Posted on 04/17/2012 4:27:49 AM PDT by scottfactor
Members of the anti-Christian, communist Left are obsessed with banishing the presence of Christian expression from all areas of the public square. They are probably the most fervent in this crusade in the government-run public school classrooms, where teachers are persecuted for displaying even a hint of Christianity.
I have written before about a California teacher, Brad Johnson, who is fighting back against a tyrannical school district that ordered him to remove patriotic banners from his classroom walls—banners that simply included the name of God in their sayings. These banners had long been hanging in his classroom, but the God-hating tyrants in his school district decided they could no longer abide even the written mention of the name of the Lord in that classroom. How very like Satan that is!
Mr. Johnson’s appeal is still pending in the courts, and the Thomas More Law Center has vowed to take it to the Supreme Court, if necessary.
There is another American teacher being persecuted for his Christian faith. This is a case out of Mount Vernon, Ohio.
As reported at the Rutherford Institute website, which is handling the case,
“The Rutherford Institute has appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court on behalf of John Freshwater, a Christian teacher who was fired for keeping religious articles in his classroom and for using teaching methods that encourage public school students to think critically about the school’s science curriculum, particularly as it relates to evolution theories. Freshwater, a 24-year veteran in the classroom, was suspended by the Mount Vernon City School District Board of Education in 2008 and officially terminated in January 2011. The School Board justified its actions by accusing Freshwater of improperly injecting religion into the classroom by giving students ‘reason to doubt the accuracy and/or veracity of scientists, science textbooks and/or science in general.’ The Board also claimed that Freshwater failed to remove ‘all religious articles’ from his classroom, including a Bible.”
Here we have the case of a Christian teacher encouraging his students to approach the unproven, unobserved theory of evolution with the skeptical eye it deserves. The anti-Christian crusaders in our world are so viciously against any teachings that declare God is the Author of the universe and all that is in it that they will fiercely defend a terribly flimsy theory—or hypothesis, rather—that seeks to explain the origins of life in this amazing world in which we live. The hypothesis of evolution—which is not even a plausible explanation, with its gaping, fossil record holes and fantasy mechanisms—is the best the godless among us have come up with, and they cling to it with a fanatical fervor.
The fact that this school district even cited Mr. Freshwater for having a Bible in his classroom is also chilling and disgusting. We must remember that our God-given rights do not end just because we become teachers in the public school system. There is no such thing as the fabled “separation of church and state” as the Left insists. The only constitutional mandates are against the federal government establishing an official national religion in America, which it has never done, and interfering with Americans’ freedom to practice their faith, which it is doing more and more each year.
The bizarre beginning of this case was back in 2008, as reported in Mr. Freshwater’s Appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, filed last Friday by the Rutherford Institute,
“Despite objective evidence demonstrating Freshwater’s consistent excellence as an eighth-grade science teacher for over 20 years, and despite his immaculate employment record, Freshwater came under intense scrutiny following a 2008 incident in which a common classroom science experiment with a Tesla coil used safely by other teachers for over 20 years allegedly produced a cross-shaped mark on one student’s arm.
While the Referee who investigated this incident ultimately determined that ‘speculation and imagination had pushed reality aside,’… community hysteria resulting from rumors about Freshwater and the incident prompted the [School] Board to launch a full-scale inquisition into Freshwater’s teaching methods and performance. This sweeping critique focused entirely on trace evidence of Freshwater’s religious faith which allegedly appeared in the classroom. On January 10, 2011, the Board adopted a Resolution terminating Freshwater’s employment contract based upon a recommendation issued by Referee R. Lee Shepherd, Esq., on January 7, 2011 that Freshwater be terminated for ‘good and just cause.’”
The supposed “good and just cause” was Mr. Freshwater’s allowing his students to examine both sides of the evolution debate and teaching them to recognize issues in printed materials that could be questioned or debated, in other words, he was teaching his students critical thinking! The godless School Board also found offense in the fact that some of Mr. Freshwater’s counterpoints to the hypothesis of evolution involved—GASP!—arguments for Creationism or Intelligent Design. Oh, the horror!
According to the School Board, this “good and just cause” amounted to “Failure to Adhere to Established Curriculum.” That sounds like something out of Nazi Germany! Absolutely NO God talk allowed here, comrades!
