Teacher Fired for Disagreeing With Literal Interpretation of Bible

Where does one draw this line? If a community college instructor tells someone in class that the core of the earth is hot despite their assertions to the contrary - end of discussion, should that warrant their dismissal? Who should run a college classroom, the instructor or the students?It seems to me that you are confusing poor quality teaching with content. Now most community colleges work under a contract system rather than tenure as in universities so the quality of their teaching is evaluated and poor instructors can be terminated. However that concerns quality of instruction, not content.Now if this given teacher was fired for poor quality of instruction, that would be within the rights of a community college. If they were fired solely for expressing their opinion, even if it was unpopular, the instructor would have a case against the college. The Dover Trial concerned a public high school where students are generally required to attend, unless they can show they are homeschooled or are attending a religious school. No one is required to attend a given public college or university. Therefore, assertions of favor toward a given religious or political dogma are forbidden in public secondary schools. This is less true in community colleges and not at all true in universities where professors have tenure. I doubt that, name the law.To provide an example of how this argument breaks down where higher education is concerned, consider the case of Ward Churchill. Here was a tenured professor who called the victims of 9/11 "little Eichmanns." An unpopular position? - yes, an untrue position? - yes, I think so, did he get fired or put in jail for stating such a position? - No. It was only when he was found guilty of plagiarizing that the university was within their rights under law to terminate his employment.Tenure exists so that university professors can exercise their absolute free speech rights to say anything no matter how outlandish it may be. Yes it does allow poor quality, senile, and even crazy professors guaranteed employment but it is also there to allow for free inquiry and research unrestricted by political or religious forces. Are you arguing that tenure should be abolished?Now community colleges are not exactly like universities in that the instructors rarely have tenure but one mission of such colleges is to act as a transition between secondary school and the university. Therefore community college instructors do not have quite the unfettered right to be low quality, crazy, or even dead wrong that tenured professors have, but they are less restricted than secondary school teachers when it comes to expressing their opinion concerning religion or politics. Are you arguing that they are or should be subject to the same restrictions as high school teachers when it comes to these subjects? If the given instructor had tenure, they would be in their right to even say god lives in a UFO. If they did not have tenure, such pronouncements may be incautious in a public college, but they would not be illegal. I wouldn't know since as a citizen of the US, I live in a republic. Yes, and as I believe I have shown there are even limits to those limits. It is not illegal according to my experience so it is a question I can't answer. Besides if one has tenure it is not only legal but can't even be used as grounds for termination.

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Read not to contradict and confute, not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider - Francis BaconThe more we understand particular things, the more we understand God - Spinoza

I believe that this is what I was overlooking. I was thinking of the Establishment Clause. I now suspect that I was wrong.As the rest of your post doesn't seem much related to what I was thinking, I sha'n't answer it in detail.

Actually suing anyone for saying what they feel puts a complete clamp on freedom of speech.There should be respect for everyone's opinions and yes you should make an effort to be able to defend what you feel is true and yes you should be free to disagree -respect for someone's opinion doesn't mean you have to agree -just agree to disagree and keep the exchange of ideas open.It's ridiculous that anyone should feel forced to keep their opinions to themselves. Forcing it down someone else's throat with sarcasm when you're in a teaching position is not great though. If I may be so bold... get rid of the flood and accept evolution over millions of years - that destroys the gospel entirely.Yes, the plot thickens.

If that is the case then that gospel is pretty much worthless and needs to be tossed on the trash heap anyway.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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get rid of the flood and accept evolution over millions of years - that destroys the gospel entirely.

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Really? How so?I mean, how does the Flood being an instructive morality tale and the ToE being true destroy, say: ?Or, how does realizing that unicorns don't exist, rabbits don't chew cud, and bats are not birds make the following invalid: ?

