May 23, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

The Tenure and Promotion Committee at Iowa State University last month denied tenure to Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez. Gonzalez has appealed to the president of the university, who is expected to issue a decision on the case in June. Having served on a T&P Committees, I appreciate that no one likes to either deny or be denied tenure, but this case is a little suspect. He is appealing because Gonzalez has “published 21 papers since 2002, many in top journals,” according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. He also has received grant funding that partially supported him and the university for 3 years, and he has a normalized h-index of 13 (a measure of how many times one is sited by other scholars). The next highest in his department of 10 is a  normalized h-index of 9. So why is tenure not awarded? Some suspect it is not because of what he didn’t do, but because of what else he did. In 2004 Mr. Gonzalez co-wrote The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery, a scholarly work that openly supports the Intelligent Design philosophy. This same book was developed into a video, which the Smithsonian Institute was to co-sponsor in premiering.. that is until a backlash of objections from key supporters came in. (I do not find it hard to believe that this is a factor in Gonzalez’s tenure denial, especially since my own dissertation proceedings were stopped when it was discovered that I though “natural selection makes more since as an explanation of organization populations than when applied in biology.” I basically had to lie that I changed my mind in order to get on with my PhD.) Please note from Gonzalez’s university bio that he suggests no objection to evolution or an old universe. That is not the real issue in Intelligent Design. It is the Design part (implying a Designer => implying an accountability beyond ourselves). Is this really possible? The most telling statement in the quite honest Chronicle article is, “‘It looks to me like discrimination,’ said one astronomer, who did not want to be named, fearing a backlash for speaking up in favor of an intelligent-design proponent.” If you would like to (nicely) express your opinion to university President Gregory Geoffroy (pronounced JOE-free), upon whose desk this issue now rests, you may contact him here..  

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April 10, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

I know it’s not good to go more than a week without posting to a blog, but I have a pretty good excuse. Wednesday night was a rough one, and Thursday morning the abdominal pains were so bad I asked my wife to drive me to the ER. X-rays revealed nothing, so why had my intestines shut down? It was Monday afternoon before exploratory optical surgery revealed a major abscess and a ruptured appendix. Yes, I could well have died, as many have told me, but that’s not the most amazing part. Apparently, when the appendix ruptured and began to abscess, parts of my intestines moved over to block off the infection from the rest of my body. Then a fiber began to form that knitted the intestines into the new position, so nothing could seep past. This reduced my pain (confusing the doctors), and prevented the infection from quickly spreading throughout my abdominal cavity, which likely would have been fatal.

Now for the truly amazing part: What my body did was above and beyond the standard call of duty. That the body would wall off infection is not unknown to doctors, but think about the context. This is an infection response that cannot be described in terms of chemical processes. Notice that the description above speaks of the event as what the body did in response to a need. That’s the only way to make sense of what happened. That can only be done from a Design position. There is nothing in evolutionary theory that can explain response to a need. The best evolutionary theory has to offer in explanation of the immune system is that natural selection would preserve good things; not cause them. And in my case, as with many others, the body’s good response was not needed until past child-bearing years. The whole immune system is a huge enigma to evolutionary theory.

Posted in Science and faith, Personal story | 3 Comments »

September 3, 2006 by Dr. Mc.

While in my PhD program I completely lost my belief in God–not because of the facts, but because of the cultural environment. You can read about my experience in this article. I have now recovered, and am passionate about the abuse I experienced.

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