Controversial sign at LA County Natural History Museum has been removed

_{Denyse O'Leary

December 16, 2013

Culture, News}

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Here’s an update from Evolution News & Views.

Recently, Vince Torley mentioned a controversy over a sign provided in connection with an anonymous donation at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, in connection with the past greats of science. The sign read,

The Nature Lab is a gift to Los Angeles to celebrate all of God’s creatures and enable NHM to broaden our understanding of the natural world through the process of scientific discovery. Anonymous Donor 2013

According to Michael Egnor at Evolution News & Views, the sign has gone missing. Wonder if the donation did as well.

Also, wonder when they’ll get around to chipping out the mosaic in the Rotunda at the Royal Ontario Museum, “That All Men May Know His Work”.

See also: “Science can be done ‘by ignoring God,’ but what follows? — a response to Torley”

Comments

JWT @ 10; I had no idea they tried it before. The judge was right to dismiss them for the trolls they really are.Shogun_{December 18, 2013
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Jorge:
I had asked myself that question many times until it dawned on me that it doesn’t say which “God”.
Why don't you ask the likes of Coyne and his herd of trolls, ask them which god makes them agitated the most and gets them to behave like inquisitors whenever they see any mention of God or ID?Shogun_{December 18, 2013
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^ They did try something similar: Atheists Lose Battle To Have 'In God We Trust' Removed From U.S. CurrencyJWTruthInLove_{December 17, 2013
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"How come the atheist inquisitors haven’t yet lobbied to prohibit the use of paper money since it has “in God we trust” on it?" I had asked myself that question many times until it dawned on me that it doesn't say which "God".Jorge_{December 17, 2013
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Barb, oops. It is you who pointed to Newton.kairosfocus_{December 17, 2013
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It's obvious Coyne and his fellow Darwin devotees do not care about science, they only care about promoting atheism.Blue_Savannah_{December 17, 2013
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News: This pattern of intolerance and censorship of legitimate and historically important perspectives begins to call forth an analysis of motives, attitudes and habitual patterns. For instance, Jesus -- in a psychologically deeply insightful observation -- warns that we should beware and seek to address the plank in our own eye when we want to take the speck out of someone else's eye, and says that he who is faithful/unfaithful with little will be much the same with greater power and responsibility. So, while the temptation for objectors to design theory etc is to try to twist this about and project it accusingly against us, given their refusal to acknowledge history (BA77 is so right to point to Newton and by extension many others down to today . . . ) and to pretend that those on our side can only be ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked, we need to hold up a mirror. For instance, Egnor reports how Coyne exults:
The anonymous donor quote at the NHM has been removed. My second-hand source tells me it will not be replaced. No doubt your efforts, coupled with those of a science reporter at KPCC looking into the mess, compelled the administration to finally do the right thing. Without doubt, you and your WEIT audience were the driving forces, for which I'm grateful.
This is censorship of a legitimate perspective on science, from a context that is educational. It is part and parcel of an increasingly widespread pattern that projects blame, base motivation, hatred/enmity to science and shrill accusations of intent to create a theocratic, right wing tyranny. This outrageously false and unbalanced scapegoating is beginning to look like blame the victim/ blame the perceived other, projection to me. Where, writ large and backed by growing radical secularist power, it is manifestly part of a blame the target turnabout accusation that all too easily becomes a big lie propaganda agenda. Where also, of course, such a lie can and must be shown to be a case of speaking with willful disregard to the truth one knows or should know, hoping to profit by what is false being perceived and acted on as if it were true. In this case, through outright censorship of a donor's plaque. And where we are cautioned, on the mirror principle, to note with Freud et al (and I here cite Wiki speaking against interest):
