HARD-CORE CREATIONISM….Chris Mooney points to a post today by Brian Montopoli about the Michael Dini evolution case (no permalinks, scroll to “Dini does it”). Brian reports, not surprisingly, that the whole thing is a put-up job and Micah Spradling is little more than a pawn in a bigger game:
Liberty Legal, the religious legal group [told Spradling] that ?they needed a reason? to make this into a case, and convinced the student to be the center of the controversy. Spradling is a hard-core creationist?I asked him if there was room for both evolution and creationism, and he said, basically, hell no?but, clearly, he is being used for political purposes. As he told me, he?d ?rather be studying? than dealing with all this nonsense?
A big part of the discussion surrounding this case has revolved around what Dini really meant when he said he would give recommendations only to students who can “truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer” to the question of human origins. My guess all along has been that his only real concern is hard-core creationism masquerading as science, not any special concern about religious views in general. Spradling’s statements seem to support this.
