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God Created Earth and Heaven Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez

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God Created Earth and Heaven Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez Volume 13, Number 1 January / February 2008 — A publication of the Creation Research Society — Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez — A Case of Intolerance in Science by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D. r. Guillermo Gonzalez is an assistant Problems Begin professor of astronomy at Iowa State University (ISU). Born in Havana, In 2004, Dr. Gonzalez co-authored the D he and his family fled from Cuba to book The Privileged Planet: How Our the United States in 1967, where he earned Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Dis- a Ph.D. in astronomy with honors from the covery, which presents empirical evidence University of Washington in 1993. for the hypothesis that the universe is the CENSORED product of intelligent design (Gonzalez Several of his colleagues have conclud- and Richards, 2004). It was this book, and ed that in 2007 Gonzalez was denied tenure a film made from the book, that got him at ISU as a result of his support for intelli- into trouble. The book critiques the gent design. Tenure denial often means the “Copernican principle,” the idea that kiss of death in academia, making it very “everything we see around us is common- difficult to find an academic position else- place in the universe, that we are average where. Although the story was first broken beings in a run-of-the-mill planetary sys- publicly in the Iowa paper, Ames Tribune, tem in an average galaxy populated by on May 12, 2007, the actual decision took scores of other mediocrities” (Gingerich, place earlier in the spring (Dillon, 2007). Dr. Gonzalez had just bought a house, ... continued on p. 3 married a local woman, and wanted to start a family and continue his very promising career as an astronomer at ISU. He tends to God Created Earth and Heaven keep to himself, focusing on his highly productive research program, which would (a Creation Hymn) continue if he were allowed to stay at the by Ralph Gillmann university. His supporters have argued that this is what ISU does not want, because of Editor’s note: Please go to page 6 for the actual hymn. I asked Mr. Gillmann for this his alleged scientific heresy. introduction to provide insight into his writing of this song praising the God of creation. According to ISU’s Department of any hymns mention the Creator or creation but I could not find one with the Physics and Astronomy, the tenure process, creation story of Genesis. I’ve written poetry over the years so I decided to as outlined on page 4 of its Procedures and write such a hymn. Writing it proved to be enlightening about the nuances Promotion and Tenure Policy and Proce- M of Genesis — there is more subtlety there than first appears. dure, requires “excellence sufficient to lead to a national or international reputation ... The hymn turned out to be long, particularly by modern standards. I started with [that] would ordinarily be shown by the a stanza for each day, but so much happened on the sixth day that it required two. publication of approximately fifteen papers Then I realized that, as a Christian hymn, it needed a final stanza on the new creation, of good quality in refereed journals.” Hav- which then meant a stanza on the Fall, too. I thought I was done until I realized it ing produced 68 refereed scientific papers, should have a beginning stanza to set the stage, just as the first two verses of Genesis Dr. Gonzalez has exceeded by more than do. 350 percent his own department’s standard The meter is 87.87.77.88, which is not common, but is used with several Lutheran for “excellence” requirement for tenure. hymns. I suggest the majestic tune Der am Kreuz, which accompanies On My Heart ISU considered 66 faculty for tenure during Imprint Thine Image and is available in a Lutheran hymnal or in The Hymn Fake the past academic year, and only Gonzalez Book (chords and melody) published by Hal Leonard Corp. More common tunes and two others were denied tenure (Dillon, that are 87.87 D such as Harwell may be adapted for example by repeating the last 2007). note. ... continued on p. 6 Math Matters by Don DeYoung, Ph.D. How Did Charles Babbage Babbage suggested that God had care- Explain Miracles? fully programmed the physical Creation with built-in singularities, analogous to n=5, nglish mathematician Charles Bab- which revealed themselves as miracles in bage (1792–1871) pioneered the de- nature. velopment of mechanical calculators. Babbage also illustrated his ideas with E His difference and analytical engines graphs. The accompanying figure shows a consumed 50 years of his life. The faith of graph of an unusual function. A smooth Babbage is displayed in his contributions to curve results except for the isolated point the Bridgewater Treatises. The Earl of at x = 2. Babbage saw this singular point Bridgewater funded this series of classic as an analogy to a miracle through master programming of nature (Eves, 1969). books