The Club of Friendly Inhibitionists?
Michael De Dora is concerned again.
…our government — and thus our public schooling system — is supposed to remain neutral on matters of religion. Federal and state governments cannot aid one religion, aid all religions, prefer one religion over another, or prefer non-religion to religion. This means that while I agree with Myers that the Biblical creation story is a “myth,” the public school classroom doesn’t seem to be the place where our message should be pushed.
Federal and state governments cannot prefer non-religion to religion, therefore, according to De Dora, as long as a mistaken claim is religious, it is against the law for public schools to say the claim is mistaken. That’s interesting. I went to a state university and I recall plenty of teachers who said particular religious claims were mistaken. I never knew that they were breaking the law by doing that. As a matter of fact I don’t believe that they were breaking the law by doing that; I think on the contrary that De Dora is talking creepy nonsense. Maybe he’s been reading Michael Ruse and Andrew Brown – they both love to announce that the Constitution forbids evil secularists to open their mouths within 500 yards of a public educational institution.
I suspect that this is not actually a bit of helpful legal advice but rather another occasion for De Dora to distance himself from the Bad kind of atheists and snuggle up to the Good kind: the ones who say snotty untrue things about Dawkins and/or Coyne and/or Hitchens a minimum of every three days. It’s all rather depressing coming from CFI. As PZ said, “Does CFI stand for the Church of Fatuous Incompetence now?”
AARGH. No knowledge of the law at all! Of course schools are allowed to talk about facts that contradict specific religious doctrines–and to point out that this is happening. A biology teacher can’t and shouldn’t talk about some completely tangential religious topic (like original sin or God or something), but she damn well can talk about something that directly concerns her subject, even if it ends up contradicting some religion.
Also, “myth” does not equal “lie.” Myth is a perfectly accurate and non-derogatory way of describing biblical creation stories.
This entry and the previous one with respect to Amnesty International remind me of the Pogo “We have seen the enemy and he is us” cartoon strip by Walt Kelly.
Is there some sort of universal principle at work here where you become the very thing that you are opposed to ?
I guess with every endeavour there is a certain amount of rear guard action required to keep the objective in sight.
He’s not only concerned, he’s starting to sound downright delusional.
Commenter Deen asks De Dora:
De Dora replies:
Seriously. He wrote that down.
I do not know how one is supposed to converse with someone who thinks and writes these things – it’s worse than trying to communicate across a language barrier, because at least then both parties are trying to find mutually understandable words. With De Dora, it’s one party telling another one (who’s staring slack-jawed) that white is, in fact, a darker color than blue.
Oh, I just noticed the title of this post: “Club of Friendly Inhibitionists.” Funny:)
That’s a very interesting exchange, Josh, thanks for re-posting it here.
So he’s drawing a hair-splitting distinction between a bio teacher saying “X is true” (where X precludes Y) and that same teacher saying “Y is not true.” And he thinks this distinction is a material point of constitutional law?
What if a student asked “Is the earth 6000 years old?” Then would it be constitutional to give an answer of “no”? Is the only issue here whether a teacher should initiate discussion of the falsity of a particular religious belief?
Baaaahahahahaha. Thanks Josh, that’s comedy gold.
What if a student asked “Is the earth 6000 years old?” Then would it be constitutional to give an answer of “no”?
You put on your best Father Ted voice and say, “That would be an ecumenical matter”, then move on…
Who is this guy anyway?? He’s *admittedly* not an evolutionary biologist, a philosopher of science, or an expert in pretty much any of the topics he writes about. His latest post suggests he might be a constitutional scholar, but I’m not quite sure. Why are we supposed to be reading this drivel? Is there a reason why he got the position at CFI? WHO IS HE?
Pretty much everything he writes is so incredibly stupid I’m starting to think he’s just too wise for me to comprehend.
Uh-oh. *Glances around warily.*
*Sips quickly from the waterhole, then looks up nervously, ears pricking, and suddenly scurries for a safer, drier piece of ground.*
Um, er, as far as I can see, De Dora’s reply to Deen that Josh is objecting to so much is pretty well constitutionally correct. It also seems correct from first (e.g. Lockean) principles.
A science teacher at state high school level should, indeed, as far as possible, teach the relevant body of theoretical knowledge in a religion-blind way. He or she may need some ambit for flexibility if challenged by a student – that puts the teacher in a difficult situation, and hopefully the courts will understand this – but there’s no reason for a science teacher to be the one to bring up the fact that there are various religious beliefs, among them literalist forms of Christianity, that contradict the well-established scientific findings being taught in the class. Just teach the science.
