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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071210/od_nm/evolution_lawsuit_dc
BOSTON (Reuters) - A Christian biologist is suing the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, claiming he was fired for refusing to accept evolution, lawyers involved in the case said on Friday.
Nathaniel Abraham, an Indian national who describes himself as a "Bible-believing Christian," said in the suit filed on Monday in U.S. District Court in Boston that he was fired in 2004 because he would not accept evolution as scientific fact.
The latest U.S. academic spat over science and religion was first reported in The Boston Globe newspaper on Friday. Gibbs Law Firm in Florida, which is representing Abraham, said he was seeking $500,000 in compensation.
The zebrafish specialist said his civil rights were violated when he was dismissed shortly after telling his superior he did not accept evolution because he believed the Bible presented a true account of human creation.
Creationists such as Abraham believe God made the world in six days, as the Bible's Book of Genesis says.
Woods Hole, a federally funded nonprofit research center on Cape Cod, said in a statement it firmly believed its actions and those of its employees in the case were "entirely lawful" and that it does not discriminate.
Abraham, who was dismissed eight months after he was hired, said he was willing to do research using evolutionary concepts but that he had been required to accept Darwin's theory of evolution as scientific fact or lose his job.
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination dismissed the case this year, saying Abraham's request not to work on evolutionary aspects of research would be difficult for Woods Hole because its work is based on evolutionary theories.
Abraham said this condition was never spelled out in the advertisement for the job and that his dismissal led to severe economic losses, an injured reputation, emotional pain and suffering and mental anguish.
The case underscores tension between scientists, who see creationist views as anti-science, and evangelical Christians who argue that protections of religious freedom enshrined in the U.S. Constitution extend to scientific settings.
Abraham, 35, is now a biology professor at Liberty University, a Baptist school in Virginia founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a Christian pastor and televangelist.
(Editing by Todd Eastham)
Summary: A Christian biologist is let go after he refused to acknowledge evolution as a fact. Kinda interesting situation. I'm all for believing in whatever the hell you want, but this is was at a federally funded program. Seems pretty justified to me. Thoughts?
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Belgium8305 Posts
i wish i could get half a mill for being a retard
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If it was a funded program, shouldnt he have known their motto, their ideas? Anyway, its good that he's giving his thoughts on what he believes
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good luck winning that lawsuit
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As wrong as it may be for him to get fired, I lost all sympathy after reading this
Abraham said this condition was never spelled out in the advertisement for the job and that his dismissal led to severe economic losses, an injured reputation, emotional pain and suffering and mental anguish.
Not that I have much sympathy for creationists anyways. Hohoho jaykay jaykay
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He shouldn't win, as he has no credible grounds for rejecting such a basic tenet of modern Biology. If he did, he'd be sitting on a scientific goldmine and would have published something peer reviewed about it and be famous by now. But he can't, so really he's not a very good Biologist for taking that kind of view of his area of study and not being able to make it scientific at all, and such people should be fired. It would be like a physicist claiming there is actually no gravitational force to his boss. baleet those people.
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Its pretty ridiculous to force scientists to accept any theory as "fact". Its just wrong.
However, funding dollars are used to conduct specific research on specific theories, and if they simply didn't have funding for non-evolution research, then that is a different matter.
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I think that it's blasphemy to play anything other than Random in SC, can I still be on your pro-team?
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On December 11 2007 05:45 lugggy wrote:
It would be like a physicist claiming there is actually no gravitational force to his boss.
I'd hire that guy...dark matter/energy sucks.
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fight_or_flight, in science you are expected to provide a scientific alternative, and if you can't, accept the current one. evolution has stood up, shown its value as a unifying principle, and nothing else has. there are many facts of evolution, the theory to tie the facts together is ever-changing and only part of it. for a scientist to utterly deny those facts and all the different theories and to not offer a scientific alternative is simply utterly bad science, and no one should keep him on as a scientist under such circumstances.
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Belgium8305 Posts
On December 11 2007 05:48 fight_or_flight wrote:
Its pretty ridiculous to force scientists to accept any theory as "fact". Its just wrong.
However, funding dollars are used to conduct specific research on specific theories, and if they simply didn't have funding for non-evolution research, then that is a different matter.
it's far from wrong when it's the freaking theory of evolution, which has an overwhelming body of evidence to support it
hey where'd that zebrafish come from?
oh, god created it, huh?
and it's six thousand years old, just like everything else?
yeah i'm gonna stop spending my precious funding on you now
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not believing in evolution obviously made him unfit for the job. this is no different from any other firing.
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My main point luggy is that he should have been fired for lack of funding, not or that he wasn't working towards the research-team's goals. However, forcing somebody so accept a theory as fact is always wrong. Its the same as christians believing in non-evolution creationism and not considering anything else.
