Cyclone Nation
05-28-07
Is this the man who really runs ISU?
By Steve Deace
CN publisher
Most of the time we leave the so-called culture war off the pages of our website.
However, when it intersects with ISU sports we feel as if it's our duty to comment.
This week, our publisher introduces you to Hector Avalos (pictured left), who
just might be the most powerful figure on the ISU campus. His next target is
Gene Chizik and the ISU football team.
Warning: what you are about to read would be considered highly offensive in
several enclaves today, especially college campuses turned indoctrination
centers like the religious studies department at Iowa State University. Those
of you that pride yourselves on being more "tolerant" and more "enlightened"
than you fellow upright vat of primordial ooze should stop reading now, or face
the implosion of your frontal lobe. Those of you who lazily refuse to acknowledge
anything could be more important than sports and spew bile every time someone
brings up a non-sports subject should also stop reading for fear that someone
might actually consider you a grown up for a change if you continue. The author
doesn’t particularly care about either group, and even less about what they think,
and he’s only warning them in order to save himself the trouble of banning them
from our message boards and deleting their whiny emails. Everyone else – those
of you best described as "normal" – should feel free to read on.
I typically only post my private thoughts on matters related to Iowa State sports
on our premium board for our Cyclone Nation subscribers. However, given the
subject matter we’re going to be addressing this week, I thought it best to make it
available to as many residents of Cyclone Nation as possible.
This week’s Deace Blog seeks to answer one, and only one, question. That
question is simply this: who is really in charge at Iowa State University?
Seriously, who is the chief of the Cyclone tribe? I know that officially Dr. Gregory
Geoffroy, nice chap by the way, is listed on the roster as university president.
However, I’m beginning to think that the most powerful man on the ISU campus
is actually Dr. Hector Avalos.
And if you’ve been following the news lately, you’ve probably come away with
that conclusion, too.
Who is Dr. Avalos? Dr. Avalos is the militant and activist atheist professor
within ISU’s religious studies department. That’s right. ISU has a militant and
activist atheist teaching in its religious studies department. Better yet, if you’re a
taxpayer here in the state of Iowa you’re actually paying for it. Congratulations on
participating in the fleecing of America.
I know what you’re thinking, cause it’s the same thing I was thinking when I first
heard about this. You’re thinking, "Dude, why would an angry atheist (and is
there any other kind) want to be teaching in the religious studies department?
What interest in religion does he have if he doesn’t believe in God?"
Now, that’s an obvious question to have, especially if – like me – you’re from a
little place we Earthlings like to call normal. So go ahead and answer your own
question. Why would an atheist, and an activist one at that, want to teach in the
religious studies department?
For the same reason a rooster wants into the hen house.
It’s tempting to say that Dr. Avalos, considering what he says and writes outside
the classroom, is using our tax money to proselytize atheism to college students.
But I’m sure a Harvard grad is too smart to be caught doing so overtly, and that
he instead uses sledgehammer-like subtlety to debunk and demagogue belief in
God to what he views as gullible college students.
Besides, the truth is that in today’s paganized and relativistic culture there is a
taxpayer-subsidized Hector Avalos somewhere and to some degree on almost
every college campus of consequence in the country. With sadly too very few
exceptions nowadays they’re called the faculty.
Normally this isn’t territory we cover here on this website, instead its fodder for
my daily radio show on 1040-WHO, and that’s because normally sports provide
some semblance of a haven from America’s ongoing culture war. But that haven
is eroding, as recent developments at ISU would attest.
See, Mr. Potter…err…I mean Mr. Avalos, is a man with a warped worldview
living in a sad denial of reality. He is the embodiment of what St. Paul once said
about educated scoffers: "While professing themselves to be wise they became
utter fools."
Mr. Avalos is trying to live his life contrary to what the owner’s manual says about
how it works. He’s trying to suppress the truth about the owner’s manual, or even
that there is an owner altogether. He wants his life to be all his own, to do with
what he wants. He may desire that, but somewhere in the back of his mind he
suspects he could be wrong, it’s just that his pride won’t let him admit it. His heart
has been hardened. People in this condition have a tendency to get increasingly
bitter and pretentious over time, and they try and take everyone down with them
as they plunge into spiritual oblivion. I used to get mad at people like this…now I
pity them.
People like Mr. Avalos describe victory as getting a few fellow fools in black
robes or on mindless public school boards to go along with the scam. And that
seemingly works for a little while. Heck, they’ve even convinced an entire
generation of Americans that the words "separation of church and state" are
actually written in the Constitution. They’re not, but the Constitution does end
with the words, "…in the year of our Lord."
Nevertheless, they sustain this charade that they’re their own God to the bitter
end. For reasons known only to Him, God allows it. However, this strategy is
short-term at best because it carries with it a fatal flaw in the long run.
The last time I checked the death rates worldwide they were still hovering at right
around 100%. Yep, we are all going to take the dirt nap at some point—no
exceptions. And since eternity is a long time, we’re all also going to be dead a lot
longer than we were ever alive.
The new man in charge of Iowa State football strives to live his life with eternity
in mind. Gene Chizik is a man with a strong Christian faith and Judeo-Christian
value system, which puts him squarely at odds with Mr. Avalos. He didn’t pick
this fight, he didn’t even want to. But living out your Christian faith has a tendency
to attract folks like Hector Avalos in this world, like a dog returns to its own vomit.
And unlike today’s modern politically correct nonsense that "faith is a private
thing," Coach Chizik kicks it old school when it comes to the absolute truth that
defines who he is as a man. He believes it should be the foundational principle
that shapes who he is as a husband, father, and yes even a football coach.
