In his January Diary, John Derbyshire comes down on the side of the University of Kentucky for refusing to hire Martin Gaskell, a superbly qualified astronomer, for the sole reason that he expressed sympathy for intelligent design. The case of Professor Gaskell, who sued UK for religious discrimination, needs to be understood in the context of widespread anti-Christian discrimination in academic science. I thought readers might be interested in some background on the story and many others like it to which Brother John did not draw our attention.
The University of Kentucky chose to pay a $125,000 settlement to Gaskell, now at the University of Texas, after Gaskell’s attorneys released records of e-mail traffic among the faculty hiring committee. Seeking a scientist to head UK’s observatory, professors complained that Gaskell was “potentially Evangelical,” while a lone astrophysicist on the committee protested that Gaskell stood to be rejected “despite his qualifications that stand far above those of any other applicant.”
This is no isolated incident. An enormous, largely hidden transformation has taken place in what we mean when we speak of “science.” For centuries, the free and unfettered scientific enterprise was fueled by a desire to know the mind of God. “The success of the West,” writes historian Rodney Stark in his important book The Victory of Reason, “including the rise of science, rested entirely on religious foundations, and the people who brought it about were devout Christians.” Now, increasingly, voicing such a desire is likely to get you excluded from the guild of professional scientists.
For years, I’ve tracked the stories that come out regularly about scientists of impeccable credentials whose religion-friendly beliefs proved injurious to their career. In some fields, notably biology and cosmology, Christians who voice doubts about Darwinian theory pay a particularly high price.
Last month, a top-level computer specialist on the NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn, David Coppedge, got fired after he sued JPL for religious discrimination. Coppedge had occasionally chatted with interested colleagues about the scientific case for intelligent design, which made good sense since JPL’s officially defined mission includes the exploration of questions relating to the origin and development of life on Earth and elsewhere. For this, his supervisor severely chastised him for “pushing religion” and humiliated and demoted him.
At Iowa State University, astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez was refused tenure, despite a spectacular research publication record, because of a book he co-authored arguing that life is no cosmic accident.
At the Smithsonian Institution, supervisors harshly penalized evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg for editing a pro–intelligent design essay in a peer-reviewed technical-biology journal. The U.S. Office of Special Counsel examined the 2005 case, finding that Smithsonian colleagues investigated his religious beliefs and created a “hostile work environment” aimed at “forcing [him] out.”
Similar incidents have occurred at the University of Idaho, George Mason University, and Baylor University.
There is, in fact, an underground of Darwin-doubting scientists, fearful for their livelihoods, who believe that evidence from cell biology, cosmology, and paleontology tells an increasingly complicated and contradictory story about life’s evolution.
In every such instance I’m aware of, the suppressed scientist is a Christian, whether Protestant or Catholic. Meanwhile, among members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, 95 percent of biologists identify as atheists or agnostics. The fact of their religious (or irreligious) beliefs doesn’t invalidate their scientific opinions. Nor should the religious belief of Christians cast their otherwise sterling scientific training and acumen into doubt. However, in academia, it is understood to do just that.
It’s bad enough when private universities clamp down on the free exchange of ideas. But government-run institutions have often seemed to be the worst offenders of all, something the First Amendment cannot permit. The public is poorly served by a system of scientific research and funding that seems locked into reaching predetermined conclusions.
Science has become a business like many others, unfortunately, and a largely nationalized one at that. Workers must toe a company line. With the government’s $7 billion National Science Foundation and $31 billion National Institutes of Health heavily supporting research, localized pressures easily take on the form of a universal compulsion to conform.
The search for truth should be unimpeded by such orthodoxies, whether religious or anti-religious. The scientists who initiated the scientific revolution itself, all Christians, knew that better than scientists, or John Derbyshire, do today.
— David Klinghoffer is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute.
IMO Mr. Klinghoffer does Mr. Derbyshire an injustice.
Derb states very clearly that this is not an easy case, and his position is based at least to some extent on distaste for anti-discrimination laws, something that many conservatives can sympathize with.
