{"id":59,"date":"2012-03-17T20:38:17","date_gmt":"2012-03-18T02:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/?p=59"},"modified":"2012-03-17T20:43:29","modified_gmt":"2012-03-18T02:43:29","slug":"faith-versus-nasa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/2012\/03\/17\/faith-versus-nasa\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith Versus NASA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another dissident in\u00a0science\u00a0has been discriminated against and wrongly treated on the job for his faith.\u00a0 I use the word “dissident” because this relates to an article I wrote\u00a0called “The Mistreatment of Darwin Doubters<\/a>.”\u00a0 The article was a review of a great book\u00a0by Dr. Jerry Bergman, “Slaughter of the Dissidents.”\u00a0 What I’m referring to\u00a0now is about\u00a0David Coppedge, who was an employee for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).\u00a0 NASA’s JPL facility manages a lot of solar system research and thus\u00a0what they do is of much interest to me.\u00a0 I have read articles from David Coppedge on the internet and in the Acts and Facts publication of the Institute for Creation Research.\u00a0 He often writes about solar system research and I like his articles and often agree with him.\u00a0 His perspective seems to be similar to mine on planetary science.\u00a0 Thus, I am troubled by the way he was demoted and then laid off, apparently because of his\u00a0Christian beliefs and him promoting ideas related to Intelligent Design.<\/p>\n

Note that Coppedge is not one of the top scientists at NASA.\u00a0 He was apparently some type of team leader\u00a0in a computer related position\u00a0on the Cassini mission to Saturn (a very important mission).\u00a0 He worked for NASA for I believe 15 years.\u00a0 But in 2009 he was removed from his team lead position, then more recently was let go.\u00a0 NASA says\u00a0he was let go as a result of budget cuts and because of issues about him relating poorly to his peers.\u00a0 In 2009\u00a0some employees accused him of harrassment.\u00a0 What was his harrassment?\u00a0 Apparently it was speaking about his Christian perspective on various issues such as his support for California’s\u00a0Proposition 8 which defines marriage as limited to\u00a0heterosexual couples,\u00a0believing\u00a0in use of the word “Christmas,” and handing out Intelligent Design related video DVDs.\u00a0 Today some who oppose Christianity\u00a0overreact to any expression of it or hint of it in the workplace.\u00a0\u00a0Christians do have\u00a0to\u00a0be careful, but the founders of this nation would be appauled at\u00a0someone losing their job over freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression.\u00a0 It doesn’t sound like what Coppedge was doing was so dangerous, it sounds like the reaction to it is the dangerous thing.<\/p>\n

What would happen today if Isaac Newton were trying to go through the modern\u00a0University system to get a Ph.D. in Physics and then work for some scientific organization?\u00a0 There is a good possibility\u00a0today\u00a0Newton would not be allowed to get\u00a0this Ph.D. and he would\u00a0not be likely to get the prestigious\u00a0position of Lucasian Professor at Cambridge, which Newton once held.\u00a0 Newton’s principles of mechanics and motion are still depended on by NASA but I doubt that NASA would allow Newton to be hired.\u00a0 Newton believed in intelligent design and wrote about it regarding the solar system.\u00a0 He also believed the Bible and wrote Bible commentaries,\u00a0especially on the book of Daniel.\u00a0 Newton\u00a0did have some questionable theology on some issues, such as having trouble with the concept of the Trinity.\u00a0 But,\u00a0I think he was definitely a Christian and he\u00a0wrote against\u00a0the idea of evolution.\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0only comfort I\u00a0can give to David Coppedge is that 1)\u00a0You’re in good company with Isaac Newton, and 2) You’ve stood up for your Christian faith in an unbelieving world, so I applaud you whether NASA does or not.<\/p>\n

Two articles about David Coppedge below.\u00a0\u00a0There is a lawsuit that reached court this past week apparently.\u00a0\u00a0Don’t know the outcome yet.
\nFirst, Yahoo News article<\/a>.\u00a0 Second, an MSNBC article\u00a0here<\/a>.\u00a0 This article deals more with the aspect of the “dangers” of expressions of\u00a0religion in the workplace.\u00a0 I don’t know David Coppedge personally and I don’t know how he related to his peers at work.\u00a0 But it is very suspicious that after apparently 15 years he is let go in this way.\u00a0\u00a0In scientific organizations and in academia, it seems like there is a mindset that\u00a0those in charge\u00a0are\u00a0somehow exempt from having to respect freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression.\u00a0 It looks like a classic example of discrimination and mistreatment.\u00a0 It’s true that employers do not have to tolerate any and all types of expression of someone’s religious faith on the job.\u00a0 But the\u00a0problem is that the general idea of what constitutes making fair allowance for someone has changed in our culture.\u00a0\u00a0Employers, or government agencies, care about how things look when someone is let go and it is often hard to determine the honest truth about why someone is let go.\u00a0\u00a0Employers let people go carefully at times and in ways where it will look legitimate, so the real reason for it is not evident.\u00a0 I can’t claim to know the situation with Mr. Coppedge but it looks very suspicious.\u00a0 The Alliance Defense Fund and The Discovery Institute are both supporting Coppedge in the lawsuit.\u00a0 The lawsuit is sort of\u00a0Coppedge’s\u00a0faith versus NASA, but it\u00a0should\u00a0not have\u00a0to be that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another dissident in\u00a0science\u00a0has been discriminated against and wrongly treated on the job for his faith.\u00a0 I use the word “dissident” because this relates to an article I wrote\u00a0called “The Mistreatment of Darwin Doubters.”\u00a0 The article was a review of a great book\u00a0by Dr. Jerry Bergman, “Slaughter of the Dissidents.”\u00a0 What I’m referring to\u00a0now is about\u00a0David … Continue reading Faith Versus NASA<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-related"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"https:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creationanswers.net\/answersblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}