Nathaniel Abraham (Woods Hole Creationist) Attorney is Also Rallying Creationists in Florida
You saw this coming, right?
It turns out that David Gibbs, the same David Gibbs who helped get right-wing congressmen to call an emergency session in the middle of the night to stop Terri Schiavo being put to rest, and the same David Gibbs who is currently representing Nathaniel Abraham, the Woods Hole Creationist, has also managed to find himself a place in the spotlight as a leader in the effort by Creationists in Florida to insert religious indoctrination into science classes.
An article appearing in tomorrow's Florida Baptist Witness mentions a number of leading disenlighteners, and Gibbs features prominently amongst them. Of course, the article trumpets how essential the Baptist church in Florida is generally in opposing what's now being called "evolution-only standards," as opposed to "evolution with a side of utter bullshit."
Baptists take lead in opposing evolution-only standardsThe irony in a bunch of these leading lights of the Dark Ages expressing concern about "scientific accuracy" is almost too much, particularly on a website that advertises books with titles like The Hoax Called Evolution. Yes, you can rest assured that just because these people are making religious arguments and are being extolled on a Baptist website, their major concern is for the accuracy of science. That's why they all chose career paths in the sciences. They're concerned about maintaining a separation of church and state, they maintain, even though there is nothing like a church of biology and they themselves are deeply motivated by religious ideologies, to the extent that Gibbs himself runs a Christian Law Association that offers free legal representation only to Christians. Seeing this shyster worrying over the Establishment Clause is like reading about Ted Bundy speaking out in favor of an Equal Rights Amendment.
...Kemple distributed to SBOE members a letter and legal memorandum by attorney David Gibbs and curriculum expert Francis Grubbs critiquing the science standards.
“We are concerned about the scientific accuracy of the Florida standards and also about the potential some of these proposed terms might have for requiring only one particular belief system in Florida classrooms, which would be an unconstitutional violation of the Establishment Clause,” write Gibbs and Grubbs. (The entire memorandum is available on the Witness Web site: www.FloridaBaptistWitness.com.)
The real question, though... is anyone surprised by this? Particularly that David Gibbs is involved in the fundamentalist attack on science in both the Nathaniel Abrahams/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution outrage and in his home state of Florida in doing whatever he can to prevent students in that state from receiving a sound and science-based education... this shyster with his connections to Liberty University and his long track record of opposing both rationality and truth?
There is a lot more to the article linked above than the excerpt, of course, and folks should read it and take a good look at the people involved. There's not a scientist among them, nor even someone with a decent education in science. They spew the usual Creationist nonsense about facts and theories, only now it's cloaked in the "alternative theory" garbage that's come into vogue lately amongst the Bronze Agers. It's more chicanery on their part, more lies with no other goal than to gather up the ignorant and turn them into a political force to stand in the way of real science — because such people are scared of the fact that, as it turns out, their religion is just one more among many that turned out to be wrong about how the world works. They appeal to the fear that comes from ignorance, not facts, not reason, and they couldn't care less about students in Florida getting a good education. They just want to make sure that their favorite mythology gets perpetuated, and if it means raising a generation of ignorant, scientifically illiterate children unsuited to compete in the global market, if it means turning the USA into a cultural and intellectual backwater, so be it.
As long as they're lying for DA LAWD, it's all OK. They think they'll go to heaven and be rewarded for their dishonesty, and who cares if they help turn some part of the planet into a service industry, client state hell in the process?
