NASA Threatened by Talk of Intelligence

Here's another example for Ben Stein to use if makes a part 2.  See the original article at HERE


Charlie Butts - OneNewsNow - 4/22/2010 5:00:00 AM

A NASA employee in Pasadena, California, has filed suit over action taken against him for discussing intelligent design with other employees.

David Coppedge, an information technology specialist and system administrator on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's mission to Saturn, claims he was harassed and demoted from a high-level job because he distributed DVDs that explain intelligent design.

Casey Luskin, an attorney with the Discovery Institute, tells OneNewsNow that NASA officials claimed intelligent design is religious material when it is really scientific.

"The evolution lobby has long claimed that intelligent design is religion and cannot be advocated in public schools," Luskin reports. "But now they are claiming that intelligent design is religion and cannot even be talked about at scientific research organizations, whose primary goal is to study the origin of life."

The only employees who received the DVDs were willing recipients, and the Discovery Institute attorney explains that Coppedge "would offer these pro-intelligent design DVDs to his coworkers, and if they said that they were not interested, he would drop the matter. He was not pushy in trying to share these DVDs with his coworkers," Luskin assures.

Nonetheless, the NASA employee was accused of promoting ideas in a fashion that was unwelcome and disruptive, and he was charged with creating a hostile work environment. Action was taken without Coppedge being allowed to even see evidence against him, so now he is suing for religious discrimination, harassment and retaliation, violation of his free-speech rights, and wrongful demotion.