While Florida media has defaulted to asking the public for advice on covering the intelligent design versus evolution controversy in that state, Texas is hesitating to grant certification to the Institute for Creation Research Graduate School for their master's degree in science education. (ICR has recently relocated to Texas from California.) The commissioner of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, Raymund Paredes, has been quoted as saying ICR's curriculum "doesn't line up very well with the curriculum available in conventional master of science programs here in Texas. I wanted them to either revise the curriculum or explain why it departed from the norm." I won't go out on a limb and call this challenge against ICR anti-creationist discrimination, but it is pretty suspicious. If anyone knows specifics about how ICR's curriculum "doesn't line up" (beyond challenging party dogma), I'm curious to know. Much as I hate to link you to such an anti-ID site as the NCSE, they have a good overview of this situation.

With all the Darwinism that creationists have to deal with these days, I wish they had could deal better with one other. At least two major disputes between creationists have been in the news in the past year. One was the ongoing tussle between AIG-U.S. and Australia's CMI, and the other, in the news this week, involves a 7-year dispute between creationist paleontologists over a particularly valuable Allosaur fossil. Tomorrow, Joe Taylor of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum in Texas will be auctioning off a large mastodon skull (bids start at $120,000) to help pay off $130,000 in damages a court has ordered him to pay for violating a written agreement made with the other parties to the Allosaur discovery.

As in many such cases, there are layers and layers to both of these disputes, which would ultimately be unprofitable to get into here. Conflict of some sort is inevitable, even among Christians. It would be presumptuous for me to make a judgment about who is right or wrong in these situations, but according to the Bible, someone in the church is qualified to arbitrate. Why bring everything into the news by allowing it to evolve into a lawsuit? Why discourage a generation of young people who might otherwise be interested in pursuing creation science work themselves? 1 Corinthians says, "The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already."

As a fellow creationist--one who is completely supportive of the missions of all groups involved--without any motive beyond love and a desire to see God's name respected, I can say this: We should have had the maturity to handle this conflict years before the secular courts became necessary. I am ashamed, not that we have conflict, but that it seems no one can resolve it.

Outside Protestantism: Pope Benedict XVI cancels a speech after his scheduled visit to La Sapienza university in Rome is protested by faculty and students. But is this really about the pope's comments on Galileo, or about anti-creationism?