9 September 2007
Baylor Academic Discrimination Crisis Makes Sunday Front Page of Waco-Trib
William Dembski
The story of Prof. Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab and its removal from Baylor has finally made it into the local paper:
Web site sparks new intelligent design battle at BU | By Tim Woods
www.wacotrib.com/…/09092007wacintelligentdesign.htmlWaco Tribune-Herald | Sunday, September 09, 2007
A Baylor University professor is fighting university officials to have the school restore his personal Web site in a battle some link to academic freedom and intelligent design.
About a week after informing distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering Robert Marks that his Evolutionary Informatics Lab site would need to be taken down, Benjamin Kelley, Baylor’s dean of engineering, ordered the site be removed without Marks’ permission, according to Marks’ attorney, St. Paul, Minn.-based John Gilmore.
The site, which was on a university server, has been down since early August. . . .
In the online version of this article, I offered the following comments:
Comments by William Dembski | Sep 9, 2007 9:17 AM
Just a few points of clarification:
(1) The EIL website can be found on a mirror site off the Baylor server at www.evolutionaryinformatics.org. This is essentially what the Baylor administration removed.
(2) When Prof. Marks received notice from Dean Kelley that he was to remove the site from the Baylor server, there was nothing said about “Baylor branding.” Here is what Kelley wrote to Marks about removing the site: “I have received several concerned messages this week about an interview and web site dealing with evolutionary computing associated ID. Please disconnect this web site immediately and Cheryl will arrange a time for us to meet immediately upon my return.” With a meeting of attorneys pending, Kelley still removed the site — without Prof. Marks’s permission.
(3) Centers and institutes are university sponsored, have an annual budget, and need to cleared with the university. Labs and groups are not. Prof. Marks has other labs and groups at Baylor that never received Baylor’s official blessing and continue on to this day without any disclaimers. This is about ID and guilt by association. It has nothing to do with established university policy. For a full account, see uncommondescent.com/…/of-groups-and-labs-at-baylor.
(4) For an updated summary of all news coverage on this academic freedom crisis (it’s already been reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, WORLD Magazine, and the Baptist Press), consult uncommondescent.com/…/media-coverage-baylor-robert-marks-and-the-evolutionary-informatics-lab.
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1
bornagain77
09/09/2007
4:06 pm
eSomething tells me the heat is about to turn up in the university’s administrative office! Maybe now the President will actually take the time to talk to Dr. Marks and learn a thing or two about the hard science behind ID, the hard science he apparently knows nothing about and was so quick to condemn in the first place!
2
magnan
09/09/2007
5:40 pm
ebornagain77, I doubt it. This probably boils down mostly to academic politics and the fear of loss of reputation and donational money. The science doesn’t have much to do with it.
3
bornagain77
09/09/2007
6:28 pm
eMagnan,
That’s the second time I heard money brought up. What has the Neo-Darwinism theory done except send geneticists down blind alleys (Sanford Genetic Entropy; 2005). If throwing money away on false research is what people want to do, it is beyond me. Must people I know would like to see some fruit come from their investment of money!
Last time I checked most breakthroughs in science were accomplished when scientists followed the best approximation of reality that science could muster. If following a failed theory can’t be overcome in America, the rest of the world will surely follow the evidence where it leads and leave the USA in the dust!
4
magnan
09/10/2007
8:12 pm
ebornagain77: “If throwing money away on false research is what people want to do, it is beyond me. Must people I know would like to see some fruit come from their investment of money!”
This is simplistic. Many governmental funding bodies and academic university organizations tend to follow political rules first, before objectively considering the science (if this is even done at all). What is most important is maintaining bureaucratic empires and influence. Individual investors not personally expert in the area of science and engineering will tend to believe the “experts”. The “experts” have a big stake in maintaining the status quo, reputation, and of course in keeping the money flowing. This of course is a general picture - there are many exceptions.
5
magnan
09/10/2007
8:45 pm
ebornagain77: “If following a failed theory can’t be overcome in America, the rest of the world will surely follow the evidence where it leads and leave the USA in the dust!”
Maybe more truth than fiction - my impression anyway is that orthodoxy rules even more intolerantly in the USA than most other countries.
6
bornagain77
09/10/2007
9:27 pm
emagnan,
I remember this quote:
A Chinese paleontologist lectures around the world saying that recent fossil finds in his country are inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of evolution. His reason: The major animal groups appear abruptly in the rocks over a relatively short time, rather than evolving gradually from a common ancestor as Darwin’s theory predicts. When this conclusion upsets American scientists, he wryly comments: “In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin.”
Its from a Phillip Johnson paper here:
http://www.junkscience.com/aug99/darwin.htm
7
bornagain77
09/10/2007
9:33 pm
eMagnan:
God help our children if America can’t follow the scientific truth to major breakthroughs in science. Maybe our children will end up being the ones sending lead paint toys to China.