Psychological projection was conceptualized by Sigmund Freud in the 1900s as a defense mechanism in which a person unconsciously rejects his or her own unacceptable attributes by ascribing them to objects or persons in the outside world.[1] For example, a person who is rude may accuse other people of being rude . . . . Projection tends to come to the fore in normal people at times of crisis, personal or political,[13] but is more commonly found in the neurotic or psychotic[14]—in personalities functioning at a primitive level as in narcissistic personality disorder or borderline personality disorder.[15] Carl Jung considered that the unacceptable parts of the personality represented by the Shadow archetype were particularly likely to give rise to projection, both small-scale and on a national/international basis.[16] Marie-Louise Von Franz extended his view of projection, stating that: "... wherever known reality stops, where we touch the unknown, there we project an archetypal image".[17] The philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach based his theory of religion in large part upon the idea of projection, that is the idea that an anthropomorphic deity is the outward projection of man's anxieties and desires . . .
That last part is revealing: Feuerbach (who is where Marx began from, and IIRC is notorious for his you are what you eat materialist view . . . ) has simply swept away the serious reasons for a mature worldview that takes God seriously -- and thus rightfully sees him as the Father of compassion and God of all comfort -- and instead paints a ridiculous strawman caricature. Which itself invites the counter- analysis that asks, what is he afraid of in his own system that he projects to others. Not, as a mere rhetorical turnabout, but in the context of the well warranted observation that the portrait projected is manifestly a strawman so it invites analysis on mirror psychology grounds. Now, let us apply to Coyne et al. 1 --> Obviously, they have begun by not doing duty of care to truth or fairness, about the easily discovered Judaeo-Christian theistic roots of modern science, and the historically important and quite legitimate view that echoes Boyle, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Pasteur, Kelvin and ever so many others down to today:
in science we seek to think God's creative and sustaining thoughts after him, serving him and others by exploring our world to more accurately understand it and so be better stewards of it and its resources . . .
2 --> There is nothing illegitimate or unduly threatening in such a view of and approach to science. That is obvious. Indeed, we do the public and especially children a disservice if we leave them with the impression that this view has not been historically important, a source of much good, and continues to be an important view today held by many working scientists, engineers and medical practitioners in all sorts of fields. 3 --> Likewise -- as as BA77 hints at just above by citing the US Declaration of Independence of 1776 (which speaks to God no less than four highly significant times, and makes rights endowed by our Creator the pivot of its argument) -- it is a manifest distortion of historically anchored truth we know or should know to pretend that faith in God is an inevitable prelude to tyranny. (And yes, we are aware of and address the sad history of the sins of Christendom, cf. here on. The problem is that we are not dealing with balance here, but a persistently repeated one-sided litany designed to stir up fear, suspicion and even hate leading to destructive anger. Instead, let us state the obvious: no influential movement of consequence in history will not have its record of sins as amidst wheat poisonous tares will forever spring up. As humans we are finite, fallible, morally and intellectually struggling, and too often ill-willed and even hypocritical. The moral hazards of being human which we must all struggle with. hence Jesus' counsel on planks in one's own eye: first remove the plank then you can see clearly to help the other with the sawdust in his eye.) 4 --> Just the opposite, when -- in Ch 2 sec 5 of his 2nd treatise on civil government -- Locke (building on a foundation laid by theologians and Christian thinkers, writers and statesmen during and before the Reformation) set out to ground what would become modern liberty and democracy . . . and not least through that same US DOI of 1776, he cites a comment by "the judicious [Anglican canon Richard] Hooker," where in his Ecclesiastical Polity that worthy comments on the neighbour love ethical principle that is at the pivot of Biblical morality:
. . . if I cannot but wish to receive good, even as much at every man's hands, as any man can wish unto his own soul, how should I look to have any part of my desire herein satisfied, unless myself be careful to satisfy the like desire which is undoubtedly in other men . . . my desire, therefore, to be loved of my equals in Nature, as much as possible may be, imposeth upon me a natural duty of bearing to themward fully the like affection. From which relation of equality between ourselves and them that are as ourselves, what several rules and canons natural reason hath drawn for direction of life no man is ignorant . . . [Hooker then continues, citing Aristotle in The Nicomachean Ethics, Bk 8:] as namely, That because we would take no harm, we must therefore do none; That since we would not be in any thing extremely dealt with, we must ourselves avoid all extremity in our dealings; That from all violence and wrong we are utterly to abstain, with such-like . . . ] [Eccl. Polity, preface, Bk I, "ch." 8, p.80.]
