Glenden BrownCreationists Get a Smackdown in Court . . . Again
Some basics: Some individual parents, a Chrisitian indoctrination center school and the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) filed a lawsuit alleging that the University of California was discriminating against them; UC has said that some of the courses these groups teach do not meet their requirements. Among those courses are courses on creationism pretending to be actual biological science.
The suits alleges UC is engaging in viewpoint and content discrimination against Christians.
A judge issued a ruling that found that UC’s actions are constitutional but (in a split the baby kind of moment) also held that standard may posssibly be applied unfairly (which btw was UC’s position):
Last year, both sides in the case asked the Judge to grant them summary judgment. The Christian schools asked the judge to rule that the entire UC policy of rejecting certain courses is unconstitutional both on its face and as it was applied specifically to them. The University of California asked the court to rule that the policy is constitutional on its face. UC did not ask the court to grant judgment on the issue of the specific courses, saying that issue involves questions best settled at trial. In order for the court to grant summary judgment, it has to agree that there are no material differences about the facts of the case, and that the party who is asking for the summary judgment is clearly in the right even if the facts are viewed in the light most favorable to the other side.
In his decision, Judge Otero rejected every single aspect of the plaintiffs’ claim, along with their entire motion for summary judgment. He accepted the University of California’s arguments, and granted their motion for partial summary judgment.
This means two things: first, the question of whether or not the University of California can reject courses from the Christian schools under any circumstances has been settled in favor of UC. The judge ruled that UC has a compelling reason to pick and choose the “content” and “viewpoints” that they will accept as meeting their admissions requirements: ensuring that the students they accept are qualified. The Christian schools who filed the suit are not entitled to an exemption from that requirement simply because they are religious extremists who fiercely reject reality as part of their faith. Second, the issue of whether or not UC was correct in rejecting the specific courses and textbooks in question will most likely go to trial. The Christian schools asked the judge to rule in their favor on that issue, while UC claimed that the issue involved enough of a dispute about the facts to require a full trial. Here, too, the judge ruled in favor of UC.
You can examine the arguments made by the Christian groups are see the systematic kind of dishonesty used by creationists. Over at The Questionable Authority, Mike Dunford takes on the biggest examples, using quotes from the judge’s ruling. My favorite quote from Mike? This one:
 This sort of thing really makes you wonder what Bird [the creationist attorney] and his people were thinking. Have they really failed to figure out that smart people - a group that, popular perception notwithstanding, includes the bulk of the Federal Bench - check the references?
Among the more interesting points Mike makes is the allegation made by the creationists that anyone who is not their version of Christian is by definition hostile to their beliefs:
The Plaintiffs appear to believe that not being Christian is evidence that you are biased against Christians. They submitted a list of actions and beliefs that they allege demonstrate that UC disapproved of their religion. One of the items that they included as evidence of the official state bias against them is that:
(5) “The senior reviewer is Buddhist, and the reviewer who handled religious school science courses and drafted most policies is Jewish…”
(page 44.)Asserting that non-Christian religious beliefs is evidence of hostility toward Christianity is quite simply wrong-headed. It relies on the assumption that everyone has the same hostile attitude toward other religious beliefs that they seem to consistently exhibit. It also relies on the assumption that they can only receive a fair hearing from like-minded people. The judge handled that last bit quite well:
Additionally, allegation (5) cannot support a hostility claim. UC is under no duty to employ only those individuals whose religious beliefs coincide with Plaintiffs.
This attitude is pervasive among conservative Christians. It’s not uncommon to hear claims that neutrality toward religion is indistinguishable from hostility to religion, that even advocating a different view is per se proof of hostility toward Christians. PZ Myers describes one of the claims made by the plaintiffs in an attempt to use textbooks that promote religion in the place of science:
 . . . Behe’s defense of these books was that it was “abusive” to ask students to subscribe to an idea like evolution with which they disagree. Setting aside the obvious point that the whole point of education is to introduce students to a multitude of ideas with which they may or may not agree, the judge pointed out that the books which Behe approved flatly state that Christians must accept creationist conclusions—unlike our biology books, which don’t demand any religious litmus test of their readers—and were therefore perfect examples of exactly the problem he was complaining about.
I’ve touched on the idea in the past that for many conservatives parents, introducing their children to ideas with which they disagree is a violation of their rights as parents. That creationists would see no problem with indoctrinating children into Christian belief is patently obvious but also shows the actual bankruptcy of conservative Christianity - if children have to be indoctrinated and can’t be exposed to other beliefs, the problem doesn’t lie with competing views of the world.
As a system of thought and theology, fundagelical Christianity is a failure. All that remains of it now is the political arm which is well funded, vicious and amoral.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I have no problem with evolution being taught in schools, but the details of evolution are still very much in the realm of theory and should not be taught as fact. Natural selection is certainly a fact, but taking that fact and postulating it into an idea that humans evolved from monkeys is not fact, but a theory. There has yet to be absolute evidence linking humans with monkeys. Human and monkey DNA reveal many similarities but so does humans and dogs, along with many other animals. Genetically we could have evolved from almost anything. Monkeys are only suspect because they most resemble humans in form, but with evolution form in itself does not prove a relation.
