Texas Bible Class

In 2007, the Texas legislature passed House Bill 1287 into law. The law, which goes into effect this fall, requires all public schools in the state of Texas to offer elective courses on the Bible. While most of us will easily recognize this as thinly disguised religious indoctrination, there are those who will undoubtedly feel that this law is purely secular, especially when the following language from the bill is considered:

[The course] must be taught in an objective and nondevotional manner that does not attempt to indoctrinate students as to either the truth or falsity of the Judeo-Christian biblical materials or of texts from other religious or cultural traditions other than the Judeo-Christian tradition...[and] may not include teaching of a religious doctrine or a sectarian interpretation of the Old or New Testament or of texts from other religious or cultural traditions other than the Judeo-Christian tradition; and...may not disparage or encourage a commitment to a set of religious beliefs.

Isn't that nice? A school, while teaching a course on the Bible, won't be encouraging "commitment" to a particular religious belief system. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Teach the Bible without promoting a particular set of religious beliefs? You might as well try to teach the Magna Carta without mentioning English history. It can't be done. And to mandate Bible classes alone, without any regard or attention to the sacred texts of other religions, is the establishment, through favor, or a particular religious belief by a state government. And that, my dear readers, is unconstitutional.

But why stop there? Let's dig a little deeper into this little piece of legislation. The stated purposes of this class are to:

(1) accommodate the rights and desires of teachers who wish to teach and students who wish to study, as applicable, the Old or New Testament; and (2) familiarize students with: the contents of the Old or New Testament; the history recorded by the Old or New Testament; the literary style and structure of the Old or New Testament; the customs and cultures of the peoples and societies recorded in the Old or New Testament; and the influence of the Old or New Testament on law, history, government, literature, art, music, customs, morals, values, and culture.

Now the authors of the bill have done a couple of things here. First, they try to pass off this gross violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution by stating they are simply trying to accommodate the "rights" of students and teachers. Then they give a nicely detailed hierarchy of what students should learn from the class. By the time you read through that list, you're left with the impression that the courses purpose is purely secular: a chance to study the historical, sociological, and literary impact of the most popular book in history. As one teacher puts it:

"By the end of the year, what they begin to realize is that it is pervasive. You can't get away from it. The kids came back and were like 'It's everywhere,'" said John Keeling, the social studies chair at Whitehouse High School. Whitehouse already offers a Bible elective. "The purpose of a course like this isn't even really to get kids to believe it, per se, it is just to appreciate the profound impact that it has had on our history and on our government."

But if you look back at the list of what sorts of things a student would "familiarize" themselves with, you see the true intent:
1. The content of the Old or New Testament: Students will learn the content of the Bible. There's not much secular about that.
2. The history recorded by the Old or New Testament: Notice that they don't say the history OF the Old or New Testament, but the history RECORDED BY the Old or New Testament.

The other objectives are, admittedly, more secular. But it's hard to ignore the religious implications of the first two. And even harder to ignore that the law goes on to mandate that the Bible itself will be the primary textbook used in the course. Never mind the wealth of good, scholarly literature that speaks directly to the historical and cultural context in which the Bible was written, or the sociological and cultural impacts of the Old and New Testaments over the past two millenia (in all fairness the law does allow for other "supplemental" readings to be used), this mandate simply takes for granted that a student will learn everything that they need to know about the Bible by simply...reading the Bible.

This is fundamentalism. And this is state sponsored religious indoctrination. And to disguise it as something else is even worse...its brainwashing. It blatantly flies in the face of one of the freedoms that we hold dearest. It makes a mockery of public education. And in trying to fit religion through a secular loophole, it comes dangerously close to being sacrilegious.

Interesting Court Ruling

On Friday, a District Court in California ruled on a case, C.F. v. Capistrano USD (PDF), in which the central issue was whether a high school teacher violated his students' religious freedoms by making statements in class that were openly hostile to religious beliefs. While the Establishment Clause of the Constitution stipulates that the government (including public schools) cannot establish or promote a particular religious belief, the Free Exercise Clause makes it illegal to prohibit the free exercise of religion. The Courts ruling on behalf of the plaintiffs basically says that a teacher did, in fact, infringe on the religious freedom of his students when he referred to creationism as "superstitious nonsense."

This isn't the only statement made by this teacher (a Mr. Corbette) which was questioned. It was, however, the only one for which the Court opined there was no secular purpose...meaning the intent of the language served no legitimate purpose other than to show a disapproval of religion. Ed Brayton has written a nice summary and opinion here. Unfortunately, you won't be able to access that link from school since it's a (!gasp!) blog.

The key part of the ruling is this:

The Court turns first to Corbett’s statement regarding John Peloza (“Peloza”). This statement presents the closest question for the Court in assessing secular purpose. Peloza apparently brought suit against Corbett because Corbett was the advisor to a student newspaper which ran an article suggesting that Peloza was teaching religion rather than science in his classroom. Corbett explained to his class that Peloza, a teacher, “was not telling the kids [Peloza’s students] the scientific truth about evolution.” Corbett also told his students that, in response to a request to give Peloza space in the newspaper to present his point of view, Corbett stated, “I will not leave John Peloza alone to propagandize kids with this religious, superstitious nonsense.” One could argue that Corbett meant that Peloza should not be presenting his religious ideas to students or that Peloza was presenting faulty science to the students. But there is more to the statement: Corbett states an unequivocal belief that creationism is “superstitious nonsense.” The Court cannot discern a legitimate secular purpose in this statement, even when considered in context. The statement therefore constitutes improper disapproval of religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.

