Starry Fight

[admin]

From miaminewtimes.com
Originally published by Miami New Times 2005-11-03
©2005 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved.

Starry Fight
Oh heavens! A brilliant Cuban exile takes top billing in the intelligent design debate
By Mariah Blake


COURTESY GUILLERMO GONZALEZ

Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez has studied the universe and decided there's nobody here but us earthlings




Skeptic James Randi in his library, where intelligent design books are shelved under C for creationism



Who / What:
Guillermo Gonzalez
Intelligent Design
SETI
Guillermo Gonzalez was a science whiz, the kind of kid classmates eye with awe — or scorn — as they fumble with their beakers in chemistry class.

While a senior at Hialeah-Miami Lakes High, he interned at Cordis Laboratories, where he helped build a device that measures temperature in pacemakers. And he made it to the finals of Westinghouse, the mother of all student science competitions, with a contraption that measured how ice and water conduct electricity.

But his true passion was for the stars.

While other boys played baseball and chased girls, he was reading astronomy books and viewing distant planets from the back yard of his Hialeah home. And it wasn't just comets Gonzalez glimpsed through the lens of his 200-pound telescope. "It was as if, by discovering the universe, I was discovering something about God," he recalls.

Gonzalez's whiz-kid days are now behind him; he is 41 years old and teaches astronomy at Iowa State University. But his life has continued to follow the twin tracks of faith and science. A year ago, those tracks collided in a book called The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery. In it he argues that a supreme being designed our planet to support both human life and scientific inquiry.

While it has received scant attention in his hometown, the book — and a documentary based on it — has made national headlines and earned Gonzalez one of thirteen senior research fellow spots at the Discovery Institute, the brain center of the intelligent design movement, which argues that Darwin got it wrong. Life is too complex to be an evolutionary fluke.

Gonzalez has expanded the debate out into the cosmos. And his ideas have stirred a controversy that has embroiled the nation's pre-eminent scientific institution and major research universities. The conflict is part of a nationwide struggle over intelligent design that is playing out most visibly before a Pennsylvania judge and may eventually reach the Supreme Court.

The stakes are high. Advocates say intelligent design is science and deserves a spot in our public-school classrooms. Opponents — among them most scientists — disagree. "They're using semantics and half-truths to paper a wall," says James Randi, a renowned Fort Lauderdale skeptic and one of Gonzalez's most vocal critics. "But it's only cardboard under that paper. Don't lean on it. Intelligent design is not science, it's theology."





Guillermo Gonzalez was only four years old when his family fled Cuba in 1967. The Castro regime had confiscated all of their belongings, so they stepped off the plane in Miami with only the clothes they were wearing. When the clan settled in Opa-locka, it was the early days of space travel and, like many boys his age, Gonzalez became obsessed with the Apollo missions. One of his earliest memories is watching the night launches from his front yard. "The rocket plume was so bright," he recalls, "you could see it hundreds of miles away."

At age seven, Gonzalez received his first telescope as a Christmas present. Not long after that, he and his family moved to the modest home in Hialeah where his mother and sister live to this day. The low-slung building, with its russet trim and a Saltillo-tiled porch, sits on a large corner lot, surrounded by juniper, bougainvillea, and ferns.

Gonzalez dissected lizards and frogs in the back yard and fished water from a nearby canal so he could inspect protozoa and algae under a microscope.

But outer space remained his first love. In his early teens, he saw an eight-inch Newtonian refractor telescope advertised in the Miami Herald and bought it for $350. Then he and his father, an auto mechanic, built an observatory in the back yard using wood scraps they scavenged from local warehouses. It was a boxy frame structure with particle board walls, musty carpeting, and a rollaway metal roof. The telescope sat perched on a concrete pedestal in the middle of the room.

Neighbors remember Gonzalez as a quiet, studious boy. "You hardly knew he was over there," recalls Edith Vargas, who lives next door. "All day he studied like crazy. And he spent his nights staring up at the sky." When he made his presence known, it was by asking Vargas to switch off the lights in her house so he could get a better view of the stars.

Gonzalez was never spoon-fed faith. His parents, while nominally Catholic, rarely attended church. But from the beginning there was a spiritual dimension to his interest in space. "I just had this intuitive sense that there was something behind the universe," he explains. While a student at Hialeah-Miami Lakes, he recalls, he began exploring evangelical Christianity and going to Bible studies organized by one of his teachers. He later began attending a nondenominational evangelical church.