5 --> These facts are not exactly obscure or hard to learn, so there is no excuse for the sort of persistently willful distortion and projections that we are seeing, which are now manifesting themselves in cases of abuse of law, administrative power and influence, here to impose a characteristic mark of growing tyranny -- undue censorship of public education. 6 --> Where, patently, there is nothing that is genuinely obscene or unduly offensive in the following inscription which was removed due to agitation, without proper accountability:
"The Nature Lab is a gift to Los Angeles to celebrate all of God's creatures and enable NHM to broaden our understanding of the natural world through the process of scientific discovery." Anonymous Donor 2013
7 --> So, we have serious grounds for now applying the mirror psychology principle to Coyne et al and their censorship. 8 --> Obviously, such fear God and fear that the world of nature and of human experience of the inner and outer world is so replete with signs that point to God and to our duty under him, that to advance their agenda of teenager rebellion writ large, they must do everything to induce us to fear, loathe, suspect and exclude God from our reckoning and to act with hostility to those who act through acknowledging God. (Cf here on and here on in context.) 9 --> They are also obviously deeply angry, as the all too persistent shrillness of their rhetoric reveals. But also, deep seated anger is a key motivator of the dark triad manipulative and abusive pattern of narcicissim, machiavellianism and sociopathy that is an increasing concern today. That is, the darker side of "cool," and it is a big red warning flag. (And yes, I come from hurricane country. I know storm signs and warnings when I see them.) 10 --> Where, obviously, such anger and threatening attitudes are easily projected to others who are designated, stereotypical, strawmannised scapegoats. Which in today's age, increasingly obviously, is what Christians -- let's be direct -- are typically set up to be by radical secularists. 11 --> And as Aristotle warned, in The Rhetoric Bk I ch 2, when he discussed the persuasive power of pathos, ethos and logos, our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are very different from those we make when we are pained and angry. 12 --> So, it is time to expose the attitudes and behaviours of Coyne and others who are already resorting to and cheering on censorship, that they are beginning to build up the same pattern of "a long train of abuses and usurpations" that dismisses concerns and remonstrance, that warrants taking serious action to carry out reformation in the teeth of those who by their persistent behaviour -- cf the case in view here, outright censorship -- show themselves threats to liberty and self-determination and self-government of and by a free people. ____________ The red storm warning flags are up, folks. KFkairosfocus_{December 17, 2013
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How come the atheist inquisitors haven't yet lobbied to prohibit the use of paper money since it has "in God we trust" on it?Shogun_{December 16, 2013
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Its a sign of the times more then a mere sign. They are creating a society of conclusion control on the people's running of their own institutions. The people decide these things and not a oppressive boss . They want to tell us what is true and not true and then our truth is attacked and censored. Surely this is a passionate invasion of our Christian civilization under the guise of common values. I guess in a free nation(s0 we must all become lawyers to defend our right to rule ourselves. Don't touch our signs when it means your touching our hearts and minds. Get your own country as these are ours. everyone get more signs and lets fight 'em.Robert Byers_{December 16, 2013
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Sir Isaac Newton spins in his grave. Look, I get the separation of church and state. But when did scientific enterprise become part of the state? Who says that science cannot be done with references to God or a creator? Who decided that?Barb_{December 16, 2013
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correction: "getting" that pesky ‘endowed by their Creator’ thing removed,,,bornagain77_{December 16, 2013
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Coyne, the Grand Inquisitor of atheistic materialism strikes again. Perhaps Coyne can next set his sites on removing that pesky 'endowed by their Creator' thing removed from The Declaration of Independence http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/ who knows how many impressionable young minds have been warped by that document? Warped to think that we live in a fair and just society, where, although opinions may strongly differ, people are able to voice their opinions without fear of reprisal or censorship. ,,, but then again perhaps Coyne just can't fathom that,, weren't all atheistic 'utopias' of the 20th century totalitarian in there government?bornagain77_{December 16, 2013
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