Maybe y’all see something in De Dora’s comment that I don’t see, and I’m sure I’ll find things to disagree with in his original post (which I haven’t read). But I just don’t understand what’s so terrible about that answer. Why is it supposed to be obvious that it’s idiotic?
I would have given a similar answer. If any of y’all are secondary science teachers and you ask your lawyers for advice on these issues, it’s the kind of advice I think you’ll probably get.
Indeed, this is exactly why Ruse is wrong. Contrary to what Ruse has said in the past, merely teaching something that the student can – if she does the mental exercise – infer contradicts one of her religious beliefs is perfectly constitutional. It really is different from bringing up religious beliefs yourself (as a science teacher) and knocking them down. As far as I can work out, De Dora’s line in replying to Deen merely confirms this.
*Bolts quickly to the safety of the nearby forest.*
He solves his problem in comment #69 by reconstructing a discussion with a student that science says one thing and religion says another. He’s relying on the child accepting the NOMA idea.
Sadly he hasn’t thought about how this level of zero conflict would impact on the school outside of the biology classroom. What day could you open a school on that equally respects all potential religions?
Russell: “Contrary to what Ruse has said in the past, merely teaching something that the student can – if she does the mental exercise – infer contradicts one of her religious beliefs is perfectly constitutional. It really is different from bringing up religious beliefs yourself (as a science teacher) and knocking them down.”
Would knocking them down from the position of a rival religion be the same as doing so from a non-religious position? Atheism is not a religion. As one blog commenter (elsewhere) that I read today noted, it is no more a religion than not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Apparently the CFI have now got their own version of Michael Egnor blasting away on their behalf.
According to De Dora (the ignora) “I hope we never have a high school biology textbook that refers to our religious stories as myths.”
What exactly does he man by “our” religious stories.
How would one explain how Hydra, a genus of simple fresh-water animal possessing radial symmetry, got its name?
Wasn’t it from a character in Greek mytho….. ooops. Not allowed.
How about physics class discussing the names of the planets. Aren’t they mainly taken from the Gods of Roman mytholo….sorry!
How about the days of the week – aren’t they derived mainly from Scandinavian mytho…. you’ll have to excuse me.
Months of the year?
I doubt it very much that anyone, least of all the Christian fundamentalists are anxious to have these ‘religions’ treated as potential truths that need to be carefully respected in case we tread on the sensibilities of believers in Thor, Zeus or Pluto (sorry Chris and Sheril!)
Ian, I don’t see how it makes any difference. If a school teacher in a state school goes out of his/her way to say to students, “Your religion, or one of its doctrines, is wrong,” that is likely to run afoul of either the establishment clause or the free exercise clause (I’m not going to get into controversial theorising about how they relate to each other). I would have thought that the US law was pretty clear on this if nothing else.
Besides, I simply wouldn’t want a science teacher at that level taking a stand one way or another on matters or religion. That’s really not their job.
(Btw, university is rather different; university academics have academic freedom and cannot reasonably be taken as speaking for the state, even if it’s a state-established university. Nor should the state take any responsibility for what they say, at least within certain reasonable limits. I’m not talking about speech that’s independently unlawful such as sexually harassing speech or threats of violence. But a philosophy professor, for example, is quite free to put the opinion that God exists, or does not exist. A problem might arise if she blatantly marked students on whether they agreed with her, rather than on their demonstrated conceptual skills, understanding of the material, level of argument, etc. Even then, I’d see it as a performance problem more than a constitutional one.)
If a teacher is put on the spot by a student, it does become a bit different, but even then I don’t think the teacher could just use the question as an opportunity to attack religious beliefs. Judges would have to make decisions about what’s reasonable, etc., as they always do if there’s a case that close to the line.
Btw, I’ve now read the para from the text book that I take it De Dora is referring to. It looks okay to me: it’s pretty much a factual claim about some historical background, and the word “myth” does not mean “falsehood”. It means something more like “culturally important narrative”.
But that said, I still can’t see what’s so objectionable about the comment that De Dora made to Deen. It seems to me like standard separation-of-church-and-state stuff and probably pretty much correct legally.
“You put on your best Father Ted voice and say, “That would be an ecumenical matter””
That was Father Jack. ;-)
Russell, you’re the lawyer, so presumably you have some legal backing for what you say. However, I should have thought that what the constitutional separation of church and state does is to privatise religion, not to protect religious propositions from thoughtful scrutiny. If it does, then education in the United States is an endangered activity.
