[Edit: I say below that Avalos was a priest. I'm pretty sure I was wrong about his affiliation with the Catholic church, although I'm still pretty sure he was in the ministry somehow.]
I should first say that I knew Avalos in undergrad and don't agree with him a lot of the time. I was often embarrassed that he was seen as the representative of my views in debates, because he was not all that good at them. That said, this article is crap.
Deace said:
Warning: what you are about to read would be considered highly offensive in several enclaves today, especially college campuses turned indoctrination centers like the religious studies department at Iowa State University. Those of you that pride yourselves on being more "tolerant" and more "enlightened" than you fellow upright vat of primordial ooze should stop reading now, or face the implosion of your frontal lobe. Those of you who lazily refuse to acknowledge anything could be more important than sports and spew bile every time someone brings up a non-sports subject should also stop reading for fear that someone might actually consider you a grown up for a change if you continue. The author doesn’t particularly care about either group, and even less about what they think, and he’s only warning them in order to save himself the trouble of banning them from our message boards and deleting their whiny emails. Everyone else – those of you best described as "normal" – should feel free to read on.
He starts with an unsupported assertion that the religious studies department is an "indoctrination center." Then he basically says that anyone who doesn't agree with him is whiny and not normal. Great start so far...
Deace said:
Who is Dr. Avalos? Dr. Avalos is the militant and activist atheist professor within ISU’s religious studies department. That’s right. ISU has a militant and activist atheist teaching in its religious studies department. Better yet, if you’re a taxpayer here in the state of Iowa you’re actually paying for it. Congratulations on participating in the fleecing of America.
An atheist cannot teach in the religious studies department why? It's a department that teaches about religions, not one that seeks to promote religion. So America is being fleeced because an atheist teaches religious studies... Nice meaningless catch phrase to finish the paragraph off.
I know what you’re thinking, cause it’s the same thing I was thinking when I first heard about this. You’re thinking, "Dude, why would an angry atheist (and is there any other kind) want to be teaching in the religious studies department? What interest in religion does he have if he doesn’t believe in God?"
Now all atheists are angry. Yet another pointless ad-hominem. If that doesn't give away his obvious and blind bias, I don't know what does. Someone cannot be interested in religion if they don't believe in God (note the capital G indicating THE God)? I find the philosophy surrounding religion quite intriguing myself. In Avalos's case he was once a priest who gave up the faith after more in depth biblical study. He is also an expert in the ancient languages of the bible. His qualifications to teach what he does are impeccable. I was well acquainted with one of the founders of Truth Bucket (an ISU organization that attempts to defend Christianity through reason) who took several classes from Avalos and had nothing but good things to say about his teaching ability.
Deace said:
Now, that’s an obvious question to have, especially if – like me – you’re from a little place we Earthlings like to call normal.
Yet another pointless jab at anyone who doesn't agree with him.
Deace said:
So go ahead and answer your own question. Why would an atheist, and an activist one at that, want to teach in the religious studies department? For the same reason a rooster wants into the hen house. It’s tempting to say that Dr. Avalos, considering what he says and writes outside the classroom, is using our tax money to proselytize atheism to college students. But I’m sure a Harvard grad is too smart to be caught doing so overtly, and that he instead uses sledgehammer-like subtlety to debunk and demagogue belief in God to what he views as gullible college students.
I'm willing to bet Deace doesn't know anything more about Avalos than what he reads in the paper. I doubt he has ever talked to him, seen him in the classroom, or even talked to any students that have taken a class from him. But its easier to just blindly impart motives on him...
Deace said:
Besides, the truth is that in today’s paganized and relativistic culture there is a taxpayer-subsidized Hector Avalos somewhere and to some degree on almost every college campus of consequence in the country. With sadly too very few exceptions nowadays they’re called the faculty.
Who do his religious views matter? There are plenty of activist Christians at colleges as well. Deace might as well just say what he appears to be thinking: We should have a religious test when hiring faculty.
Deace said:
See, Mr. Potter…err…I mean Mr. Avalos, is a man with a warped worldview living in a sad denial of reality. He is the embodiment of what St. Paul once said about educated scoffers: "While professing themselves to be wise they became utter fools." Mr. Avalos is trying to live his life contrary to what the owner’s manual says about how it works. He’s trying to suppress the truth about the owner’s manual, or even that there is an owner altogether. He wants his life to be all his own, to do with what he wants. He may desire that, but somewhere in the back of his mind he suspects he could be wrong, it’s just that his pride won’t let him admit it. His heart has been hardened. People in this condition have a tendency to get increasingly bitter and pretentious over time, and they try and take everyone down with them as they plunge into spiritual oblivion. I used to get mad at people like this…now I pity them.
