James “Jesus Glasses” Corbett: Update 10 Nov ‘09

OUR last update on this case was here: Update 28 Oct ‘09, in which we informed you that everyone was appealing the trial court’s decision, and that WorldNetDaily had taken up the cause of the creationist kid who sued his teacher.

We earlier reported, somewhat gleefully, that although the creationist kid had been partially successful in suing Corbett, he had also sued the school board which was found not liable. Therefore the court ruled that because same lawyers represented both Corbett and the school board, the kid had to pay legal fees to Corbett’s lawyers for their victory on behalf of the school board. But as you may recall, that fee award had been made by the court clerk’s office, and it wasn’t final until the judge approved it.

Here are some excerpts from Judge tentatively denies awarding $378,519 to teacher’s defense team, which appears in the Orange County Register. The bold font was added by us:

A federal judge has tentatively denied awarding $378,519 in attorneys’ fees to the defense team for high school teacher James Corbett, sued by a student two years ago for his anti-Christian classroom rhetoric.

Let’s read on:

U.S. District Court Judge James Selna said in a six-page preliminary ruling that although the Capistrano Unified School District was not liable for Corbett’s actions, Capistrano was not eligible to recover any attorneys’ fees because student Chad Farnan’s lawsuit against the school district was not simply “a baseless, vexatious claim,” as Corbett’s attorneys had argued.

Here’s a link to the court’s ruling (pdf file). We continue:

“C.F. (Chad Farnan) set out to prove a constitutional violation, and he did,” [Judge] Selna said. “The vagaries of the law in this area, from which Corbett benefitted [sic], do not undermine the substantive validity of C.F.’s establishment clause claim, nor do they render his position frivolous.”

Corbett “benefited”? Here’s more:

Selna issued the tentative decision Friday from his Santa Ana courtroom. A hearing had been scheduled for today to give both parties an opportunity to respond and for the judge to finalize his decision, but the hearing was postponed at the last minute and has not been rescheduled.

How would you like to be in Corbett’s shoes? This thing is a never-ending nightmare; and we imagine that the creationist kid is rapturous over the grief he’s causing his teacher. Moving along:

If the tentative ruling becomes final, it could have bearing on last month’s decision to award $12,631 in court-related fees to Corbett’s defense team. The school district and the teachers union applied for and were awarded these fees by a federal court clerk, as part of what is typically a routine procedural matter.

But Farnan’s [the creationist kid] attorneys already have filed a motion with Selna seeking to reverse the decision by Milli Borgarding, the deputy in charge of the Santa Ana division of the U.S. District Court clerk’s office. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Nov. 30.

Nothing ever seems to get resolved here. One last excerpt:

Separately, both sides have appealed the entire case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Corbett is seeking to be exonerated; Farnan is seeking a stronger, broader judgment against Corbett.

What does the kid want — an old-fashioned witch burning? We’ve been following this case, and we think that’s certainly possible.

But because the kid is obviously a litigious chap, we hasten to add that although we’re aware of his position in this case, which we think is constitutionally ridiculous, we don’t actually know the lad and we have no intention of defaming him. Therefore, we’ll keep our opinion of him private. You may draw your own conclusions, dear reader.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

Beyond Darwin: Vatican Conference on Aliens

THINGS are out of this world at the Daily Telegraph, which has the ninth largest daily circulation among UK newspapers. A few days ago one of their stories inspired us to write Darwin, Evolution, and Alien Life.

Now, from that same source we bring you: The Vatican joins the search for alien life. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding a conference on astrobiology, the study of life beyond Earth, with scientists and religious leaders gathering in Rome this week.

For centuries, theologians have argued over what the existence of life elsewhere in the universe would mean for the Church: at least since Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk, was put to death by the Inquisition in 1600 for claiming that other worlds exist.

Alas, Giordano Bruno got torched for committing Thoughtcrime. For lots of the people we write about, those were the good old days. Let’s read on:

Among other things, extremely alien-looking aliens would be hard to fit with the idea that God “made man in his own image”.

Furthermore, Jesus Christ’s role as saviour would be confused: would other worlds have their own, tentacled Christ-figures, or would Earth’s Christ be universal?

There are people who truly worry about such issues. We continue:

However, just as the Church eventually made accommodations after Copernicus and Galileo showed that the Earth was not the centre of the universe, and when it belatedly accepted the truth of Darwin’s theory of evolution, Catholic leaders say that alien life can be aligned with the Bible’s teachings.

