Tuesday, October 24, 2006

How Many ID-iots Does it Take to...?

An old net-acquaintance of mine, Robert O'Brien, once attended UF. He got an MS in Mathematics, so far as I can tell, is now teaching math at Cal State U - Chico, and he also received the distinction of having a popular blogger's "idiot of the month award" named after him. Robert alerted me, via his blog, that a math professor here at UF had signed Intelligent Design's ID-iotic pledge of allegiance sheet (my serious analysis here) to "dissent from Darwinism"; and so I decided to do a cursory search of the newest version of the document, revised June '06, to find out how many persons here at UF, and at VT (my "nourishing mother"), were logged on to their program. Sadly...a few:
In no particular order --
    UF
  1. Dr. George R. Lebo, Retired Assoc. Prof. of Astronomy -- this guy went to Wheaton for undergrad, so no great surprise there.
  2. Prof. James E. Keesling, Mathematics -- he's the past president of the Christian Faculty Fellowship, and guess who else shows up at that page? Dr. Lebo.
    VT
  1. Dr. Malcolm A. Cutchins, Retired [Emeritus] Prof. of Engineering Mechanics (at Auburn) -- he got his Ph.D. at VT and invoked VT on the ID-iot list, so, I had to lump him in here...
  2. Dr. David M. Howell, unknown employment status -- he got his Ph.D. at VT, published a paper with Dr. White (I knew him), but I can't find out anything else about the guy.
  3. Prof. Jonathan D. Eisenback, Plant Pathology and Weed Science -- interestingly, the guy went to Bryan college, the site of the famous Dayton Scopes Trial.
  4. Prof. Richard J. Neves, Fisheries and Wildlife Science -- mussels expert, went to UMass.
So that's what a cursory search for the terms "Florida" and "Virginia" yield within the newest version of the ID-iotic pledge. I'm actually going to write all of these guys and ask them what they think of my analysis of the statement that they signed -- that it is crafted so as to be deceptive. Perhaps one or two of them will agree and tell me they're going to write and ask to be taken off of it. As a side note, I did find one dead guy on the list -- David C. Chapman. I wrote and asked the DI about this, and Logan Gage kindly informed me that he was not added poshumously, so at least they aren't that low and dirty.

I will update if the "dissenters" write me back...hopefully they will see the light of day on this thing.
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