In any case, Dave would appear to have nailed it; even if you (CIP) are right about the nature of the law (that religious expression trumps all, including the commensense idea that an employer ought to be able to fire employees that harm that employer’s business), there appears to be something of a logical trap there for Gonzales.

There are a couple of problems with your argument. First, denial of tenure is not a decision to fire someone. It is a decision not to hire them for a permanent job. This makes it much harder to win a lawsuit.

Second, the very essence of “Intelligent Design” would seem to defeat any attempt to make a religious discrimination claim. If Gonzalez were to claim that he rejects evolution based on his religious beliefs, but that this doesn’t interfere with his astronomy, then he might be able to claim religious discrimination. But, “Intelligent Design” claims to be a scientific theory, so the tenure decision could be based on his poor scientific judgement in accepting ID. So, in order to make his claim, Gonzalez would have to deny the central fraud behind ID. This seems unlikely.

Are you sure about that? Suppose I work at Bob’s Auto Repair. I put in my hours, then right after I’m off the clock, I stand on the street outside the shop, on public property, and I start handing out flyers that say, “Bob is pro-choice! Boycott Bob’s, or Jesus will see to it that you burn in hell forever!” I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that Bob ought to be able to fire me.

I suggest you review your understanding of US law. Religious activity is protected speech, and if you aren’t advocating or doing something criminal, the State of Iowa can’t legally take any job action against you for it. This is all spelled out very clearly in Civil Rights case law and the statutes.

He can’t use his classroom to proseletyze, but what he does on his own time, if of a religious character, cannot (legally) be used against him any more than his race, sex or ethnicity could be.

If it is chock full of supernatural assumptions and completely untestable (even in principle), then, yes, his positions is anti-science. And it would be wrong to grant him tenure in a pro-science department.

And completely illegal not to grant him tenure on that basis.

If it is chock full of supernatural assumptions and completely untestable (even in principle), then, yes, his positions is anti-science. And it would be wrong to grant him tenure in a pro-science department.

I guess I’m still trying to figure out where that great big collider in the sky and energy source that produced the big bang might have gone (or come from).

However I understand that research entails not only researching what has been found, but searching for the ‘unknown’ and that can entail things which turn out to be right, and often things that turn out to be false or wrong. After all what does knowing what may have happened at the beginning of Time, or how Time began - change. Will it change our lives, the way earth’s gravity pulls us down or the way things and people age, decay & die, And the question will remain why did it happen, and what was before. And more important perhaps what comes after - is there any more? Who would have believed before yesterday that you will soon be able to store the sum total of the knowledge and life experiences of the average human ‘being’ in the next generation of ‘memory’ sticks. And man & science still strive for inmortality, and the possibility or notion that life in some shape or form can (or may) continue after bodily death … exists even among non-theist (and atheist) scientists

Joanne’s point is that Gonzalez wasn’t ‘preaching out of class’, but, rather, using his ISU credentials to do it (in that sense, representing the University). Now, that probably means that some people can’t preach religion very easily because of the career path they chose, in that their big opposrunities to preach come through their job. Those people should probably seek a different job, as we capitaists would prefer them to.

It seems to me that it’s possible that Gonzalez was exercising his right to religious expression in a way that harms his employer. Carte blanche to do that would appear to make hiring religious people rather difficult; there clearly has to be a balance between their right to religious expression and the right of employers not to employ people that they believe hurt their business.

There is such a thing as giving one’s affiliation for purposes of identification without the implication that the individual is speaking for the institution. See, e.g., Dr. Hewett’s bio page under “contributors” on this blog.

Gonzalez’ work supportive of a design inference isn’t exactly out in far left field. See the book jacket endorsements on _The Privileged Planet_ from, among others, Owen Gingerich and Simon Conway Morris.

I don’t think we actually disagree. If we treat ID as a serious but largely discredited idea, there is no problem. If, as is usually done, it’s called religion, there is.

It is also true that serious or not, it is being used as a stalking horse for religion.