Among ecclesiastical institutions, that’s a rare and most admirable attitude. A bit late for Bruno and Galileo, but hey — timing is everything. Here’s more:

Father Jose Funes, a Jesuit astronomer at the Vatican Observatory and one of the organisers of the conference, said: “As a multiplicity of creatures exists on Earth, so there could be other beings, also intelligent, created by God. “This does not conflict with our faith, because we cannot put limits on the creative freedom of God.”

What shall we call this? It’s clearly not moving the goalposts, which is a common creationist tactic. In fact it’s the opposite. They’re preparing the faithful — and themselves — for what is anticipated to be a major shock. Moving along:

Not everyone agrees. Paul Davies, a theoretical physicist and author of The Goldilocks Enigma, told The Washington Post that the threat to Christianity is “being downplayed” by Church leaders. He said: “I think the discovery of a second genesis would be of enormous spiritual significance. The real threat would come from the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, because if there are beings elsewhere in the universe, then Christians, they’re in this horrible bind.”

What’s the problem?

“They believe that God became incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ in order to save humankind, not dolphins or chimpanzees or little green men on other planets.”

Somehow, they’ll deal with it. They know that they must if they intend for their institution to survive into the future.

Meanwhile, here’s a link to a 24-page pdf file from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences titled: Study Week on Astrobiology. The conference is scheduled for 06 through 10 November.

At page 21 is a list of the conference participants. It’s impressive; it even includes Paul Davies. But there’s nobody from the Discovery Institute. Expelled again!

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

Creationists Defend the Indefensible

THE Glendive Dinosaur & Fossil Museum, located in Glendive, Montana, tells us at their website:

When you visit a major natural history museum today, you will see wide-eyed elementary and preschool children (not to mention their parents and teachers) being funneled into an abyss of scientific deception. No matter whether it’s the study of animals, earth science, or astronomy, the wonders of God’s creation are prostituted for evolutionism. And the end result is just more confusion, mystification, and cynicism in the lives of our young people and adults.

But they have a cure:

[W]e are convinced there are adults, and especially many young people, whom God wants to set free from this lack of knowledge and bondage of deception. Many of them are not attracted to churches for various reasons; yet they may be inclined to see the wonders of God’s creation through visiting a public museum featuring “the rest of the story” about dinosaurs, the stars, the Flood, and the wonders of ancient man, as well as the scientific facts they are not hearing that insist upon creation and absolutely demolish evolutionism’s nonsense.

It is to this end that the 20,000 sq. ft. Glendive Dinosaur & Fossil Museum was built. The Glendive Dinosaur & Fossil Museum houses several full size dinosaur and fossil exhibits plus a myriad of singular fossils, making it the largest dinosaur and fossil museum in the United States to present its fossils in the context of biblical creation. [Emphasis supplied.]

In other words, it’s yet another creationist “museum.” This hall of hogwash has been criticized by some scientists, and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) — the fountainhead of creationist wisdom, is rushing to their defense. At AIG’s website we read: Paleontologists Target Montana Dinosaur Museum. Here are some excerpts, with bold added by us:

Widely known dinosaur expert Jack Horner told the Billings Gazette, “It’s not a science museum at all. It’s not a pseudo-science museum. It’s just not science…There’s nothing scientific about it.” He also stated, “You can’t have a debate about science and opinion.”

Here’s the article in the Billings Gazette from which that quote is taken: Dinosaur museum presents biblical view of origins. Let’s read on in the ICR article:

Horner did not specify which artifacts in the museum were not scientific, nor what was unscientific about them.

Sneaky. Slimy. Very creationist. The problem isn’t the artifacts, it’s the creationism. We continue:

Mary Schweitzer is famous for having proved that some dinosaur fossils from the nearby Hell Creek formation contain soft tissues, including blood cells.

Sneaky. Slimy. Very creationist. That distortion has been debunked a thousand times, for example, here at the TalkOrigins Index to Creationist Claims.

Here’s more from ICR:

But Dr. Schweitzer dismissed the museum’s content without any firsthand investigation, stating, “I haven’t been to the museum. But I think the whole subject of a creation-based museum combines really bad science and really weak faith….It’s a misunderstanding of what is a science to begin with …. If you’re doing science, you have to play by certain rules. They’re trying to rewrite the rules of science and call it science.”

