There’s an ugly case brewing in Ohio. A popular middle school science teacher has been ordered to remove his copy of the bible from his desk. On the face of it, I think letting a teacher have a bible on his desk or on his person should not be a problem — it’s nothing but a personal tchotchke, and it’s not worth fighting over. John Freshwater, though, has made it more than an expression of personal preference. He is proselytizing in the public school classroom. Freshwater is responsible for turning this into a church-state separation case; he’s one of those particularly obnoxious Christians who wrap themselves in sanctimony and loudly demand that they have more than a right to believe (a right I would defend), they have a right to tell their students what they must believe, and who uses every opportunity to evangelize in defiance of his professional responsibilities.

The school has a right and an obligation to tell him to knock it off, and if he won’t comply, they should hold him in violation of his contract and fire him. But I wouldn’t have him fired for being a pretentious Christian, only for refusal to do his job.

There’s another reason he should be fired, however, and the school district should take advantage of his intransigence over his stupid bible to kick his sorry ass off the faculty. He’s an incompetent science teacher.

In one class, Freshwater used Lego pieces to describe the beginning of the world. He dumped the pieces, then asked students if the Legos could assemble by themselves, said Joe Stuart, 18, assistant editor of the high-school newspaper.

When Freshwater taught students about electrical current, he used a device to leave a red mark in the shape of a cross on the forearms of some students, Stuart said.

“If it were just about the Bible, I don’t think people would have a problem with it,” Stuart said.

In his evaluations through the 21 years he’s worked for the district, Freshwater has drawn consistent praise for his strong rapport with students, broad knowledge of his subject matter and engaging teaching style.

In 2006, he was instructed to remove from his curriculum a handout titled “Darwin’s Theory of Evolution — The Premise and the Problem.” A parent had questioned its validity and use in a science classroom.

Mr Stuart is wise. It’s not the bible at all. It’s that he’s a deluded creationist teaching lies to students in a science class. Unfortunately, there’s little recourse for expelling bad teachers (and his popularity is not an indication that he’s a good teacher, don’t make that mistake) on the basis of incompetence.

And the cross thing is just plain bizarre. Burning religious symbols into students’ flesh is not a way to teach them about the physics of electricity; what next, will he teach about the chemistry of oxidation reactions by burning heretical students at a stake? Even religious parents in the community are disturbed by this kook:

The fax stated, “We are religious people, but we were offended when Mr. Freshwater burned a cross onto the arm of our child. This was done in science class in December 2007, where an electric shock machine was used to burn our child. The burn was severe enough that our child awoke that night with severe pain, and the cross remained there for several weeks. … We have tried to keep this a private matter and hesitate to tell the whole story to the media for fear that we will be retaliated against.”

These same parents also expressed the key issue in separation of church and state:

Short said it is alleged that Freshwater used his classroom to advance religion and that he teaches his own beliefs from the Bible and not the approved curriculum. In the fax, the parents also said, “We are Christians who practice our faith where it belongs, at church and in our home and, most importantly, outside the public classroom, where the law requires a separation of church and state.”

Freshwater can believe whatever he wants. When he decides to use his public school classroom to shove his beliefs down student throats, he’s in the wrong and should obey the order to keep his class secular. And when his personal beliefs so scramble his judgment that he can’t even teach the evidence and logic of science, his professional duty, fire him.

A while back, I pulled down a pdf of something called the “Leader’s Guide” from the Expelled website. I was agog. It’s flat-out fundamentalist Christian creationism, through and through — quote-mines, sermon suggestions, etc., etc., etc. I was thinking that here’s another nail in the coffin for the next time this garbage comes to trial, and that I should dig through it and pull out the tired old creationist quotes from it.

Now I don’t have to: Troy Britain has put together a two-part dissection. Take a look, and be amazed. Henry Morris would be so proud.

Michael Korn, the crazed creationist from Colorado who has threatened evolutionists with physical harm, keeps sending me email. His latest is an enumeration of the sins of evolutionists as exhibited in the movie, Expelled, which seems to have him quite worked up. He ranks us by evil; I’m #2^*. I’m going to have to try harder.

[Read more…]

I think I’ve said just about everything I can about that contemptible, dishonest propaganda movie starring Ben Stein, so I’ve been fairly quiet about it lately. It will run its short course in the theaters, and the main result will be that we’ll get a few more creationists who, in addition to being grossly ignorant, will be grossly disinformed about science. Thanks to the Expelled gang, creationist arguments will be a little bit stupider.

So here are what I think are the best of the responses I’ve seen so far.

• Sahotra Sarkar succinctly guts the main points of the movie. (It’s also partly in response to the very worst defense of the movie, by David Klinghoffer, who somehow ties it to the glory of circumcision — cringe before the stupid.)

• Richard Dawkins writes a letter to a disinformed viewer who suddenly thinks biologists and atheists are plotting another Holocaust. That’s another outcome of this movie: It’s going to inflame more than a few crazy people.

• Arthur Caplan excoriates the movie: it isn’t just bad, it’s immoral. Stein is practicing a form of Holocaust denial.

Use them in future arguments with creationists; you’ll need to.

As for all those people who are arguing from box office grosses that the movie is a success or a failure, grow up. We have a large population of miseducated evangelical lackwits in this country who will fork over money for exactly this kind of crap, so we knew ahead of time that the producers were going to get some small pots of cash out of this; worrying over exactly how much they got or will get is a pointless exercise. All it tells us is roughly how many people were motivated enough to see a bad movie because it caters to their prejudices. The issue at hand is dealing with the substance of the movie’s claims and the reactions of the viewers. If you’re counting dollar signs and using that to opine over the worth of the movie (in either direction), you’re being part of the problem.

It’s the same problem that we see in press reports on politics right now. Everything is focused on the horse race — how many votes do they have so far, how much money have they raised? — and next to nothing on what the people actually say. Stop it!