Here is an interesting one. The Associated Press has an article out of California wherein a federal judge has held that a teacher violated the First Amendment Rights of a student by referring to Creationism as “superstitious nonsense.”
U.S. District Judge James Selna issued the ruling Friday after a 16-month legal battle between student Chad Farnan and his former teacher, James Corbett.
Farnan’s lawsuit alleged that Corbett made more than 20 statements that were disparaging to Christians and their beliefs.
The judge found that Corbett’s reference to creationism as “religious, superstitious nonsense†violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Courts have interpreted the clause as prohibiting government employees from displaying religious hostility.
I wonder where the line is — whether mainstream religions have special protections. Would Heaven’s Gate cultist be protected from having their religions beliefs disparaged?
The opinion is here (pdf) . Ed Brayton and his commenters have a pretty good discussion of the ruling here.
The crux of the matter is that religion gets special protection not given to other sorts of ideas by the U.S. Constitution. Parents are, to one degree or another, compelled to put their kids in public schools and/or support the public schools with their tax collars. Consequently, the courts have found that teachers, as government employees, are not permitted to be openly hostile to religion absent some legitimate government purpose. If the challenged action of the teacher serves some legitimate purpose, the challenged action furthermore cannot have the principal or primary effect of promoting or inhibiting religion. Lastly, the challenged action cannot foster an excessive entanglement with religion.
Ultimately, the court sided with the school and teacher on a large number of challenged statements and with the student on the one statement where the teacher referred to creationism as superstitious nonsense. Truth, in this context, is apparently not an absolute defense.
Lou, back to something I said in another thread:
Comparing religion and science as studies is comparing apples and oranges–- or apples and rocks. For the most part, they speak to different realms. It would be more appropriate to compare the contributions of religion to those of history and psychology.
Or another field comes to mind here: archaeology, which can be found to support (“enhance”) or refute various hypotheses about religion (e.g., the existence of the pool of Bethsaida in John 5 vs. Mormon claims about America).
So, Jesus will never be a scientific issue per se. He is an historic and perhaps an archaeological issue.
Creationism as “God just did it” is a hand-waving religious exercise and is not scientific. (See also: hand-waving scientifically-flavored assertions that “Evolution just did it”– without evidence.) Creationism– so to speak– within the study of “Intelligent Design” is a scientific pursuit (one that may or may not bear fruit).
@ Doug: LOL! I guess most of us that post here have some geek tendencies. Yours are on display more often perhaps. :)
@varianguard: Okay, I think that we can agree that there are more scientists today than there were 100 years ago. I’ll even agree that there is probably some degree of waste and slowness due to there being an entrenched scientific bureaucracy at universities and other research venues.
I’m curious to know, since you imply it, if there are any concrete examples of advances that haven’t happened but should have by now. I’m not sure that the twentieth century is a good example. There were huge advances in science and technology in fewer than 100 years. It doesn’t stand to reason, however, that the rate of scientific and technological advancement will always be as rapid as it was then. Nor does the “slowing down” necessarily have to do with people laying down on the job. There very well may be some breakthroughs that are out there, waiting to be discovered. How can you know that being “safe” has prevented these breakthroughs from being discovered sooner? We know now that the world is a lot more complex than it was thought to be a hundred years ago. Advancements in science and technology may be slower and incremental because of that complexity. The complexity may have also led to the increase in the number of scientists and scientific specialties. You may think that the increase in scientists and the slower rate of breakthroughs are indications of waste, but ‘taint necessarily so.
I’m struck by the notion that evolutionary theory is limited by the lack of transitional species. Mainly because it’s not true.
There have been many transitional species noted in the fossil record. Archaeopteryx is probably the most famous one. The evolution of the modern horse from a small mammal has been demonstrated. We have pretty good fossil records of whale evolution, also.
eric schansberg said:
Creationism– so to speak– within the study of “Intelligent Design†is a scientific pursuit (one that may or may not bear fruit).
Lou answers:
Science is destroyed by ID because divine intervention is assumed.But anyone is free to believe that as a matter of faith,because we have constitutional separation of church and state..
Apples will never be oranges, and both have their place,but comparing religion to science seems always a religious exercise,not a scientific one,and is an effort to make religion what it can never be.
Pila, you are projecting your own hopes and dreams upon people and bureaucracies that you claim to know nothing about. In this kind of forum, I cannot debate against convictions grounded in a vacuum.
Lou, it’s a common misconception to believe that ID requires “divine intervention”– a myth spread out of ignorance &/or spite.
I would recommend that you read an ID’er to get a clearer idea of what ID’ers are trying to do. In particular, I would recommend Dembski’s The Design Revolution.
Eric Schansberg:
Here is the link to the Dover PA school board / ID trial.The verdict was that ID is not science,and ID must not be taught along side science as science.The testimony of expert winesses pointed out that ID was nothing more than blatantly re-labeled Creationism. This was a foiled attempt to get a religious foot into the public school science curricula..So the case is closed.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/12/20/intelligent.design/index.htm
Ahhhh…a verdict from a judge must be Truth! ;-)
I can understand why you might be fooled by that– or by popular opinion. But seriously, read something positive about ID for yourself.
I know that saying ID is equivalent to (young-earth) creationism is popular, but it’s simply rank ignorance.
Here’s something I posted about ID and Dembski awhile back. It might be a helpful start…
http://schansblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/how-about-some-intelligent-discussion.html