Iowa State Promotes Atheist Professor Who Equates Bible with Mein
Kampf While Denying Tenure to ID Astronomer

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/05/iowa_state_promotes_atheist_pr.html

Iowa State Promotes Atheist Professor Who Equates Bible with Mein
Kampf While Denying Tenure to ID Astronomer

Iowa taxpayers can be relieved to know that ISU is making sure their
tax dollars will be spent on worthy scholars like Prof. Avalos rather
than disreputable astronomers like Dr. Gonzalez.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/05/iowa_state_promotes_atheist_pr.html

Iowa State Promotes Atheist Professor Who Equates Bible with Mein
Kampf While Denying Tenure to ID Astronomer

While Iowa State University denied tenure this spring to gifted pro-
ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, it turns out that it decided at the
same time to promote to full professor outspoken atheist Hector
Avalos, religious studies professor and faculty adviser to the ISU
Atheist and Agnostic Society. Avalos has led the charge against
Gonzalez and intelligent design on ISU's campus, helping to draft a
2005 petition denouncing intelligent design that ultimately was signed
by more than 120 ISU faculty.

In fact, Mein Kampf does not contain a single explicit command for
genocide equivalent to those found in the Hebrew Bible... Thus, if all
of Mein Kampf is to be rejected simply for its implied genocidal
policies, we should certainly reject all of the Bible for some of its
explicit and blatant genocidal policies. [p. 363]

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/05/iowa_state_promotes_atheist_pr.html



Iowa State Promotes Atheist Professor Who Equates Bible with Mein
Kampf While Denying Tenure to ID Astronomer



While Iowa State University denied tenure this spring to gifted pro-
ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, it turns out that it decided at the
same time to promote to full professor outspoken atheist Hector
Avalos, religious studies professor and faculty adviser to the ISU
Atheist and Agnostic Society. Avalos has led the charge against
Gonzalez and intelligent design on ISU's campus, helping to draft a
2005 petition denouncing intelligent design that ultimately was signed
by more than 120 ISU faculty.

Apparently ISU professors who are horrified by the supposed mixing of
metaphysics and scholarship on the part of ID proponents have no
qualms about supporting Avalos's explicit anti-religious propaganda,
including his effort to equate the Bible with Hitler's Mein Kampf (for
more on Avalos's view of the Bible, see below). It is worth pointing
out that ISU issued a press release a few years ago boasting about
Avalos's appointment as the executive director of a group affiliated
with the Council for Secular Humanism that seeks to debunk religion.

Avalos's promotion to full professor comes just in time for the
publication of his new book on the Bible later this month. According
to the publisher's description, Avalos argues in the book

that our world is best served by leaving the Bible as a relic of an
ancient civilization instead of the "living" document most religionist
scholars believe it should be. He urges his colleagues to concentrate
on educating the broader society to recognize the irrelevance and even
violent effects of the Bible in modern life.
Just how extreme Avalos's view of the Bible is can be seen in his
previous book, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence
(2005), in which he repeatedly equates the Bible with Hitler's Mein
Kampf. Indeed, in a section of the book titled "Scripture: A Zero-
Tolerance Argument," Avalos actually suggests that the Bible is worse
than Mein Kampf:

In fact, Mein Kampf does not contain a single explicit command for
genocide equivalent to those found in the Hebrew Bible... Thus, if all
of Mein Kampf is to be rejected simply for its implied genocidal
policies, we should certainly reject all of the Bible for some of its
explicit and blatant genocidal policies. [p. 363]
At other points, Avalos appears to blame Jewish people for Hitler's
attempt to exterminate them, locating the origins of the Holocaust in
what he calls "Hebrew racism." Consider the following passages:


"The purpose here is to show that the Nazi policy of genocide was
based on premises quite similar to those in the Hebrew Bible." [p.
316]

"the Nazi Holocaust represents the synthesis of attitudes found in
both the New Testament and the Hebrew scriptures." [p. 318]

"[Scholars Katz and Wolpoff] fail to see the parallels between certain
practices promulgated in the Hebrew Bible itself. Indeed, the supreme
irony of the Holocaust is that the genocidal policies first
systematically enunciated in the Hebrew scriptures were reversed by
the Nazis. Nazi ideology simply had better technology to do what
biblical authors had said they would do to their enemies." [pp.
318-319]

"Hitler saw himself as trying to counteract Hebrew racism, which he
saw as the main counterpart and enemy of the German race." [p. 319]


As if these statements were not enough, Prof. Avalos has equated
creationism with Nazism, denounced religion-inspired acts of love, and
even suggested that we "eliminate religion from human life
altogether":

"Nazi ideology is similar to creationist ideology, which believes that
scientific findings support the biblical stories of Creation and the
Flood." [p. 318]

"any act of love based on religion is immoral." [p. 369]

"Mother Teresa... advocated policies that helped to generate the very
pool of poor people she was attempting to help. Religious beliefs are
largely responsible for arguments against contraception, which helps
to perpetuate poverty and conflicts over scarce resources. So in the
end, did Mother Teresa help more people than were harmed by her
religious belief?" [p. 370]

"until the Abrahamic religions overthrow the master-slave model in
which they were born, we see little progress to be made. Since all
religious beliefs are ultimately unverifiable, the greatest scarce
resource of all is verifiability. And one way to remedy or minimize
unverifiability in any decision-making process, especially that
leading to violence, is to eliminate religion from human life
altogether." [p. 371, emphasis added]