That comes from Paleontologists take issue with creation-based museum in the Billings Gazette. Here’s how ICR deals with this criticism:

Significantly, both Schweitzer’s and Horner’s objections appear to be based on philosophical assertions, since no specific scientific finding or claim was addressed.

Sneaky. Slimy. Very creationist. We’ll skip more paragraphs of the same, and get to the conclusion of the ICR article, which we’ll break into two parts to allow for our commentary:

Instead of weighing the evidence for or against the creation model presented at the Glendive Dinosaur Museum, these paleontologists have resorted to poorly thought-out, ideologically oriented fall-back phrases.

That’s something creationists would never do. Here’s the rest of it:

Whereas they repeat misguided mantras that faith and science do not overlap — “faith and science support each other very well, if you let God be God and science be science,” according to Schweitzer — scientific arguments do not appear among their attacks on the museum.

Good grief — those were newspaper interviews! For a creationist sink-hole like ICR to criticize anyone for failing to make scientific arguments is … well, we can’t find the words for it. It’s so far beyond hypocrisy that it can’t be named — except to call it creationism.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

Creationism in Politics: Growing or Fading?

THIS is a subject we’ve dealt with before, e.g.: Creationism in Politics: Time for Benign Neglect? It may at first seem off topic for us, but when you step back a moment you’ll realize that the only topic that really matters here is the political strength of the anti-science elements in society. Were creationists content to mind their own business and peacefully enjoy their private realities, The Controversy between evolution and creationism wouldn’t exist.

Therefore we present you some excerpts from Evangelicals’ political clout: real or imagined?, which appears an the Washington Post website. It’s by Steven Brint, who is introduced as follows:

Every election cycle the political power of evangelicals and the Christian Right seems to come under fresh scrutiny. But what is the actual impact of the group’s excellent mobilization efforts. Steven Brint, professor of sociology and associate dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of California, Riverside, provides some insight. …

When we discuss the religion-politics nexus, we do so reluctantly. That’s because the articles we quote often mention the proclivities of specific denominations and sects, which makes us uneasy. Our principal focus here is on science, not denominational disputes. But in retail politics this kind of thing is inevitable, so here it comes. The bold font was added by us:

Evangelical Protestant denominations accounted for 85 percent of all U.S. churches in 1860, according to the historian Mark Noll. Today, evangelicals represent about 25 percent of the U.S. adult population, a distinct minority in a landscape populated not only by Catholics (who rival them in numbers), mainline Protestants, and Jews — but also increasing numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others.

That’s the way professional politicians think about things — segmentation of voters into interest groups, whose grievances they exploit in seeking votes. They seek out and exacerbate latent divisions in society. Let’s read on:

Even so, it often seems like evangelicals have attained unprecedented strength, as evidenced by their raucous support for Sarah Palin on the 2008 campaign trail and their sometimes rowdy turnout in town hall meetings to protest health care reform as a prelude to socialism and death panels. Since the West Virginia textbook protests of the 1960s, white evangelicals have shown that they will demonstrate loudly against social policies they reject.

The Washington Post doesn’t like Sarah Palin. And they think the town hall protests against health-care legislation are the work of “white evangelicals.” We continue:

Why has the politically diverse mass of white evangelicals (30 percent still think of themselves as Democrats) provided so many recruits for the Christian Right? Social factors help to explain it. Evangelicals experience feelings of moral elevation due, in part, to the strictness of the theological doctrines they profess.

Creationism and “moral elevation” are not exactly compatible in our experience. Notice that 30 percent who still linger in the Democrat party? They’re the residue from the creationist-populist glory days when William Jennings Bryan was their leader. Moving along:

Moreover, they are nominally members of the dominant racial and religious groups in American society, yet they perceive themselves as ignored or marginalized by the culture. The reservoir of frustration created by these circumstances runs deep and wide.

Not only deep and wide, but when stirred up, creationists can also be ugly. Here’s more:

Evangelicals find the nation continuously beset by social problems, many stemming from changes in sexual freedoms, gender and family relations, and the raising of children. They identify the secularization of society as the root cause of these problems.

