Bruce L. Gordon

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Bruce L. Gordon is a Canadian philosopher of science (physics), metaphysician and philosopher of religion. He is a proponent of intelligent design and has been affiliated with the Discovery Institute since 1997.

Contents

Biography

Early life and education

Gordon was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1963.

Gordon earned two undergraduate degrees, one in piano performance at the Royal Conservatory of Music at the University of Toronto in 1982 and another in applied mathematics at the University of Calgary in 1986. He was awarded a master's degree in analytic philosophy from the University of Calgary in 1988. He moved to the United States for graduate study in 1988, and has been a permanent resident ever since. In 1990, Gordon received a master's degree in apologetics and systematic theology from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Finally, he was awarded a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois in the history and philosophy of science (physics) in 1998. [1]

Career

In 1997 he became an affiliate of the Discovery Institute. [1]

He was a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and a Fellow in the Center for Philosophy of Religion at Notre Dame in 1998–99. [1]

In 1999 he was appointed as a non-tenured associate research professor at Baylor University, [2] and was appointed as associate director of the short-lived Michael Polanyi Center there, which was directed by William Dembski. [3] The center was a step forward in the Discovery Institute's wedge strategy in that it established a beachhead for intelligent design within a major US university. [4] The Baylor faculty rejected the Center in 2000, Dembski was removed as director, and Gordon was appointed interim director. By 2001 the center had been renamed The Baylor Science and Religion Project and placed under the institute. [5] :378 [6] By 2002 it had been again renamed to the Baylor Center for Science, Philosophy and Religion, still with Gordon at its head. [7] [8]

Gordon left Baylor in 2005 to join the Discovery Institute [1] and by 2008 was the director of its Center for Science and Culture. [9]

Gordon is a known proponent of intelligent design and Fellow of the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID). He was the managing editor of the moribund Access Research Network journal Origin and Design, as of its last issue (20:1) [5] :176 and an associate editor of the likewise moribund ISCID journal. [5] :213

In April 2010 Gordon was named Associate Professor of Science and Mathematics at The King's College, New York. [10]

In 2012, he started working at Houston Baptist University. [1]

Related Research Articles

Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins". Proponents claim that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." ID is a form of creationism that lacks empirical support and offers no testable or tenable hypotheses, and is therefore not science. The leading proponents of ID are associated with the Discovery Institute, a Christian, politically conservative think tank based in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William A. Dembski</span> American mathematician and proponent of intelligent design

William Albert Dembski is an American mathematician, philosopher and theologian. He was a proponent of intelligent design (ID) pseudoscience, specifically the concept of specified complexity, and was a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC). On September 23, 2016, he officially retired from intelligent design, resigning all his "formal associations with the ID community, including [his] Discovery Institute fellowship of 20 years". A February 2021 interview in the CSC's blog Evolution News announced "his return to the intelligent design arena".

The International Society for Complexity, Information, and Design (ISCID) was a creationism advocacy organization that described itself as "a cross-disciplinary professional society that investigates complex systems apart from external programmatic constraints like materialism, naturalism, or reductionism." It was founded and led by figures associated with the intelligent design movement, such as William A. Dembski and Michael Behe.

Phillip E. Johnson was a UC Berkeley law professor, opponent of evolutionary science, co-founder of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement, author of the "Wedge strategy" and co-founder of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC). He described himself as "in a sense the father of the intelligent design movement". He was a critic of Darwinism, which he described as "fully naturalistic evolution, involving chance mechanisms and natural selection". The wedge strategy aims to change public opinion and scientific consensus, and seeks to convince the scientific community to allow a role for theism, or causes beyond naturalistic explanation, in scientific discourse. Johnson argued that scientists accepted the theory of evolution "before it was rigorously tested, and thereafter used all their authority to convince the public that naturalistic processes are sufficient to produce a human from a bacterium, and a bacterium from a mix of chemicals."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Center for Science and Culture</span> Part of the Discovery Institute

The Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), is part of the Discovery Institute (DI), a conservative Christian think tank in the United States. The CSC lobbies for the inclusion of creationism in the form of intelligent design (ID) in public-school science curricula as an explanation for the origins of life and the universe while trying to cast doubt on the theory of evolution. These positions have been rejected by the scientific community, which identifies intelligent design as pseudoscientific neo-creationism, whereas the theory of evolution is overwhelmingly accepted as a matter of scientific consensus.

The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the pseudoscientific idea of intelligent design (ID), which asserts that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Its chief activities are a campaign to promote public awareness of this concept, the lobbying of policymakers to include its teaching in high school science classes, and legal action, either to defend such teaching or to remove barriers otherwise preventing it. The movement arose out of the creation science movement in the United States, and is driven by a small group of proponents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen C. Meyer</span> American author, educator and advocate of intelligent design creationism

Stephen C. Meyer is an American author and former educator. He is an advocate of the pseudoscience of intelligent design and helped found the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute (DI), which is the main organization behind the intelligent design movement. Before joining the DI, Meyer was a professor at Whitworth College. Meyer is a senior fellow of the DI and director of the CSC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Polanyi Center</span>

The Michael Polanyi Center (MPC) at Baylor University, Texas, was the first center at a research university exclusively dedicated to the principle of intelligent design, primarily to host William Dembski, its director, and Bruce L. Gordon, its assistant director. It was founded in 1999 by Baylor president Robert B. Sloan "with the primary aim of advancing the understanding of the sciences" in a religious context and was named for Michael Polanyi. It was aligned with the Discovery Institute's wedge strategy, and was funded in part by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation via the Discovery Institute. All of the center's research investigated the subject of intelligent design. It hosted a conference in April 2000 that brought the center to the attention of the broader Baylor community as well as the rest of the scholarly world.

