Religion

Judge Jones’ ruling in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case found the Dover Area School District’s policy on intelligent design a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause on two grounds. First, on the ground that it had a specifically religious purpose, and second, that intelligent design is not science but religion, and so the policy was an endorsement of religion. These are two of the three prongs of the “Lemon Test” for whether a state action violates the establishment clause. The Discovery Institute has argued that Jones’ ruling should only have used the “purpose” test and not the “endorsement” test. Ed Brayton points out that this position is contrary to the position that creationists and intelligent design advocates have argued for the last three decades–that the “purpose” prong of the Lemon Test for violations of the First Amendment’s establishment clause is unfair and should be abandoned. Ed observes that at least four DI personnel–Casey Luskin, Frank Beckwith, Mark Ryland, and David DeWolf–have all argued this way in the past. His post also responds in some detail to the specific arguments made by Philip Italiano, a law student at Rutgers Law School, who is the latest to argue that Jones should only have used the “purpose” test.

At long last, Kearny, NJ U.S. History teacher and Baptist youth minister David Paszkiewicz has spoken out publicly about his teaching (in a letter to his local newspaper), and has publicly displayed his incompetence on early U.S. history in the process. Paszkiewicz’s letter shows that his knowledge of the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment comes from crackpot pseudo-historian David Barton. He misrepresents the views of Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin using out-of-context and fabricated quotations, makes the bogus argument that because the words “separation of church and state” aren’t in the U.S. Constitution that the concept isn’t there either, and generally shows that he doesn’t understand the subject matter he teaches. Kennesaw State University history professor David Parker shows that Paszkiewicz’s alleged Jefferson quotation from an April 21, 1803 letter to Benjamin Rush is not found in that letter. (There’s something somewhat similar, but Paszkiewicz’s version changes the meaning by dishonestly adding and removing words from what Jefferson actually wrote.) Paszkiewicz misrepresents Jefferson’s religious views, failing to recognize that Jefferson did not believe in the divinity or miracles of Jesus, and edited the gospels into “Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth” (sometimes known as the “Jefferson Bible”) by removing all of the miracles. Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars addresses Paszkiewicz’s claims in more detail, showing that he doesn’t understand the role of the U.S. judicial system. Mr. Paszkiewicz, already considered a fool, has spoken and removed all doubt. (Hat tip to Pharyngula.) UPDATE (January 15, 2007): I’ve removed the statement that Ed Brayton has shown that Paszkiewicz used a fabricated Washington quotation, though it appears Washington didn’t mean what Paszkiewicz thought he did, and Paszkiewicz didn’t quote it correctly. The correct quotation, part of Washington’s advice for assimilation, is “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do every thing they can to assist you in this wise intention.” He didn’t say he believed it, he said to learn it. An interesting and lengthy examination of the history of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause can be found in Noah Feldman’s “The Intellectual Origins of the Establishment Clause” (PDF) from the May 2002 New York University Law Review (vol. 77, pp. 346-428). ...

RBH describes how a Christian neuroscientist was banned from William Dembski’s Uncommon Descent blog. Lots more similar examples of banning may be found in the comments.

This is a treasure trove of mind-bogglingly idiotic statements. Some examples: #2: “No, everyone is born Christian. Only later in life do people choose to stray from Jesus and worship satan instead. Atheists have the greatest “cover” of all, they insist they believe in no god yet most polls done and the latest research indicates that they are actually a different sect of Muslims." #3 (I’ve seen this one before): “One of the most basic laws in the universe is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This states that as time goes by, entropy in an environment will increase. Evolution argues differently against a law that is accepted EVERYWHERE BY EVERYONE. Evolution says that we started out simple, and over time became more complex. That just isn’t possible: UNLESS there is a giant outside source of energy supplying the Earth with huge amounts of energy. If there were such a source, scientists would certainly know about it. [emphasis added]” (FSTDT! Post of the Year for 2005) #4: “I am a bit troubled. I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed. My son is only 16 and I really don’t think he’s ready to date yet. What’s worse is that he’s sneaking some girl to his room behind my back. I need help, God! I want my son to stop being so secretive!” (“Occam’s Razor Disagrees” Award winner) #9: “There are a lot of things I have concluded to be wrong, without studying them in-depth. Evolution is one of them. The fact that I don’t know that much about it does not bother me in the least.” (Fundamentalism in a Nutshell Award winner) (Via Beth Wolzson on the SKEPTIC mailing list.) ...

