Another Professor in Hot Water Over Evolution

Inside Higher Ed is posting a story about a professor at Georgia Southern University, a state school in Statesboro, Georgia.  Quoth Colleen Flaherty:

Lecturing for a week about how “evolution could not have happened.” Offering extra credit for students to watch the film “God’s Not Dead.” Showing religious bias in exam questions. Student reviews saying he’ll try to “convert you.”

Those charges, among others, make up a complaint filed recently by two First Amendment watchdog groups against T. Emerson McMullen, an associate professor of history at Georgia Southern University. The institution says it’s now investigating the professor for allegedly using his classroom at the public university to promote his anti-evolution Christian beliefs.

Apparently the Freedom From Religion Foundation and The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science have become involved in this and have pushed for an investigation into the charges.  It strikes me that if he is a science professor, these are serious charges.  If, on the other hand, he is a history professor, then it is incumbent on him to get the history correct.  If he does that, then the sole focus should be on whether or not he is using his classroom as a pulpit.  Despite his insistence otherwise, enough of the student comments indicate that, at least to some degree, he is. 

When I teach Anthropology 110: Human Origins, I am open to speaking with students about the apparent conflicts between evolution and Christianity, but I do not openly discuss them in class or promote EC.  I also use established science.  To do otherwise, I believe, would hurt the cause of Christianity.  Wisely, the Discovery Institute has left this one alone. 

Inside Higher Ed on Guillermo Gonzalez

Inside Higher Ed has a short blurb on the hiring of Guillermo Gonzalez at Ball State University.  It reads in part:

Gonzalez was denied tenure at Iowa State University, where he said that he was being punished for his views, but his faculty colleagues said he was rejected based on traditional tenure criteria. A broad consensus exists among scientists that evolution, not intelligent design, explains the origins of the earth. And many scientists -- while having no problem with intelligent design as a focus in philosophy or religion classes -- object to science departments teaching it.

What is considerably more interesting is the comments section, which contains an invocation of Godwin's Law and some reactions to the blurb. For example, one (correctly) writes:

I'm pretty sure that this sentence cannot be true: "A broad consensus exists among scientists that evolution, not intelligent design, explains the origins of the earth."

Unless, that is, the word "origin" no longer means what it used to mean.

Another individual responded “The hiring of such people should automatically decertify the institution.” This was not very well received and reminded me of what defrocked comedian Mike Warnke once upon a time said: “He was so narrow-minded he could look through a key-hole with both eyes.”

It is quite interesting to see the range of variation in comments to this story, both here and elsewhere.  It seems to have struck quite a nerve.