In 1983 Gonzalez graduated from high school and moved to Tucson to attend the University of Arizona. It was the first time he had ever left Florida. "Going away was a big deal," he says. "But the University of Miami didn't have an astronomy program, and Tucson is the astronomy capital of the world." Besides, U. of A. had offered a four-year full-tuition scholarship.

Gonzalez went on to earn a Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Washington in Seattle. Then, in 1995, he traveled to Asia to do postdoctoral research at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bangalore. There he had an encounter that lasted less than a minute but shaped the course of his career.

It began with a train trip to an impoverished village called Neem Ka Thana, in India's northern desert. The morning after his arrival, he and a team of other scientists set up their equipment in the grassy playground of a local school. It was a clear, crisp day. And just after 9:00 a.m., the sun began slinking behind the moon. For a moment its rays shimmered like a cut diamond. Then, for 51 seconds, it disappeared except for a glowing corona. The temperature dropped 21 degrees and distant planets blazed into view.

This was the first and only total solar eclipse Gonzalez had seen, and it dazzled him.

Afterward, he recalls, he began to consider that many of the same factors allowing intelligent life to flourish on Earth — among them the large size of our moon and our distance from the sun — also made these rare astrological events possible. At the same time, he began thinking about the breakthroughs scientists had made by viewing eclipses — which include discovery of the element helium and confirmation of Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. "You can call [all of this] a coincidence," he explains. "But I went further and said, 'Well, what if it's not a coincidence?'"

These musings would evolve into The Privileged Planet, the book that would land Gonzalez on the culture war's front lines.





The year after his India trip, Gonzalez heard about a conference that would bring together a fledgling coalition of scientists and academics who believed life bore the thumbprint of a Creator with a capital C. He decided to attend the event, called Mere Creation, at Biola University in Los Angeles in October 1996.

The gathering came at a key moment. A six-year-old Seattle-based organization called the Discovery Institute had just launched its Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture to support researchers and academics looking for evidence of Creation. And Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe had just published Darwin's Black Box, which introduced "irreducible complexity" — the notion that biological systems are too intricate to be the result of unguided evolution. Both developments helped lay the foundation for the movement that would become known as intelligent design.

Gonzalez left the event feeling as if he had found his niche.

While he once thought the universe was teeming with beings, he was beginning to think mankind might be alone in the cosmos. He also began to believe that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, called SETI by astronomers, was an effort to discredit biblical accounts of creation. "It is no secret that most SETI advocates are also anti-theists," he wrote in a letter to a Website for Christian academics. "Atheists strongly ... support SETI, because the discovery of other intelligent beings in the Milky Way would show once and for all that we are not special.... It is only a small step, then, to discredit the Judeo-Christian worldview."

Gonzalez went public with some of his ideas in a July 1997 op-ed he wrote for the Wall Street Journal. In it he argued that the evidence surfacing for life on Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa was flimsy, and the chances of ever finding life on other planets was exceedingly slim. The argument was pure science, except for the closing. It read: "We should not be asking: 'Are we alone?' We should instead be asking: 'Why are we here?'"

Gonzalez, who has published more than 60 peer-reviewed papers, had never before hinted at his belief that the universe might have been created for a purpose. He simply didn't think his fellow scientists would be receptive. "There's almost a complete censorship of that point of view," he says.

The Wall Street Journal editorial caught the eye of Jay Richards, vice president for research at the Discovery Institute. In 1999 Richards contacted Gonzalez, then a 35-year-old assistant professor at UW. Over lunch, Gonzalez told Richards his theory that our planet was designed not only to sustain intelligent life but also to foster scientific discovery. Richards encouraged him to apply for a grant from the John Templeton Foundation — which supports research on the intersection of faith and science — to develop the concept. Gonzalez did, and was awarded $58,000.

Richards eventually began urging Gonzalez to write a book about his design theory. But Gonzalez had trouble, so he asked Richards to sign on as co-author. Richards agreed, and they began working on the project in 2001. By then, Gonzalez had secured a tenure-track position at Iowa State University.

They published The Privileged Planet in March 2004. That September, Illustra Media, which specializes in intelligent design films, produced a documentary based on their work and began airing it on PBS stations. These developments were hailed by intelligent design advocates. "The book and film have expanded the intelligent design debate into a new arena," explains Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman. "Most of the discussion has involved evolution — life on Earth. Gonzalez's work has shifted it into the field of ... how the universe has developed." Before long, the book was being translated into Spanish; the film into Mandarin, Cantonese, and Czech.

