So...those who buy into the general premise of Expelled,

[crawfish]

...that ID proponents are being suppressed by academia.

What you you think of this?

Essentially, it points to academicians - most of them Christians - who have been dismissed or punished for holding evolutionary views. Here are a few samples:

Steve Bitterman was an instructor who taught the Western Civilization course at Southwestern Community College in Red Oak, Iowa. In 2007, at the age of sixty, he was fired because he did not teach the story of Adam and Eve as literal truth. (How many faithful Christians there are in this country who see that story as an allegory, and a powerful, meaningful one, of the loss of innocence!) “I just thought there was such a thing as academic freedom here,” he said afterward. “From my point of view, what they’re doing is essentially teaching their students very well to function in the eighth century.”

Richard Colling graduated from Olivet Nazarene University and taught there for twenty-seven years. A man of strong religious convictions, he argued that one could believe in the Christian God and still accept the scientific truth of evolution. In 2004, he published a book about this belief, and for his pains, he was barred from teaching general biology or having his book used in the school.

I've always been distressed about how Colling was treated. His book is an excellent read, and he's obviously a man of great faith.

You'll notice the list is longer, and far more detailed, than what Expelled offered. It is also more disturbing, with threats of death and physical violence, and some actual violence involved. Interesting also that in the game that Expelled! pits as being atheist vs. believers, the chief targets of the ID/creationist crowd seems to be other Christians.

 

[vossler]

I've always been distressed about how Colling was treated. His book is an excellent read, and he's obviously a man of great faith.

It's hard to comment on these people without doing some due diligence and investigating them fully. However, I will make this general observation about Colling. If he was a professor at a christian university where he taught something that was clearly non-biblical then yes he should have been dismissed. I have absolutely no problem with that.

 

[shernren]

Meanwhile, the true stories of the "expelled" are quite different from portrayed in the movie:

http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth

 

[crawfish]

It's hard to comment on these people without doing some due diligence and investigating them fully. However, I will make this general observation about Colling. If he was a professor at a christian university where he taught something that was clearly non-biblical then yes he should have been dismissed. I have absolutely no problem with that.

Clearly? The Nazarene church has no clear stance on the creationism/evolution debate, and most Nazarene colleges allow evolution to be taught.

He was dismissed because of the pressure put on officials by creationist proponents because of his book, pure and simple.

And no, he neither taught or claimed nothing that was clearly anti-biblical, anyway.

 

[shernren]

It's hard to comment on these people without doing some due diligence and investigating them fully. However, I will make this general observation about Colling. If he was a professor at a christian university where he taught something that was clearly non-biblical then yes he should have been dismissed. I have absolutely no problem with that.

Quotes from Colling's president who stood up for him against the negative views of the community:

Bowling has also spoken out about how religion and science can be reconciled, arguing that they can interact (although his analysis places more of an emphasis on the primacy of faith). In an address to students last year, Bowling explored these issues. “Christianity should not be viewed as adversarial to diligent science. It is not. God created the natural order and the laws which govern it. Science and faith are not enemies,” he said. “But let’s go a step further. How do we respond when we come to a point of apparent conflict between scripture and science? I believe that at a point, Scripture takes pre-eminence. For example, the miraculous activity of God, ultimately demonstrated in the incarnation (Jesus becoming human), and the resurrection, can never be explained by science; such events do not fit the laws of science. So if we subvert the faith to what can be explained by the laws of science alone, we fall short of the Biblical view of God and salvation.”

On the question of evolution, Bowling said this: “The Christian faith and some understandings of evolution are not necessarily incompatible. However, I want to be very clear in saying that not every articulation of evolution will do; not at all. That is to say, evolution must be understood in certain ways to be compatible with Christian faith. The Christian affirmation of God as Creator affirms God as initially creating, but also continually sustaining, actively interacting, and purposefully directing creation to its culmination. All things come from Him, exist in Him, and move to Him. Evolution, if it is to be held by a Christian, must be considered as a methodology of divine creation within that broader Biblical context.”

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/10/evolution

 

[Jimlarmore]

I believe in freedom of speech and freedom to express your beliefs without reprisals. However, in a critical environment such as the classroom of an institution of higher learning , the philosophy of those who run it come into play.

To my knowledge all of those who have suffered from what they considered persecution knew full well in advance the consequences of proceding on with their intended course of action. IOW, if I went to a public university as a creationists and taught an alternative view of science I could fully expect to be disiplined for it and vice versa because of intolerance to that.