The claim that if evolution is true then there is no God is a false preposition. They are not mutually exclusive. If evolution is fact then it in no way eliminates the possibility of a creator. Similar with the Big Bang theory. If everything sprang forth out of a singularity then the next obvious question is what or who created the singularity in the first place. How did something come out of nothing and create the universe? The concept of intelligent design makes more logical sense than something even scientists would have to admit is an absolute impossibility.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Ken - you’re misusing the concept of a theory. In science, a theory is not just a guess - it is a predictive model which explains a wide set of facts. The “details of evolutoin” are not guesses, they are predicted by the theory of evolution. Humans did not “evolve from monkeys” - both species evolved from an earlier species of primate. Humans and the other primate species diverged from common ancestors at different stages of evolution over the last couple million years. That’s not a “guess” or “just a theory.” It is a scientific theory - one that has yet to be disproved despite 150 years of people doing their best to accomplish exactly that. The confusion arises from the divergent ways the term theory is used among scientists and the general public.
FWIW, I agree that evolution doesn’t disprove the existence of god. However, it certainly disproves the factuality of almost every religion’s creation story. Intelligent design isn’t a logical conclusion - it flies in the face of logic.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Ken:
As usual, your comment illustrates your typical superficial analysis of complicated topics - global warming comes to mind, for example.
First, the BBT has nothing to do with who/what created a singularity; rather, the BBT explains development of the universe over time. And the BBT is, moreover, generally accepted by physicists, cosmologists and the wider scientific community.
Second, I find it interesting that you have difficulty with the concept of a singularity. Do you have equal difficulty with the concept of infinity?
Third, I find the first sentence of your comment completely at odds with what I think you meant to say. You said:
.
But the fact of the matter is evolution is not taught as fact; rather, it is taught as theory. Further, you are absolutely incorrect when you state that the “details” of evolution are not fact. Indeed, the details of, for example, genetic mutation are fact and go a long ways toward supporting the theory of evolution. You need to review, apparently, a primer on the difference between fact and theory.
And finally, your suggestion that the theory of evolution concludes that humans evolved from monkeys is so far off base that it calls into question - yet again - your abilities for critical thinking and analysis. Scientists believe that humans share a common ancestor with modern African apes, like gorillas and chimpanzees, and that this ancestor existed 5 to 8 million years ago. But no credible evolutionary scientist these days believes that humans evolved from monkeys! Check your “facts!”
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Glenden, you understated your case. The political arm of fundagelical Christians is welfunded, viscious and “immoral.” And many deeply religious Christians not only interpret neutrality, but failure to promote their agenda as hostility to their agenda.
As for Ken’s post, I’m not sure what lack of evidence he’s talking about regarding monkeys and humans. The DNA of humans is around 98% the same as our nearest cousin species, the chimpanzee. Clearly, humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor fairly recently. We share more dna with chmpanzees, than we do for gorillas, and more with gorillas than we do with monkeys. Obviously, there is still much to discover, but if you think the evidence for humans not having a common ancestor with monkeys, chimpanzees or great apes is lacking, you obviously haven’t been doing much reading.
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:21 pm
” . . . but if you think the evidence for humans not having a common ancestor with monkeys, chimpanzees or great apes is lacking, you obviously haven’t been doing much reading.”
Or, you’re reading too much ID propaganda . . .
April 3rd, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Hey you guys, I’m new to this side of the sandbox, but it seems to me that this evolution business does actually have some interesting and complicated wrinkles and it’s hard to get at them if the conversation doesn’t progress beyond accusing each other of not doing our homework. I think we evolutionists have a responsbility to acknowledge that there are some big fat troublesome gaps in evolution’s account.
What I would hope from the schools is that they say to the students, here is what our primitive science has been able to discern up to now. The fact of there being fossil and other records that show significantly different species at different times is not in serious dispute. The fact of there being remarkable similarities between the DNA and physiognomy of humans and other species is not in serious dispute. The fact of the earth being not thousands but billions of years old is not in serious dispute. Evolution can just be flawed. Whatever theory you want to put up against evolution must provide a better explanation of these facts than evolution.
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:47 pm
There you go being all reasonable! I don’t remember if it was Carl Sagan or Michael Shermer who talked about the idea that biologists love finding the gaps in the record and trying to fill them but I love that mental image. Scientists have no problem with the idea of science being incomplete. I think its those of us who are non-scientists struggle with it.
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Oh the irony! The humility that we should rightly feel on being confronted with just exactly how primitive our science still is should prime us for accepting that we are not so far from our ape ancestors.
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
[...] Via One Utah. [...]
April 4th, 2008 at 12:25 am
What makes me mad about this creationism nonsense is not the fact that some people actually believe the story of Adam and Eve, but that most politicians couldn’t care less about it except for the fact they can use it politically.
The perfect case in point is when Steven Colbert had Republican Congressman Lynn Westmoreland on. He is one of these guys who goes on and on about the importance of following the ten commandments, but turned white when Colbert asked:
Ye hypocrites!
April 4th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Physiognomy is the inexact science of determining characteristics of people by study of their facial features.
April 4th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Yeesh. You’re totally right. I can’t even come up with the word I thought I was using. I just mean physical characteristics, I guess. Phenotype?.. I’ll think of it.
April 5th, 2008 at 7:31 am
On the other hand there are quite a few humans that have the faces of monkeys.