Monk has served as a first sergeant at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio since 2011. He recently returned from a deployment and discovered he had a new commander – an open lesbian.
“In one of our first meetings, she was talking about her promotion and she mentioned something about a benediction,” Monk told Fox News. “She said she wanted a chaplain but objected to one particular chaplain that she called a bigot because he preached that homosexuality is a sin.”
“She then said, ‘I don’t know what kind of people actually believe that kind of crap,’” Monk said, recalling the meeting. “I knew I was going to have a rough time in this unit and I would have to be very careful what I said.”
That moment came when Monk was called in to advise the commander on a disciplinary matter involving an Air Force instructor accused of making comments objecting to gay marriage.
And then Monk had to advise his lesbian officer about someone who disagreed with homosexuality:
Seven people filed complaints about the remarks. It then became Monk’s job to advise the commander on disciplinary action.
“Her very first reaction was to say, ‘we need to lop off the head of this guy,’” Monk said. “The commander took the position that his speech was discrimination.”
Monk suggested she use the incident as a learning experience – a way to teach everyone about tolerance and diversity.
“I don’t believe someone having an opinion for or against homosexuality is discriminatory,” Monk told Fox News.
From that point, Monk said he was told that he wasn’t on the same page as the commander and if I didn’t get on the page they were on, they would find another place for me to work.”
“I’m being chastised about what’s going on,” he said. “I’m told that members of the Air Force don’t have freedom of speech. They don’t have the right to say anything that goes against Air Force policy.”
Monk, who is a devout evangelical Christian, said he met with the young instructor and told him that he was fighting for him.
“He was really concerned,” he said. “He said he felt like he was on an island – that he couldn’t be who he is anymore. He didn’t understand why somebody would be offended.”
The instructor was eventually punished by having a letter of counseling placed in his official file.
Monk soon found himself in a very similar position after his commander ordered him to answer a question about whether people who object to gay marriage are guilty of discrimination.
“She said, ‘Sgt. Monk, I need to know if you can, as my first sergeant, if you can see discrimination if somebody says that they don’t agree with homosexual marriage,’” he said. “I refused to answer the question.”
Monk said to answer would have put him in a legal predicament.
“And as a matter of conscience I could not answer the question the way the commander wanted me to,” he said.
I actually wanted to joint the military when I was young. But I knew that if I ever disagreed with my superiors on issues like abortion or gay marriage, that I would have trouble transferring my skills to a new career. I chose to go into computer science so that I could get my skills without being censored or sanctioned by teachers who didn’t agree with me. I wanted to avoid having to change who I was because someone else disagreed with me and wanted to push their views on me by exercising power. I had read about what atheists did to Christians in communist countries, and I didn’t want to be exposed to that. I knew that I had to choose a field where I could always take my skills and leave if I sensed danger.
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 sixth segment from this past week, courtesy of the Intelligent Design: The Future podcast.
On this episode of ID the Future, the CSC’s Casey Luskin and atheist Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation debate academic freedom and free speech on the Medved Show. This debate was inspired by the ongoing case of Professor Eric Hedin, a physicist at Ball State University who is being threatened by the Freedom From Religion Foundation for favorably portraying intelligent design in the classroom.
Please lend your voice to defend Professor Eric Hedin and academic freedom. Sign the petition at 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: (note that I am paraphrasing Dan Barker for the sake of humor, and he will probably sue me, since that is his entire contribution to the search for truth in this debate)
Michael Medved: untenured Ball State University professor Eric Hedin is under fire for teaching both sides of intelligent design in a college course
Dan Barker: this complaint against professor Hedin came to our attention from Jerry Coyne not from students of Professor Hedin
Dan Barker: professors are not allowed to question the presuppositions atheism, materialism, naturalism in the physics classroom
Dan Barker: this is a science course and you cannot question the religion of naturalism in class or else it’s teaching religion
Dan Barker: we need to use the power of the courts to stifle any dissent from of my religion (naturalism)
Dan Barker: the classroom of a university is not the proper place for students to inquire about both sides of scientific disputes
Dan Barker: even if students are paying their money and choosing this course of their own free will, they can’t be allowed to hear both sides
Casey Luskin: this course is not a science course, it is open to non-science students
Casey Luskin: the course evaluations from students of all majors is overwhelmingly positive
Casey Luskin: the course features people on both sides
Casey Luskin: the course features brilliant scholars like Lennox and Penrose, both from Oxford University
Casey Luskin: the course features opponents of intelligent design like Francis Collins and Karl Gilberson
Casey Luskin: the course features non-Christians like Lee Spetner, Paul Davies, Roger Penrose and Gerald Schroeder
Dan Barker: (taking over the host) you cannot study scientists like Francis Collins who mapped the human genome, that is “creationism”
Michael Medved: academic freedom allows professors to put a slant on what they are teaching
Dan Barker: if the professor’s slant is against my religion of naturalism, then I have to put them in jail and inquisition them
Dan Barker: you cannot teach science like the Big Bang and fine-tuning as if it is science because it contradicts naturalism
Casey Luskin: Even radical atheist PZ Myers says that professors have the right to academic freedom
Dan Barker: I’ll burn that creationist at the stake, too! And smash his filthy microscopes and telescopes!