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Belgium8305 Posts
On December 11 2007 05:56 fight_or_flight wrote:
My main point luggy is that he should have been fired for lack of funding, not or that he wasn't working towards the research-team's goals. However, forcing somebody so accept a theory as fact is always wrong. Its the same as christians believing in non-evolution creationism and not considering anything else.
no man, it's not the same
the difference is that a scientist is willing to listen to alternatives, provided they have sufficient backing (e.g. proof)
a fundamentalist christian will only believe what is written in the bible
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On December 11 2007 05:48 fight_or_flight wrote:
Its pretty ridiculous to force scientists to accept any theory as "fact". Its just wrong.
However, funding dollars are used to conduct specific research on specific theories, and if they simply didn't have funding for non-evolution research, then that is a different matter.
You've shown a complete lack of understanding of what a scientific theory is. Good job.
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Evolution is fact, and biologists are in the wrong field if they don't accept it. There is just no proof of evolution as the cause of life on earth, because it is pretty impossible to prove one way or another. No scientist would get fired for not accepting that much as fact, because the scientists putting forward those theories do not accept them as fact. And those theories are still being developed and changed, and from year to year, things like the origin of certain early prokaryotes can vary by half a billion years or so.
Worst of all is not accepting it for the most unscientific of reasons, religious ones. I don't know the other details of the case, but after reading:
Abraham, 35, is now a biology professor at Liberty University, a Baptist school in Virginia founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a Christian pastor and televangelist.
I doubt his character
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On December 11 2007 05:59 vGl-CoW wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2007 05:56 fight_or_flight wrote:
My main point luggy is that he should have been fired for lack of funding, not or that he wasn't working towards the research-team's goals. However, forcing somebody so accept a theory as fact is always wrong. Its the same as christians believing in non-evolution creationism and not considering anything else. no man, it's not the same the difference is that a scientist is willing to listen to alternatives, provided they have sufficient backing (e.g. proof) a fundamentalist christian will only believe what is written in the bible
This issue is pretty subtle, however, this is the main impedance to science. I will leave you guys with some things to ponder:
+ Show Spoiler +
"...the scientist makes use of a whole arsenal of concepts
which he imbibed practically with his mother's milk; and
seldom if ever is he aware of the eternally problematic
character of his concepts. He uses this conceptual
material, or, speaking more exactly, these conceptual
tools of thought, as something obviously, immutably
given; something having an objective value of truth which
is hardly even, and in any case not seriously, to be
doubted. ...in the interests of science it is necessary over
and over again to engage in the critique of these
fundamental concepts, in order that we may not
unconsciously be ruled by them."
-Albert Einstein
"…science is not the danger; scientists encouraged to do
bad science to survive are.” … "…changing the way
modern science is funded is an enormous undertaking, but
it is a necessary one if we want to protect our future. Call
it managed risk."
-Smith
"Anybody who has studied the history of science or
worked as a scientist knows that whenever something
novel is discovered or proposed, there is a polarization of
scientists, with hostility and bitterness that may last for
generations. What wins arguments is scientific fact, and
that may change as the years go by. A good example of
this is the geological theory of continental drift, as
proposed by Wegener in 1912. When I studied geology
around 1950, continental drift was acknowledged in my
undergraduate textbook as a crank theory. The first
serious confirmation was in 1956, and it was finally
established as the dominant theory in the early 1970s.
Until that time, anybody who admitted that he or she
believed in continental drift was the subject of derision
and scorn. Sorry, folks, science is not and has never been
the 'idealized portrait painted in textbooks'."
-Allan Blair
"…I suggest that most revolutions in science have taken
place outside the lofty arena of the refereed journals, and
with good reason. The philosophy by which these journals
govern themselves virtually precludes publication of ideas
that challenge an existing consensus."
-William K. George
"An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way
by gradually winning over and converting its opponents:
it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does
happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that
the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from
the beginning."
-Max Planck
"We used to be able to say things once; if the message
was reasonable, it had a good chance of becoming a
permanent part of the structure of the field. Today, a
single publication is lost; if we say it only once, it will be
presumed that we have changed our mind, and we
therefore must publish repeatedly. This further fuels the
large publication volume that requires us to repeat."
-Rolf Landauer
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that
something is possible he is almost certainly right. When
he states that something is impossible he is very probably
wrong."
[Clarke's First Law]
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Belgium8305 Posts
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HnR)hT
United States3468 Posts
On December 11 2007 05:53 Aepplet wrote:
not believing in evolution obviously made him unfit for the job. this is no different from any other firing.
How can belief in a proposition or lack thereof make someone unfit for any job?
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Belgium8305 Posts
On December 11 2007 06:07 HnR)hT wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2007 05:53 Aepplet wrote:
not believing in evolution obviously made him unfit for the job. this is no different from any other firing. How can belief in a proposition or lack thereof make someone unfit for any job?
how can you be fit for a job in a field where you completely reject one of its main paradigms
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EPT
