Update on Guillermo Gonzalez

Readers interested in the case of Guillermo Gonzalez which we wrote about below (Paying the Price) can find a lot of additional information here. Go to the link and scroll down through the various articles on this travesty.

RLC

Gentle Darwinians

There is among devotees of both Nietzsche and Darwin a view that the two men were both gentle academics who would have been appalled had they seen how their writings were distorted and perverted to justify eugenics and nazism.

Peter Quinn, writing in Commonweal, puts the kibosh to such romanticizing and demonstrates that the subsequent history of Europe was not at all inconsistent with what both men believed and taught.

The article is a little long but, it's an important contribution to the debate over the consequences of atheism and naturalism in the modern world.

RLC

Wilson Vs. Hitchens

Christianity Today is hosting an online debate between atheist Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and theologian Douglas Wilson. The topic is whether Christianity is good for the world. Round One can be read here and I have to say that I think Wilson already has Hitchens on the ropes, which is not an easy thing to accomplish with someone of Hitchens' intellectual gifts.

Read both Hitchens' opening statement and Wilson's response. It's well-worth the time and it'll cause you to eagerly anticipate Round Two.

UPDATE: Round II is here. Wilson continues to press the key issue: Hitchens wants to talk morality but he doesn't see that atheism undermines all notions of right and wrong. Here's Wilson on the subject:

Now my question for you is this: Is there such a thing as atheist hypocrisy? When another atheist makes different ethical choices than you do (as Stalin and Mao certainly did), is there an overarching common standard for all atheists that you are obeying and which they are not obeying? If so, what is that standard and what book did it come from? Why is it binding on them if they differ with you? And if there is not a common objective standard which binds all atheists, then would it not appear that the supernatural is necessary in order to have a standard of morality that can be reasonably articulated and defended?

So I am not saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to live as a responsible citizen. I am saying you have to believe in the supernatural in order to be able to give a rational and coherent account of why you believe yourself obligated to live this way. In order to prove me wrong here, you must do more than employ words like "casuistry" or "evasions"-you simply need to provide that rational account. Given atheism, objective morality follows ... how?

The Christian faith is good for the world because it provides the fixed standard which atheism cannot provide and because it provides forgiveness for sins, which atheism cannot provide either. We need the direction of the standard because we are confused sinners. We need the forgiveness because we are guilty sinners. Atheism not only keeps the guilt, but it also keeps the confusion.

Hitchens responds in Round III, but, as Wilson shows, his reply is completely inadequate.

RLC

Paying The Price

If ever you hear it said that there's no discrimination on campus against people who hold views in opposition to the reigning Darwinian orthodoxy e-mail them the story of Guillermo Gonzalez. The Darwinist clergy, like the inquisitors before whom Galileo stood, are determined to expunge all traces of dissent and heresy from the halls of academe which was once, before the left took over, a bastion of diversity and non-conformity. Now everyone must march in lockstep, or goosestep, or face the wrath of the guardians of the true faith.

Gonzalez is not the first to suffer excommunication from the academy, nor will he be the last, but just as shutting up Galileo did not prevent the facts about the cosmos from spilling out, denying Gonzalez tenure will not derail the march of truth either.

Read the story at the link and ask yourself how much more qualified can a scientist be than Gonzalez is and how much more of a narrow-minded bigot can a college president be than Iowa State's Gregory Geoffrey is.

RLC