People feel strongly about the issues, no doubt, but for the most part nobody is up to anything nefarious. Get over it.

So far, all of the ID advocates' "scientific" work has pretty much consisted of taking the results of the work of real scientists, and twisting its interpretation to claim support for ID. This is inefficient and lends itself to embarassment, when the scientists in question object that the interpretation is erroneous, such as in the Ohio literature debacle.

Much more efficient, obviously, is to take actual scientists, and just say they are, unknowingly, ID advocates. That way, the DI PR folks can claim to have entire departments and research centers hard at work in academia already (forget about the "BioLogic Institute", which only exists in the NYT pages).
BRILLIANT.

Don't forget that Miller also advocates the fine-tuning of cosmological constants, and claims that fine science popularizers like Dawkins and Gould are a big part of the problem when it comes to fighting attacks on science education.

Beautiful.

To Dr. Kenneth R. Miller PhD
From the Board of Regents, Brown University

Dear Dr. Miller,
Recent egregious and dangerous statements that you have been making publicly have reached our attention, and this has caused us to pursue a course of action towards the revoking of your tenure at Brown. Since Brown University adopted the tenure standards set forth by the University of Minnesota, we must ask ourselves if you are fit, or even sane enough, to not be a danger to science. This letter will outline the dangerous offenses and the course of action that you may take to prevent the revocation process.

1. In your book "Finding Darwin's God", you publicly claim to believe in some sort of supernatural "god". This belief in some kind of a fairy story about a supernatural "man in the sky with super powers" puts you on shaky and unscientific ground to say the least.

2.You also state in "Finding Darwin's God" that this god "allows" evolution to take place. The belief that evolution only happens because the god "allows" it threatens to embarrass this fine institution's credibility.

3. In "Finding Darwin's God", you admit that you openly tell students about your belief in the supernatural god, and that it influences your biology research. We find this to be dangerous to the future of science and the good name of Brown University.

4. On national television, you proclaimed to be a member in good standing of the Roman Catholic Church, an organization dedicated to spreading lies and unscientific propoganda that refutes biological truth.

5. There have been substantiated rumors that you actually participate in some kind of festival that celebrates a "raising of the dead" - the so called "easter" fairytale.

The regents have prescribed a course of action that may allow you to retain your tenure. Since we would normally deny tenure to anyone who thinks that the earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around the earth, or that some big supernatural "super-sky-daddy" made everything, we must hold the same standard for our tenured professors in order to preserve the dignity and stature of Brown University. Since you have already gone public with your questionable beliefs, we must require that you recant.

1. You must deny your belief in the supernatural publicly, and in writing, even if this involves a certain level of disingenuousness on your part. This supernatural belief that god "allows" evolution seems to the board to be thinly veiled creationism. The board doesn't see how you can teach evolution if your foundation of evolution rests upon nature somehow getting "permission" from some unknown entity. Embarrassing.

2. You must explain your membership in an organization that espouses "raising of the dead", "prayer", "human virgin birth", "miraculous healing", and other medically and biologically disproven myths.
We would similarly reject any professor who claimed to be a witch doctor or a handler of snakes.

3. You must publicly state that while you DO go to church (we can't stop you from doing that), you merely do it as a sterile ritual, and of course you don't believe in such unscientific nonsense as the "xmas fairytale" and the "jesus story". The board feels that no one in academia would take any of your published works seriously if it were known that you were a believer of mythical imaginary characters.

Please understand that while the board recognizes your right to believe whatever wacky, aberrant, insane, or destructive ideas you may have, the fact that you have put these ideas in your published writings, and said them publicly on national television has left us no choice but to take action to prevent further embarrassment to the good name of Brown University.

Sincerely,

Board of Regents, Brown University

Ah, yes. The tired ol' nonsense about evolution being as central to all things biology-related as the Earth revolving around the Sun is to astronomy. Except that no-one can say for sure just how evolution works . . . or when . . . or even if it does . . . or if it does, what kind of evolutionary principles are involved . . .

These astronomy and physics analogies are self-serving justifications for one's personal incapacity to conceive that any intelligent person could possibly disbelieve what all proper materialists know in their heart of hearts just has to be the true nature of things as they really are.

As par for the course, Branch preaches, even evangelizes: We possess the true knowledge of critical truth and it must be disseminated and protected. First by conversion; and then if a wolf somehow enters the flock, by excommunication.

It is perfectly legitimate to fail a student who, in such circumstances, insists, e.g., that the Earth is flat or that the Earth revolves around the Sun. A student who denied quantum mechanics wouldn't get very far in a physics department. A student who couldn't write well enough to produce a dissertation of sufficient quality could be failed. Equally, if a student rejects evolution and/or argues their results in the context of creationism or ID then they could legitimately be ejected from a Biology program. If they demonstrated a sufficient understanding of evolutionary theory but privately didn't believe it then they could probably survive. But that would involve a certain level of disingenuousness on their part.

Ethel