Iowa taxpayers can be relieved to know that ISU is making sure their
tax dollars will be spent on worthy scholars like Prof. Avalos rather
than disreputable astronomers like Dr. Gonzalez.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/05/iowa_state_promotes_atheist_pr.html



Iowa State Promotes Atheist Professor Who Equates Bible with Mein
Kampf While Denying Tenure to ID Astronomer



While Iowa State University denied tenure this spring to gifted pro-
ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, it turns out that it decided at the
same time to promote to full professor outspoken atheist Hector
Avalos, religious studies professor and faculty adviser to the ISU
Atheist and Agnostic Society. Avalos has led the charge against
Gonzalez and intelligent design on ISU's campus, helping to draft a
2005 petition denouncing intelligent design that ultimately was signed
by more than 120 ISU faculty.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/05/iowa_state_promotes_atheist_pr.html
Iowa State Promotes Atheist Professor Who Equates Bible with Mein
Kampf While Denying Tenure to ID Astronomer

Subject: Iowa State Promotes Atheist Professor Who Equates Bible With
Mein Kampf

Iowa State Promotes Atheist Professor...While Denying Tenure to ID
Astronomer

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2007/05/iowa_state_promotes_atheist_pr.html



Iowa State Promotes Atheist Professor Who Equates Bible with Mein
Kampf While Denying Tenure to ID Astronomer



While Iowa State University denied tenure this spring to gifted pro-
ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, it turns out that it decided at the
same time to promote to full professor outspoken atheist Hector
Avalos, religious studies professor and faculty adviser to the ISU
Atheist and Agnostic Society. Avalos has led the charge against
Gonzalez and intelligent design on ISU's campus, helping to draft a
2005 petition denouncing intelligent design that ultimately was signed
by more than 120 ISU faculty.

Apparently ISU professors who are horrified by the supposed mixing of
metaphysics and scholarship on the part of ID proponents have no
qualms about supporting Avalos's explicit anti-religious propaganda,
including his effort to equate the Bible with Hitler's Mein Kampf (for
more on Avalos's view of the Bible, see below). It is worth pointing
out that ISU issued a press release a few years ago boasting about
Avalos's appointment as the executive director of a group affiliated
with the Council for Secular Humanism that seeks to debunk religion.

Avalos's promotion to full professor comes just in time for the
publication of his new book on the Bible later this month. According
to the publisher's description, Avalos argues in the book

that our world is best served by leaving the Bible as a relic of an
ancient civilization instead of the "living" document most religionist
scholars believe it should be. He urges his colleagues to concentrate
on educating the broader society to recognize the irrelevance and even
violent effects of the Bible in modern life.
Just how extreme Avalos's view of the Bible is can be seen in his
previous book, Fighting Words: The Origins of Religious Violence
(2005), in which he repeatedly equates the Bible with Hitler's Mein
Kampf. Indeed, in a section of the book titled "Scripture: A Zero-
Tolerance Argument," Avalos actually suggests that the Bible is worse
than Mein Kampf:

In fact, Mein Kampf does not contain a single explicit command for
genocide equivalent to those found in the Hebrew Bible... Thus, if all
of Mein Kampf is to be rejected simply for its implied genocidal
policies, we should certainly reject all of the Bible for some of its
explicit and blatant genocidal policies. [p. 363]
At other points, Avalos appears to blame Jewish people for Hitler's
attempt to exterminate them, locating the origins of the Holocaust in
what he calls "Hebrew racism." Consider the following passages:


"The purpose here is to show that the Nazi policy of genocide was
based on premises quite similar to those in the Hebrew Bible." [p.
316]

"the Nazi Holocaust represents the synthesis of attitudes found in
both the New Testament and the Hebrew scriptures." [p. 318]

"[Scholars Katz and Wolpoff] fail to see the parallels between certain
practices promulgated in the Hebrew Bible itself. Indeed, the supreme
irony of the Holocaust is that the genocidal policies first
systematically enunciated in the Hebrew scriptures were reversed by
the Nazis. Nazi ideology simply had better technology to do what
biblical authors had said they would do to their enemies." [pp.
318-319]

"Hitler saw himself as trying to counteract Hebrew racism, which he
saw as the main counterpart and enemy of the German race." [p. 319]


As if these statements were not enough, Prof. Avalos has equated
creationism with Nazism, denounced religion-inspired acts of love, and
even suggested that we "eliminate religion from human life
altogether":

"Nazi ideology is similar to creationist ideology, which believes that
scientific findings support the biblical stories of Creation and the
Flood." [p. 318]

"any act of love based on religion is immoral." [p. 369]

"Mother Teresa... advocated policies that helped to generate the very
pool of poor people she was attempting to help. Religious beliefs are
largely responsible for arguments against contraception, which helps
to perpetuate poverty and conflicts over scarce resources. So in the
end, did Mother Teresa help more people than were harmed by her
religious belief?" [p. 370]

"until the Abrahamic religions overthrow the master-slave model in
which they were born, we see little progress to be made. Since all
religious beliefs are ultimately unverifiable, the greatest scarce
resource of all is verifiability. And one way to remedy or minimize
unverifiability in any decision-making process, especially that
leading to violence, is to eliminate religion from human life
altogether." [p. 371, emphasis added]


Iowa taxpayers can be relieved to know that ISU is making sure their
tax dollars will be spent on worthy scholars like Prof. Avalos rather
than disreputable astronomers like Dr. Gonzalez.