This post is a followup to my series of ten posts about the finances of creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Access Research Network, the Creation Evidence Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Discovery Institute, and, though not reported in Cole’s article, I also looked at Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation. As Nick Matzke pointed out in a comment on the last of these, there are other creationist organizations out there of some significance, such as the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (publisher of the creationist/intelligent design textbook, Of Pandas and People), Probe Ministries (Ray Bohlin’s group in Texas which authored the annotated bibliography of Josh McDowell’s book Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity–the anti-evolution sections of which were ghost authored by an individual who now supports evolution), and Hugh Ross’s old-earth creationist group, Reasons To Believe. There are also five groups that were listed in Cole’s article which I did not cover–these were the five smallest groups, the Creation Education Society of Tennessee, the Creation Resource Foundation of El Dorado, California, the Creation Science Association for Mid-America of Kansas City, Missouri (originators of the “Lucy’s knee joint” argument), the Creation-Science Fellowship of Pittsburgh, and the Genesis Institute of Mead, Washington. And there are still others out there, like the Twin Cities Creation Science Association of Minneapolis/St. Paul, Kent Hovind’s organization (which didn’t file anything with the IRS, which is part of why he’s in jail right now), and various online creationist ministries. I may, as Nick suggested, take a look at some of these others in the future. At this point, however, I wanted to see if any conclusions can be drawn from the data in the Form 990s of the groups I’ve covered so far. I took a look at one section of each of the Form 990s which gives income data for previous years, and totaled those amounts up for each year across all the groups for which I had data. In some cases, I had to use other sources which were not quite comparable (such as the revenue figures from John Cole’s article), but are probably good enough for approximation to look at the size of the creationist market each year. (The main difference between the income figures I used versus the revenue figures is that the income figures show money coming in for purchases without subtracting the cost of goods sold, while the revenue numbers deduct the cost of goods sold.) The Discovery Institute’s totals were used, even though the DI does more than creationism, so that may have contributed to an overestimate, while the omission of all of the other groups above would have contributed to an underestimate. Since the DI brings in considerably more revenue than the other groups, it would take quite a few creationist groups making less than $100,000 a year to make up the difference. So this can’t be considered definitive. Given this total size of the creationist market for each year, I then looked at each group’s percentage of that marketplace, and how it has changed over time. Here are the numbers, rounded to the closest $1 million: 1998: $13 million market Institute for Creation Research: 45% Answers in Genesis: 28% Discovery Institute: 15% Creation Evidence Museum: 3% Creation Moments: 2% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 3% Creation Research Society: no data All others: less than 1% each 1999: $13 million market Institute for Creation Research: 41% Answers in Genesis: 30% Discovery Institute: 13% Creation Evidence Museum: 7% Creation Moments: 2% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Research Society: 2% All others: less than 1% each 2000: $16 million market Answers in Genesis: 46% Institute for Creation Research: 34% Discovery Institute: 10% Creation Evidence Museum: 4% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Moments: 1% Creation Research Society: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2001: $20 million market Answers in Genesis: 46% Institute for Creation Research: 30% Discovery Institute: 15% Creation Evidence Museum: 3% Creation Research Society: 1% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 1% Creation Moments: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2002: $19 million market Answers in Genesis: 49% Institute for Creation Research: 31% Discovery Institute: 12% Creation Evidence Museum: 3% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Research Society: 2% Creation Moments: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2003: $21 million market Answers in Genesis: 52% Institute for Creation Research: 28% Discovery Institute: 15% Creation Evidence Museum: 2% Creation Illustrated Ministries: 2% Creation Moments: 1% Creation Research Society: 1% All others: less than 1% each 2004: $22 million market Answers in Genesis: 59% Institute for Creation Research: 20% Discovery Institute: 16% Creation Research Society: 1% Creation Moments: 1% Creation Evidence Museum: no data Creation Illustrated Ministries: no data Even with these approximations and limitations, there are a few things that stand out clearly: 1. The marketplace for creationism has been growing. 2. Answers in Genesis’ market share has grown and dominates the market. 3. The Institute for Creation Research has had a declining market share. 4. The Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture has had a fairly static market share (overrepresented here, as well, since their numbers include other branches of the DI). 5. Other creationist groups have tended to lose market share in the face of Answers in Genesis’s dominance, even if their overall revenue has grown.

This is the tenth and final in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation Research, Access Research Network, the Creation Evidence Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Discovery Institute, and now we finally reach Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to complete the series. Although Brown’s organization was not included in Cole’s article, I include this one because it is a Phoenix-based organization and one that I’ve personally interacted with. ...

This is the ninth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...

This is the eighth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...

This is the seventh in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...

This is the sixth in a series of posts about the finances of the creationist ministries which were previously reported in Reports of the National Center for Science Education in 2000 in an article by John Cole: the Access Research Network, Answers in Genesis, the Creation Evidences Museum, Creation Illustrated Ministries, Creation Moments, the Creation Research Society, Creation Worldview Ministries, the Institute for Creation Research, the Discovery Institute, and I’ll add Walter Brown’s Center for Scientific Creation to the list. ...