For some of these young men, Coach Chizik will be the closest thing to a father
they’ve ever had up until this point. As a leader of young men, Coach Chizik
takes seriously his role as mentor for a generation of football players that will go
on to become our neighbors, fathers to the next generation of our children, and
members of our community someday soon. Getting there as a young man is
often a sloppy process, I know it was for me.
Until recently my life didn’t make sense, despite the fact that from the outside
looking in people probably thought I was pretty well off. By the age of 28 I had a
daily radio show, regularly appeared on television, was married to a loyal wife,
and had a beautiful baby daughter. I had some money (when I wasn’t getting
fired). I had some notoriety. I had some stuff. I wasn’t even 30. But still
something huge was missing. It all still seemed so meaningless.
Coach Chizik understands that the only way to ultimately live a meaningful life,
and there’s nothing a man craves more than a legacy, is to have a healthy
relationship with the Maker. It’s when we don’t that we have a tendency to make
bad decisions, the sorts of decisions that can irreparably damage our lives and
the lives of those around us. I know that I am a far different father, husband, and
man in the years since I got to know my Father than I was when I was a spiritual
orphan. I’m certainly not perfect, but I’m no longer a lost soul, either.
That’s why Coach Chizik has helped to bring in and promote the "In the Zone"
event coming to Ames on June 23rd, which he’ll be speaking at. It’s also why
Coach Chizik wants a team chaplain to be a full-time staff position within the
football program.
Hector Avalos’ ignores his Maker, and instead worships the idols of science and
reason. They can be useful tools that shouldn’t be dismissed, but all they can tell
us about this life is how. They certainly can’t tell us why. Mr. Avalos doesn’t want
to know why, because if he acknowledges the answer to why it will have
repercussions for the choices he makes in his life right on down the line. And
when you’re asphyxiating on pride you don’t even consider the why for a second.
So Mr. Avalos and his band of 99 other reprobate minds have circulated a
petition on campus, urging Dr. Geoffroy to deny Coach Chizik’s request – which
is supported by athletics director Jamie Pollard – for a team chaplain.
Predictably, you’re hearing all the high-minded talk of tolerance and pluralism;
how the taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for a "religious office."
Some of these gutless tactics even made it into a recent sports column in the
Des Moines Register. Why do I say gutless? Because they’re covering up their
real motives. They don’t have the testicular fortitude to just come out and really
say what they don’t like about it. So I’ll do it for them.
This isn’t about the separation of church and state, and this isn’t about tolerance.
This is about one thing and one thing only—the separation of Christ and state.
Jesus Christ is unique among all other figures in history, and that’s why over two
millennia later a boy born in a barn is still making folks like Mr. Avalos nervous.
He asserted absolutes, and said that if you weren’t for him you were against him.
He leaves no middle ground about who he is, and doesn’t provide you the
escape hatch of a good moral teacher. That’s because billions of people across
the globe worship him every day as the embodiment of the only true God. A good
moral teacher doesn’t lie about who he is.
Other religions, like Islam, bastardize him. Other religions dismiss him. Other
religions try to downplay him by including him in a pantheon of other gods. But
nobody – and I do mean nobody – ignores him.
He’s the greatest phenomena that ever crossed the horizon of this world. He’s
the centerpiece of western civilization. He’s unique…he’s unparalleled…he’s
unprecedented. For folks like Mr. Avalos, try as the might they can’t get him out
of their minds, and they can’t outlive him nor can they live without him.
What Mr. Avalos, and others like him, really fear is that Coach Chizik’s plan for a
team chaplain may inspire a generation of young men wearing the Cyclone
uniform to reconsider their eternal destiny, which will cause them to reconsider
how to live their temporal lives on this planet. If they do that they may not vote
the way folks like Mr. Avalos prefer, nor will they likely live the way folks like Mr.
Avalos do. And when you’re of the mindset of a Mr. Avalos and are convinced
that this life is all there is, you will fight to the grave for it.
That’s why Mr. Avalos and his same gang of 99 are trying to derail giving tenure
to Guillermo Gonzalez, even though Professor Gonzalez doesn’t teach intelligent
design in his ISU classes the way an atheist like Dr. Avalos teaches religion.
Professor Gonzalez’ beliefs are not any different than Francis Collins’ are, and
he’s the man that runs the human genome project, probably the most important
scientific initiative of the age.
Would ISU deny tenure to Dr. Collins, who is a Christian that believes in theistic
evolution (in other words, he believes that God steered the evolutionary process
and it wasn’t random chance like Darwin asserted)? Is ISU suddenly too
enlightened to give tenure to the head of the human genome project? I would
think not, even though his views on the origin of life are essentially the same as
Gonzalez’s. Except he doesn’t have a militant atheist religious studies professor
stalking him the way Guillermo does.
That’s funny. I thought religion wasn’t supposed to interfere with the scientific
process? But at ISU the Scopes Monkey Trial has come full circle. Now an
atheist in the religious studies department gets to decide who gets tenured in the
science department, and he gets to decide whether our football coach who is
responsible for one of the university’s biggest revenue streams gets a component
that he believes is vital to its long-term success.
At ISU, the atheists have become the theocrats, it’s just that their god is their
stomachs. As the great prophet Roger Daltry once sang: "Meet the new
boss…same as the old boss."
So now it’s time for us to come full circle as well in this column and again ask the
question we posed at the outset: who is really in charge at Iowa State University?
Dr. Geoffroy, if you’re reading this, here’s your chance to prove it’s really you.