For a scene of pure hilarity and joy, get ye over to Uncommon Descent as they try spin the rejection of a “Evolutionary Informatics Lab” by Baylor University.
Yesterday, the Baylor University administration shut down Prof. Robert Marks’s Evolutionary Informatics Lab because the lab’s research was perceived as linked to intelligent design (ID).
Hah. Perceived as linked? It probably doesn’t help to have Dembski linking it as his one example of an ID research program. That’s a little damning. Continued:
Robert J. Marks II, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Baylor, had hoped that a late-August compromise would save his lab, but the University withdrew from the previous offer yesterday morning. While President Lilley was not at the meeting, an insider senses his hand in the affair, noting that Lilley was the only person with the authority to overturn what the Provost, who was at the meeting, agreed to.
You see, when a Christian University, and a Baptist one at that, decides that ID is so distasteful and unscientific, that they won’t even lend their name to an off-site, non-existent lab associated with ID, this is a dark day for the cranks. It’s a real bind. Their usual refrain to events like these is to yell Conspiracy! Or even better yet, persecution! They’re like Galileo! But they can’t say that given how religious a university Baylor is. They can’t turn on the Baptists after all, that’s half of their constituency.
Denyse still manages to crazy it up, and her take is pretty crankerific, ranging from “thought control” to evil materialist conspiracies.
Fresh off of writing yet another premature “death of Darwin” post (how many of those a month do they need to reassure themselves their task isn’t just a Sisyphean joke) entitled Why Darwin is Losing, she now has to explain why even a mainstream Christian university can’t tolerate even a nod to ID. The explanation? Baylor is beholden to the evil secularists!
A typical “Christian” university like Baylor battens off the wealth of Christians who can afford college for their kids, on the understanding that it brokers the relationship between Christians and an increasingly hostile secular elite – an elite that often displays a general contempt for traditional religious freedoms.
The understanding is that – (a wink and a nod) – the real world is irrelevant to the pious fantasies of Christians. But in large parts of North America, for some unknown reason, Christians are a large, powerful, and affluent group. So they must be taught to adapt. A wink and a nod in many a faculty lounge, I am sure.
Christians must be educated in such a way that they present no threat to the secular establishment supported by their taxes, which makes the laws and rules they must obey.
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Baylor’s function is accommodating Christians to rule by materialists.
Ah, the materialists have struck again! If we teach people ID, they won’t pay their taxes! That must be why we must maintain fierce control over Darwinism, it’s an actuarial necessity! How quickly the crank turns to a conspiracy to justify any setback. They must never consider the possibility that any institution with any integrity would not allow denialists and cranks to infiltrate their ranks. People that re-publish textbooks with “creationism” replaced by “intelligent design” and who in response to this crisis published a fake letter from the president of Baylor which they subsequently have had to retract. What kind of moron would think that was a good idea? Did Baylor need any better proof that this is not a group of honest brokers, or people that should have access to students?
All I can say to all this crankery and is “Haw Haw”, because if you can’t even get a Christian school like Baylor to tolerate your religion masquerading as science, what have you got?
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