Intelligent Design Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez the Victim of Academic Persecution, Says Discovery Institute

On Monday, the Discovery Institute announced that it is making public a record of secret e-mails exchanged among faculty at Iowa State University about noted ISU astronomer Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez. The e-mails, according to the Institute, show forth the fact that an orchestrated campaign was organized and conducted against Gonzalez by his colleagues, with the intent to deny him tenure because he is a supporter of the philosophy of Intelligent Design (ID).

Faculty involved in the tenure decision knew very well that Gonzalez supports ID. Over a year before his tenure evaluation was scheduled, one ISU professor wrote an e-mail that left no doubt that Gonzalez's tenure application would never receive a fair evaluation.

In private e-mails, Gonzalez's colleagues deliberated about his tenure and collaborated to express their contempt for his views by asserting that ID is "intellectually vacuous and that "embalming is more of a science" than ID.

What's more, they asserted that Gonzalez should be lumped with "idiots" and "religious nutcases." They laughed at and ridiculed Gonzalez's ID work, saying they would only study it "[u]nder medication."

Members of ISU's department of Physics and Astronomy desired for Gonzalez to understand "that this is not a friendly place for him to develop further his IDeas" and they hoped "he may look for a better place as a result."

Flying in the face of his public statements and those of ISU President Gregory Geoffroy, the chairman of ISU's Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dr. Eli Rosenberg stated in Dr. Gonzalez's tenure dossier that Dr. Gonzalez's support for intelligent design "disqualifies him from serving as a science educator."

Casey Luskin, the Discovery Institute's attorney for public policy and legal affairs, states, "Dr. Rosenberg misled Dr. Gonzalez, the public, and the media when he said ID barely played a role in the decision...[ISU department faculty] at secret and inappropriate tenure deliberations held via e-mail a year before the official process started, they decided that they wanted Gonzalez out of ISU because he supported intelligent design...The e-mails prove that Dr. Gonzalez lost his job because of views on ID, not because of his job performance...It is extremely disconcerting that[the Board] are closing their eyes to the fact that Gonzalez was a victim of academic persecution, a clear First Amendment case."

Intelligent Design asserts that complex life-forms, including human beings, are so "irreducibly complex" that it is impossible that they were created through the process of evolution, or if they were created by such there had to have been a divine guiding Hand at work behind the scenes. Many ID supporters are also biblical Creationists, which means they believe that the Earth is no more than 10,000 years old. They say that scientific dating methods that show the Earth to be billions of years old are too flawed to give accurate information and thus skew the results.

The vast majority of scientists who are ID supporters are Christians and they say that "irreducible complexity" can be used to prove the existence of God.
Many parents are outraged over the permission given by courts to public schools to teach the theory of ID in biology classes, as long as Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is also taught. They say that these teachings are motivated by religion, not by science, and have no place in the public classroom because public schools are not permitted to mix the promotion of religious views in with their academic programs.

Scientists who do not support ID are very much in agreement that the concept makes students less scientifically literate and does not adhere to the scientific methodology.

The Discovery Institute says of itself, "The point of view Discovery brings to its work includes a belief in God-given reason and the permanency of human nature." The non-partisan Institute produces, among many other things, media for Congressional testimony.

Supporters of ID say that those opposed to the teaching of ID in the classroom are "Darwinian fundamentalists" who are afraid to have their views on evolutionary theory challenged, and that since Darwin's concept is just a theory, not 100% proven, students should be exposed to an alternative point of view.

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