A lawsuit filed by a high school honors student and his parents against a California history teacher for anti-religion bias has ignited debate about the role of a teacher’s convictions in the classroom.
Sophomore Chad Farnan tape-recorded his teacher’s alleged “derogatory remarks” about traditional Christian viewpoints and comments that exhibited “hostility” toward Christianity.
Some of the comments by his teacher, James Corbett, included, "When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can't see the truth” and "Conservatives don't want women to avoid pregnancies – that's interfering with God's work.” The comments were made while he was teaching Advanced Placement European history at Capistrano Valley High School.
"It just shocks me that someone would think that and say that," Farnan said in a report by Orange County Register. "He's my teacher, and I've lost respect for him. I'm offended."
In the suit filed last Wednesday, the 16-year-old and his parents charged the instructor of violating the Establishment Clause, which prohibits government from advancing religion or promoting hostility toward religion.
"Corbett causes students who hold religious beliefs to feel like second-class citizens because of their protected religious expression, beliefs and conduct,” stated an announcement by Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a Christian legal group representing Farnan.
Farnan, who took the class as a requirement for college admission, said he taped the lectures with the recorder in plain sight on his backpack.
"Corbett has made derogatory remarks about Christian viewpoints regarding homosexuality, Viagra, birth control and sexual activities of teenagers. As a result of Dr. Corbett's hostility toward Christianity, Mr. Farnan has filed this federal lawsuit for a violation of his First Amendment rights," added the law firm.
The firm said the family will not seek monetary damages if Corbett is removed from the classroom, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Robert Tyler, the general counsel for Advocates, said the “blatant disregard for relevant topics of what can and should be discussed in a high school history class goes beyond moral reasoning.”
“Students come to class to learn, not to be forced to listen to the personal, demoralizing rantings of their teacher.”
Many, however, came to the history teacher’s defense.
"I don't agree with everything he says, but that's not the point," said Capistrano Valley High graduate Erica Bashaw, 18, now a freshman at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, to the Orange County Register. "Can you tolerate someone saying something that you don't agree with? Can you have a fiery debate about ideas? It scares me that that's not acceptable."
A Christian faculty member also supported Corbett.
"Corbett has been a powerful reminder to me that we 'Christians' do not have the monopoly on truth," Capistrano Valley High geography and history teacher Tom Airey wrote in the Orange County Register's opinion section. "… In an age where there is probably too much emphasis on teaching to the standards and getting 'the facts' right, Corbett is training young students to think critically."
Farnan disagrees. "He's only giving one side – that's not thinking critically at all," he said. Critics say Corbett, who often discusses current events, promotes his own liberal viewpoints and leaves little room for students to interject. Continue >>
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I don't know what you mean by limited knowledge of Ethics? So far you have failed to bring any system that is objective without God. When you say ethics I think you are referring to the definition that is the study of morals. If that is the case then why did you say objective ethics? That is as impossible as saying I am an objective anthropologist. When I say ethics I mean the system by which we discern our morals, in either case without God there is no objectivity. What counter world would you bring that is better than this one? There are basically four options, one is a world where people are not given the choice between good and evil, they are just robots that always choose good, another is simply not creating this world (no people, no evil), a third would be a world where there was no distinguishing between good and evil, in other words the only choice you could make would always be good, and finally the world we live in now. As Zacharias points out well only our world is able to have love in it. And as I would add only our world is capable of having real choices, people can have a will. You brought love into this discussion, something which I have not mentioned up until now. My point was only that if we believe in objective morals then the only way they can be truly objective is if God exists. You mentioned you would be hard pressed to believe God cared about our well being (I was not ever arguing that He did, but since you decided to throw that in there...) what would you have God do, instantly kill anyone who did wrong? Or would you have one of the other possible worlds? This all goes without mentioning that if the Christian God is true, then He did do something about all the evil in this world, He gave us a way not only to overcome the evil around us, but also and very importantly a way to overcome the evil within us. I fail to see your point.
It would seem to me that you made these claims with a limited knowledge of the branch of ethical philosophy. Coming from this premise, I have to disagree with a lot of what you said. Whats more what you claim I again believe is absurd. If there is a God, I am going to be hard pressed to believe that he cares about our well being. If you disagree, you havent lived in our world yet. This does not come from a person whos suffered all his life and has had little love in his world. This comes from the standpoint of a realist, how can you look at this world and discern that a loving God created us this way? And if God instilled those morals into us dont you think we'd be a lot less violent as a whole? I have to agree with George Carlin's view on this whole thing that if God created this universe, he did a horrible job, and if there were any other decent universe's out there they would have given him the boot =P.