In fact, I largely agree with Derb's discussion of the issue, although I would come down on balance on the other side.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUT is a better school anyway. Hopefully, he'll go on to make some incredibly important discovery, become a household name, and shame UK.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI think this is analogous to a Biology department refusing to hire a professor because the professor is a believer in astrology.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJohn who? The Derb has been irrelevant for a few years now. I'm not sure what set him off down his bitter path, but Derb, good luck with that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUntil the so-called "Intelligent Design" community of Darwin-doubters can come up with a real, falsifiable alternate theory to Evolution that isn't Christian Creation theory dressed up as science, they will not and should not be taken seriously. That they are Christian is not the issue. ID's proponents have no scientific basis to push it, so now you resort to claims of bigotry. While early scientist were indeed Christian believers, they were also more intellectually honest than current ID proponents.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThank you so much for a reasoned response both to Mr. Derbyshire and to the silly bigotry which currently pervades the scientific enterprise. It sounds as though the nanny state mentality is killing science, too.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe most interesting scientists would be those who, while not Christian, still accepted part or all of the Intelligent Design thesis. Religious skeptics or, say, Buddhists who looked at the evidence and found evidence of some non-physical causes of change would be far more convincing than the assertions of believing Christians.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd thus we have "right wing" identity politics. Wonderful.
Sorry, but if you are going to argue that the universe is a certain age based on other sources, the Bible for instance, it completely ruins your objectivity as a scientist (and please don't list the differences between creationism and ID - if the ID crown wasn't creationist at its core, there would be no conflict with anyone, except in philosophy departments). Trying to fit observation into a preconceived idea of the universe, particularly a religious preconceived notion, is about the worst sort of bias you can have. So I can see exactly why any astronomy or physics department would refuse to hire creationists. If you cannot accept data for which the absolute best interpretation is that the Earth is much more than 6,000 years old, you simply cannot be a scientist.
Now, the other issue is with the guild-like system that comprises academia. You can dig into anyone's record whose ideas you don't like and fire them for it, and you can overlook anyone's record whose opinions you agree with. But this is a problem that extends far beyond Christianity, and certainly beyond such indefensible positions as creationism. See Phi Beta Cons for much more on the troubled state of academia.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJimS, you are participating in precisely the same unintellectual straw-man prejudice that is being dealt with here. You are suggesting that the only arguments these scientists are making are Biblical ones, but that just makes the point against you. These are scientists who wish to scientifically investigate alternative theories and explanations and are systematically prevented from doing so by industry-wide blacklisting.
If a majority of scientists of a certain type profess to be athiests, I would assert that they are at least as guilty of attempting to fit their understanding of the universe into a preconceived notion as any scientist with ID or creationist leanings. And their unwillingness to allow for dissent only seems to verify such an argument.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf evolutionary ideas are so clearly right, and creationist ideas so clearly wrong, why do the evolutionists in charge need to shut up the creationists, or engage in ad hominem attacks? Debate them, and shoot their arguments full of holes. Unless, of course, you can't do it...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis has nothing to do with right wing identity politics. It has to do with ideological persecution of scientists. None of the cases Klinghoffer mentions has anything to do with debates about the age of the universe. None of the individuals involved was defending young earth creationism. Ranting about the age of the earth question indicates a refusal or inability to make simple distinctions.
Finally, in most cases, these scientists have been persecuted simply for holding suspect opinions rather than for teaching them. This is blatant ideological persecution that would be easily recognized in any other field.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseKlinghoffer made an interesting point about academic freedom and the high price that Christians especially pay for expressing dissenting views. Naturally he's immediately attacked in the comments section, thus proving his point. Some views, such as doubts about Darwinism, can't be tolerated apparently.
And beyond that they can’t even be accurately described by the critics. The first commenter just instantly assumes that David thinks the earth is 6,000 years old. Regardless of what David does think about the age of the earth, the commenter’s inability to grasp an opposing viewpoint is really amazing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJimS: You're right. If anyone right of center experiences discrimination, they should just suck it up, because it's either that or they have no option except to turn into a mirror-reverse image of Al Sharpton, strutting and prancing and making crazy demands and organizing marches to nowhere. There can't possibly be anything in between, right?
Except there's one little problem. We rely on science to be "neutral", and the evidence is increasingly suggesting that it's not - it's ideological.
In fact, it is taking on the qualities of its own "religion", complete with myths, taboos, untouchable assumptions, origin-stories, and all those things that science used to be opposed to.
So if right wing scientists are morally obligated to get into their closet and be happy there, what about the rest of us, who are expected to accept the pronouncements of the scientific community as unbiased and factual?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseStraw man alert, or maybe it's guilt by association.
JimS, you've done what too many people keep doing: conflating a belief in the possibility/ likelihood that the cosmos originated from intelligence with the most radical version of creationism. For the gazillionth time (I counted), to believe a god made the universe does not tie one into a young earth, literal seven-day schema as a naive reading of the book of Genesis might imply.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJimS, You have done a fine job of killing the "creationist" straw man. I would have thought, however, that as a fan of the scientific method you would have wanted some evidence that these Chtistian scientists actually believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old. But then you choose to remain ignorant of any difference between creationism and intelligent design. Instead you combine them for no reason that I can tell other than it would interfere with your preconceived notions.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI read Derb's comments regarding the case and I believe he was being reasonable. The scientist in question is most emphatically not a young universe guy and his qualifications were exceptional. Look, if he were a mohammedan, they university would have had no objection. In fact, they would have been delighted to have him. Islam, of course, is a creationist religion. It also believes nothing happens by chance, so teaching probability and quantum mechanics would be dicey.