To take the example given. Kelvin thought that Darwin’s theory could not be true because he believed the age of the earth did not give time enough for natural selection to do its work. He was shown to be wrong, mainly, if I recall correctly, because he did not know what processes were involved in sun. The earth is billions of years old. “Bible believing” Christians believe that the earth is 6000 years old. This is in contradiction to all known facts about the age of the earth, to all the various interlocking and mutually supporting dating methods that are used to date the earth, and with the known facts about biological evolution. To teach the facts is to contradict a religious claim. Kids aren’t stupid, so they will bring it up. Yet the answer is supposed to be: Sorry, I can’t comment on that. That’s not science. That’s something for religion or philosophy to answer, and constitutionally that is protected speech.
Two questions and one statement: (1) In what way is that education? (2) Is the American constitution that stupid? De Dora is.
What’s objectionable about what De Dora says to Deen is that it’s obviously silly. If you say the earth is billions of years old, you’re saying that it is not 6000 years old. And this is not a question for philosophy or religion. It’s a scientific question, and kids should be taught about science, how critical, evidential thought works, and how conclusions are supported, and mistaken conclusions exposed and excluded. Anything else is not education, but something else. Does the constitution of the United States of America actually prohibit education?
You may be right. Perhaps it does. But it doesn’t help to make De Dora’s response any less silly. It just means that the constitution is silly too.
And I’ve now read Michael De Dora’s entire post and most of the ensuing thread. I think he’s being tin-eared and stubborn about the word “myth”, which never means “falsehood” in this sort of context. But what I say in my comments above still stands. He is right in principle about teachers at secondary level being as neutral as reasonably possible about religious doctrines and not bringing them up unnecessarily.
I think I’m being principled about this, and not only in respect of the constitutional issues. Even where no constitutional issues arise, it’s often better to stick to science and let others argue about God.
Individual academics, whether scientists or not, have a different role from secondary teachers or science bureaucrats in commenting on matters of public interest. University academics are supposed to be public intellectuals with broad interests. The pity is that so many shy away from it – though in their defence, the mass media are not very welcoming.
It makes plenty of sense for Jerry Coyne or Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers to be forthright public advocates of atheism (but PZ doesn’t do it in his classes). It makes no sense for the NCSE (whose faith dude has now published an article about how ID is blasphemous) to do so. Let alone a body like the AAAS. But the same also goes for state secondary schools and their teaching staff.
I’m sure that if a student made a statement about the age of the earth being 6000 years, that notion would be quickly refuted in any class taught by the above.
There is no need to frame this as a religious issue, the 6000 year claim is a testable proposition and should be treated as such.
If it’s wrong then this should be pointed out.
There are no end to religious claims in the areas of biology, geology, chemistry, physics etc that are demonstrably false and should be treated as such by any science teacher.
I can just imaging a student in a class in neuro physiology trotting out the concept of mind body dualism and the concept of an immaterial soul to explain human (as distinct from animal) behaviour. The whole thing descends into the ridiculous unless religious ideas can be treated like any other idea.
Russell: “Individual academics, whether scientists or not, have a different role from secondary teachers or science bureaucrats in commenting on matters of public interest. University academics are supposed to be public intellectuals with broad interests…”
Be that as it may, though who is doing the ‘supposing’ here is a interesting question.
The difference at present between being a student in secondary as against tertiary education is that in the former one has little choice but to be there. Tertiary on the other hand is 100% voluntary.
I taught secondary science, including geology and evolutionary biology, for 27 years. Looking back on that time, I can say that never once did I have a student coming from a religious position challenge me on anything. Nor did I ever find it necessary in the course of any discussion of the fossil record or the prevalent Darwinian paradigm to bring up the alternative biblical hypothesis. The two were as ships passing in the night.
I have good reason to believe that some of my students over the years were Christians of a rather fundamentalist persuasion. My conclusion is that as long as young people are not put on the spot and required to defend whatever position they may hold against a full-frontal challenge from some authority figure (and in a public situation) they can ride along with pretty well anything.
The company I keep today ranges from Christians of an ultra-fundamentalist position to far-out free thinkers. And everything between. Yet peace reigns; and will continue to do so as long as everyone’s life rafts are not attacked. (Anyone who chooses to attack my own had better watch out.)