Michael Medved: Casey, would you use state power to fire a professor who disagreed with you because you were offended?
Casey Luskin: no, I had to take tons of courses from professors who had a slant against my views and I learned a lot from different views
Dan Barker: you will address me as the Holy Father, please! Every professor who disagrees with my religion must burn!
Casey Luskin: Barker has no idea what is going on in the class, he never attended it
Casey Luskin: The atheists students who took his class gave him high ratings and said he graded fairly
Dan Barker: I don’t have to look through the telescope to know the Earth is flat – Hedin is a traitor! Off with his head!
Dan Barker: Creationist PZ Myers is wrong, and I’ll burn him at the stake for creationist heresy against my Holy Church!
Dan Barker: Oxford professors like John Lennox are creationists because his Big Bang religion is grounded on experimental data like the cosmic background radiation, the hydrogen/helium abundances and the redshifting of light from distant galaxies
Dan Barker: I have a degree in Religion and I write hymns, which makes me smarter than John Lennox since he is a “creationist”
Dan Barker: I haven’t published any scientific research myself, but I have written some atheist praise hymns, so I am qualified to burn the heretics!
Michael Medved: The course is taught by someone with a PhD in Physics, and the syllabus says that it investigates science and religion
Michael Medved: Why is it wrong to investigate the science that questions philosophical assumptions like naturalism and materialism?
Casey Luskin: The syllabus features amazing readings from all the latest science relevant to that question from both sides
Michael Medved: What will Ball State U do to the professor?
Casey Luskin: So far no action from Ball State U, but people need to sign the petition to protect the professor
Michael Medved: Isn’t academic freedom being applied inconsistently here?
Casey Luskin: Yes and science is supposed to move forward by disagreement and debate
Casey Luskin: How confident can intelligent design censors really be if their contribution to the debate is coercion and intimidation?
Michael Luskin: Is Dan Barker right to say that Oxford professor John Lennox is a “creationist”?
Casey Luskin: Creationism starts with the Bible, but intelligent design starts with scientific data
And there is a period of questions from the callers. This episode features a debate, so it is not to be missed.
You can see more about Dan Barker’s educational background:
Dan became a teenage evangelist at age 15. At 16 he was choir librarian for faith-healer Kathryn Kuhlman’s Los Angeles appearances. He received a degree in Religion from Azusa Pacific University and was ordained to the ministry by the Standard Community Church, California, in 1975.
[…]Dan preached for 19 years. He maintained an ongoing touring musical ministry, including eight years of full-time, cross-country evangelism. An accomplished pianist, record producer, arranger and songwriter, he worked with Christian music companies such as Manna Music and Word Music. For a few years, Dan wrote and produced the annual “Mini Musicale” for Gospel Light Publications’ Vacation Bible School curriculum.
I’m not sure if Dan Barker has the right background for disputing whether intelligent design belongs in a classroom or not. Remember, the bulk of his life was spent writing and singing feel-g0od, happy-clappy songs. In his debates with Christians, it’s quite clear that he is totally unequipped to assess scientific evidence from the Big Bang, the fine-tuning, the origin of life, the Cambrian explosion, or habitability. It’s just not his thing, and I don’t think that musicians have what it takes to understand those arguments enough to feel comfortable using the courts to suppress people with actual PhDs in science.
Evolution News writes about an eminent scientist who is under by professors and students at Emory University because of his disagreement with Darwinian orthodoxy and his assertion that morality isn’t possible on a materialistic worldview.
Here’s the first article from Evolution News, which explains what got Dr. Carson in trouble with the Darwoids.
Excerpt:
You can be a brilliant, innovative pediatric neurosurgeon at a sky-scraping top medical school, in addition to being a generous philanthropist with an inspirational up-from-dire-poverty personal story, plus a Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, and a best-selling writer whose memoir was turned into a TV movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr.
All that, but if you once shared your critical thoughts on evolutionary science and its moral implications — everything else about you suddenly dwindles to very little.
Dr. Ben Carson of Johns Hopkins University is that man. He’s scheduled to give the Commencement address and receive an honorary degree at Emory University but close to 500 faculty members, students and staff protested, drawing up a gravely serious letter to the student paper expressing their “concerns.” Over what? Carson had no intention of speaking about evolution but someone dug up an impromptu interview he once gave to a publication associated with his Christian denomination (he’s a Seventh Day Adventist).
Carson explained why he’s not impressed by the evidence on offer for Darwinian theory and why a materialist philosophy is at odds with the idea of free will and therefore makes it tough to offer a coherent account of moral principles. The interview is casual in tone and it’s not clear whether his views are more along the lines of theistic evolution, intelligent design, or some other perspective. Not that the protestors seemed inclined to make any careful distinctions.
Emory isn’t withdrawing the invitation and the letter’s signatories don’t demand that the university do so. But they do distort his opinions and make him sound far less thoughtful than he actually is. Because he says you can’t, under materialism, give a sound rationale for morality, they claim he said that evolutionists are therefore morally defective, which is of course absurd.
