Tuesday, May 02, 2006

If ID is religion, then opposition is discrimination

At Telic Thoughts, Joy pointed out the following.

1) The Dover vs Kitzmiller trial demonstrated, to the satisfaction of many opponents of Intelligent Design, that ID is religious, not scientific.

2) There are people (such as P.Z.Myers) who are prepared to veto tenure appointments simply on the grounds that somebody believes in ID - they don't even need to teach it.

3) Given 1 above, this represents religious discrimination, which is not constitutionally permissible.

I can't see a logical fault in this argument - that if somebody holds that Judge Jones' verdict is sound, then discrimination of the sort talked about by P.Z.Myers is not permissible. Unfortunately, the discussion in the comments section ended up sidetracked by discussion about Jehovah's Witnesses and blood donation, vegetarianism and interpretation of the Bible. But this meant that the real discussion ceased about a third of the way into the comments.

Now, I don't think that the verdict was sound, and I am not pleading "religious discrimination." But what I want to know is how those people who think the verdict is sound can believe that P.Z.Myers' attitude can be acceptable, on constitutional grounds.