Secularization is the big enemy of the Discoveroids. See their Wedge strategy. Another excerpt:

In spite of its impressive capacity to mobilize evangelicals, the Christian Right has made relatively few lasting impressions on post-sixties American society. Women’s rights and gay rights have continued to gain ground, as have women and gay candidates for office. Intelligent design has failed to displace evolution at the center of science teaching, and, indeed, both the educational objectives and curriculum of Christian school looks quite a bit like those of public schools.

Ghastly collection of issues. One last excerpt:

The lesson is that American society is, above all, an arena of secular legal authority, pluralistic competition for power, and a consumer marketplace. Religious conservatives have been shaped by these realities far more than they have been able to shape them. … Where they have been successful, they have done it, ironically, by becoming more a part of the secular world.

That’s an overly-optimistic view of things. Or is it that after so much dumpster-diving at creationist websites, your Curmudgeon has become too pessimistic? Time will tell.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article

The Lost Voyage of Ringo Darwin

YOUR Curmudgeon has come into possession of a document of incomparable value. This manuscript, originally sealed in a bottle, has been bobbing in the world’s oceans since 1833. It confirms the long-whispered existence of Ringo Darwin, uncle to Charles. Ringo was rumored to have been the product of a brief but passionate deathbed assignation between Charles’ grandfather, Erasmus, and a servant girl.

Always an embarrassment, Ringo was kept in the attic. He was only six years older than Charles, who thought of him as his strange half-brother, about whom he was never to speak. When Charles embarked on the Beagle, having accomplished little in his studies of medicine and theology, Ringo was sent off on the Beagle’s sister-ship, the Poodle.

Charles’ passion was being a naturalist. Ringo’s solitary study in the family attic had been anthropology. His voyage was for the dual purpose of letting him study the rapidly-vanishing tattooed savages on remote Pacific islands, and getting him out England where his existence was certain to cause a family scandal.

Until now, neither Ringo nor the ship on which he sailed were ever heard from again. Here, dear reader, is the complete text of the newly-found manuscript:

Journal of Ringo Darwin

12 June 1833: And so, having been left on the uncharted isle of Lui Lui, with the captain’s promise that the Poodle would retrieve me upon his return from Australia, I commenced my study of the natives.

This island is verdant but frightfully volcanic. Because of my natural facility for learning languages, I was soon fluent in the natives’ speech. I befriended Rahm-Rahm, one of the last and greatest of the Pacific islands’ bone-in-the-nose medicine men.

Rahm-Rahm confided in me that his spiritual leadership was sometimes challenged because the young islanders were contaminated by occasional contact with shipwrecked Englishmen, who disparaged the native religion. But whenever things were getting out of hand, the island’s volcano would begin to belch smoke, the ground would tremble, and the terrified natives would return to their ancestral faith. He never revealed what became of those Englishmen.

I asked him what he knew about the volcano, and he forthrightly told me that he didn’t have a clue, but it provided him with a handsome livelihood. “Better than scrounging for coconuts,” he said.

Rahm-Rahm told me a maxim he had learned from his father, which had been handed down in his priestly family for countless generations: “Never let a good upheaval go to waste.” Indeed, while the natives feared the volcano, and he clearly knew nothing about it, Rahm-Rahm regarded it not as a god, but merely a tool of his trade, using its outbursts as occasions for recruiting followers and amassing the offerings they brought him to avert disaster.

When I asked him if he had ever feared the volcano, he shrugged. “Convulsions come and go. They never cause any serious problems.”

18 June 1833: I must interrupt this narrative to report that for the past few days the volcano’s activity has been continuous. Today its rumblings have grown increasingly severe, and it has been belching an immense column of smoke for hours. The ground is shaking badly. The natives are praying, and Rahm-Rahm is accepting their offerings. I can see lava starting to flow.

The Poodle isn’t due to return for at least two months, and the nearest habitable island is more than 100 miles away. Escape by canoe is unlikely. I can’t handle one by myself, and the natives prefer prayer to flight.

As a precaution, I am placing these notes in a bottle, which I shall fling as far as possible into the sea. It is my hope that if the worst should happen, something of my work may survive.

There is no more time –

That is where the manuscript ends. We checked, but we can find no mention of a Pacific island named Lui Lui. Ringo said it was uncharted. If it existed, it has vanished beneath the waves. Nor is there any record that the Poodle ever returned to England.

[Yes, you guessed it. This little parable was inspired by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who famously said: "Never let a serious crisis go to waste."]

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article