Ball State president to meet with creationist Indiana legislators

March 27, 2014 • 8:10 am

The backstory, which you’ll know if you’ve been reading here, is this: President Jo Ann Gora of Ball State University (BSU) in Muncie, Indiana convened an investigatory panel after the Freedom From Religion Foundation informed her that one of the science classes in the Physics and Astronomy Department was teaching ID creationism and plumping for Jesus. After the panel’s report, Gora then deep-sixed that course, taught by Professor Eric Hedin, because the course pushed not only intelligent design (“ID,” which Gora characterized, correctly, as not credible science), but also Christianity, whose teaching violated the First Amendment (BSU is a public university).

The creationist Discovery Institute (DI) of Seattle went into a tizzy, decrying this as “censorship” even though Gora said that ID could be discussed in philosophy or non-science classes. The DI then leaned on four Republican Indiana State legislators, who wrote a letter to Gora asking her to make public the records of the investigatory panel, and to investigate other possible instances of atheism being proselytized (one by a Catholic teacher!) at BSU. They (and the Discovery Institute) issued an implicit threat to BSU: do our bidding or we’ll cut your university funding. This was in the form of a letter to Gora, and the legislators demanded a written response by last Monday. (I suspect their letter was drafted by the DI.)

Now, according to the Muncie Star-Press, Gora has responded to the legislators individually, saying that a face-to-face meeting with the legislators would be better than a written response, and inviting them to visit BSU for a chat, lunch, and also a campus tour. I’ve obtained a copy of Gora’s letter, which is below.

 

Gora letterThe Discovery Institute sees this as their big opportunity to get ID taught in science classes in public universities (it’s illegal to do that in secondary schools, but the First Amendment may not apply so strictly in universities). Gora—who will retire in June—is a tough person, I think, and I doubt she’ll give in. I also doubt whether four Republican legislators, one of whom is a creationist who keeps trying to get school prayer bills passed in Indiana, can have significant influence in cutting funds to a state university because they don’t like what it’s teaching.

I will refrain from calling those legislators names, but I have to say that as sympathizers to creationism who are threatening university funding if ID is not given sympathetic treatment, they’re looking like_________ (you fill in the blank).

Professor Ceiling Cat’s Prediction: the Discovery Institute will lose this one; Gora will not back down and the Indiana legislature won’t go to the mat for creationism lest they look really stupid. And that means we can expect an endless series of whiny posts from DI flack David Klinghoffer, kvetching about censorship (I’m their “Censor of the Year,” an award which brings me endless pleasure) and calling me names.

But I have a question for the DI:  when are you going to produce the scientific evidence for Intelligent Design that you’ve been saying is “right around the corner”?  It’s been nearly a decade now, and you’ve come up with nothing. I’m waiting, but all I see is endless carping about evolution and complaining about ID being “censored.”  If you have some science, bring it on! Otherwise, admit that you’re just a bunch of religious creationists who are trying to implement the Wedge Strategy. According to that strategy, ID should by now be well ensconced within mainstream science. LOL!

71 thoughts on “Ball State president to meet with creationist Indiana legislators”

  1. Reminds me that Phillip Johnson, author of the “Wedge” document, once said in 1996 that he’d be alive to see evolution replaced with ID. Recently he said he was overly optimistic.

    ID is the theory of the future. And always will be.

        2. And why is it a “smiley” according to my emoji add on in Chrome. I guess it’s better than a place.

          7. But they won’t say “moof”! You’d think Apple would have a proper dogcow emoji!

  4. Dr. Gora must surely be frustrated that she must spend her valuable time dealing with this crap, when she probably has better things to do.

    On the other hand, some of this pain is self-inflicted in that she let this become a public issue in the first place. This would never have become political had this bad idea of a course been strangled at its first breath.

    1. Sounds like she’s doing her best to turn the visit into a potential fundraising opportunity. Showing them around campus etc. Who knows, stranger things have happened than someone coming in a critic and leaving a supporter.

      1. “potential fundraising opportunity. Showing them around campus etc.”

        Ah, ok, I wondered about that.

    2. As University president, Gora can not monitor the syllabus of every university course and monitor all reference material and still do an effective job as president.

