Posted on 08/22/2011 7:49:29 AM PDT by Former Fetus
A public high school teacher in California may not be sued for making hostile remarks about religion in his classroom, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.
The decision stems from a lawsuit filed by a student charging that the teacher's hostile remarks about creationism and religious faith violated a First Amendment mandate that the government remain neutral in matters of religion.
A three-judge panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the lawsuit 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.
The San Francisco-based appeals court said the teacher was entitled to immunity because it was not clearly established in the law that a teacher's expression of hostility to certain religious beliefs in a public school classroom would violate the First Amendment's establishment clause.
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Sometimes I like to daydream about what if I became an American dictator. You know, just like the Romans used to do in the Republican times when things were getting out of hand, someone who was given absolute power for a limited time, with a life-time immunity for the decissions made while in office. It worked for them, and I wonder if it would work for us. Anyhow, if I became absolute ruler for a time, I think the first thing I would do (after overturning Roe vs. Wade) would be to get rid of all judges. I would hold special elections to replace them, but I would not spare anybody!
and while you’re at it,
send all the libtards off to colonize other planets.
That’s a promise! Y’all appoint me dictator and I will ship the libtards in the shuttles. After all, we don’t need them any longer (the shuttles, we NEVER needed the libtards). LOL-
Ok to urinate on the baby Jesus but say God Bless You .... and they have to put you down.
Might be a silver lining in this cloud: this ruling could be legal ammunition for the *defense* of a *Christian* teacher who professed his or her belief *in* the Creator.
Neutral is neutral; hostility to one side *or the other* is not neutrality.
Put another way, militant atheism is a religion, too; if it must be respected in the classroom, than so must Christianity.
‘Teacher of the Year’ is under fire after he likened same-sex unions to a ‘cesspool’ on Facebook.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2765792/posts
Pending a school district investigation, Mr Buell, who serves on the school’s advisory council, has been reassigned to an administrative post.
It’s the Ninth Circuit court of appeals. What do you expect?
Ummm...yeah, sure. Not clearly established in the law? Try speaking out about the violence and intolerence of Islam in a classroom. Simply amazing when the very basis of the 1st Amendment is flipped upside down and used as an anti-religious device. So now the 1st Amendment prevents the discussion of any positive influences religion has on society yet protects the debasement of those very same religions by agents of the State.
Would I to hear this case in court, I would have still found in favor of the teacher, but for a different reason.
Namely, that creationism is not a religion, nor is it found in any religion, nor is it a science. My argument would go as follows.
Science has a fixed set of rules, called the scientific method, that are not unlike the rules for say, the game of chess. If you follow the rules of science, you have done just that, conducted an experiment following the rules of science. An experiment that is reproducible by anyone, using the same rules.
If you play a game of chess, you must do so by its rules, or it is not a game of chess, even if it uses a chess board and chess pieces. Likewise, many people call many things “science”, that are not scientific, even in the sciences, because they do not follow the rules of science. This includes interpolation and extrapolation of scientific ideas outside of the scientific method.
Some of the parts of evolution are not truly scientific, but other parts are. Thus, criticisms of evolution are justifiable on grounds that it is not fully scientific, and only the scientific parts should be taught as science.
However, criticizing evolution with the creation of a pseudo-science, creationism, compounds the error. Creationism does not use the rules of science, so it is not “creation science”, and since it is the mandate of schools to teach science, creationism has no place in public schools.
If the “separation of Church & State” concept (not in the Constitution) together with the First Amendment, have any conjoined meaning it is that the State must be AGNOSTIC.
An agnostic is neither a believer nor a non-believer.
An agnostic is neither a promoter and defender of either secular humanism or religion, nor an opponent of either one - they are neutral.
If the “separation of Church & State” concept (not in the Constitution) together with the First Amendment, have any conjoined meaning it is that teachers IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS need to be AGNOSTICS, on matters where religion and the secular world disagree.
That means they are neither there to promote religion, nor to attack it - they must be neutral.
May not be a terrible ruling in the sense that if you cannot stop a teacher from making hostile comments about religion, conversely you also could argue they can’t stop a teacher making friendly comments about religion in the classroom, either. Further it also means you can’t stop a teacher pointing out problems with evolution, identifying the questions it cannot ever answer itself, shortcomings, all the theories held as gospel you couldn’t question until they found data that proved them wrong, that they have no new logical explanations for, etc.
Free speech works both ways. Use their own ruling against them.
What does your post have to do with the article? The article is about a teacher expressing hostility to religion in the classroom.
Most atheists when pressed (called on the fact that the claim “there is no God” is just as unprovable as the statement “there is a God” and is therefore equally an expression of faith) retreat and claim to be “agnostic”. Usually the expressing hostility to religion in the classroom is rooted in the denial of the possibility of God’s existence.
“...if you cannot stop a teacher from making hostile comments about religion, conversely you also could argue they can’t stop a teacher making friendly comments about religion in the classroom, either.”
Good point.
Nor could you stop a teacher from making hostile comments about atheismor any other theory or claim.
Except they wouldn’t be facing a student lawsuit; the student would complain to the school board, the school board would fire the teacher, and the courts would rule that it was an employment matter, and not a first amendment matter.
But an atheist is in fact not an agnostic, and an agnostic does not have to "retreat" from statements that an atheist makes; they don't make them. The atheist does and exposes themselves as only pretending to be an agnostic.
"Usually the expressing hostility to religion in the classroom is rooted in the denial of the possibility of God’s existence."
That's my point. Such actions are not that of a PUBLIC SCHOOL educator practicing agnosticism in the classroom. They are not taking an agnostic position of being neither an advocate nor a denier of any religious precepts. They are not acting as agnosticism would dictate - neutral. They are taking an atheist or secular humanist view and attacking a religious precept. That is not the agnostic, neutral position PUBLIC SCHOOL educators need to take.
I understand all that. But I also know that agnosticism means much more than “nuetrality”; agnosticm is far more complex than that. Books have been written on the subject, including on distinctions of the various flavors of agnosticism.
In the real world, and especially looking at the case in the article that was posted that set off this discussion about agnocticism, just scratch the surface and you will usually find an atheist underneath.
Your premise is faulty. The Bible's book of Genesis contains an account of creationism, so it is most definitely found in a religion.
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