Others here will have more to say on this later, but just wanted to note the local Star Press’s lead sentence:
Ball State University has hired a controversial astronomer who is a national leader in the intelligent design movement.
President Jo Ann Gora approved the hiring of Guillermo Gonzalez as an assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy on June 12 at a salary of $57,000. He will start teaching at BSU in August.
Between being denied tenure at Iowa State University under scandalous circumstances and this new appointment, Gonzalez was at Grove City College.
It’s amusing that Gonzalez is described as “controversial.” There is nothing controversial about him, nor is he, strictly, a leader in the intelligent design community, at least not in any political sense. He wanted mainly to find and write about exoplanets (of which he has done a great deal). But the simple expression of his view that the design of the universe is not an accident triggered attacks by atheists at Iowa State, apparently spearheaded by an atheist religion prof, Hector Avalos. The entire controversy was brought to him by such people.
It continues today, with Darwin’s man Jerry Coyne quoted in the story:
“Do you see any pattern here?” Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, asked The Star Press. “I’m wondering … why Ball State’s physics and astronomy department has a penchant for ID (intelligent design) people. This (hiring) is a very unwise move for Ball State, particularly when one of its other astronomy professors, Eric Hedin, is under investigation for teaching ID in an astronomy class. If the university wants to retain any scientific credibility, they should start hiring scientists who will teach real science and not religious apologetics.”
An atheist who claims religion and science are incompatible, …
I do see a pattern. I see a big fat piece of work, actually.
It says a lot for the low state of the professoriate today if no one gets tired of Darwin’s men demonstrating that this is all they have really got left. By now the threat of destroying the university’s credibility should sound hollow even to a campus bureaucrat. – O’Leary
Hat tip: Daniel Quinones