Here are some excerpts from “US Judges Rule For Teacher Who Called Creationism ‘Superstitious Nonsense’,” an op-ed by Warren Richey that was published in the August 22 issue of Jewish World Review.
The federal appeals court did not rule whether the teacher violated the Constitution with his remarks, ruling only that he had immunity from getting sued. This case is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
Here are those excerpts:
A three-judge panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that a lawsuit for making hostile remarks about religion in his classroom against an advanced placement history teacher at Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo must be thrown out of court because the teacher was entitled to immunity.
As part of its ruling, the appeals court vacated a district judge's earlier decision that the teacher, Dr. James Corbett, violated the [First Amendment] establishment clause in a comment he made in class that creationism was "superstitious nonsense."
The dispute began in 2007 when Chad Farnan, then a 15-year-old sophomore in Corbett's class, took issue with comments about creationism the teacher made during his lectures.
"Aristotle … argued, you know, there sort of has to be a G0d. Of course that's nonsense," Corbett said according to a transcript of his lecture. "I mean, that's what you call deductive reasoning, you know. And you hear it all the time with people who say, 'Well, if all this stuff that makes up the universe is here, something must have created it.' Faulty logic. Very faulty logic."
He continued: "The other possibility is, it's always been there.… Your call as to which one of those notions is scientific and which one is magic."
"All I'm saying is that, you know, the people who want to make the argument that G0d did it, there is as much evidence that G0d did it as there is that there is a giant spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it," the transcript says.
Corbett told his students that "real" scientists try to disprove the theory of evolution. "Contrast that with creationists," he told his students. "They never try to disprove creationism. They're all running around trying to prove it. That's deduction. It's not science. Scientifically, it's nonsense."
2 comments:
"They never try to disprove creationism. They're all running around trying to prove it. That's deduction. It's not science. Scientifically, it's nonsense."
Scientifically , it is nonsense, but then again it was not too long ago in our our history that science thought the world was flat.
Scientist are very arrogant these days and pesonaly I think who am I to say there is no God. If thousands of years of faith based thinking is wrong then when I die I think "oh well, at least I tried" and if the scientist are right then I am just worm dirt and it does not matter.
If there is a God though it just seems to me that being on his good side might not be such a bad idea...
I have often thought that public schools should offer a class in comparitive religion, which examines religious beliefs as religious beliefs. As this was a history class and not a science class I am unsure it was a smart thing for the teacher to do, but I agree that it was protected. There is, after all, some scientific evidence to support the theory of evolution. Not enough to be considered proof, but there is some evidence. There is zero scientific evidence to support "creation science." I hesitate to call it superstition, but it is certainly not science.
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