Thoughts in a Haystack

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.
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