If You Litigate, They Will Come.

Several funny things have happened recently in Selman v. Cobb County School District, the Georgia case involving evolution disclaimer stickers.

First off, Roy Moore’s Foundation for Moral Law had their pro-disclaimer amicus brief rejected by recess appointee William Pryor because it challenged clearly established Supreme Court precedent. Knowing the source, you can probably guess how bad and loony it was. Now Moore’s cabal is asking for their brief to be reconsidered:

[T]his Court’s order misconstrues the relevance of, or entirely ignores, the arguments contained in the Foundation’s brief, and . . . the order has dangerous implications for future constitutional litigants before this Court . . . .

Can you say “crackpot”? Additionally Moore’s cabal has asked for Pryor to recuse himself from the motion to reconsider, claiming that Pryor has a vendetta against Moore.

[A]s a federal judge, given Mr. Pryor’s documented and publicized history of antagonism toward former Chief Justice Roy Moore, his judicial impartiality in a matter concerning the former Chief Justice would easily be questioned. Now that he has publicly singled out Chief Justice Moore’s amicus brief for denial, his partiality has appeared to manifest itself. Judge Pryor is entitled to counter or criticize the arguments asserted in the Foundation’s amicus brief. But his May 20, 2005 order opposing only Chief Justice Moore’s brief demonstrates the partiality that an objective observer would expect Judge Pryor to hold against Chief Justice Moore after the intense public controversy between the two in the months and even days leading up to Judge Pryor’s recess appointment.

Can you say “paranoid”?

And the icing on the cake is a Georgia man asking to file a late amicus for the disclaimers. If you think Moore is a crackpot, wait until you meet Herman Cummings.

Herman Cummings moves for Extension of Time to File and amicus-curiae brief in support of [Cobb Country School District]. Since the date that the decision of the District Court was made known, both the defendant and counsel have refused to communicate with the movant, not giving him any information concerning trial dates and proceedings. All information has been obtained by chance by internet alerts (Google).

On June 10th, and “evolution Cobb County” email alert by Google informed this movant of an amicus-curiae submitted by the Anti-Deformation League, in support of the Appellees. Then learning what a amicus brief was, this movant used information obtained on the internet to formulate a brief to submit to the Court of Appeals.

“Anti-Deformation League”? This is just the cover letter; it gets better. Who is Herman Cummings?

Amicus Herman Cummings, is not a member of any group or organization, but is the author of the unpublished manuscript “Moses Didn’t Write about Creation”, copyrighted 1991 & 19992. Last November, this amicus contacted each member of the Cobb County School Board, one week before the trial, offering testimony that would reveal what truth Genesis was saying to mankind. So called bible scholars and the world of theology have never understood the text of the first to chapter of Genesis. Theology has erroneously taught mankind that Genesis is describing “the Seven Days of Creation (Week)”, while the book of Genesis is actually conveying a previously unknown concept, given to the ancient nation of Israel in 1598 BC, which modern science would not discover for another 3000 years. If desired, this can be explained to the court.

However, the Cobb County School Board refused to give this amicus any audience, and rejected all communications. The attorneys for the defense also refused to communicate with this amicus, rejecting the line of questioning that would have demonstrated to the District Court that the exclusive teaching of evolution in public schools is actually unconstitutional. A total of two messages, one voicemail, the other via his secretary were given to Atty. E. Linwood Gunn on Wednesday and Thursday during the week of the trial, but no return calls were received from anyone from the firm of Brock, Clay, and Calhoun, P.C.

Apparently, Dover and Kansas have also declined Cummings’s aid. How sloppy of a lawyer do you have to be to refuse expert testimony from “the foremost terrestrial authority on the book of Genesis”? (Prove him wrong!) Cummings has good reason to consider himself the foremost expert because he is the only one who realizes that “Genesis does not convey how Earth was created. However it does explain the 600 million year fossil record that science has uncovered”.

According to Cummings, the “future of our nation and all of humanity will be in our children’s hands. Therefore we are obligated to instruct them in knowledge, wisdom, and morality. But above all, our schools are required to teach reality.” What then is the reality that Cummings wants taught, but that the defenders of creationism refuse to present in court?

God hates even numbered creatures!

Suppose all of those prehistoric life forms came into existence at the beginning of the Precambrian Age, and the rotation of our galaxy brought our solar system through an agent of catastrophe, such as a comic cloud, that first killed the lower forms of sea life, type 2, causing the “Cambrian explosion”. Suppose at certain intervals, that the same or similar cloud is encountered, that kills more type 2 and many type 4 life forms because of repeated exposure, which causes the Oligocene Extinction.

Many millions of years later, that cloud again is encountered and causes the Devonian Extinction, killing type 6 life forms. A fourth encounter kills all remaining types 2, 4, and 6, and also kills all of the more advanced type 8 life forms. This would be the Permian Extinction, which is the greatest mass extinction ever recorded in Earth’s History. With this scenario, the escalation death of life forms in Earth’s early history is explained, without the need of the “missing” transitional types [1, 3, 5, and 7]. Let this be know as the “escalating death” theory. . . .

With the theory of “escalation death” in mind, suppose the Seven Days of Moses (not “Creation”) are not linear, and are in some sort of sequential order other than chronological order? Suppose Moses saw one day from the beginning of each geological age as defined by God? That would make Genesis too scientific for bible scholars and theologians to understand. . . .

The amicus offers the following suggestion. In biological science classes, the goal is the teach about the possible origin of life, and how life progressed on Earth since this planet was formed. Specifically, the 600+ million year fossil record is the focal point. We have undeniable data that tells us that earth is 4.6 billion years old, and that multi-celled life has exists at least since 600 million years ago. Allow all theories that address (explain) those issues, whether they be secular or biblical, and exclude all doctrines that deny the reality of that data. That way, the students are not prevented from learning all possible scenarios, and hopefully the truth attained.

Amen, teach the controversy!

Now, to end, here are some choice quotes from Cummings:

The first major mass extinction is called “the Cambrian explosion”, in about 510 Million BC.

Citing Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, in the opinion of the court, delivered by Chief Justice Warren, [i]“We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” The [church-state] separatists expect our children to learn the conclusions of science concerning Earth’s ancient past in public school, and for those that will, learn what Genesis says only in a theological setting, concerning the same subject matter. If both explanations are kept separate, aren’t they then unequal?

the continued exclusive teaching of evolution is a government endorsement of the religion of Atheism.

How much influence does the idealism of Atheism have in our school systems? How much does it have in our courts? How much of Atheism has infiltrated into legislative and executive branches at all levels of government? Fifty years of indoctrination our students with Atheism has produced people in positions of authority that question and/or deny the existence of God. Fifty years ago, who would have thought that an American judge would try to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance?. Are we now becoming an atheist society?

The influence of Atheism force modern science to only look for natural causes for any phenomena. If no natural cause can be found, then a fictional cause is invented or theorized in order to stay within the “natural realm”, and deny any supernatural involvement (or existence).

Insanity can be described as a deranged state of the mind usually occurring as a specific disorder (as schizophrenia), and that which denies reality. With the doctrine of denial of any supernatural involvement, secular science has established both the theory of “the Big Bang”, and the theory of evolution. . . . All available data and evidence should be examined, and none should be excluded, just to appease those that would deny reality.