    1. I don’t think the lawyer part gets off the ground, or that you meant it as more than a snarkjoke, but she’d be very wise to have at least one other person present besides herself and the four revisioneteers from the legislature. If she doesn’t have a neutral witness it’s gonna be “she said, they said,” so the Repubs could stay in their offices and publish their negative fiction about the tour content before COB this week, saving everybody the trouble of actually going through with the farce.

      Suppose they show up for the tour. This presents a prime opportunity for a video/print team from the JO school to get some hands-on reporting experience. If the drab 4 is even actually considering taking Ms. Gora up on her offer at this time, though, recorded evidence of what takes place on a tour like this is the last thing they will agree to.

      1. I read it as she’s planning on meeting them individually and separately. That’s “divide and conquer” for starters.
        She’s in public life – even if she refrains from recording them, they’ll be recording her, and for the same reasons. That’s regardless of the legalities of the situation. (Being on *her* turf – the campus – she may well have private property rules on her side, and/ or directional microphones on security cameras.)

  8. I have a question for the DI: when are you going to produce the scientific evidence for Intelligent Design that you’ve been saying is “right around the corner”? It’s been nearly a decade now, and you’ve come up with nothing.

    Pedantic correction…its been TWO decades and they’ve come up with nothing. I think its reasonable to use Behe’s publication of Darwin’s Black Box as a starting point. That was 1996.

    🙂

  9. “The wedge strategy was designed with both five-year and twenty-year goals in mind in order to achieve the conversion of the mainstream.” – Wikipedia.
    Looks like they will have to review those goals.

  10. I’m amazed at the gall of DI in raising the issue of censorship, given their incestuous intertwining with Biola University, where Faculty need to have their faith regularly examined by Wm Lane Craig. And note, of course, their amazing silence on the Bryan College affair, playing out right now, and the enforced YEC creationism of colleges affiliated to the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS); see http://wp.me/p21T1L-9S for details.

    1. It’s what psychologists call “projection” and moralists call “hypocrisy”

      1. And what posters at WEIT call “bullshit”.

        The DI’s science consists of “it looks designed to me, so it must have been designed.”

        And it cannot be pointed out often enough that their bl*g does not allow comments (my own take: they know the scientists would eat them alive). Jerry is rightly proud of his “Censor of the Year” award.

        Nor can it pointed out too often that ID is nothing but religion; Forrest & Gross’ book Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design proves that in excruciating detail. Their own writings testify to their theocratic yearnings.

        But hey, rich right-wingers give them lots of money, so by the American definition of the term, they are quite successful.

        1. thats why they’ll keep going and ignore scientific criticism. they got a steady flow of money.

          1. That’s it. Someone pointed that out on this website 2-3 weeks ago (don’t remember whom), and it really opened my eyes. He or she remarked that the Ken Hams, Discoveroids, Ray Comforts, TV evangelists, and more lunatic fringe preachers simply *do not care* that they are ridiculed by almost everyone, as they have their group of sheep/zombies/losers who are addicted enough to their nonsense to continue to send them sufficient money. In other words, beyond the question as to whether or not they believe what they preach, or even understand the science that they reject, a more basic fact is that they are *all* charlatans.

  11. Gora mentions that the proposed meeting would include “appropriate university personnel.” Hopefully, professors from the biology department are what she has in mind.

      1. With attractively-bound copies of the Dover vs Kitzmiller judgement to hand out to all participants.

        I still read that judgement from time to time. It’s a thing of snarky beauty!

  12. A friend of mine and I once noted that while the line “monsters from the id” from the film Forbidden Planet referred to the Freudian id, it was tempting to capitalize the last word and change the referent, so my suggestion for filling in the blank is “monsters from ID”.

  13. “… they’re looking like_________ (you fill in the blank).”

    No need to fill in the blank. That is what they are. Blank, zero, zilch, useless, a waste of the space they occupy.

  14. But I have a question for the DI: when are you going to produce the scientific evidence for Intelligent Design that you’ve been saying is “right around the corner”?

    They have thousands of brilliant scientific papers just waiting to be published in peer-reviewed journals, but you keep censoring them!

  15. My predictions:

    1) What we would see as a humiliating defeat, the legislators (and the DI) will see as uplifting affirmation of their martyr complexes.

    2) Gora will not back down.

    3) The legislators will not be able to enact legislation to address this directly, but they will find some petty way to strike back at Ball State indirectly. After all, that’s the Christian thing to do.

