Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Sauce for the gander

ID opponents are defending Iowa State University for apparently denying tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez for supporting Intelligent Design, but are up in arms about Texas Director of Science Curriculum Chris Comer being fired for being against Intelligent Design. The former, they say, is perfectly okay, but the latter is an outrage.

I'm shocked.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"denying tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez for supporting Intelligent Design"

Are you SURE of this? Perhaps he didn't publish enough and didn't bring in enough grant money. Has Martin Cothran ever participated in a college tenure review? Has Martin Cothran done any research in the sciences related to this issue?

Martin Cothran said...

Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot: We're not supposed to have opinions on anything that we haven't actually experienced or engaged in ourselves.

How could I have been so careless!

Let me see. That means I'd better not say anything about politics because I've never actually been elected to office; I'd better not talk about the NCAA national football championship because I've never played in one; and I'd better not talk about religion since I'm not God.

Gee, that sort of limits my comments here doesn't it?

I'm sure you are posting this same comment on blogs that agree with you, right? Since all those posters who have never actually participated in a tenure review are defending ISU?

And by the way, in answer to your question of whether I am "SURE" about ISU's decision, I notice you conveniently left out the word "apparently," which was included in my comment. Now far be it from me to suggest that you left it out on purpose.

In fact, I probably shouldn't express an opinion on it at all, since I'm not myself in the habit of posting anonymously on other people's blogs and leaving out phrases which would answer my own questions.

Anonymous said...

While being an IDist certainly didn't help Gonzalez, there is good reason to believe he wouldn't have gotten tenure anyway. To get tenure, professors generally have to pull their weight by bringing in research grants, and Gonzalez has brought in almost nothing since being hired by ISU. You can read a good discussion about tenure decisions by someone in Gonzalez's field at http://scienceblogs.com/interactions/2007/07/a_farewell_to_academia_1.php

The situation in Texas is interesting because the creationist chairman of the SBOE, Don McLeroy, is clearly gearing up to introduce creationist anti-evolutionary pseudoscience into Texas scienc education standards, so he needed to get rid of his pro-science director of science curriculum. Now they can hire a creationist for the position.

Anonymous said...

The web address in my previous poist got cut off. The full address is http://scienceblogs.com/interactions/2007/07/a_fare
well_to_academia_1.php

Anonymous said...

"ID opponents are defending Iowa State University for apparently denying tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez for supporting Intelligent Design, but are up in arms about Texas Director of Science Curriculum Chris Comer being fired for being against Intelligent Design. The former, they say, is perfectly okay, but the latter is an outrage."

Intelligent Design is just another word for supernatural magic. Chris Comer is for science and she is against the idea of forcing science teachers to waste their students time discussing magic. Evolution is science. Intelligent Design is stupidity. Guillermo Gonzalez is pro-stupidity and Chris Comer is pro-science. It makes sense to throw stupid flat-earthers like Gonzalez out, but it made no sense to throw out a pro-science person like Chris Comer.

Do you understand now? I doubt it. It's obvious the people who own this blog are as stupid as Gonzalez. You might not like my choice of words, but I'm getting sick of dishonest Intelligent Design creationists lying to the gullible public about evolution. I just have a big problem with stupid liars and nobody is more stupid and more dishonest than a intelligent design creationist. I give these liars all the respect they deserve, and they deserve no respect at all. I don't know what motivates them. I don't understand why they are constantly trying to destroy science education. I do know they must be fought constantly. It's impossible to reason with stupid people, so all we can do is ridicule them and make sure they continue to lose in court. It's too bad they didn't learn anything from the Dover trial. Most likely there will be another trial some day, the flat-earthers will lose again, and more taxpayer money will be wasted on creationism insanity.

Martin Cothran said...

bobc,

I had always thought that people who were in favor of science were people who championed reason as well. Your post, however, seems to contain a lot of emotion. What is your argument that ID is not science? What is your evidence that ID proponents are dishonest.

I appreciate your visceral reaction to all of this, but we flat earthers here at Non-Science Central would like to hear how reason and evidence figure in to your positions.