A Privileged Planet

 A Privileged Planet

INTELLIGENT DESIGN also arose as a contentious issue after publication ofThe Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery. The book, by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards (Regnery Books, 2004), challenged the Copernican Principle—the idea that there is nothing special about Earth or its place in the universe. The authors replaced the Copernican principle with the Anthropic Principle—the claim that had the physical parameters of the universe been slightly different, we wouldn’t be here to observe it.

“The implication is that intelligent life requires the existence of a cosmos of quite a specific level of complexity,” said Steve Fuller, and that level of complexity “borders on the miraculous—unless, of course, it was somehow ‘purpose-made.’”24A faculty member at the University of Warwick, Steve Fuller was appointed to a chair in Social Epistemology in 2011.

The presence of essential elements on Earth—particularly carbon, oxygen, and water in the right proportions—led to the claim by Gonzalez and Richards that the planet was designed for multicellular organic life. One reviewer of the book pointed out that “bringing together the conditions for life as we know it is so complex that advanced life may be exceedingly rare.”

 Extraterrestrial life remains elusive, despite a great deal of searching. So the idea that ours is a privileged planet still has not been refuted.

Gonzalez and Richards went further and said that the universe itself—not just our place in it—was “designed for discovery.” They maintain, for example, that Earth and the Moon work together to sustain earthly life as one intricate system, producing the best solar eclipses available to earthly observers. They also claimed that Jupiter and Saturn protect Earth from cataclysmic destruction.

What happened next was perhaps more interesting than the claims in the book. Gonzalez, an assistant research professor of astronomy at Iowa State University, and the author of over sixty peer-reviewed scientific articles, including articles inNatureandScience, and aScientific Americancover story, was refused tenure in 2007.

The problem was that he had invoked intelligent design. This was too much for faculty members, and not just at Iowa State University. Over 400 professors across the state signed various statements, opposing “all attempts to represent Intelligent Design as a scientific endeavor.” Both on and outside the planet, whether in astronomy or biology, the professors insisted, the philosophy of naturalism is expected to enjoy a monopoly. Any alternative claim was rejected as unscientific.

William H. Jefferys, a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, spoke for many in the academy. He said in a review ofThe Privileged Planetthat “[what is] new in this book isn’t interesting, and what is old is just old-hat creationism in a new, modern-looking astronomical costume.”25

 In 2013, Guillermo Gonzalez joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Ball State University in Indiana. He told members of the department that he would continue his research on astrobiology and stellar astrophysics. “I will not be discussing intelligent design (ID) in my classes (I didn’t discuss ID at Iowa State University either).” He reiterated his view that evidence of design in cosmology “is not out of the mainstream” and “a number of cosmologists and physicists hold to this view.” He also said that he was denied tenure at Iowa State “not because of poor academics on my part, but for ideological and political reasons.”2614

From: DARWIN’S

 HOUSE OF CARDS

A JOURNALIST’S ODYSSEY

 THROUGH THE DARWIN DEBATES

by TOM BETHELL