Creationists Sue the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board

Last year, the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) applied to have its “Master of Science” program officially recognized in Texas but was rejected by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) which oversees all applications, who found that whatever it is the ICR Graduate School is teaching, it ain’t science.

Now they’re back, in full whine mode, and with a law suit claiming that their academic freedom and their constitutional right to free speech have been violated.  Not surprisingly their press release is laughable, and full of lies and distortions.

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,” 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.

It’s just laughable that any scientist would even suggest that “eyewitness or forensic evidence” is required before a scientific theory can be considered to be more than an “assumption,” but it is an objection frequently raised by creationists in the form of the question “If you weren’t there to witness it, then how do you know?” often followed by “God was there, and told us exactly what happened.”  Naturally, this begs the return question: “So, were you there when God told us what happened?”

And, as it happens, we do have very good eyewitness and forensic evidence going all the way back to just after the Big Bang, from instruments like the Hubble Space Telescope and the Cosmic Background Explorer.  But, of course, the ICR conveniently rejects telescopic observations as reliable evidence, despite having failed hopelessly in their attempts to produce a coherent alternative that explains how we can see galaxies that are 13 billion light years away from Earth.

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.

Nonsense.  Nobody is muzzling college-level science education.  The ICR is free to teach whatever they want as science—even the theory that the Sun and Moon are moved around by angels, or that hurricanes are God’s belches, if they want.  What they can’t do is teach their creationist nonsense in a science course and have it recognized by the State of Texas as an accredited Master of Science program.

Of course, the controversy is not unique to ICR’s graduate school. Scientists and professors who are Christians, and even non-Christian academics, continue to face persecution from science censors. Ben Stein’s Expelled documentary in 2008 clearly demonstrated that even highly-qualified scientists in secular institutions are facing various forms of expulsion simply because they question “recognized” Darwinian beliefs and the tenets of evolutionary science.

And we all know what a load of hyped up nonsense that movie turned out to be.

THECB Commissioner Raymund Paredes insists that the 27-year-old Master of Science program at ICRGS cannot possibly be “science” because its professors hold a biblical Christian viewpoint about the origin of the universe and the origin of life on earth. Call it something other than science, he and his board members suggested, and ICR can move its school to Texas.

Paredes is exactly right.  The ICR doesn’t practice science because it cannot accept any scientific finding that contradicts their literal interpretation of the Bible.  When you use the scientific method to make a discovery, you don’t do what the ICR does and go running to Bible to find out if you’re on the right track.  That is not science.

I still remember from my boyhood the days of racial segregation in America, and walking past public bathroom doors labeled “Men,” “Women,” and “Colored.” Discrimination was ugly then, and discrimination is just as ugly today.

Oh boy.  How unbelievably crass to compare their imagined affront with the century-long struggle of African Americans to acheive equal rights in this country.  Pathetic.

ICRGS is now the victim of academic (and religious) viewpoint discrimination in the Lone Star State. And because this government-mandated viewpoint ban is now enforced against the content of ICR’s school catalog within the state, this viewpoint discrimination includes censorship-stifling freedom of the press.

Again, their academic freedoms have not been discriminated against.  They are allowed to teach what they want, where they want, how they want, and they can call all of it science until they’re blue in the face.  What they can’t do is force the State of Texas to redefine science so that it matches the ICR’s definition, nor that they force the THECB to grant official recognition to a Master of Science program that doesn’t teach real science.

I predict that, even in a state as conservative as Texas, this law suit isn’t going anywhere, and for that, I will be thankful.