Institute for Creation Research Gives Up Quest for MS Certification, Plays Victim Card
Henry Morris III, the CEO of the Institute for Creation Research, has announced the end of the school’s fight with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
In 2008, after the board denied the institute’s request for authority to offer a master’s degree in science education, the Dallas-based Christian institution filed a lawsuit. In June, a U.S. District Court ruled against the institute, upholding the board right to refuse the certification.
U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, assigned to hear the case, complained that he had requested a “a short and plain statement of the relief requested,” but that the plaintiff was “entirely unable to file a complaint which is not overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering, and full of irrelevant information.” [Hehe…]
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In the September 2010 issue of the school’s newsletter, Acts & Facts, Morris contributes a 1,400-word article announcing, essentially, that “ICR’s legal battle is over.”
Here’s a short excerpt:
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To be clear, ICR asked for no money in this lawsuit, and we required no outside financial assistance; we did this rather quietly and hopefully, all the while understanding the bias against us. Our effort was to draw out the clear issues and give the courts a chance to allow Christian organizations to pursue their Kingdom “viewpoints” without interference from the government. Unfortunately, after two years of intense interface with both the state and federal judiciary, a federal judge in Austin issued a summary judgment against us…
… The message is clear: no science programs offered from a biblical creationist viewpoint are allowed. Even private schools will be judged by the restricted, secular practices of public schools, reinforced by the secular (read “non-Christian”) interpretations of the Establishment Clause that now dominate the legal system.
Mr. Morris The Third seems unable to accept the Judge’s conclusion that ICR (Mr. Morris) is “entirely unable to file a complaint which is not overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering, and full of irrelevant information.”
Morris also seems stunned that the Constitution is interpreted secularly! What does he expect - that the Constitution should be interpreted according to a sect’s view? Oh yes, right, he does want the Constitution to be interpreted according to a sect - his.
A paragraph of Morris’s that was left out of the Tribune piece:
Over the five years since the Dover case, the amount of anti-creation activity has increased significantly. Not only have prominent atheists become bestselling authors, but the public intensity of the creation-evolution controversy has raged nationally. Both California and the 9th Circuit Court have recently sided against the Association of Christian Schools International, refusing to reverse the exclusion of university applicants who studied at Christian high schools, ruling that any high school courses that included a creationist view of science (or a providential view of history) are disqualified as credit-worthy for California university admission purposes.
Oh noes! Atheists have now become best selling authors!
Recommend reading the whole ICR entry to get an idea of the victim-speak of Morris… for example:
The [Dover] case failed, and the opinion by Judge John Jones was scathing in its denunciation of the “creationists” and the ID movement in general. Part of the rationale for Judge Jones was that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) that a Louisiana law requiring creation science to be taught along with evolution in public schools was unconstitutional. Thus, the “law of the land” now asserted that creation was “religion” and could not be taught in public schools as an alternative to evolution.
Imagine that - “creation” being a religion! Morris of course dropped the “-ism” from the word - creationism is a sectarian religious belief whether Morris has the honesty to admit it or not.