Saturday, March 03, 2012

 

Thank You, Thank You Very Much!


The Alliance Defense Fund, you may know, is representing David Coppedge in his suit against Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Coppedge was a computer technician on the Cassini mission who was told to stop bothering his coworkers with his attempts to pass out Intelligent Design materials and was "demoted" and, eventually, "downsized" as the mission neared its end. It's notable that Coppedge is actually a young-Earth creationist.

The basis of Coppedge's suit, as explained by the ADF, is that "intelligent design is a scientific theory, but JPL has illegally discriminated against him on the basis of what they deem is 'religion.'"

Uh, huh.

Strangely (or not, if you've followed the history of creationist/IDist attempts to inject religion into public school science classes) the ADF is singing out of both sides of their collective mouths.

In a post at the ADF's blog Speak Up and at The Christian Post, ADF Legal Counsel David J. Hacker comments on the recent flap over the almost publication by Springer of Biological Information: New Perspectives, a book report on a young-Earth creationist and ID "symposium" held in a rented room at Cornell University. Hacker (an appropriate name) entitled his post "When Scientists Are Censors" and complains:

Of all the scientific fields, evolutionary biology has become fiefdom [sic] where academic freedom is dead and detractors are thrown out and publicly lambasted. And they protect their mandatory orthodoxy with vigor. It's no wonder so many people refuse to buy into it.
But then he goes on:

Has someone at your university criticized your Christian beliefs about human origins? Let us know by commenting below.
Wait a minute! I thought ID was a scientific theory that had nothing to do with religion? Why ask then, in connection with a post on "censorship" of a purported ID tome, whether Christian beliefs about human origins are being censored?

Oh, riiight! Lying for Jesus!

I've kept a copy of this post ... just in case a memory hole unexpectedly opens in the vicinity.
.

Comments:
The alternative, of course, is that Hacker, like so many 'Christians', Repubicans and right wingers generally, suffers some peculiar memory defect that prevents their memory digging up anything they know from the past that might conflict with what they are about to say/write.

That or they all read 1984 and thought doublethink was A Good Thing.

Of course, lying is the go-to explanation, but I've worked a policy job too long and done too much risk management not to canvass the other possibilities.
 
Of course, lying is the go-to explanation, but I've worked a policy job too long and done too much risk management not to canvass the other possibilities.

Oh, I agree that Hacker probably doesn't think of it as lying and there may, indeed, be some sort of psychological defense mechanism that permits him to hold two contradictory thoughts at once (a common human trait). That doesn't, on its own, mean he isn't lying for Christ.

As a lawyer, he's someone who is presumptively aware of the ADF's position on Coppedge's case and yet he also clearly understands ID to be a Christian belief about human origins. While, in the law, lawyers are allowed to argue inconsistent defenses and actions, they are supposed to admit to the courts when they are doing so. I haven't seen where the ADF has told the court that, even if ID is a religious belief, Coppedge's suit is justified.

As a lawyer, he is duty-bound to be honest about the ADF's case.
 
the ADL is singing out of both sides of their collective mouths.

I think it's not the ADL. Momentarily I was thinking, how did the ADL end up weaseling around with creationists?

Just think of how horrible it would really be if the IDiots could use the government to force their bogosity into science. You'd think even they would be worried about such flagrant abuse of power (dark shades of Stalin/Lysenko), as if it could never be used against them.

But I guess like evolution, they have no appreciable foresight beyond winning now.
 
I think it's not the ADL

Yeah, something kept making me type ADL instead of ADF. I actually caught myself and corrected it elsewhere but missed that one.
 
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