ThePlayDrive
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It's not a teacher's job to tell people that what they believe is "superstitious nonsense". However, I'm not sure that there is any legal basis from stopping this teacher (although I would fire his ass). They could make a legal argument against the teacher using a liberal interpretation of the free exercise clause of the 1st amendment, but it likely wouldn't hold water against the obvious interpretation of free speech.I thought this was an interesting ruling because it isn't specifically about evolution versus creationism. (On that issue, schools should obviously teach evolution and not creationism, because one is a matter of scientific fact and the other is a matter of religion.) But in this case, you have a teacher who specifically called creationism "superstitious nonsense." Some people had a problem with this and sued the school, on the grounds that the state should not establish a religion. The judge ruled that the teacher should be able to voice that opinion in the classroom if he wanted to.
I'm actually on the plaintiff's side on this. While I think there is plenty of good reason to be hostile toward creationism, that's no reason for the teacher to make a statement like this. For those who disagree, ask yourself if you would be OK with a teacher saying the same thing about some other doctrine of religious faith: "Judaism is superstitious nonsense," or "the virgin birth is superstitious nonsense," or "not believing in God is superstitious nonsense." I think that whether one agrees with those statements or not, it's a bad precedent to allow government employees to express their personal religious views to a captive audience.
What do you think?
That said, had the teacher proclaimed that "creationism is fact", the ruling would have been reversed which is hypocritical in my opinion.