Theistic science, also referred to as theistic realism, is the pseudoscientific proposal that the central scientific method of requiring testability, known as methodological naturalism, should be replaced by a philosophy of science that allows occasional supernatural explanations which are inherently untestable. Proponents propose supernatural explanations for topics raised by their theology, in particular evolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wedge strategy</span> Creationist political and social action plan

The Wedge Strategy is a creationist political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document. Its goal is to change American culture by shaping public policy to reflect politically conservative fundamentalist evangelical Protestant values. The wedge metaphor is attributed to Phillip E. Johnson and depicts a metal wedge splitting a log.

The Kansas evolution hearings were a series of hearings held in Topeka, Kansas, United States from May 5 to 12, 2005 by the Kansas State Board of Education and its State Board Science Hearing Committee to change how evolution and the origin of life would be taught in the state's public high school science classes. The hearings were arranged by the Board of Education with the intent of introducing intelligent design into science classes via the Teach the Controversy method.

"A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism" was a statement issued in 2001 by the Discovery Institute, a Christian, conservative think tank based in Seattle, Washington, U.S., best known for its promotion of the pseudoscientific principle of intelligent design. As part of the Discovery Institute's Teach the Controversy campaign, the statement expresses skepticism about the ability of random mutations and natural selection to account for the complexity of life, and encourages careful examination of the evidence for "Darwinism", a term intelligent design proponents use to refer to evolution.

<i>Uncommon Dissent</i> 2004 anthology edited by William A. Dembski

Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing is a 2004 anthology edited by William A. Dembski in which fifteen intellectuals, eight of whom are leading intelligent design proponents associated with the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC) and the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design (ISCID), criticise "Darwinism" and make a case for intelligent design. It is published by the publishing wing of the paleoconservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The foreword is by John Wilson, editor of the evangelical Christian magazine Christianity Today. The title is a pun on the principle of biology known as common descent. The Discovery Institute is the engine behind the intelligent design movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of intelligent design</span> Outline of the topic

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Jay Wesley Richards is an American analytic philosopher who focuses on the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. He is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow in Heritage’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation. He serves as an adjunct professor in the School of Business at the Catholic University of America and the executive editor of The Stream and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. A former Presbyterian, Richards is now a Catholic.

The Biologic Institute was a section of the Discovery Institute created to give the organization a facade of conducting biological research with the aim of producing experimental evidence of intelligent design creationism, funded by the Discovery Institute. It claimed offices in Redmond, Washington and laboratories in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington. Instead Biologic Institute consisted solely of a rented office space in Redmond which is no longer in use for several years although the web domain is still renewed. The 'research' listed for the group consists mainly of random and often irrelevant works by Intelligent Design supporters going back to their graduate school years. Several are notably articles, books or internally published content from Discovery's 'BioComplexity' journal which is not a legitimate scientific journal.

The Trotter Prize is awarded at Texas A&M University and is part of an endowed lecture series. It is awarded "for pioneering contributions to the understanding of the role of information, complexity and inference in illuminating the mechanisms and wonder of nature" and includes The Trotter Lecture which "seeks to reveal connections between science and religion, often viewed in academia as non-overlapping, if not rival, worldviews.

The relationship between intelligent design and science has been a contentious one. Intelligent design (ID) is presented by its proponents as science and claims to offer an alternative to evolution. The Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank and the leading proponent of intelligent design, launched a campaign entitled "Teach the Controversy", which claims that a controversy exists within the scientific community over evolution. The scientific community rejects intelligent design as a form of creationism, and the basic facts of evolution are not a matter of controversy in science.

The John Templeton Foundation is a philanthropic organization that reflects the ideas of its founder, John Templeton, who became wealthy via a career as a contrarian investor, and wanted to support progress in religious and spiritual knowledge, especially at the intersection of religion and science. He also sought to fund research on methods to promote and develop moral character, intelligence, and creativity in people, and to promote free markets. In 2008, the foundation was awarded the National Humanities Medal. In 2016, Inside Philanthropy called it "the oddest—or most interesting—big foundation around."

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Bruce L. Gordon". LinkedIn. Retrieved 18 July 2018.
  2. Smith, Christie (September 29, 1999). "Discussion group focuses on science's relationship to religion". The Lariat.
  3. Professors debate legitimacy of Polanyi
  4. Gross, Barbara (3 December 2008). "The Wedge at Work". NCSE.
  5. 1 2 3 Forrest, Barbara; Gross, Paul R. (2007). Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780195319736.
  6. Gordon, Bruce (January 2001). "Intelligent Design Movement Struggles with Identity Crisis". Research News & Opportunities in Science and Theology. John Templeton Foundation: 9.
  7. "Press release: Baylor To Be Site Of High-Profile Academic Conferences". Media Communications | Baylor University. 24 September 2002.
  8. Forrest, Barbara; Branch, Glenn (2005). "Wedging Creationism into the Academy". Academe. 91 (1): 36–41. doi:10.2307/40252735. JSTOR   40252735. S2CID   141766477.
  9. Forrest, B. (21 June 2008). "Still creationism after all these years: understanding and counteracting intelligent design". Integrative and Comparative Biology. 48 (2): 189–201. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.520.5693 . doi: 10.1093/icb/icn032 . PMID   21669783. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  10. "Press release: Dr. Bruce L. Gordon Named Associate Professor". The King's College. April 6, 2010. Archived from the original on May 28, 2010.

Writings