Mr. Freshwater was also accused of “Disobedience of Orders,” because he was told to remove certain items from his classroom, which he did, but there was a patriotic poster featuring Colin Powell that he did not remove, but said he did not recall being told to remove it. That poster was handed out to teachers by the school office and was displayed in other classrooms in the district besides his. He also had a couple of school library books: one was a Bible, and one was titled “Jesus of Nazareth.” Because he had these things in his classroom, he was accused of “defiance.”
This is an outrageous injustice, and this case is extremely important for the future freedoms of teachers and students alike. As the President and founder of the Rutherford Institute, John Whitehead, stated,
“Academic freedom was once the bedrock of American education. That is no longer the state of affairs, as this case makes clear. ... What we need today are more teachers and school administrators who understand that young people don’t need to be indoctrinated. Rather, they need to be taught how to think for themselves.”
The godless people who aggressively push the hypothesis of evolution in our public schools cannot tolerate opposing viewpoints, and if Mr. Freshwater ultimately loses this battle in the courts, all of America will have lost yet another chunk of our Christian liberty at the hands of anti-Christian tyrants.
As reported by the Rutherford Institute, two lower courts have already sided with the School Board against Mr. Freshwater, ignoring the First and Fourteenth Amendment violations by the school district.
The conclusion of Mr. Freshwater’s appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court states,
“The [School] Board's actions constitute a violation of the First Amendment academic freedom rights of both Freshwater and of his students, of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, and of Freshwater's right to Equal Protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. Because of its significant implications for academic freedom in public schools and the continued vitality of teachers' First Amendment right to openly practice and discuss their religious faith, the case is one of monumental public concern. As no reviewing court has yet examined these critical civil liberty components of this case, Freshwater prays that this Court will grant his petition and undertake that essential analysis.”
We should all be praying that Mr. Freshwater is given a victory over this anti-Christian, public school district. Ultimately, we are all Mr. Freshwater, and if he loses, we all lose.
We should also pray for, and consider financially supporting, the Rutherford Institute, which is made up of front-line, legal warriors who provide free legal services to people who have had their constitutional rights threatened or violated. From the Institute’s information page,
“The Institute’s mission is twofold: to provide legal services in the defense of religious and civil liberties and to educate the public on important issues affecting their constitutional freedoms.
Whether our attorneys are protecting the rights of parents whose children are strip-searched at school, standing up for a teacher fired for speaking about religion or defending the rights of individuals against illegal search and seizure, The Rutherford Institute offers assistance—and hope—to thousands.”
LOL- I guess you are one of them
Do you even know what a strawman is?
And yet we still have short, fat, and ugly (look at democraps) You would thing evolution theory would have made them all go away and everyone beautiful
Evolution theorist (the godless democrap fanatics, usually) deny creationism as a 'theory' while creationists do NOT deny evolutions - we can see both as 'theory' and question them
for example, evolution predicts certain things that we don't find (show me the millions of dead skeletons with a precursor Eyeball) . We just suddenly see full and complete eyeballs
That is a valid scientific argument (it may be wrong, who knows?) but it is valid. Evolutionists deny creation as having any valid argument- they cannot accept that there might be other theories other than their own, like it is a religion to them. Global warming propagandists are the same way.
Then it could also have "arisen independently" many hundreds and thousands of times and descended along many unrelated lines. That is not the theory of evolution as taught in the classroom.
To assume that the speciation of microscopic lifeforms proves that all species evolved from other species is a giant logical leap. It's a non-sequitur. It just does not follow that observing speciation proves that all species speciate, much less that all species are descended from one single common ancestor. The theory of evolution is built upon a mountain of such logical fallacies. For example, your argument appealing to the authority of the Pope does not help make the case that evolution is not a religious belief based entirely on faith and philosophic world-view.
You can breed whatever kind of dog you want but it’ll still be a dog. You’ll never see a dog give birth to a cat though. Dogs only give birth to other dogs.
That's actually a good question. See here...
Should we teach evolution in school? Sure! We can use this material: Inbred Science to explain to the kiddies what evolution is really all about. Likewise we can teach kids about communism by making them read The Black Book of Communism and a condensed version of The Gulag Archipelago. Those two courses would immediately grind out sharper students. A simple modification like that to the education system can save America.