At the First Things website, Princeton University moral philosopher Robbie George comes to Carson’s defense. Professor George agrees with Carson:
But of course Gentle Ben (and he is indeed one of the gentlest, kindest people one could ever meet) doesn’t believe that his Darwinist friends and colleagues are necessarily unethical. What he believes is that Darwinism is necessarily materialistic. (This is a view about Darwinism that he shares with some devout Darwinists themselves.) And he believes that materialism, if true, is incompatible with free will and with ethical norms (which must be, after all, norms for the guidance of free choices, if they are to have any standing, force, and validity at all). Now, he knows perfectly well that people who believe in materialism are in many cases decent, honorable, ethical people. But he thinks that they lead lives that are much better than their formal philosophical beliefs would require them to lead. He believes that their commitment to materialism makes it impossible for them to give a sound account of the ethical norms which they themselves, to their credit, live by. Of course, he might be wrong about that (though I don’t think he is), just as he might be wrong about the validity of Darwinism as a scientific theory, or the compatility of Darwinism with the rejection of materialism. But it’s certainly not a mean or crazy thing to believe or say. It’s scarcely a cause for “concern” about having him as a Commencement speaker.
Robbie George is one of the best moral philosophers out there. If he says that morality is not rationally grounded on a materialist worldview, then that’s the way it is. Naturally, people who believe in Darwinism can behave morally, because they are made in God’s image. Therefore, they have free will and an awareness of the moral law, even though these things are not rationally grounded on materialism. The point that theists make is merely that materialists are not able to make sense of morality on a deterministic worldview. They can, however, act better than their worldview allows – but it’s not rational for them to do that.
I note that Emory University is on the list of LEAST-FREE universities, according to the non-partisan, non-religious Foundational for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), so it’s not surprising that they would be censor anyone who has different views than they do.
Almost 500 Emory faculty and students have expressed their dismay that their commencement speaker on May 14 does not toe the ideological line on evolutionary biology. Yes, gasp, the renowned Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson does not believe in evolutionary theory. Not only that, but biology professors at Emory and their supporters also accuse Carson of committing a thought crime because he allegedly “equates acceptance of evolution with a lack of ethics and morality.”
Since I am a historian who has studied and published on the history of evolutionary ethics, I was rather surprised by the Emory faculty’s consternation over Carson’s belief that evolution undermines objective ethics and morality. Last summer I attended a major interdisciplinary conference at Oxford University on “The Evolution of Morality and the Morality of Evolution.” So I am well aware that there are a variety of viewpoints in academe on this topic. Nonetheless, many evolutionists — from Darwin to the present (including quite a few at that Oxford conference) — have argued and are still arguing precisely the point that Dr. Carson highlighted: they claim that morality has evolved and thus has no objective existence.
One of the keynote speakers at the Oxford conference was a leading philosopher of science, Michael Ruse, who stated in a 1985 article co-authored with Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson: “Ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to co-operate.” Why do biologists at Emory try to make Carson appear foolish for asserting that evolution undermines ethics, while one of the leading evolutionary biologists and one of the leading philosophers of science admit that evolution destroys any objective morality? Wilson in his book Consilience (1998) argued: “Either ethical precepts, such as justice and human rights, are independent of human experience or else they are human inventions.” He rejected the former explanation, which he called transcendentalist ethics, in favor of the latter, which he named empiricist ethics.
Atheists who think about these issues agree – on a materialist interpretation of nature, ethics is arbitrary, made-up nonsense.
Even atheists like Richard Dawkins think so:
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
(“God’s Utility Function,” Scientific American, November, 1995, p. 85)
Surprise! Atheism, which assumes that matter is all there is, implies the complete destruction of rationally grounded morality – including moral standards and human rights. This is denied by no one who has thought about this problem for more than 5 seconds. If you are talking to an atheist, you are talking to someone who thinks that any statement about right and wrong is as true as it’s opposite. On atheism, the morality of rape or slavery is as arbitrary as fashion or food. Any statement that rape is wrong has as much reason behind it, on atheism, as the statement that rape is right. Any statement that slavery is wrong has as much reason behind it, on atheism, as the statement that slavery is right. And that’s what atheists mean by morality, on their view. It’s just like picking which side of the road that people will drive on in different groups of people in different places in different times. That’s “atheist morality”. And when they die, there is no accountability in the afterlife for anything they’ve done and managed to escape judgment for in this life.
And, in point of fact, you can see it right now in the way that they are treating Dr. Carson.
What to do about it
If you are not happy with the actions of the Darwish Inquisition at Emory University, then please sign the petition!
And any atheists who are reading this post and don’t support Carson’s right to speak, please understand why theists have the opinion that atheism is nothing more than the practice of running from debates and silencing (one way or another) anyone who disagrees with you. That’s our experience of dealing with secular humanists like Richard Dawkins – no debates, just insults and coercion. To us, secular humanism is just a phrase that means totalitarianism and censorship. That’s our experience.
If you disagree, then sign the petition and prove us wrong.
WINTERY KNIGHT 