Pim,
Your various posts in response to mine raise at least two very good points.
(1) The legal rulings about academic freedom, which I was not aware of, are
quite interesting. Institutions do have their own guidelines, in many
cases, and courts do typically pay attention to those. But it's
extraordinary IMO for a university president to rule that professors in one
cluster of disciplines (history, phil, religion, etc) may "teach" a subject
and professors in another cluster of disciplines (sciences) may not. I have
in fact never heard of such a thing, althoug this doesn't mean that it has
not happened.
The Univ of Idaho is the first and so far the only university whose
president has made such a ruling. An historian writing about this in 50
years will notice that, as I have, and will surely connect this with Scott
Minnich's upcoming testimony for the defense. Indeed, it would be
incompetent of such an historian NOT to make that connection, it's just so
obvious. If 20 other schools had already done this, and none of them had on
their faculties scientists who were going to testify for the defense, it
would be another matter.
(2) Your point about universities stopping creationism, etc, is important
and I sympathize with it. However we should be able to learn the results of
an important case along these lines--I haven't taken time late tonight to
look, perhaps I can do so on Monday. As you may realize, Pim, for many
years an important evolutionist who is an expert on abiogenesis taught
introductory biology at a university in California. I mean Dean Kenyon.
Following his conversion to Christianity followed by his conversion to YEC
(a rare case, but it is as a describe it), he started teaching some YEC
ideas in that course and his colleagues took that course away from him. I'm
pretty sure he sued his university, and I think he was reinstated. I'd have
to check those details. But in any case his situation, involving YEC ideas,
is much more extreme. So if he won out in his situation (which I think he
did, pending correction), then Minnich should win out in his.
Ted
Received on Sat Oct 8 23:19:56 2005
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