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Jay Richards discusses academic freedom on the Michael Medved show

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The Michael Medved show is a national radio show broadcast out of Seattle, Washington. According to Talkers magazine, he has the fifth largest radio audience. He has a regular weekly segment on science and culture featuring  scholars from the Discovery Institute.

Here is the segment from this past week, courtesy of the Intelligent Design: The Future podcast.

The MP3 file is available for download. (33 minutes)

The description is:

On this episode of ID the Future, Dr. Jay Richards appears on the Michael Medved Show to discuss the meaning of academic freedom and the importance of teaching both sides of debated issues. Listen in as Richards and Medved look at intimidation in academia and the current efforts to censor Professor Eric Hedin at Ball State University.

URGENT: Please consider signing our petition to defend the academic freedom of Professor Eric Hedin. To sign, visit www.academicfreedompetition.com.

Each week, leading fellows from Discovery Institute will join Michael Medved to talk about the intersection of science and culture. Listen in live online or on your local Medved station, or stay tuned at ID the Future for the weekly podcast.

Topics:

  • Medved: Why is a group of activists trying to challenge the hiring of Guillermo Gonzalez at Ball State University?
  • Richards: When Guillermo was at Iowa State University, he was the best or second-best published assistant professor
  • Richards: A rabid atheist professor of religion blocked his tenure because of his views on intelligent design
  • Richards: Guillermo never mentioned intelligent design in class
  • Richards: Militant Darwinian fundamentalist Jerry Coyne is trying to block Ball State from hiring Guillermo
  • Medved: Eric Hedin, another professor at Ball State, is facing persecution for teaching both sides of evolution
  • Medved: Tell us about the book “The Privileged Planet” that got him into trouble
  • Richards: The book is about how the progress of science shows that habitable planets have to be fine-tuned
  • Richards: The book argues that there is a correlation between habitability and the ability to make scientific discoveries
  • Medved: Your book “Money Greed and God” talks about materialism has impacted economics as well
  • Richards: It’s problematic to assume materialism when studying economics and neglect human creativity
  • Medved: Why don’t intelligent design people just focus on religion, instead of trying to get into the science classroom?
  • Richards: Darwin himself was trying to argue against design, so the evidence for design is part of the debate
  • Caller1: There are many galaxies, solar systems and planets in the universe, so the odds are good of getting life by chance
  • Richards: There are 10 to the 22 stars in the visible so we have an idea of the probabilistic resources available
  • Richards: There are a lot of things that you need to get right in order to support life – the odds are less than 10 to the 22
  • Caller1: Why can’t just teach about astrophysics and astrobiology in a religion or history class?
  • Richards: Because the evidence for design is found in things like bacterial flagellums and the origin of life
  • Richards: Since evidence for design is scientific, it makes no sense to talk about it in a history or religion class
  • Caller2: Intelligent design argues that we are too complicated, but then the Designer must be even more complicated
  • Richards: Consider a situation where a murder has been committed, but the murder suspect has fled the country
  • Richards: Are we not allowed to infer that an agent murdered the victim if we can’t produce the murderer?
  • Caller2: But inferring that an intelligence is the cause of some effect means that you stop asking questions
  • Medved: Why is it so hard for you to accept
  • Caller2: I’m an atheist and I like the Big Bang theory, and it explains where matter came from
  • Medved: The Big Bang theory explains the origin of space and time from nothing: that’s not atheism, that’s theism
  • Caller3: Intelligent design theory is nothing but a fear of randomness in the universe
  • Richards: The arguments for intelligent design are based on discoveries abut the origin of life or the Cambrian explosion
  • Richards: The real question is whether materialistic mechanisms and random chance can explain the evidence
  • Caller4: Explain your idea that habitability is corelated with the ability to make discoveries
  • Richards: Example: in order to have perfect solar eclipses, the masses of the Sun, moon and planet have to be fine-tuned
  • Richards: Example: life-permitting atmosphere is also a transparent atmosphere, so we can see past it to make discoveries
  • Richards: Example: galactic habitable zone is also the best place to do astronomy and make discoveries

By the way, there was a troubling update about the Darwish Inquisition against Eric Hedin – it looks like the panel of investigators is stacked with close-minded naturalists.

I subscribe to the ID the Future podcast, and I really recommend that you do as well!

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