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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 04/22/2009 : 03:33:43
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Our friends over there at the Sanatorium Institute for Creation Research have moved at least some of their grift from CA to TX, much to the benefit California. I think all might agree that Texas is a good place for them, down there where there are lots of steers but no queers. Or so it is said.
Anyhow, CA made the really stupid mistake of certifying them to award something called Masters of Science degrees. But it turns out that TX, to it's credit, ain't havin' that, so ICR feels called upon to haul the whole thing into court in order to produce more godly liars with sheepskins, of sorts. They are being very snotty about it.
"Censorship in Texas: Fighting Academic and Religious Discrimination
by James J. S. Johnson, J.D.*
"Stop the presses!" That was one of the effects of the decision of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) in Austin, Texas, on April 24, 2008, when the Institute for Creation Research Graduate School (ICRGS) was told that it could not move its 27-year-old Master of Science program to Texas, nor could it recruit students from Texas to apply to its California graduate school. Why? Because ICRGS does not teach science from an evolution-only viewpoint.
Dr. Raymund Paredes, in his official capacity as Texas Commissioner of Higher Education, has assumed and officially favored his personal viewpoint that the Big Bang was an "astonishing event" that "was initiated some 14 billion years ago,"1 and imposed that personally-held belief on a private school. No eyewitness or forensic evidence was presented by Dr. Paredes last April to support his assumption; he relied only on his ardent belief in this theory that is professed by some scientists, but not all.
As a result, college-level science education in Texas is now muzzled by Texas governmental censorship, a situation that interferes with both academic freedom, the right of a school to teach any subject from its own institutional viewpoint; and interstate commerce, the right of a school outside Texas to recruit and teach Texas residents.
Many Acts & Facts readers will recall a similar controversy in California 19 years ago. ICR sought due process in response to political persecution from a California education official named Bill Honig."
This will be interesting to watch and we are in a win=win situation. Consider; if the state keeps them out, we will be treated to amusing howls of pious outrage. If ICR prevails, we can go back to bashing the TX educational system with a clear conscious.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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the_ignored
SFN Addict
2562 Posts |
Posted - 04/22/2009 : 22:45:57 [Permalink]
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Here's a take on it from a lawyer, though it's on an atheist and not a legal site:
| This lawsuit is gloriously insane. From top to bottom, this is exactly the kind of lawsuit you would expect from the kind of minds who think the world is 6,000 years old. I can only highlight just some of the glaring defects in this bizarre lawsuit. |
Read on... |
>From: enuffenuff@fastmail.fm
(excerpt follows):
> I'm looking to teach these two bastards a lesson they'll never forget.
> Personal visit by mates of mine. No violence, just a wee little chat.
>
> **** has also committed more crimes than you can count with his
> incitement of hatred against a religion. That law came in about 2007
> much to ****'s ignorance. That is fact and his writing will become well
> know as well as him becoming a publicly known icon of hatred.
>
> Good luck with that fuckwit. And Reynold, fucking run, and don't stop.
> Disappear would be best as it was you who dared to attack me on my
> illness knowing nothing of the cause. You disgust me and you are top of
> the list boy. Again, no violence. Just regular reminders of who's there
> and visits to see you are behaving. Nothing scary in reality. But I'd
> still disappear if I was you.
What brought that on? this. Original posting here.
Another example of this guy's lunacy here. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
 Posted - 04/22/2009 : 23:37:02 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by the_ignored
Here's a take on it from a lawyer, though it's on an atheist and not a legal site:
| This lawsuit is gloriously insane. From top to bottom, this is exactly the kind of lawsuit you would expect from the kind of minds who think the world is 6,000 years old. I can only highlight just some of the glaring defects in this bizarre lawsuit. |
Read on...
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Golly, I read that. ICR is using a divorce lawyer to sue in Federal court. A particularly stupid, Creationist divorce lawyer, at that. With predictable results to be seen in the complaint that's been filed.
The results are what one might expect. Like a raving Creationist blog post, the complaint rambles and shouts, with bizarrely inappropriate use of font changes, bolding, italics, and underlining (sometimes used all together at once).
The lawyer even demonstrates his ignorance of basic legal terms, by demanding an "injunction" (a legal order to stop someone from doing something) to force the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to let ICR grant science degrees. A "writ of mandamus" (a court order to for someone to do something) is what the Creotard attorney should have asked for.
The list of stupid goes on and on, and is well worth reading. My layman's opinion is that ICR's suit is doomed.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 04/23/2009 04:24:38 |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 04/23/2009 : 00:39:25 [Permalink]
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I'm just waiting for creationists to start using creationist-only doctors. That would certainly thin the herd a bit.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 04/23/2009 : 02:14:36 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by the_ignored
Here's a take on it from a lawyer, though it's on an atheist and not a legal site:
| This lawsuit is gloriously insane. From top to bottom, this is exactly the kind of lawsuit you would expect from the kind of minds who think the world is 6,000 years old. I can only highlight just some of the glaring defects in this bizarre lawsuit. |
Read on...
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Good golly Miss Molly! They're dumber than even I had imagined.
It is conceivable, indeed probable, that they are using Johnson because no litigation lawyer would touch it even with a stick -- good lawyers tend to know a loser when they see one. Johnson also is, if not actually on staff (I dunno), writes extensively for them.
The whole thing might be over before it starts.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 04/23/2009 : 09:09:43 [Permalink]
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filthy:
The whole thing might be over before it starts. |
Article concludes:
The bottom line is that there is literally no way this complaint survives a motion to dismiss. |
Thing is, the courts take a dim view of having their time to be wasted. Hopefully, the ICR will have to pick up any and all legal fees for the time it takes state attorneys to answer their complaint, and move to have it thrown out. The motion is so flawed that even a judge sympathetic to the ICR on a personal level will have to throw out the motion for a gazillion technical reasons.
My gut tells me that the ICR is in serious decline. I think they need the tuition money that the graduate program would have generated. Based on their tax exempt status, and the fact that they once generated enough in donations to keep "scientists" busy doing things like "flood research" and other stupid stuff, the fact that they couldn't come up with a lawyer qualified enough to, at the very least, present something better than their hack lawyer did, with little grasp of the legal concepts involved, might say something about the condition of the ICR itself. One can only hope...
I'm only speculating, but it's my guess that the ID movement and Ken Ham's organization has stolen much of the ICR's thunder and the money that comes with it. The ICR and the CRS are not the big players that they used to be. Duan Gish is a fading memory, as is Henry Morris.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 04/23/2009 : 13:35:17 [Permalink]
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I wonder.
Is this silly lawsuit only (unintelligently) designed to bring them back into the spotlights and pretend how they are, ho so much, persecuted?
Do they really think they might win this one? |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 04/23/2009 : 13:49:18 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Simon
I wonder.
Is this silly lawsuit only (unintelligently) designed to bring them back into the spotlights and pretend how they are, ho so much, persecuted?
Do they really think they might win this one?
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I doubt it. Of course, they will claim persecution, and believe it to be so, but what fundamentalist organization doesn't? Mostly, I think they wanted the tuition money. And mostly, I think they are basically idiots.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Cry me a river....
