Texas Creationism: WND Supports Zedler’s Bill

The legislative lunacy in Texas about which we wrote here: Texas’s First Creationism Bill for 2011 is gaining support — the sort of support that should cause its sponsor, Bill Zedler, to seriously consider withdrawing the bill, resigning from the legislature, and issuing a public apology for having been such a fool. We’re speaking about Zedler’s HB 2454, which provides:

An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member’s or student’s conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.

Zedler’s bill was filed on 08 March 2011 and on 14 March was referred to the House Higher Education Committee. It has no co-sponsors, at least not yet. Nothing else has happened — in Texas. But look at the powerful support it’s picking up elsewhere.

No less prestigious a publication than WorldNetDaily (WND) has taken up the cause. They’re even writing about it beneath their “Evolution Watch” banner, which always gets our Curmudgeonly attention.

WND’s article is Texas considers protecting those who question Darwin. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us:

A Texas lawmaker has proposed a legal protection for those in academia who question Charles Darwin’s beliefs that man evolved from sludge and today’s world is a result of the survival of the fittest.

Admit it, dear reader — that’s one of the finest opening sentences you’ve ever seen. Hey, WND interviewed the great Texas lawmaker himself. Pay attention now:

“Isn’t it amazing in the halls of academia you can almost believe anything and espouse everything and they go right along with you. But lo and behold if someone talks about intelligent design, all of a sudden, we need to get rid of you,” Zedler told WND.

In support of Zedler’s claim, WND says:

Such actions already have been documented, and have produced court cases.

Then they offer evidence to back up Zedler’s charge of academic intolerance by regurgitating the familiar list of creationist martyrs that we’ve seen so often before, starting with William Dembski and Intelligent Design’s Brief Shining Moment at Baylor, then moving on to Ben Stein’s Expelled, which they say is “about the monopoly Darwinian beliefs hold in academia.” They also mention David Coppedge, the computer technician and creationist proselytizer who no longer works at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Later in the article they get around to mentioning Guillermo Gonzalez.

Those creationist names are familiar to our readers, so we won’t provide any links. Well, okay — here’s one that discusses them all except Coppedge: Expelled Exposed, and our latest post on Coppedge is here.

WND’s journalistic integrity is meticulous, because for information about the Coppedge atrocity they provide quotes from a knowledgeable and unbiased source — Casey Luskin of the Discovery Institute. Then, having documented the long and lamentable history of the problem, WND returns to the subject of Zedler’s bill and says:

Zedler’s proposal has been referred to committee and he couldn’t provide to WND an estimate for when, or if, it could reach the House floor for debate and vote. He said sometimes the politics are more important than the issue. But he said the issue is something that needs to be raised as the dominance of the opinion supporting evolution in colleges and universities leaves those who disagree, or even just have questions, as targets.

Isn’t that wonderful? Just as places like San Francisco and Seattle have declared themselves to be sanctuary cities for illegal aliens, so may Texas become a “sanctuary state” for creationist researchers.

That’s pretty much all that WND has to say, which is understandable because Zedler’s bill hasn’t generated any other news, but the important thing here is to note that WND is solidly behind Zedler, and they’re in touch with and getting their information from the Discoveroids. Birds of a feather, you know.

Copyright © 2011. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

• • • • • • • • • • •

. . Permalink for this article