News and commentary on Religion, especially Southern religion.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

When is 'Creation Science' most clearly not science?

When someone is attempting to award a degree in it, a Texas federal district court would appear to have ruled. Howard M. Friedman at Religion Clause writes:

In Institute for Creation Research Graduate School v. Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, (WD TX, June 18, 2010), a Texas federal district court upheld the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's refusal to grant the Institute of Creation Research Graduate School a certificate of authority to offer a Master of Science degree with a major in Science Education. The Texas Education Code (Sec. 61.301) authorizes the Board to regulate the use of "academic terminology" in order "to prevent deception of the public resulting from the conferring and use of fraudulent or substandard college and university degrees." The Board denied ICRGS's application because its curriculum which was designed to promote "scientific creationism" and "Biblical creationism" does not adequately cover the breadth of knowledge of the discipline taught. The Board's decision was based on the conclusion by the Commissioner of Higher Education that the school's program "inadequately covers key areas of science and their methodologies and rejects one of the foundational theories of modern science," and thus "cannot be properly designated as either 'science' or 'science education.'"

Indeed, Melissa Ludwig of the San Antonio Express-News writes:

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks of Austin found no merit in the institute's claims and criticized its legal documents as "overly verbose, disjointed, incoherent, maundering and full of irrelevant information."

Hard times, Southern Baptists? Or does a Creationism MS one way or the other matter to Al Mohler and his allies?

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for commenting. Comments are moderated. Yours will be reviewed soon.