Ethics is only the system from which we discern morals, if the moral law itself is not objective, then no system of ethics will be objective either. Just because a company decides on a specific "work ethic" doesn't make it objective, it is still completely subjective. The same goes for society, and so on. Pointing to ethics does not solve the problem, it only postpones it. We do not have to create some supreme being to make morals objective either (that would still be subjective by every definition of the word!) In other words, a believer in a created god is no closer to objective morals than the atheist is. In order for morals to be true, they must be based upon something or someone that transcends our existence. If we are a bunch of matter arranged in such a way that we are able to think and that is all, then there is no objective moral code, only a created one. Just like the created god(s), the morals we "create" are equally subjective and not real. What I mean by the next logical step is this, every human knows and feels a moral code in their hearts, it is undeniable. The only reason for this could be something beyond us. Atheism doesn't answer this, in fact if you subscribe to natural selection and atheistic evolution, then what is "right" for the species will often and blatantly go directly against what we know as good.
:P how is that logical? The next logical conclusion is to create a person who we deem to be the most moral being? Noo i dont believe so... Morals is a complicated question, what are objective morals? Or rather.. what are objective ethics? Well there is a whole branch of education on the subject, and we do call it ethics. If you want to know what atheists believe objective morals are, look into ethics. When people say things are unethical, or think of the ethical implications, this is what they refer to.. not moral implications or is this a moral experiment... is it an ethical experiment... bah just look into it :P.
Token,
You do not mention what is the objective source? Cultures do not come up with the same morals, there are (or at least were I don't know if they exist still) societies that believed certain things that we consider horrible, i.e. lying, rape, murder as not immoral. And cultures everywhere disagree on many points. Moreover, if God is true then He is the Author of truth. God is not bound to the morals He creates, rather we think that these things are good because God has given us that inclination. We cannot envision a "good" god as going against "our" moral ideas because God has given us that desire. You aren't proving that morals are above God, rather you are showing just why God is so important to us as human beings. If atheism is true then the morals do not matter, they are not objective, they don't transcend God, they don't even transcend a tree or a rock, they don't exist, we create them (this is subjective at every level, not objective). Once again I applaud you for actually admitting the obvious, that morals are objective, but if you really think about it I believe you will find that the next logical step from that is that God exists. Many of the prominent atheists today are denying the objectivity of morals (as they have to), take Richard Dawkins for an example. Thanks for the conversation.
lol :) you guys amuse me. Well no im not saying that morals are relative to culture, im just saying that culture teaches us the same morals, where the culture learn these morals from though is ab objective source that transcends even God himself. I dont believe that what God commands is good, I believe that God commands it because it is good. If God had done everything exactly the opposite in the Bible, then by the logic that we must worship what God does, we'd have to worship everything he did the opposite way. We would be praising him for doing evil things. I say that Morals are not arbitrary to God, whats more I contend that the people who wrote the Bible wrote those morals because they knew they were good morals they saw the objective morals that transcends culture and everyone and thats why those morals are in the Bible. That is my arguement.
Token, you forget that it was buttercream icing, I put forward that with buttercream icing you would have at least a 95% percent chance of taking it if you were unsure about your next meal. Ok this is getting boring now. Why in heck did I bring up the cake. I am hungry now :(
Token,
What I am contending with is “why” we have the morals. You say that morals are objective, I agree and I am glad you feel that way, America and other advanced countries are beginning to hold a much larger perception that morals are relative (a terrible position), however as you pointed out, if God does not exist then we just get our morals from our parents and them theirs in this regression that I suppose atheism takes back to our primordial pool of “life-possible” gunk. If this is stated then morals are not objective, they are relative. What is true for one society may not be for another and so on. Why should we say causing human suffering is wrong? In the atheist argument the reason must be, because I wouldn’t want it to happen to me, or because it is bad for society (not always the case), but nonetheless saying that doesn’t make it objective, only subjective. Another point of clarification is that human laws are not objective, ever. For instance after World War II, the most popular excuse given by officers of the Nazi regime who killed so many people was that they were just following orders, to which a prosecutor replied “is there not a law above our own?” Nietzsche would reply “no”. I too have enjoyed our discussion, it has challenged me.