Deace now just resorts to straight up preaching, working on the unsupported assumption that his faith is the correct one. He does this through much of the rest of the article and I don't plan to quote it all. He of course again attacks Avalos based solely on his atheist views.
Deace said:
Heck, they’ve even convinced an entire generation of Americans that the words "separation of church and state" are actually written in the Constitution. They’re not, but the Constitution does end with the words, "…in the year of our Lord."
This is about the closest thing to a decent argument in the whole article. Figured that deserved a quote.
Deace said:
But living out your Christian faith has a tendency to attract folks like Hector Avalos in this world, like a dog returns to its own vomit.
Another ad-hom.
Deace said:
Nevertheless, they sustain this charade that they’re their own God to the bitter end.
Just wanted to point out that I can make this exact same argument with regard to just about anything. Unsupported assertions are fun!
Deace said:
Coach Chizik understands that the only way to ultimately live a meaningful life, and there’s nothing a man craves more than a legacy, is to have a healthy relationship with the Maker. It’s when we don’t that we have a tendency to make bad decisions, the sorts of decisions that can irreparably damage our lives and the lives of those around us. I know that I am a far different father, husband, and man in the years since I got to know my Father than I was when I was a spiritual orphan. I’m certainly not perfect, but I’m no longer a lost soul, either.
That’s why Coach Chizik has helped to bring in and promote the "In the Zone" event coming to Ames on June 23rd, which he’ll be speaking at. It’s also why Coach Chizik wants a team chaplain to be a full-time staff position within the football program.
And now we see the true motivation for Deace, and supposedly Chizik as well, namely promoting Christianity to our football team. If this is the motivation for the chaplain then count me out.
Deace said:
Hector Avalos’ ignores his Maker, and instead worships the idols of science and reason. They can be useful tools that shouldn’t be dismissed, but all they can tell us about this life is how. They certainly can’t tell us why. Mr. Avalos doesn’t want to know why, because if he acknowledges the answer to why it will have repercussions for the choices he makes in his life right on down the line. And when you’re asphyxiating on pride you don’t even consider the why for a second.
Again, Deace doesn't have any information on which to base his groundless assertions. I would assume that someone who was once in the ministry has asked quite a few questions about their beliefs.
Deace said:
Some of these gutless tactics even made it into a recent sports column in the Des Moines Register. Why do I say gutless? Because they’re covering up their real motives. They don’t have the testicular fortitude to just come out and really say what they don’t like about it. So I’ll do it for them.
This isn’t about the separation of church and state, and this isn’t about tolerance. This is about one thing and one thing only—the separation of Christ and state.
B.S. It appears that way because Christianity is the most prominent religion and is thus the only one there are ever problems with. I assure you that if Chizik was hiring a rabbi to promote Judaism to the team people would be raising hell. Such situations just never occur.
Deace said:
That’s why Mr. Avalos and his same gang of 99 are trying to derail giving tenure to Guillermo Gonzalez, even though Professor Gonzalez doesn’t teach intelligent design in his ISU classes the way an atheist like Dr. Avalos teaches religion. Professor Gonzalez’ beliefs are not any different than Francis Collins’ are, and he’s the man that runs the human genome project, probably the most important scientific initiative of the age.
Would ISU deny tenure to Dr. Collins, who is a Christian that believes in theistic evolution (in other words, he believes that God steered the evolutionary process and it wasn’t random chance like Darwin asserted)? Is ISU suddenly too enlightened to give tenure to the head of the human genome project? I would think not, even though his views on the origin of life are essentially the same as Gonzalez’s. Except he doesn’t have a militant atheist religious studies professor stalking him the way Guillermo does.
Deace doesn't know any more about the reasons behind the denial of tenure than we do. There is a good indication that Gonzalez's research and grants did not meet expectations. Deace also equates Gonzalez and Collins by the use of only one criterion, their religious beliefs. I'm sorry, but if I believe the same thing about evolution as Dr. Collins that does not mean I am as good of a scientist as he is.
Deace's whole article was little more than preaching, attacks on Avalos, and incredibly poor reasoning.
