Recently, the Discovery Institute's Anika Smith had this to say about the removal of a provision that would have explicitly prohibited the teaching of Intelligent Design (and/or Creationism) in the science classrooms of Louisiana public schools:
The legally redundant provision would have gone beyond the intent of the legislation...
When I initially read Smith's post, I was left wondering: how can something be "legally redundant" and "beyond the intent of the legislation" at the same time?Is this some kind of paradox? I daresay that, like Alice in Through the Looking-Glass, I haven't had much practice believing impossible things.
Thankfully, John Pieret of "Thoughts in a Haystack" delved in to try to sort it all out:
Huh? How's that? If the provision was "legally redundant" that would mean that banning ID is already in the guidelines. If banning ID is against the intent of the legislation, removing the "legally redundant" provision wouldn't restore the legislature's intent. Conversely, keeping the explicit (and redundant) ban couldn't go beyond the legislature's intent, unless the intent was not to ban ID at all, in which case, why isn't the DI protesting that effect of the guidelines?
It makes no sense at all ... unless the legislature's intent, happily adopted by the DI, was to keep the whole thing as fuzzy as possible, in hopes that some creationism will slip by the courts and others who have actual respect for our Constitution.
It makes no sense at all ... unless the legislature's intent, happily adopted by the DI, was to keep the whole thing as fuzzy as possible, in hopes that some creationism will slip by the courts and others who have actual respect for our Constitution.
If this is the kind of "critical thinking" that one can expect from supporters of the Louisiana Science Education Act, then maybe we need to consider the possibility that they, like Humpty Dumpty, choose to make words mean different things.
posted by Jeremy Mohn