What did Jesus come to earth for?
To die for our sins.
What else?
To conquer death.
What have sins and death got to do with Jesus and the gospel?
Well it goes back to the Garden of Eden where everything was perfect -no sins - no pain - no death.
Then Adam and Eve got it into their heads to do things their own way -don't listen to God, we're much cleverer. He said don't eat off that tree but there's no good reason for that that we can see so lets do it anyway.So sin entered the world (don't worry what God said) and with it death. God cursed the world with death because of sin - from that moment man started to die.So what did Jesus come to earth for -to conquer death.
"For through one man came death" and Jesus is described as 'the last Adam' since he conquered death by rising from the dead.If Adam didn't sin, there would be no death. No sin and no death would mean there would be no need for Jesus Christ to come to save us.My point: Without Genesis, there is no call for the gospel and Jesus Christ later on.My next point:If sin brought death into the world, then death is not normal and right, it is a curse on humanity -it sure feels like it, especially if you're close to it.Evolution maintains that there was death hundreds of millions of years before man.
So is death natural or is it a curse caused by man?
Maybe when man disobeyed God, that's when God put out the 2nd law of thermodynamics and that is why everything is running down -not getting better and better as evolution maintains.Survival of the fittest is just another way for man to be selfish - we're just trying to survive so lets not bother about anyone else.Evolution also breeds racism -other people groups are inferior -they're behind on the evolutionary scale -do they deserve to survive? Hitler had the answer to that.But the Bible says 'all mankind is of one blood' -so does that mean all men are related through Adam and all the subsequent geneologies as laid out in the Bible? Maybe our genes had loads of variety back then and you just got varying degrees of melanin pigment and different people went in different directions and propogated their own dominant color and racial variations by being geographically separated.Way back in Australia, men used to kill aboriginees to send their skulls to natural history museums as examples of missing links.(even though they were alive and not missing)- is that what evolution causes?
Even if evolution wasn't such a cut throat business, is it true???Personally (and yes I'll get to the reasons) I can't believe it.People who believe in theistic evolution haven't thought it through. Edited by Beretta, : Incomplete

I'm sorry, but you didn't answer my specific questions.I'd like to know the specific, detailed reasoning why you believe the following Boble verses are invalidated if alleles in populations change over time:I mean, how does the Flood being an instructive morality tale and the ToE being true destroy, say: Specifically, how is this passage invalidated if alleles in populations change over time, or if the flood was a myth?Are you really saying that you cannot treat others as you would want to be treated, if the flood story was mythical, or if alleles change in populations over time?Or, how does realizing that unicorns don't exist, rabbits don't chew cud, and bats are not birds make the following invalid: Specifically, how is the above passage invalidated if we now understand that unicorns don't exist, rabbits do not chew cud, and bats are not birds?Are you really saying that if unicorns do not exist, you can't love God? Edited by nator, : No reason given.

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Evolution also breeds racism -other people groups are inferior -they're behind on the evolutionary scale -do they deserve to survive? Hitler had the answer to that.

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Er, racism and the idea that other groups are inferior was present long, long, long before Darwin came along.We see it right there in the Bible, in fact. Plenty of slavery, racism, hatred of women, hatred of gentiles, bloodthirsty genocidal cruelty done in God's name by his chosen people, etc. are in the Bible.Hitler had NOTHING on God in the genocide department.

My point is either the Bible was inspired by God and is the Word of God or it is not. If it is not and the flood and everything else is not true, then we can pick and choose what to believe. Then you might as well go for evolution.Genetic variation works, natural selection happens, evolution as in one kind of animal or plant changing into a completely new kind has never been proven. Life gives rise to life. Chemicals do not give rise to life except by intelligence, information and organization. A frog in a blender will make frog soup and you can wait for millions of years and apply heat and energy any way you want, it will not reorganize into a frog or any other kind of life despite the rich chemical broth available. An intelligence has to have created life -spontaneous generation has already been disproven.Why do we imagine it worked long ago and far away if we can't even produce a simple cell now with our intellect and scientific ability and our knowledge of what is contained therein - never mind the cell's completely amazing ability to reproduce itself.It's all very nice to love God (and your neighbour) but if you can't even believe him, what's there to love?

The flood might be true, but if it is, why did your deity see to it that all evidence for it was magically erased and that all science would argue against it rather than for it? Seems a rather large step to ensure that believers believe. Would have been so much simpler to kill the planet off in a different and easier way.