    2. If Gora is smart, she may be able to give them the ability to declare victory while helping BSU.

      Gora giving tour: “…and here we have the religious studies building. You can see how that wing there is in disrepair, and the signage has fallen down. We sure would like to offer our students more classes on religion. If you could see your way to adding some additional funding to next year’s budget, we would love to invite you to the grand reopening of the Dennis K. Kreuse Religious Studies hall next in fall of 2015…”

      2. Welllll … if the “Religious Studies” hall is given due importance – say, the auxiliary machine room at the top of a lift shaft – while the rest of the building is useful. Sewage processing plant, or something intellectually upwards.
        Of course, the upkeep of the “Religious Studies” hall will require keeping the rest of the building up to spec. All of it. Very expensive little hall to maintain.

  16. I admire President Gora for the way she has been handling all of this. I especially admire her tact and the gracious manner of her communications–nice straightforward communication, as well as thoughtful, considerate, firm and polite.

  17. Just took a look at the Wedge Document over lunch. It seems that, having realized that their “research” (the tip of the wedge) will never materialize, creationists have decided to try and hammer the wedge in backwards (skipping the science and going straight for cultural confrontation).

    1. What’s funny is a few years ago the Templeton Foundation offered to bankroll research in ID. All the folks had to do was submit a testable proposal and Templeton would give them a grant.

      After a few years the foundation stopped the offer because no one had submitted any proposals. So even their FRIENDS admit ID is empty.

  18. Knock the “Wedge Strategy” all you want, but a similar long-term end game is what we lack. WE always talk about the difficulty of herding cats, but it’s not entirely true. You can get a variety of different groups of atheists in a tizzy about individual, short term, reactionary things.

    But we don’t have a long term strategy equivalent to the Wedge, or say, to Political Islam’s “Caliphate Through Emigration and Attrition” approach, which may not have a wedge document to prove it, but which is fairly obvious in implementation.

    I’d link to a blog post on that, but I believe I’d be violating “da Roolz” and I value Professor Ceiling Cat’s approval.

    1. PS… I see someone else referenced Da Roolz as “the Roolz”…

      Reminds me of why “Da BoDeans” of Waukesha, WI changed their name to “The BoDeans” after being introduced on Letterman as “The Dabodeans!”
      🙂

    2. The NCSE seems to be our parallel organization, and they do have a long term end goal – to see mainstream science (and not woo) taught in every high school in the US.

      1. Yes, exactly. I don’t think turning people atheist is, or should be, our goal. We just need to expose every kid to real science education and that will fix many of the world’s ills. Atheism is really just a side effect, and not even the most important one. Developing a habit of rational skeptical thought is much more important than whether you throw off your parents’ religion.

      2. True, on this issue. I meant more broadly the atheist “community” does not have a long term strategic approach. Maybe the Secular Coalition for America would count

        reactionary organizations like FFRF, while valuable, don’t qualify as “strategically” implanting secularism in the society.

      2. That is a very good article. It’s true that most (but not all) of the comments are pathetic.

  20. I wouldn’t say they’ve produced nothing.

    There was that oh-so-clever video of Judge Jones that included fart noises.

    To this day, I’m surprised it didn’t pass peer review and appear in every major scientific journal. 😉

  21. Speaking of Republicans, “Nate Silver projects the Republicans have a 60% chance of taking control of the Senate this November.”

    (From a Democratic fund-raising letter.)

  22. I will refrain from calling those legislators names, […] they’re looking like_________ (you fill in the blank).

    ProfCC, you’ve already besmirched their names with one of the most vicious, vituperative and denegatory appelations available in modern English : “legislators”.
    And I thought that I was being nasty, trying for the last 20+ years to introduce the word “wunch” into English. Usage : “oh look, it’s a wunch of bankers!”

  23. Good thing I am not the one who has to deal with these idiots. I would definitely be unfit for the job.

    My letter would look very different…

    I admire her self-control

  24. No, she won’t back down, and yes, the lawmakers already look foolish. Since they accepted her date instead of demanding an answer to their questions, they also had their spines removed in the process. Bad move if you’re trying to play hard ball.

    Game over now. Discovery Institute will have to find another school and another group of lawmakers because the Indiana group just lost their credibility.

    http://muncievoice.com/10525/intelligent-design-hoosier-lawmakers-demand-answers-president-gora/

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