As a science teacher, my first impulse here is to applaud this ruling. I understand that Mr. Corbett did not want to give another teacher a platform to try to pass of supernatural beliefs (which are, by definition, not scientific) as legitimate science. This is a stance taken by many in the scientific and educational communities. Mr. Corbett crossed the line, however, when he used emotionally charged language to denigrate the beliefs of that teacher as part of his classroom instruction.

Public school teachers have the responsibility, as professionals, to provide the best education possible to their students. I will continue to stand firmly behind my assertion that this is ONLY accomplished in science when we teach SCIENTIFIC principles, including the robust and well established theory of biological evolution. I will stand firmly behind my assertion that trying to force public schools to teach religious views such as creationism, creation science, or intelligent design in science classes is absolutely unconstitutional. And I will stand firmly behind my assertion that to profess a religious belief which involves special creation in any form means that you have to be able to explain away mountains of hard, well-established scientific evidence...or simply be willing to accept that your beliefs are not in line with current scientific thinking.

HOWEVER...I also will stand firmly behind the idea that a student's religious belief (or lack thereof) is their belief which they are entitled to. How a student sees themselves in relation to a higher power is at the core of their understanding of the world and themselves. When a teacher, acting as a professional public educator, intentionally bashes a particular religious belief for no other purpose than to advance their own atheistic worldview is nothing short of educational malpractice. And it makes it that much more difficult for those of us who are trying to have real, open, and honest conversations about the relationship between science and religion.

As Brayton puts it so well:

There will inevitably be conflicts between things taught in school and the religious beliefs of some students. When those conflicts occur, a teacher has to handle those situations with some degree of sensitivity. It is one thing to tell a student that they are teaching something because it is the position best supported by the evidence; it is quite another to tell them that their religion makes them incapable of seeing the truth and that their religion is a fraud believed in by fools. I think this teacher clearly crossed over the line here, and not just in the one statement the court found to be a problem.

I couldn't agree with him more.

Einstein and God

I've been working my way through Walter Isaacson's biography of Einstein, and a particular passage caught my eye. It comes from chapter 17, titled "Einstein's God", and speaks to the man's religious views:

One evening in Berlin, Einstein and his wife were at a dinner party when a guest expressed a belief in astrology. Einstein ridiculed the notion as pure superstition. Another guest stepped in and similarly disparaged religion. Belief in God, he insisted, was likewise a superstition.

At this point the host tried to silence him by invoking the fact that even Einstein harbored religious beliefs.

"It isn't possible!" the skeptical guest said, turning to Einstein to ask if he was, in fact, religious.

"Yes, you can call it that," Einstein replied calmly. "Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious."

When asked by an interviewer if he believed in God, Einstein's response was:

I'm not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.

And from a piece of Eistein's writing called "What I Believe" comes this little nugget:

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experience there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness.

Science will continue to guide our understanding of the nature which we are a part of. And faith must always be, by definition, a belief in that for which there is no emperical basis for belief. And no matter how much science illuminates about the nature of our existence, for those of us who believe, faith will always be a part of it.

*This post is dedicated to Mrs. G...

Is God friendly?

I had the following conversation with Littlemagette this morning:

Littlemagette (LM): Daddy, when am I going to die?

Mistermagette (MM): Well, hopefully not for a very long time.

LM: How long is a long time?

MM: Probably not until you're an old man.

LM: Daddy, I don't want to be an old man.

MM: Why not?

LM: Because then I'll die.

MM: Well, son, I don't think you need to worry about that right now.

LM: Daddy, is it scary when you die?

MM: Not at all. When somebody dies, everyone is really sad because they miss them. But the person who dies is actually really happy...because they get to go live with God.

LM: Is God friendly?

MM: Yes, son. God is very friendly. He's friendlier than anyone else you've ever met.

LM: You're tricking me, Daddy!

MM: What?

LM: You're being silly...God lives up in the sky and I can't go up in the sky! That's silly.

MM: (changing the subject) So what would you like to do today...?

God and Global Warming

Great news! We don't need to worry about global warming...it's in the Bible:

This is Bizarre...

No comment...

Science and Religion

I just read a great article about science (specifically evolution) and its relation to religious faith.

One of the things that mars our culture is the fracture between faith and science. It impoverishes our inquiry into the realities that make up our life and world. This is a false opposition.
[...]
It is a mistake to treat the theology of creation in the Book of Genesis as a scientific textbook. It does unfold a profound and valid truth about the world in which we live, its order and purpose. The Book of Genesis speaks about the relationship between God and creation and especially about the place of humanity in that relationship. That wonderful narrative of creation offers us a first vision of an “ecology of holiness” in which every material and living thing has a place and its creativity is consecrated in goodness by God. The account of creation in Genesis is pointing us beyond the question “how?” to the question “why?”
[...]
The anniversary of Darwin's birth is an invitation to renew the conversation between science and faith. Christianity can contribute to the progress of science, not only by encouraging scientists in the search for truth, but by inviting them to consider these wider questions that go to the heart of our common and necessary search for understanding.
[...]
This alerts us to the question that lies within all our other questions: the choice that humans alone have to make between good and evil. It is a question planted at the heart of Genesis's account of creation. It is as much a question for the scientist as for the believer. It, too, is about our freedom. Darwin's theory does not take away the reality of that freedom and the moral responsibility it gives us.

True knowledge comes not from scientific or religious dogma. True knowledge is found in the continual search for truth...both physical and spiritual.