Yes and the concept of evolution and survival of the fittest propogates it. All very human which is why the ten commandments were given - to show us what we should be doing so that we can see why we need a saviour when we keep screwing up. So God allowed rampant evil to be destroyed, why can't he, he made us.By the way, he's coming back. In the meantime, men kill men because they don't believe God, men perpetrate evil of every description.We have choices and the time is coming where either we pay or Jesus Christ pays for us -you choose. No-one is innocent.

It wasn't erased, it's right there in the sedimentary rock layers -billions of dead things washed there and petrified in the sediments -unless you believe in evolution then it's millions of years of evolution.
If it is all the dead things from the flood, then there's nothing left for evolution.Some people don't like to believe in the worldwide flood even though so many cultures have a flood legend... and then there's all those dead things...
Some people don't want to believe in God either but he's still there whether you choose to believe it or not -that's the nature of reality.Evolution ....creation ....evolution....creation????

It isn't even about evolution. Comparatively, few fossils are found in sediments that were laid down in floods. We know what rocks are flood deposits and what ones are not. People go on about how geology and paleontology are simply historical sciences and that all the evidence is observation-based and that no experiments are ever done in either discipline. This is simply untrue. We do lots of actual experiments on things like how sand grains settle or calcite precipitates out of water columns and carcasses degrade and break down and get introduced into the local environment, etc. Also, because many many sedimentary processes operate at temperatures and pressures we live in (unlike, say, magma cooling into granite 20km below the surface), they can be directly observed (e.g., you can go to a beach and watch the beds form). People who say things like "we don't really know how rocks form" and that "no one was there when it happened" and "all the evidence is indirect and based on guesses from the past" are making statements that are as untrue as "there is no such thing as a car." We do absolutely infer present processes to have happened in the past in the same ways, but unless some deity decided to entirely change physics just when geologists started looking at sediments in a rigorous way, then we know a great deal about how sedimentary rocks form and in what paleoenvironments. Statements to the contrary (like "all sediments are laid down in water" or "the Grand Canyon records an epic global flood") are just simply untrue. They just are. You don't get to just wave away 300+ years of direct observation and experimentation on how sedimentary bodies form and assert that it happened another way for which there is no evidence. Especially when you do things like use petroleum (sedimentology is one of the disciplines that is central to finding petroleum--the science works...we find oil). Of the known fossil record, comparatively few fossils are found in flood deposits. By far most fossils are found in rocks deposited under marine conditions (stuff that might not have been on the ark at all). These creatures show an orderly progression through the rock record that is absolutely inconsistent with a single event. But even if you ignore the fossils completely, there is no evidence for a global worldwide catastrophic flood in the rock record. In fact, the geology flatly contradicts this having happened. We can go into detail if you like, but basically, there isn't any evidence for the event described in Genesis. Again, the flood might be true, but why did God go through so much trouble to erase the evidence?

So then are you saying that the KKK, Phinias Priesthood, & Neonazis are Atheists?Edited by bluescat48, : clarity

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other

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My point is either the Bible was inspired by God and is the Word of God or it is not. If it is not and the flood and everything else is not true, then we can pick and choose what to believe. Then you might as well go for evolution.

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Right, but you already pick and choose, don't you?Do you believe unicorns exist?Do you believe that if animals breed in view of a pole made of a certain kind of wood that their offspring will be spotted?Do you believe that rabbits chew the cud?No?Then you already pick and choose what you believe in the Bible.But again, you didn't answer my specific questions about the specific passages I quoted:I'm sorry, but you didn't answer my specific questions.I'd like to know the specific, detailed reasoning why you believe the following Bible verses are invalidated if alleles in populations change over time.I mean, how does the Flood being an instructive morality tale and the ToE being true destroy, say: Specifically, how is this passage invalidated if alleles in populations change over time, or if the flood was a myth?Are you really saying that you cannot treat others as you would want to be treated, if the flood story was mythical, or if alleles change in populations over time?Or, how does realizing that unicorns don't exist, rabbits don't chew cud, and bats are not birds make the following invalid: Specifically, how is the above passage invalidated if we now understand that unicorns don't exist, rabbits do not chew cud, and bats are not birds?Are you really saying that if unicorns do not exist, you can't love God?