Gonzalez's work garnered little attention outside the intelligent design community, though. That is, until May 28, when the New York Times ran a brief story saying that the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History was hosting and cosponsoring the official premiere of the film in exchange for a $16,000 donation from the Discovery Institute. Shortly thereafter, James Randi, a MacArthur Award-winning skeptic from Fort Lauderdale, caught wind of the showing.





Randi, a former magician, debunks supernatural and paranormal claims from his Davie Road headquarters, a hacienda-style building crowded with superstitious trinkets. Among them: statues of Bigfoot, a Scientology "e-meter," and a chunk of slate with a tiny winged skeleton etched into it — "proof," Randi explains, "that fairies existed in prehistoric times." The building also houses an ample library, where books are arranged alphabetically from alien abduction and alchemy to witches. Intelligent design literature is shelved under C for creationism.

Randi dashed off a letter to the Museum of Natural History's director. "That you would sell your integrity for $16,000 is not merely incomprehensible," he seethed, "but also shameful." He also offered to pay the museum $20,000 to drop the film. Then he ran a story on his online newsletter about the showing. It warned that "the creationists are flailing about trying to borrow or steal validation from science" and urged readers to bombard the Smithsonian with e-mails.

Days after Randi posted his missive, the museum began trying to distance itself from the film. Lucy Dorrick, associate director for special events, sent a message to the Discovery Institute, saying, "Upon further review, the Museum has determined that the content of the film is not consistent with the mission of the Smithsonian Institution's scientific research." The museum also withdrew cosponsorship and announced it would not accept the Discovery Institute's $16,000 fee. But the film would nevertheless be shown.

Gonzalez and Richards believe the Smithsonian was responding to the e-mail campaign Randi unleashed. "He got people all heated up," Gonzalez grumbles. "His pronouncements were so hysterical; you would think I was saying the Earth didn't revolve around the sun."

The Smithsonian's backpedaling made headlines in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Science Magazine, and Christianity Today,among other publications.

Randi, who was interviewed for several stories, applauded the move, but scientists were vexed that the museum was moving ahead with the showing.

Days before The Privileged Planet was to air, the top brass of the American Institute of Physics and six other major scientific organizations sent a letter urging the Smithsonian to drop the film. The American Geophysics Union, which represents researchers in the earth, space, and atmospheric sciences, went a step further, urging its 43,000 members to write Smithsonian board members directly. "The Smithsonian is a kind of gateway. It's the public's front door into science," explains Martha Heil, a spokesperson for the AIP. "So it's enormously troubling for it to show a film advocating intelligent design, a movement with the stated goal of overthrowing scientific materialism."

Nevertheless, The Privileged Planet aired June 23. Afterward, the 300 attendees — among them National Geographic Television COO Ken Ferguson and U.S. Congressman John Culberson (R-Texas) — crowded into the Smithsonian's Hall of Gems for a reception.

The Smithsonian dustup led some of Gonzalez's colleagues at Iowa State to worry that the university would be seen as a center of intelligent design research. And in late July, three professors drafted a petition urging the university to reject all attempts to represent intelligent design as science. It began circulating August 2, the day after George W. Bush made intelligent design the talk-show topic du jour by declaring it should be given a place alongside evolution in public schools. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," he explained, "so people can understand what the debate is about."

All told, the professors collected some 130 signatures and submitted them to the university president. Gonzalez's name never appears in the document. "We saw this as attacking the idea, not the person," explains Hector Avalos, who helped organize the petition drive. But William Dembski, another senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and perhaps the best-known intelligent design theorist, suggests that the broadside was intended to destroy Gonzalez's career. "What's next? Petitioning Guillermo to turn in his telescope?" he quipped.

In early September, the Discovery Institute issued a scathing press release. It contended that the petition — which it called "a blatant attack on academic freedom" and proof that "the Darwinist inquisition is spreading" — was circulated by "a small group of narrow-minded ... faculty members." A couple weeks later, the American Association of University Professors sent a letter applauding the professors for protecting academic freedom by standing up against intelligent design advocates.

The controversy has continued to dog Gonzalez, even when he's ventured off his home campus. On September 28 he gave a lecture about The Privileged Planet at the University of Northern Iowa. A few days earlier, parents and school board members from Dover, Pennsylvania, began their high-profile court battle over intelligent design. The case has invited comparison to the one that ended in 1987 with a Supreme Court ban on teaching creationism in public-school science classes.