In my own secondary and tertiary education years I had little difficulty working out what positions my teachers held or where they were coming from. I doubt that many of my own students had much trouble in detecting mine. After all,
they were not fools. Thus doth education proceed.
The ingredients of my secondary and tertiary educations were access to: (1) formal classes (2) libraries (3) laboratories (4) seminars, and (5) other students in the same courses. It was in (5) that the greatest intellectual challenges occurred.
But also: http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=232
Sorry Russell. Don’t see how this is principled. Don’t see how it’s education either. Basically, you’re saying that the state has no interest in teaching critical thinking, or in opposing anti-intellectual forms of religion. I think it has an interest in both, and I do not think that the separation of church and state should give sole custody of children’s intellectual development to the parents, or to the religious institutions to which parents choose to entrust it. Children have rights too, rights against their parents, and the state should see that they are respected.
God is (or at least may be) an essential part of the classroom, because parents have made God an integral part of their children’s lives. It can’t be left up to others to argue about God, because, for the most part, they don’t. Besides, pace De Dora and a few others, the age of the earth is not a question for religion or philosophy – what does he take philosophy for, anyway? – I hate this twinning of religion and philosophy – and calling a story a myth, despite all the clever theological ploys to the contrary, is to say that it does not correspond in any literal way with reality. Children should know this, and we shouldn’t simply temporise and vacillate about it and think up clever ways of dancing round the mulberry bush whenever questions of this sort arise.
No, Father Jack just said ‘Feck!’ a lot [and occasionally ‘Drink!’]. Either of which might be appropriate if confronted in the classroom by fundie loons, but it was definitely Father Ted who had the smooth way with getting out of little ecumenical difficulties.
I think Russel has the right of this. Michael De Dora is simply stating that an overt religious reference (for or against) in a state classroom is forbiden. Stating facts that, if investigated, would falsify a religious claim is allowed.
It is a legal thing; it doesn’t have to be logical.
(I think Father Ted taught it to Father Jack – so they both said it.)
Eric the state CANNOT challenge the truth-claims of “anti-intellectual” forms of religion. Not in the US. That would clearly be unconstitutional.
As a matter of law, this isn’t even controversial. There’s a long line of Supreme Court precedent.
I might not like various religious doctrines, and if I lived in the US I would have freedom of speech to challenge them all I want. But the state (including its employees when working in their official capacity) does not have that kind of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech about religion resides with individuals (including, for better or worse, corporations and the like … that’s another story), not with the state. It’s a negative right against the state that the state not use its overwhelming coercive power to shut you up. It’s not a right held by the state itself, allowing the state to indoctrinate children in religion or irreligion as it sees fit.
Imagine if it did have that right! The concomitant is that it could teach the religious doctrines that it believes to be correct, and you could say goodbye to keeping creation science, intelligent design, and every other doctrine that the state might favour from time to time, out of state schools. All over the southern states there’d be schools teaching intelligent design by now.
Someone mentioned my name? ;)
@Russel Blackford:
I think you are failing to make a distinction here. “The earth is 6000 years old” is a statement of fact that is in principle falsifiable by science. It’s a claim that is made by a sizable group of people in society, so it’s bound to come up sooner or later. Therefore, if it were to come up in the classroom, a teacher should be allowed to refute it, using the exact same evidence that was deemed religiously neutral enough to teach that the earth is 4.5 billion years old. If all of a sudden, this evidence is not to be considered neutral anymore, then Ruse would have been right, and we couldn’t teach about the age of the earth at all anymore.
So the teacher may comment on religiously motivated statements of fact, to the extent they are scientifically testable. What the teacher may not do, however, is comment on any possible theological or ideological implications of such a refutation.
Any scientifically testable claim should be fair game in the science classroom, regardless of whether the claim was made by PZ Myers, or the Pope. Any other position is not religious neutrality.
Maybe the current wording of the constitution prohibits this, but in that case, the constitution appears to be wrong.
Russell has it exactly right here. The law has nothing to do with logic. And, much though I disagree with accommodationists, De Dora’s article is also correct.
If I were a public school biology teacher, I could state scientific facts and theories all day long without falling afoul of the separation doctrine, even if all of my assertions contradicted one or another religious belief. But as soon as I make any explicit statement about any religion, pro or anti, I’m skating on very thin ice.
If I were that teacher, I’d be constantly terrified that a student would ask me a question that meant I’d be screwed no matter what I said or didn’t say. And, believe me, such questions are possible.
