Higgaion and Playing Chess With Pigeons have detailed responses to claims made in the movie Expelled. Apparently the “moral absolutist” mentioned in the last post was here on campus promoting Expelled. That explains why he treated my claim that we have faculty on campus who are conservative Christians of an inerrantist variety with such skepticism. But the truth is that I am familiar with institutions that require one to sign an affirmation of inerrancy or a denial of evolution, and if one doesn’t one will not be hired; I have yet to encounter an institution where one asks one to sign a denial of inerrancy in order to be hired. Of course, scientists will prefer applications from those doing credible science, and scholars will prefer applications from those doing credible scholarship. But I can’t imagine a serious but conservative scholar being excluded automatically from consideration here at Butler. Indeed, I know that this is not the case. And so the truth is that, were it not for the protection of religious concerns with special privileges allowing them to sidestep matters of intellectual freedom and discrimination, none of the fundamentalist groups would be supporting “academic freedom” bills of any sort.
John Pieret has a nice post on why the label “Darwinism” continues to be used. I’m a Newtonist too, by the way. Bob Cornwall features an atheist “with whom we might talk”. DaveScot calls for fairness in tarring people with the Hitler brush.