Gonzalez's presentation was sponsored by Sigma Xi, an international science and engineering society, a fact that stirred outrage. In the weeks before Gonzalez's arrival, some faculty members began circulating a petition similar to Iowa State's and collected more than 100 signatures. The day of the event, students distributed anti-intelligent design pamphlets. And Gonzalez's talk, delivered to a standing-room-only crowd, was followed by a heated question-and-answer session. His next presentation, at Truman State University in Missouri this past October 5, also sparked fervent debate. Gonzalez has done his best to keep the controversy from his mother and sister in Hialeah. "I don't want them to know that my career is in danger," he explains. But privately he worries that the squabbles will jeopardize his chances of receiving tenure. He also puzzles over the firestorm his work has created. "I'm just a regular scientist who believes in God and has remained open to evidence of design in the universe," he says, his voice tinged with exasperation. "It's not like I'm some crazed Bible-thumping, fire-breathing creationist."

[Christine]

"It's not like I'm some crazed Bible-thumping, fire-breathing creationist."

Can't say the same about me, huh GMPilot? "The Church Lady" noticed you online and thought I'd say it before you did! heh heh

[GMpilot]

Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't think you're crazed...

...and you've still misspelled my name. Take another break.

[admin]

Dear gmPILOT,

I think that I will just continue to misspell your name since it seems to just drive you crazy! heh heh

Anyway, here is an interesting Amicus brief that was filed in the Dover ID/Evolution trial called:

Plaintiffs have falsely asserted that the scientific theory of intelligent design postulates a “supernatural” creator.

Happy reading!

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/vie...ownload&id=574

[GMpilot]

originally posted by Christine

Plaintiffs have falsely asserted that the scientific theory of intelligent design postulates a “supernatural” creator.

Is that a fact, hostess…?

also originally posted by Christine

HARRISBURG, Pa. — As he took the witness stand in a packed courtroom, ready to dissect Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, biochemist Michael J. Behe looked confident and relaxed. Then he learned what it felt like to be under a microscope.

Isn't it true, an attorney asked, that Behe's critique of Darwin and support for intelligent design, a rival belief about the origins of life, have little scientific support?

Yes, Behe conceded.

Isn't it also true, the attorney pressed, that faculty members in Behe's department at Lehigh University have rejected his writings as unscientific?

Behe, a slight, balding man with a graying beard, grudgingly answered yes.

"Intelligent design is not the dominant view of the scientific community," he said. "But I'm pleased with the progress we are making."

After two grueling days on the stand, Behe looked drained. He was also unbowed. In a nationally watched trial that could determine whether intelligent design can be taught in a public school, the soft-spoken professor had bucked decades of established scientific thought.

Behe (pronounced BEE-hee), one of the nation's leading advocates of intelligent design, challenged Darwin's theory that life evolved through natural selection and a process of random variation. He argued that living organisms are so highly complex that an unseen, intelligent designer must have created them. That designer, he said, is God.

-GAME OVER-

[Christine]

No. The "game" is not over. Behe expressed his opinion that the designer is God. If Carl Sagan was still alive, perhaps he would most likely believe that aliens designed us!

You shouldn't take someone's personal belief about who the designer might be and make it a blanket pronunciation that ALL would, or would necessarily have to, believe the same thing.

[GMpilot]

I don't know if you've read Sagan; I have, and he never postulated an Intelligent Designer, either supernatural or alien. (Yes, ID theory was in circulation long before he died, and he addressed it.) Erich von Daniken did speculate aliens, over 30 years ago ("Chariots of the Gods?"), but his case was even weaker than Behe's; at least Behe has done real science. However, he uses much of the same incredulity and supposition von Daniken did.

It's interesting, I admit, but as yet is still unsupported by the facts.

You shouldn't take someone's personal belief about who the designer might be and make it a blanket pronunciation that ALL would, or would necessarily have to, believe the same thing.

And yet you want me to accept the personal belief of some Bronze Age scribes that "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". You can't have it both ways, hostess.

Checkmate!

[Christine]

You people should make up your minds.

First, you want to kick God out of the origins theory picture entirely.

Then, when an hypothesis comes along that successfully explains how to avoid identifying just who the designer is (which allows for several possible answers as to "who the designer might be,") you want to bring Him back in just for the purpose of having a reason to discredit the hypothesis.

Sheesh!

