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.”
Why do antibiotics prove less effective after their initial introduction?
How is antibiotic resistance developed within a population?
There is only one scientific answer. Evolution.
And those with a superstitious and primitive view of the world do not have a veto power on what science is taught in science class. And if they did - it would not stop with evolution.
Once again you FAIL to engage my argument.
Radioactivity decay - can't study that because it embarrasses creationists about the age of the earth.
The nature and speed of light - can't study that for the same reason.
Plate tectonics - oops - long age of the Earth - cannot study that!
I could go on but the point is clear - creationists objections to science are hardly limited to the theory of evolution.
I can NOT fight a strawman of your creation. How many times in my posts did I use the word MACRO evolution ( known by some as “Darwinism”) ?
Fact: Macro evolution is of NO importance to the overwhelming majority of scientists. Most never even spend a nano-second on the subject in their graduate programs or in their daily work. And....This is true even for biologists.
Fact: Those who invented the techniques used for studying and measuring radioactive decay, plate tectonics, or the speed of light didn't give a twit about Macro evolution and likely attended all their various levels of schooling BEFORE macro evolution was part of the curriculum.
Solution: Remove the “Veto Power” of the voting mob. Privatize universal K-12 education. End the curriculum wars.
It is impossible to have a politically, religiously, and culturally neutral education.
There are half wolf half dogs...where are the half ape half man?
But once again you FAIL to address my argument.
If we give those with a primitive and superstitious view of reality a veto power over what is taught in science class it will not end with evolution.
It seems that the majority of the “major scientific discoveries” listed creationists have MACRO objections to - they don't have MICRO objections to those fields of science - they have MACRO objections.
That is why your strawman that it is ONLY one facet of one theory and therefore NOT that important is inapplicable to reality - because it is NOT just that one facet of one theory that creationists object to - it is major features of almost every scientific discipline.
Rant about public schools all you want - I support privatization of schools, vouchers, homeschooling, you name it. But so long as there are public schools - science should be taught in science class.
Not just what science is acceptable to those with a primitive and superstitious view of the world.
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State” Thomas Jefferson author of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom that Madison used for inspiration.
Separation of Church and State is a foundational principle of this Republic. One essential to it being a FREE Republic.
Sure worked for the Soviet Republic.
The Soviets were not a Republic - neither were they free.
The concept of separation of Church and State is one that predates Communism - and it was one of our foundational principles as outlined by Madison and Jefferson and its recognition is included within the very first right in the bill of rights.
Funny that creationists not only have to reject science - but now apparently history also.
If (as the evolutionists say) evolution is compatible with God, and if micro-evolution equals evolution (as the evolutionists like to say), then the following is merely a statement of evolution: man evolved from Adam and Eve, who were created by God. Since this is evolution, it can be taught in evolution class. And evolutionists should have no objection to it.
1935 Consititution of the USSRARTICLE 124. In order to ensure to citizens freedom of conscience, the church in the U.S.S.R. is separated from the state, and the school from the church.
Decree of the Soviet of People's Commissars on the Separation of the Church from the State, and of the School from the Church (January 23, 1918):1. The church is hereby separated from the state.
2. It is unlawful to pass any local law or issue any decree whatsoever within the territory of the Republics, which will restrict or limit the liberty of conscience or grant any advantage or privilege whatsoever to any citizen on the basis of his religious profession.
4. No proceedings of any state or other official public body shall be accompanied by any religious rites or ceremonies whatsoever.
6. No person may refuse to fulfill any civic obligation on the ground of his religious convictions. Exceptions to this rule may be made on the condition that another civic obligation is performed in substitution for the one declined, but this must in each separate case be considered by the People's Court.
7. Religious vows, or oaths, are abolished. Whenever necessary solemn affirmation to tell the truth is made.
8. Registration of births, marriages, deaths, etc., are performed exclusively by the civil authorities and the departments for the registration of marriages and births.
9. The school is hereby separated from the church. The teaching of religious doctrines is not permitted in any state, public, or private educational institution where general educational subjects are taught. Citizens may give or receive religious instructions privately.
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State”
Thomas Jefferson
It’s a one way separation ‘wall’ amd!
