http://www.stnews.org/articles.php?category=guide&guide=Intelligent%20Design&article_id=2170

Gonzalez, Iowa State’s "Wizard of ID," on defensive

Iowa State astronomy assistant and Intelligent Design supporter Guillermo Gonzalez says his critics have got him wrong.

By Kevin Ferguson

(November 10, 2005)

It could not have been an easy place for life to flourish: a superheated atmosphere in which the ground rapidly shifted and sulfuric material was incessantly spewed. Primordial Earth? Actually, it was Iowa State University in March 2004 as intelligent design proponents and their critics squared off following the publication of The Privileged Planet by Guillermo Gonzalez, an astronomy professor at Iowa State University, and Jay W. Richards, a former teaching fellow at Princeton Theological Seminary. Both are senior fellows at the Seattle-based Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, which supports ID research.

Gonzalez, a well-respected astronomer who has been feted by both NASA and the National Science Foundation, is in good company. His openness to — some would say promulgation of — intelligent design theory puts him in same camp as John D. Barrow, a research professor of mathematical sciences at the University of Cambridge, who said at a Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship seminar in June the extraordinary “fine-tuning” of the universe. Nonetheless, Gonzalez has managed to draw peer ire for discussing intelligent design theory. In fact, Gonzalez’s stand impelled Hector Avalos, an associate professor of religious studies at Iowa State and faculty adviser to the ISU Atheist and Agnostic Society, to spearhead an anti-ID petition at Iowa State. More than 120 faculty members have signed it.

But Gonzalez’s critics have got him – well, mostly – wrong, he said. “The statements use overheated rhetoric, such as labeling intelligent design as the ‘new creationism,’ ” said Gonzalez. “They don’t really try to engage intelligent design proponents. So, I see a particularly high level of intolerance for real discussion among leading scientific organizations.”