Looks it's all a matter of who has political power, nothing else. Islam has it in droves and Christianity does not. In our multicultural times, the university did not want to come across as being compromised by a particular religion, particularly one that can be dispensed with at a price. Had the fellow been non-christian, the whole business might not have happened. We would have had other problems though. Same with the NASA guy.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Trying to fit observation into a preconceived idea" is definitely a problem, and that's why it is helpful for people to find out the facts before dragging Biblical creationism into this case.
Contrary to one of the posters, Martin Gaskell clearly accepted the standard scientific view about the age of the earth and universe (as do most scientific proponents of intelligent design). So that is a completely bogus justification for the state-sponsored discrimination that occurred in this case. Indeed, Dr. Gaskell was pretty clear that he had no huge beef with modern evolutionary theory. But he made the mistake of publicly making some friendly comments about certain intelligent design proponents such as biochemist Michael Behe. That was too much for the politically-correct thought police to accept (even though Gaskell was being hired for a position in astronomy, not biology).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMartin Gaskell is a professional acquaintance of mine, and I want to clear one thing up. He is no young earth creationist at all. He takes the Big Bang Cosmology view and holds the universe to be 13.7 billion years old--perfectly conventional astrophysics. Furthermore, he defends Big Bang Cosmology against what had been atheistic objections raised against it early on.
What got him into trouble with UK's search committee was this web page:
External Link
This is a handout he's given to Christians asking him about astronomy and its implications for religion. In it, he covers the range of interpretations of Genesis 1 (not only the widely-known 6,000 year-old universe view, which he is critical of, but also others that seek to harmonize its interpretation with scientific discoveries), and he explains what modern astronomy has to say about the origins, evolution, and structure of the universe. Then he shows what the Bible says, interpreted in the light of our discoveries in astrophysics.
I've noted elsewhere that there is absolutely nothing a mainstream astrophysicist could find fault with in Dr. Gaskell's presentation of the science here. The only thing that I could imagine someone taking issue with would be his discussion of how the Bible should or could be interpreted in light of our other knowledge--and that, only because there is such a variety of religious opinion on the matter. If the University of Kentucky found that to be objectionable, then they had put themselves in the position of judging a candidate's religious orthodoxy. And I know they don't want to open *that* Pandora's box.
What Dr. Gaskell has presented on this web page is the same kind of talk (and many of the same points) I've given to Sunday school classes and other religious groups when I talk about science and religion. I've done it many times, as have a lot of other Christian scientists I know--it's run-of-the-mill stuff. He was showing Christians why they don't have to fear astronomy and the Big Bang Model; that they shouldn't think of it as anti-Christian.
This is scientific outreach to religious groups, and even the National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have been taking interest in promoting. See, for example:
External Link
Now, if we can find our jobs (or job prospects) in jeopardy, based not on our scientific work, but on the fact that we promote science when talking to church groups...then we're in serious trouble. I'm generally wary of hiring discrimination cases, but the emails Gaskell's legal team released were the smoking gun. I'm glad UK settled, and I hope other public colleges are warned off.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBaylor? A Christian school in the heart of Texas! What is the world coming to? Before you know it, we'll have a president who didn't do a darn thing before being elected except write about himself not doing a darn thing before being elected.
Jim S.: Although I'm not really up on the whole ID scenario, I'm pretty sure the intelligent proponents don't take the Bible literally and thus they don't have any issues w/ the earth being older than 6,000 years ;)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIntelligent design? OK, maybe. Suppose there is a supreme being or similar "fairly supreme" being that created the universe and the earth as we know it. Suppose the scientific community embraced the concept. What does that lead to?
(i) the unwarranted leap that this creator is the God of Christians, Jews, Muslims, etc. and thereby justifies monotheism
(ii) that this creator "authored" the Bible, the Koran, the Torah etc. and therefore these are authoritative texts that are ultimate sources with "fundamental principles" to govern human society and activity
(iii) that this creator is a "personal god" rather than a disinterested being along the lines of the beliefs of the 18th century deists who "fathered" this country
I venture to say that many "people of faith" who advocate for an acceptance of intelligent design do so only as a pretext for imposing their moral values on others. Dangerous road say the least.
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