by ninahale
Luskin, laws, and lies
[Via The Panda's Thumb]
Casey Luskin has an article in the Liberty University Law Review which he claims isn’t about Intelligent Design creationism, but is instead meant to show how “zeal for Darwin encourages certain violations of the Establishment Clause.” It will come as no surprise to anyone that Luskin’s argument is flimsy, his evidence illusory, his readings of the case law distorted, and the overall effect essentially a fun-house mirror version of First Amendment law.
Luskin’s thesis is that criticizing Intelligent Design creationism = attacking a religious viewpoint. He combines this with an insistent denial that ID is a religious viewpoint, which is an amusing effort to stick to the Discovery Institute party line, but is not, strictly speaking, illogical. His position is that, if we assume the fact (which is a fact, but he assumes, rather than believing it) that ID creationism is a religious viewpoint, why, then, it violates the First Amendment to disparage it: “Sylvia Mader’s 2007 introductory biology textbook, Essentials of Biology…plainly communicates that ID runs counter to the factual scientific data,” he writes. “If she is correct that ID is a religious viewpoint, is it appropriate for state schools to use her textbooks that unambiguously claim ID is empirically wrong?”
The correct answer is, yes, it’s perfectly constitutional and perfectly appropriate–but of course, to Luskin, the answer is no: “Students who support scientific creationism would thus hear that their ‘set of religious beliefs’ is not only an ‘arbitrary faith,’ but that they are not using their ‘God-given gifts to reason and to understand’ in the way God intended. While many might agree with such arguments, religious neutrality forbids the government from attacking, opposing, and disapproving of such a ‘set of religious beliefs’ in this fashion.”
This is false. The neutrality requirement in the First Amendment forbids the government from taking a position on the truth or falsehood of a religious doctrine in religious terms, but it may take a position on any matter on areligious or non-religious terms. That is, the Constitution forbids the government from endorsing or propagating or censoring the doctrinal truth of a religious proposition, but it does not forbid the government from endorsing or propagating the factual truth of a proposition, even if those propositions turn out to be the same in content. It does not forbid the government from reaching a conclusion, and stating or endorsing that conclusion, from secular premises, even if that conclusion happens to clash with someone’s religious view. Government may not take religious positions, but it take secular positions that happen to clash with positions endorsed by a religious viewpoint.
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So, if intelligent design is a religious view, than no one in government, meaning any teacher, can say that it is wrong? That would be disparaging religion which is forbidden by the First amendment. Talk about twisting stuff around.
If a teacher demonstrates that the Earth is 4 billion years old, they run afoul of the First Amendment? Any sort of nonsense can be called a religious view and, by doing so, make it completely immune to further investigation and understanding.”You can’t explain the reasons why we have an understanding of how old the Earth really is. You will hurt someone’s religious view.”
Luckily, so far, these attempts to draw us all into some very weird Cargo Cult Worlds has not been too successful. BUt they certainly make it hard for people to gain any sort of understanding to help their ignorance.
This is what Cargo Cult Worlds do. They support a useless simplification of a complex problem, so that people do not really need to understand the underlying principles. They then short circuit any further investigations and understanding that could reveal the underlying principle.
Cargo Cult Worlds are inhabited by people who do not want to understand. That is a critical point to know, especially for those of us who do want to understand.
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