I guess my biggest problem is with the intolerance. Why not allow both sides to be presented and allow discerning minds to work? What would be so bad about that? I mean really. Some scientist equate metaphysical views as nothing more than trumped up spells and witches potions anyway. Yet they have no problem at all with talking about witches and spells of long ago. They have no problem with talking about the way things were before the so-called enlightenment. Yet they are scared to death to allow a Christian scientist to present his views on an alternative to the paradigm. Amazing!!

God Bless
Jim Larmore

 

[Mallon]

It strikes me that most of the neocreationists here commenting on what goes on in academia aren't actually involved in academia.
Amirite?

 

[shernren]

Jim, have you actually looked at the real stories of the "expelled"? The ones on expelledexposed.com that I posted up?

 

[busterdog]

I believe in freedom of speech and freedom to express your beliefs without reprisals. However, in a critical environment such as the classroom of an institution of higher learning , the philosophy of those who run it come into play.

To my knowledge all of those who have suffered from what they considered persecution knew full well in advance the consequences of proceding on with their intended course of action. IOW, if I went to a public university as a creationists and taught an alternative view of science I could fully expect to be disiplined for it and vice versa because of intolerance to that.

I guess my biggest problem is with the intolerance. Why not allow both sides to be presented and allow discerning minds to work? What would be so bad about that? I mean really. Some scientist equate metaphysical views as nothing more than trumped up spells and witches potions anyway. Yet they have no problem at all with talking about witches and spells of long ago. They have no problem with talking about the way things were before the so-called enlightenment. Yet they are scared to death to allow a Christian scientist to present his views on an alternative to the paradigm. Amazing!!

God Bless
Jim Larmore

When the critics of Expelled can actually find, say four or five cases of real persecution, then they can be taken seriously. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Astronomer Barry Settefield's wife was on the board a while ago. She was told her husband was a fraud on this board by a group of TEs, some of whom still post here.

The real dig against Expelled, by many who post here, is that all the ID people who have been excluded from academia are rightly excluded. The suggestion to the contrary is incredible.

The other fantasy is that there isn't spectrum of opinion within ID, much of which is blurred and merges with the fringes of Darwinianism. The fantasy is pretending that academics do not react irrationally against such scientists when there is any faint whiff of religion the fact they do fit within a range of seriously debated subjects.

With extremes of intolerance, as you note, I think the right challenge is to say, find something to agree with in the disfavored position. Then we can talk about whether you really are tolerant at all.

 

[shernren]

When the critics of Expelled can actually find, say four or five cases of real persecution, then they can be taken seriously. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Astronomer Barry Settefield's wife was on the board a while ago. She was told her husband was a fraud on this board by a group of TEs, some of whom still post here.

A bunch of internet forumers tells Setterfield he is a fraud = academic persecution! Dang. Some people really need thicker skin.

I've lost count of the number of times YECs have called me a second-class Christian, does that mean I qualify for Fox's Book of Martyrs?

The real dig against Expelled, by many who post here, is that all the ID people who have been excluded from academia are rightly excluded. The suggestion to the contrary is incredible.

The other fantasy is that there isn't spectrum of opinion within ID, much of which is blurred and merges with the fringes of Darwinianism. The fantasy is pretending that academics do not react irrationally against such scientists when there is any faint whiff of religion the fact they do fit within a range of seriously debated subjects.

Well, Sternberg unethically handled museum samples, and Gonzalez wasn't pulling in a fifth of the research grants his cohort was pulling in, to name just two instances where ID "martyrs" have been rightfully excluded from academia.

Meanwhile, out in the real world of academia ...

It has been repeatedly rumored (and reiterated by one of the reviewers of this article) that both the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have in the past actively discouraged the use of the word “evolution” in titles or abstracts of proposals so as to avoid controversy. Indeed, we were told by one researcher that in the title of one proposal, the authors were urged to change the phrase “the evolution of sex” to the more arcanely eloquent wording “the advantage of bi-parental genomic recombination.” - "Evolution by Any Other Name", Janis Antonovics et al.

Oops. Who's being expelled now?

With extremes of intolerance, as you note, I think the right challenge is to say, find something to agree with in the disfavored position. Then we can talk about whether you really are tolerant at all.

So what can you agree with TEs about, busterdog? ^^

 

[busterdog]

A bunch of internet forumers tells Setterfield he is a fraud = academic persecution! Dang. Some people really need thicker skin.

Actually, this is a Christian body, nominally at least. We could go through the scripturally prohibitions against what was done for starters. My name is not Setterfield, so perhaps that is unnecessary. When you err on such matters, however, scripture tells me to point it out. I did and I do.

As for "thick skin", I think you misunderstand. The working hypothesis is that you are wasting my time. My proposal is a matter of economy.