Institute Discovery 05-27-07 Dark Matter: Blacklist at Iowa State It's clear from the ideologically motivated attacks on Dr Guillermo Gonzalez, an assistant professor of astronomy and co-author of The Privileged Planet, that scientists who acknowledge the evidence for design in the universe are not welcome as tenured members of the Iowa State University faculty. Anti-design scientists and bloggers have admitted publicly that they will continue to exclude intelligent design scientists from academia. Yet in the 20th century many of the advances in the understanding of our universe were accompanied by vigorous open discussion of the design implications of cosmological theories. From the Enlightenment to early the 20th century, virtually all astronomers believed that the universe was eternal. When solutions for Einstein's tensor equations were proposed in the first decades of the 20th century, it was evident that they were compatible with an expansion (or contraction) of the universe. With Edwin Hubble's observation of the redshift that showed evidence for an expanding universe, some astrophysicists proposed that the universe had a moment of creation. Many other astrophysicists were troubled by the theological implications of a "moment of creation," and proposed a Steady State (eternal) model of the cosmos. There was a vigorous free discussion of the scientific, philosophical and theological implications of the expanding universe by scientists the in early and mid 20th century. A "moment of creation" -- the Big Bang -- implied a creator, and implied design. Based on the evidence, design won, and the advocates of the steady state model showed integrity and grace in acknowledging that the Big Bang theory, despite its design implications, was the best theory to explain the emergence and structure of the universe. As agnostic astrophysicist Robert Jastrow famously said: For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. As the blacklist at Iowa State shows, 21st century atheists lack the integrity and grace of their predecessors. This time, they i...