in the 1830s. They were dedicated to 2 2 A graph of the function y =(x-2) (x-3). The Babbage’s technical ideas for miracles are illustrating the “power, wisdom, and good- single isolated point (x = 2) on the graph was interesting, but they are also deficient. Mir- ness of God as manifested in the works of used by Charles Babbage to illustrate the oc- acles are clearly supernatural and not ex- Creation.” currence of miracles. plainable by natural laws. Miracles are exceptions to the known laws of science Babbage suggested several mathemati- and math and not subject to detailed analysis. cal explanations for how God performed example sequence where n = 0, 1, 2, …, miracles. Babbage wrote formulas for cer- with an infinite value for n = 5: Reference tain arithmetic sequences which change 2 Eves, Howard W. 1969. In Mathematical Circles. uniformly except for specific numbers n = 0,-0.25,-1.3,-4.5,-16,¥,36,24.5,K n - 5 Prindle, Weber, and Schmidt, Inc., Boston. which become infinitely large. Consider an Contents Take advantage Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez: A Case of Intolerance............1 of the members’ God Created Earth and Heaven (a Creation Hymn)......1 Math Matters: discount at the CRS How Did Charles Babbage Explain Miracles?.............2 Letters: online bookstore Pre-Flood/Flood Boundary: Not in the Grand Canyon!7 A Reply to M. J. Hunter..................................................8 Speaking of Science www.CRSbooks.com Hidden Messages Found in DNA..............................................9 A Step Closer to Gecko Adhesive.............................................9 Of All the Nerve: Functional Intron Discovered.......................9 The Evolutionary Inference.....................................................10 Life Influences Dating Method................................................10 Mouse Grows Long Finger, Takes Off Like a Bat..................11 Blind Cave Fish Can See Again..............................................11 All by Design: Chemical Signaling in the Honeybee..12 Creation Matters ISSN 1094-6632 Volume 13, Number 1 January / February 2008 Copyright © 2008 Creation Research Society Membership Matters All rights reserved. by Glen Wolfrom, Ph.D. General Editor: Glen W. Wolfrom For membership / subscription information, advertising rates, rom time to time we receive letters is long overdue. and information for authors: May God richly bless and use F which are an encouragement to us. Glen W. Wolfrom, Editor Here is one we received a while back: your and your wife’s creation ministry. P.O. Box 8263 Sincerely, St. Joseph, MO 64508-8263 Thank you so much for Creation Mat- BL Email: [email protected] ters. You produce a unique and excep- Westfield, NJ Phone/fax: 816.279.2312 tionally interesting update on creation Creation Research Society Website: information. Also, please express my We are truly grateful that the Lord has www.creationresearch.org appreciation to all the people who provided us this opportunity to produce a Articles published in Creation Matters represent the opinions and beliefs of the authors, and do not necessarily work on this publication, and the au- publication which many people find useful. reflect the official position of the CRS. thors of the papers. My thank you note To our faithful readers, “Thank you!” 2 Creation Matters college-level astronomy book, Observation- ated from the University of Arizona with Gonzalez al Astronomy, published by Cambridge Uni- high honors, and in the same year his first ...continued from page 1 versity Press, a work that is now in its refereed paper was published in Solar Phys- 2006, pp. 13-14). Esteemed Harvard profes- second edition (Birney, Gonzalez, and Oes- ics. He received his Ph.D. in astronomy in sor Owen Gingerich (2006, p. 16) wrote that per, 2006). Publication of a major book has 1993 from the University of Washington. critics of the film based on Gonzalez’s book been considered by many universities to be In 1995 he conducted postdoctoral re- merit for promotion to a full professor raised the alarm that the showing of search on solar eclipses at the Indian Insti- (Smith, 1973). the film The Privileged Planet at the tute of Astrophysics in Bangalore, an Smithsonian Museum would some- Gonzalez’s research on stars was high- experience that motivated him to formulate how constitute an endorsement of lighted on the National Geographic Chan- what would later become the Privileged Intelligent Design. I suppose that few nel. His work has also been cited in Science, Planet hypothesis. He also did a postdoc at of the critics actually saw the film, Nature, and many other leading scientific the University of Texas. The director there, for it contains no explicit mention of journals (for example see Murray, 1998). A David Lambert, said: “He proved himself Intelligent Design. It did, however, citation search by the author’s name located very quickly” and was “one of the best contain implicit criticism of the Co- 1,638 citations in peer-reviewed science postdocs I have had” (quoted in Brumfiel, pernican principle, for the film ar- journals as of July 2007.
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