Long ago there was an England. England copulated with a foreign power and left many offspring, who likewise left many descendants. But, to paraphrase Darwin in single-quotes for the rest of this tedious exercise, ‘…each nation-state strove to increase in a geometrical ratio. Each at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, had to struggle for life and to suffer great destruction.’ Soon the earth became full of nations struggling for food and struggling to reproduce as many offspring as they possibly could, in a geometric ratio preferably.‘Natural selection, always intently watching each slight alteration in politics, economy or national make-up; and carefully preserving each which, under varied circumstances, in any way or in any degree, tends to produce a better nation. We must suppose each new state to be multiplied by the million; each to be preserved until a better one is produced, and then the old ones to be all destroyed.‘ ‘In nations, hereditary variation will cause the slight alterations in constitutions, laws, method of government, etc, and generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on for millions of years; and during each year on millions of nations of many kinds; and may we not believe that a nation like America might thus be formed as superior to England, as the works of the Creator are to those of man?’ ‘Natural selection was daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations of these offspring nations, rejecting those that were bad, preserving those that were good.’ ‘As natural selection acts by life and death, by the survival of the fittest, and by the destruction of the less well-fitted nations’, it preserved and accumulated nations with a twinge of America-ness while old England-like variations, being inferior, were rigidly destroyed in the struggle for existence. Thus was America born.
http://www.icr.org/article/speciation-animals-ark/
This article sure seems to support that.
So species don't speciate - unless they do - and at many thousands of times the usual rate?
The evidence - of Endogenous Retrovirus - of gene families - of nested hierarchies of similarity in DNA - and others - all support the common descent of species.
Observing speciation doesn't mean that all species will speciate. That is correct. But any species that uses DNA will be subject to change. Change is inevitable. DNA replication itself causes change.
I am not appealing to the authority of the Pope that evolution is true - just that it is consistent with a faith in God. If you state something cannot be - that one cannot accept evolution and have faith in God - then it would be incumbent upon you to explain how the Pope and many other millions of Christians have no faith in God.
But that is a theological argument - if you want to argue the evidence - read up on endogenous retroviral sequences and get back to me.
When you have a basic understanding of the evidence then you might credibly argue the nature of the evidence.
They are probably the most fervent in this crusade in the government-run public school classrooms, where teachers are persecuted for displaying even a hint of Christianity.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Atheists are the most “fervent” in defending the godless government schools. Gee! Why not? Government schools are taxpayer funded temples of atheism. Isn’t that convenient for them?!
Axiom: It is **impossible** to have a religiously neutral school.
Corollary: Government schools are not now, and **never** have been, religiously neutral!
Solution: Begin the process of privatizing all K-12 education. End the government schools wars over curriculum.
Corollary: Government owned and run socialist-entitlement schools have **NEVER** been religiously, politically, or culturally neutral!
Solution: Begin the process of privatizing K-12 education. END the government school curriculum wars!
Anecdotal Observation: Atheists are the biggest defenders of the godless government schools. Gee! Good for them! They get the taxpayer to fund their religious worldview. How convenient! /sarc
Truth: The **NARROW** field of evolution is important to only a very SMALL number of scientists working in this area of science. The VAST VAST VAST majority of scientists ( even in the area of biology) rarely deal with it in their day to day research and work. As for the rest of the population of American citizens it is of NO IMPORTANCE in their daily lives or work whatsoever.
On a smaller scale, we’ve seen what would happen if the secularists were forced to compete with Christian homeschoolers.
The homeschoolers tend to excel, to put it mildly, as compared to their secular public school contemporaries.
It this were put into ubiquitous practice throughout the country, those teaching based on the knowledge of God (the basis of wisdom) vs those based on the hollow philosophies of man, would so far outpace the secularists that it would show the utter failure of that ideology.
When the Dover School board started flirting with teaching creationism it was a very conservative and mostly Christian electorate that voted them out.
If creationism conflicted with only one theory in biology it might be politic to just ignore that theory when teaching. But creationism conflicts with any number of theories and scientific disciplines.
Science class is there to teach science - not what science is acceptable to those with a primitive and superstitious view of the world.