Here is a link to the Amicus Brief filed by the Discovery Institute in the Kansas trial. http://www.discovery.org/scripts/vie...ownload&id=574

An excerpt from it says this:

Intelligent design theorists have written many technical articles which rely
entirely upon empirically-based arguments and make no appeal to the
supernatural. Rather, technical literature explicating the scientific theory of
intelligent design consistently uses observation-based scientific methods to
detect the prior action of an unspecified designing intelligence.
A. Stephen C. Meyer, “The origin of biological information and the
higher taxonomic categories,” Proceedings of the Biological Society
of Washington, 117(2) (August, 2004):213-239.

This peer-reviewed research article in a mainstream biology journal exemplifies
how design theory is advanced in scientific literature in a manner which is
devoid of religious underpinnings. The article argues that there is empirical
evidence for intelligent design during the Cambrian Explosion, and makes no
reference to God or a “supernatural” designer. Rather, the article emphasizes
that there are valid empirical reasons to infer design by an intelligent cause:

“An experience-based analysis of the causal powers of various
explanatory hypotheses suggests purposive or intelligent design as a
causally adequate--and perhaps the most causally adequate--
explanation for the origin of the complex specified information
required to build the Cambrian animals and the novel forms they
represent.”

B. Lönnig, W.-E. “Dynamic genomes, morphological stasis and the
origin of irreducible complexity,” Dynamical Genetics, page 101-
119.
This peer-reviewed research paper explains that there are many features of
biology which are unexplained by evolution, including the abrupt appearance of
biological complexity in the fossil record, the extreme conservation of genes
across diverse lineages, and the irreducible complexity of life. The author
argues that an intelligent cause provides the best explanation for these
observations, without appealing to “God” or the “supernatural.” His inference to design is based upon Dembski’s empirically-based model of detecting design
by identifying “specified complexity.” The article concludes that this is a valid
scientific approach:

“...research on irreducible and/or specified complexities in biology
definitely do not constitute metaphysical research programmes, but
is at least as scientifically valid as the SETI (search for
extraterrestrial intelligence), which is presently supported by
thousands of scientists worldwide, not to mention the affiliated
network of more than 4 million computers in over 200 countries
around the globe (for an exhaustive discussion of further basic
questions, see the contributions of Behe, Dembski, Lönnig, Meyer,
and others [5-7, 21-23, 53-58, 68, 86]). Irreducible and specified
complexity are inspiring tools that can and should be empirically
investigated. Also, the concepts are potentially falsifiable in actual
research (Popper) and thus clearly belong to the realm of science.”

C. Michael J. Behe & David W. Snoke, “Simulating evolution by gene
duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid
residues,” Protein Science (13) 2004 (13).
This peer-reviewed research article, co-authored by leading design proponent
Michael Behe, makes no reference to God or the supernatural. The paper
reports results of various computer simulations testing the evolvability of various
protein-protein interactions. The authors note at the end that gene-duplication
provides a poor explanation for the origin of complex protein-protein
interactions, and infer that “other mechanisms” might be responsible for the
origin of these features:

“Although large uncertainties remain, it nonetheless seems
reasonable to conclude that, although gene duplication and point
mutation may be an effective mechanism for exploring closely
neighboring genetic space for novel functions, where single
mutations produce selectable effects, this conceptually simple
pathway for developing new functions is problematic when multiple
mutations are required. Thus, as a rule, we should look to more
complicated pathways, perhaps involving insertion, deletion,
recombination, selection of intermediate states, or other mechanisms, to account for most MR protein features.”

While this article is framed as a challenge to evolution, Behe has argued
extensively elsewhere that the best mechanism to account for the origin of
these types of unevolvable biochemical pathways is intelligent design (See
mechanisms, to account for most MR protein features.”Behe, 1996; discussed here in section II (A)). Behe’s argument is purely
empirical and makes no reliance upon God or the supernatural.

There are several more explanations and comments that show evidence of design without using reference to God or the supernatural.

[Christine]

The usual end of the discussion has occurred...

[frank]

Because you stop talking.

The list you presented of ID publications was not very impresssive. The forst one came out of a book, which may not really be peer-reviewed in the same sense as peiodical literature. The quote by Behe mentions a number of possible mechanisms that may need to be considered other than the most simple base substitutions, but when he said the list included: "insertion, deletion, recombination, selection of intermediate states, or other mechanisms" did you think he was seriously including invisible intelligent designers among the latter cause? Perhaps he was, being Behe and all, but as an IDEeist, he ought to be able to propose a way to test that possibility. Otherwise, he is pretty much stuck with finding out how molecules do what molecules do under the usual laws of chemistry and physics.