Thomas Jefferson “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”
Evolution seems to fear open and honest debate and prefer the courts to continue doing their godless bidding. Judgement day is coming soon for everyone to give an account of their words and actions.
Information theory is scientific and is a valid defense for ID and creation. You can NOT have things like DNA without a creator creating these complex codes. Science is simply trying to re-trace God’s thoughts and actions.
Evolution does just fine in open and honest debate - it is the creationists who had to lie on the stand in Dover and who have to invent revisionist history.
Judgment day = if you accept evolution you are going to hell.
Heck of a scientific argument you got there buddy!
Amusing that creationists cannot argue against a scientific theory without making it an argument against atheism.
Science describes the physical mechanisms behind creation. There is no gap, and God is not a god of the gaps. God created a universe that evidently is self-consistent and without the need for miraculous intervention for day to day operations.
I put ‘wall’ in quotes b/c it is only a limitation or separation on the state ~ not the church nor the people.
Without your precious state funding evolution would have been discarded long ago as the useless theory that it is.
The scientists from centuries back payed their own way rather than being dependent on taxation and lawyers to do their bidding.
Without information theory you would not have a computer nor a network to continue posting your drivel.
Thomas Jefferson didn’t put scare quotes around a wall of separation. It is a limitation on the State - and the limitation goes both ways - the State cannot infringe upon free exercise of religion or pass laws that establish a particular religion in preference to others.
Evolution is a useful theory and its formulation, acceptance and use is in no way dependent upon government funding.
In the free market where ideas are either seen to have value or not - Science has value - knowledge of evolution has value - Creationism is useless.
MM: Fine. Then leave evolution out of it because it's nothing but a philosophical construct based on forensic evidence and extrapolation. There is no ability to observe it in action, no testability, no repeatably, nothing that would qualify it for being classified as science except it's blinkered exclusion of God.
Well of course dear allmendream, science should be taught in science class. But this begs the question as to whether Darwin's theory is "science." Evidently metmom has reasons to suspect it isn't; and so do I. It rather appears to be a philosophical cosmology rooted in materialist presuppositions.
It utterly denies any spiritual extension of the natural world. It is "successful" largely for subjective psychological reasons.
So let me bring in a forensic psychologist, Robert Godwin, who has deep insights into this problem. In his book, One Cosmos under God: The Unification of Matter, Life, Mind and Spirit [2004] he cites Aldous Huxley, who thought that "too much working hypothesis means finding only what you already know to be there and ignoring the rest. And this is especially problematic in the realm of Spirit, where people have a decided tendency to think what is thinkable and a strong motivation to 'discover' what is desirable, not what is true. We might call the problem of 'too much hypothesis' the 'fallacy of religion.'"
In my view (FWIW), Darwinist evolution theory is a prime example of "too much hypothesis" that definitely does involve the "fallacy of religion." Darwin's theory is effectively an ersatz religion for an utterly materialistic, despiritualized world. (Darwinism has no need for Spirit, just as it has no need for God.)
Godwin says the 'fallacy of religion' "is not, of course, limited to religion, but is pervasively present in political, cultural, and psychological thought, in fact, the humanities in general, which are overrun with pseudo-religions masquerading as theories and ideologies."
He goes on to say, "These parasitic pseudo-religions form closed systems that distort and obscure reality through the prismhouse of ideological I-glosses." He contrasts the problem of "too much hypothesis" with another problem akin to it, the "no hypothesis" problem which, strangely, also seems to affect Darwin's theory:
...Huxley points out that "no working hypothesis" means no motive for research, no reason for making one experiment rather than another, no way of bringing sense or order into the observed facts." This problem of "no hypothesis" we shall refer to as the "fallacy of scientism." Instead of enlarging our thought so that it fits the phenomena, this fallacy reduces, ignores, or excises the phenomena to fit the theory, often leaving a universe too impoverished even to sustain the original phenomena. [Emphasis added.]Elsewhere, Godwin calls this phenomenon "'Materialitis,' or perhaps 'Reductionosis'."