In the free market where ideas are shown to either have value or not - science is a big winner and creationism is useless.
That is why the conservative and christian electorate of Dover threw out the creationists. Because the people of Dover wanted their children to learn useful things, and creationism is useless.
NOT TRUE. The reason why the school board through out the Creationists is because two of the defendants were found to have "plotted" to bring religion into a government school; not on the merits of the science of Intelligent Design - ID. The people who voted out these two were embarrassed by the fact that these two stated that the case was about ID and not about Creationism; but the Kitzmiller lawyers found video stating the opposite from them.
The judge in, "Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District," decided to relate ID and Creationism which he linked to being religious. The judge did not delve into the merits of whether or not they were different. The judge was not interested on the merits of the science of ID, let alone the science of Creationism. The judge was only interested on whether or not "religion" was being introduced int a government school.
This is the only way Evos win, by taking ID and/or Creationism to courts and/or defining it as religion. Evos don't want to fight it in the battle of scientific discussion in any classroom, or anywhere else for that matter. Ever see, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed?
They “defended” the teaching of science in science class.
The judge did delve into the supposed scientific merits of the Incompetent Design philosophy - and like most other people found it was built from the ground up with the intention of being a Trojan Horse for creationism and has on its own no scientific merit.
It is as useless as Creationism.
In the battle of scientific discussion creationists are woefully outgunned. The discussion in science is about what is useful - what models help explain and predict data and lead to useful applications. Creationism is useless in this regard.
No, it was not about science.
"The judge did delve into the supposed scientific merits of the Incompetent Design philosophy."
No, he did not.
"The discussion in science is about what is useful."
No, it is not with you or any Evo.
The Judge most CERTAINLY delved into the supposed scientific merits of ID - and found it wanting on several criteria.
From the decision.....
“After a searching review of the record and applicable caselaw, we find that while ID arguments may be true, a proposition on which the Court takes no position, ID is not science. We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. …It is additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research. Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena. (page 64)”
Just how wrong can you be?
Nope, as I stated, it was out of the embarrassment of two defendants obviously not being forthright.
"From the decision....."
A decision obviously made with the predisposition that what mattered was the false notion that is now law that there is a separation between church and state that goes one way. The judges view on this decision has no merit in fact; (1) - Science up until the 1900's had always recognized God. (2) - The judge ignores the evidence because of his prejudice. (3) - See Expelled: no Intelligence Allowed. The last sentence by the judge is absolutely ludicrous; Newton, Faraday, and even Einstein new that God had a hand in science.
You are the one, like this judge, that is wrong. The only way Evos win is by way of the court and the communist law that deems a separation of church and state on Americans. And like the Communists, progress in science will be slowed because of Evos.
Exactly. The teaching of evolution in schools have been forced on the American people through litigation. And the removal of teaching creation has also been forced on the American people through litigation.
When given a choice, the majority of the parents and students WANT creation taught in public schools.
Forcing parents to pay taxes under threat of jail time to support an education system which they don't approve of, is tyrannical.
By “not being forthright” you mean lying repeatedly? Amazing what acts people will justify if they think they are doing “the Lord's work” - but who again is the Father of Lies? Whose work did they do when they lied on the stand? They knew they had to lie - because they had become the servant of lies.
Science has no way of recognizing God or any other supernatural causation. Newton when he wrote about theology was a mess - only when he ascribed natural causes to explain natural phenomena did he do anything currently of any use. Faraday was a man of great faith in God, but he never tried to say the electricity was too complex to understand via natural means and that God had to be involved in the “gaps” of our understanding - which is the central argument of “Incompetent Design”. When Faraday contributed to science it was through ascribing and describing natural causes to explain natural phenomena.
Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were Communists?
They believed in a “Wall of separation” and “a perfect separation” (respectively) of Church and State - and Madison wrote the 1st Amendment based upon that belief and the Statute of Religious Freedom written by Jefferson.
The way science wins is in the real world of ideas.
No oil company is interested in hiring a “creation geologist”. No biotech firm is interested in hiring a “creation biologist”. That is because in the free market of ideas where things are judged on their merits and ability to produce useful results - creationism has been found wanting while science has been found to be amazingly productive.
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