Monday, May 05, 2008

Baylor and Gomorrah

Denyse O'Leary has a real problem with Baylor University. and she views Baylor President John Lilley as a minion of the antichrist. Baylor and Lilley have committed several unpardonable sins, viz., 1) they unceremoniously showed O'Leary's friend and guru Bill Dembski the door, at least twice. 2) By refusing to require the Baylor Board of Regents to wear scarlet M's (for Materialist) they forced Dembski to publish, as a public service to the many sane commenters on his blog, the board members' addresses and home phone numbers, and 3) They made Robert Marks move his virtual lab to a private web server. To recover his lab, and this makes the mind reel, it required two, yes two invocations of ftp.

On a recent Uncommon Descent post, Denyese reports on a letter that Lilley addressed, it would seem, to those who have complained (I'm sure without any inciting from from that bastion of graciousness and decency, Uncommon Descent) that Baylor is BINO.

O'Leary complains that Lilley's letter says nothing. Actually I think it says "stop being ignorant asses" without actually saying "stop being ignorant asses."

Along the way, O'Leary manages to dis Francis Collins (again), which is a bit like Paula Abdul dissing The New York Times entertainment writers.

But I bring all this up because in complaining about Lilley's letter, O'Leary, wittingly or not, but in any case with impressive conciseness, summarizes the wrongheadedness of the thinking on Uncommon Descent in particular and the Intelligent Design Movement in general. She writes that Lilley said nothing at all,
Unless, that is, you believe faith and science are in conflict, in which case he [Lilley] reassures you that they aren’t.

But if you do believe that, why would you want to attend or fund Baylor - or any religiously affiliated university?
That is Uncommon-Descent-Think in a nutshell: Faith and science are in conflict; God is a god of confusion. Why would you support any Christian university that teaches the blasphemous doctrine of the harmony of faith and science?

She nailed it.

(Well, faith and science in conflict is their material cause. Their final cause is that they are being unmercifully persecuted out of existence.)


Baptist In Name Only. See this comment. This is reminiscent of Liberty University, whose faculty and administration, in my experience, customarily refer to other Christian schools that don't require an affirmation of YECism and premillennial dispensationalism as “CINO,” or Christian In Name Only.

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