I dont believe that Christians have less morals than anyone else... But yes in a sense I was just trying to say that people think Atheists are ammoral, but the irony is that you can find a larger ratio of Christians in prison... and im not talking about the population as in there are more christians so obviously there would be more christians in prison, im saying the ratios are different.. and =P that scenario doesnt compute with me about the cake because if I ever found myself in the vicinity of a cake the only reason id consider wanting some is if i was hungry, but I wouldnt take some without asking or paying first =P. If I was poor starving and the cake was there and I was uncertain when I'd get my next meal then id prob have a 90% chance of taking a piece of the cake :P.
Chris
What im contending here what im trying to argue here is that we all have the same morals. I am saying that morals is not something that is limited to the bible, but that can be found anywhere, and that those morals found anywhere are the same. It is a culture thing it is a peer thing... we learn it from our friends from our parents and our parents learn it from their parents and their friends and whats more we all learn it from laws human laws laws that are objective, they are objective. Sure you can find a few of them in the Bible, but I portend, and if you disagree with me just look up ethics for awhile just... explore that for a bit, that these ethical laws are ethical regardless of who says it. ahhh but anyways thanks for the discussion.
Hey TokenSP,
I am sorry that some Christians have judged you and others as not having morals, simply based upon what a person or group of people believes. That is as intellectually ridiculous as to say that Christians reject science. The point I wanted to make is that the Christian worldview does not permit a person to take advantage of another for personal benefit (or do any number of other wrongs), whereas the atheistic worldview does permit that, and the case can be argued (easily) that atheism can even support such behavior (Nietzsche as an example). Nonetheless you are right about Christianity not having a monopoly on morals, other faith systems have their own moral systems, some similar to Christianity. But as Ravi Zacharias puts well, “Jesus did not come to make bad people good, He came to make dead people live!” Morals are bound up in Jesus’ teachings, however they are not the foundation. (As many wrongly claim)
One last point about an earlier comment you made. You said that the Bible was just a good novel that was consistent and just later edited for the purpose of consistency. Here is the problem with your argument. If the Bible is perfect you say, “Aha, it must have been forged, because nothing of that scope could be otherwise.” But if there is some contradiction then you reply, “Aha, it must have been created because God would never have made a contradiction.” The argument is impossibly closed and self defeating.
Oh and TokensP, I believe you forgot to take into account that it was BUTTERCREAM ICING!!! >:(
I never implied that Christians are the only onees with morals and I have little respect for anyone who did. What you were obviously trying to say with your jail statistics (please do not denie it becase you know it is true) is that Christians are LESS moral than atheists and that Christians are more likely to commit crimes. In fact I do not think anyone was saying that Christians have better morals it is just that, in my eyes at least, it is alot easier to think for the future if you believe in an afterlife and a God. I find that it gives me hope. I am certain that is all Chris was saying. And if I am wrong, you can't blame me because, heck, nobody is gonna go back and read all those posts, I got halfway down the second page -_-.
Hey ifeelfine72,
I think you meant that the Bible and evolution are not mutually exclusive (I leave out words all the time though, I'm terrible with writing!). To that I agree, however the difference is that from a Christian perspective there is a cuase behind it and that is God, in the atheistic evolution, chance is the cause (an extremely poor chance some estimates put it at mathematically zero due to various tests, but a chance nonetheless) The natural outworking of that is that human beings are just a bunch of matter. In the Christian idea, regardless of the method, we are children of God, formed with great care. Regarding Nelson Glueck's statement, I chose it because he used the wonderful word categorical in defending his point, regardless of whether he is a biblical archeaologist or not, facts are facts, and we can debate him on that statement, sure, but he wouldn't say something like that without good reason to believe it. I appreciate your comment and for helping me to clarify these things.
My point in saying all that was the show that Christians are not some the only people in the world with morality... Morality can go to other people as well. If a cake was in the room all by itself, you wouldnt steal it because first off its wrong, but if you need to debate yourself about it then you just realize the consequence that if you steal it then you are stealing someones cake who took the time to make it either for their family themselves or to sell it for money with which they need to buy other things. Understand the consequences of your actoins and it shouldnt really be a hard choice... But if the thought even crosses your mind to steal it then I would imagine it wouldnt be hard to convince yourself to do it ~~. The first time i every got emotionally attached to this arguement was over the case of morality. Christians seriously thought we had no morals and that we were horrible people. That was the first time I took the debate personally and so that is why i reacted in the way I did, its a sore spot for me ^^;.
Chris333 - But you don't have to reject evolution to believe the Bible. The two are mutually exclusive of each other. Also, what would you expect Nelson Glueck to say? He isn't an archaeologist as much as a Biblical archaeologist. Do you expect a guy like that to say anything different? Its like asking someone from the Disco' 'tute if they believe in ID.