Imagine a two-dimensional being trying to "get away from it all" by going on vacation in Flatland; anywhere he goes, he will still be restricted to a cramped planar existence, and never experience the comparatively infinite freedom of the third dimension, even though that dimension is equally available from any point in Flatland.So, how do we rescue AMD from Flatland? Is this even possible?
Must close for now, but not before giving Robert Godwin the last word:
...strictly speaking, science has no "theory of spirit" — as put by the philosopher Eric Voegelin, it is philosophically "closed" and "logophobic" — because it does not acknowledge the existence of the divine or transcendent ground in the first place.... The "logophobia" or "pneumapathology" of science is actually a spiritual disorder whose symptoms include "refusal to engage in the search for the truth of existence," closure of the soul and resultant estrangement from the transcendent ground of being, adherence to rigid ideological and methodological preconceptions, the substitution of "secondary realities" for the primary One, and the inevitable worship of false gods in the form of intellectual "graven images." It leaves our world in the now familiar position of being "turned backwards and upside down, with its face toward darkness and nonentity and its back to the sun of truth and the source of being."No wonder our society is in such deep trouble nowadays....
Thank you so very much, dear sister in Christ, for your (as usual) keenly astute observations!
Darwin's theory is successful because it is of use. Creationism is useless.
Science is based upon using physical causes to explain physical phenomena. You can cry all you want to about how such is a “materialist presupposition” - but it is what makes science of use.
If the cause of a phenomena is material - then it is predictable, replicable and understandable.
If the cause of a phenomena is supernatural - then it is not predictable or replicable and not understandable - and thus it is of absolutely no use in terms of further knowledge discover or useful application.
So have you figured out what the physical cause of the evolution you say you accept is yet?
Will you ever?
What if there IS no "physical cause?" Have you ever entertained that possibility?
What if the driver of evolution is actually a spiritual cause?
Which is do believe is what Genesis 1 asserts. Physical, "material" nature does not show up until Genesis 2.
So, what is going on in Genesis 1? To me, it is the spiritual layout, or blueprint, for what ensues in Genesis 2. The analogy from physics is that Genesis 1 refers to whatever was loaded into the Singularity — the Word of God, Logos Alpha to Omega — In the Beginning.
The "Logos Alpha–Omega" part guarantees that our universe, as created by God, was originally designed to unfold — or "evolve" — in physical space and time. Indeed, that was God's Plan in the Beginning. That He already knows the End — the purpose and goal of His Creation — does not affect its free development "In-Between" its Beginning and End, which has been called (by Aristotle), the Immanent Cause of everything that happens, or could happen, in physical Nature.
In other words, God did not create an "overly-determined" universe. There are rules and guides to the system; but within those constraints, there is every possible scope for novelty to emerge in physical nature, via an evolutionary process.
An analogy from physics: the relations between the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The first law — "matter cannot be either created nor destroyed" — is a conservation principle. It refers to that which does not ever change over time. It is, in short, a universal principle.
The second law — the law of entropy — refers to that in nature which is capable of changing. Note the second law holds that all systems in nature have an inherent tendency to become disordered over time. And all would do so, if there were no other operative principle in the universe to counteract this tendency.
BTW, the Singularity was "discovered" by Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, a Jesuit priest. The Singularity is what "blew up" in the Big Bang; and evidently is the basic foundation for the inflationary expansion of the universe ever since — which is decidedly an evolutionary process in space and time.
But of course, Lemaître was perhaps just another superstitious Christian creationist in your book. Maybe we can also say this of Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian monk who just happens to be the father of the science of genetics, which gave Darwin so many bright ideas.
* * * * * * *
Anyhoot, I don't know if any of the above is at all helpful to you, dear allmendream. All I can say is I'm not here to "tell you what to think," but rather to "show you where to look." You can go look if you want to.
I do hope you will, dear brother in Christ! Thank you ever so much for writing!
What part of evolution is replicable? Testable? What real life observations of evolution in action have been made that are not based on forensic evidence and extrapolation?
OK, predict the next step in the evolution of any man or animal of your choice?
If the cause of a phenomena is supernatural - then it is not predictable or replicable and not understandable - and thus it is of absolutely no use in terms of further knowledge discover or useful application.
Sounds like you just described evolution there.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
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