Iowa
State.