So, the supposed take-home message here is:
(1) It is okay for a science teacher to say: “The earth is 4.5 billion years old.”
(2) It is not okay for a science teacher to say: “The earth is not 6000 years old.”
And the rationale for this is: (1) is neutral with respect to “matters of religion,” while (2) is not?
I’m sorry, but I just don’t agree with this at all. The statements are not mutually exclusive, and moreover both are true. Thus, how could one be neutral while the other isn’t? To a large degree, they’re saying the same thing!
Also, couldn’t you argue that statement (1) is not neutral w.r.t. plenty of religions? I’m sure a young-earth creationist would say that statement (1) is not religiously neutral, because it sides with mainstream christianity.
So it must be impossible for secondary school teachers in public (state) schools to teach basic intellectual history, right? History teachers, I mean. They can’t teach anything along the lines of history of error (so to speak) – what informed people used to think and how that has changed over time. Right?
If this really is true (if this is US law) it seems pretty alarming.
Sign me up for the “The Earth is not merely 6000 years old is a scientific statement” camp. It might be a religious statement too, but that’s unfortunate, because the logical implication of saying “The Earth is 13 bazillion years old” is that it is not merely 6000 years old. Hence, it is not reasonable to expect science teachers to withhold that inference. If a trivial logical inference itself is not a standard of what is reasonable, then the word “reasonable” has no meaning at all — none.
@OB: oh, it gets worse. English teachers are screwed too if they want to discuss the Bible as an important influence on our literary tradition – which it undoubtedly is. Will they be allowed to what textual analysis reveals about its origins and history?
Well, Russell, you’re the lawyer. I’m not. But if what you say is true, it’s stupid and self-destructive, besides being very alarming. I simply cannot believe that the Enlightenment drafters of the constitution had this idiocy squared in mind. How on earth does education take place where false statements cannot be questioned?
I have to agree with Benjamin. Words themselves become meaningless. Reasonable? True? False? Confirmed? Wrong? If I cross the border have I passed through the looking glass? Besides, they have thousands of nukes, not just weapons grade plutonium! Madness! No wonder Obama is having such a problem. He came in on the promise of ‘Yes we can!’ but they can’t. They can’t even tell kids that the world is not just 6000 years old! And they call it education?! Give me strength!
Quite. The more you think about it the more this claim points to a horrible impoverishment of teaching and learning. Jerry Coyne quotes bits of The Origin of Species to make a similar point. If teaching is that inhibited and that gutted it’s no longer teaching – it’s just some kind of input.
You couldn’t explain anything – you couldn’t explain about geology, and its implications, and the excitement about it in the 1830s, and how that informed Darwin’s inquiries on the Beagle, etc. You couldn’t give students any sense of how inquiry works, and the way it is cumulative, and how useful even mistakes can be – and how exhilarating it can be to find out something is wrong – how it can open new doors.
Oh it’s all so idiotic and pathetic – the Center for Inquiry for christ’s sake.
He is right in principle about teachers at secondary level being as neutral as reasonably possible about religious doctrines and not bringing them up unnecessarily.
I agree with that principle, Russell. I’m not saying teachers should give atheist “sermons.”
I just happen to think that saying “the earth is not 6000 years old” and saying “the earth is 4.5 billion years old” are about equally neutral. And that De Dora’s argument hints at requiring teachers to take unreasonable, eggshell-walking measures in order to avoid touching the subject of religion. He reads way too much into the word “myth,” and places too much emphasis on the difference between the first statement in quotations above and the second.
They can’t teach anything along the lines of history of error (so to speak) – what informed people used to think and how that has changed over time. Right?
No, they can–they just can’t broach the subject of particular religious doctrines unless it’s necessary to some relevant topic. If I understand Russell correctly. History teachers can talk about Galileo and the Church, but they can’t go off on tangents about other stuff the church may be wrong about.
And I’m okay with that. I just think the distinction De Dora is trying to draw here pushes things too far, and might create a silencing effect.
Incidentally, here’s the quote that started the constitutional argument:
In the 1970s and 1980s, antievolutionists in Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana passed identical bills calling for “equal time” for teaching evolution and creationism, the biblical myth that the universe was created by the Judeo-Christian god in six days. But a court ruled that the “equal-time” bill was unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the separation of church and state.
http://books.google.com/books?id=cjgdW4SjoJcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=asking+about+life&lr=&as_brr=0&ei=VmbHS6DcFovONcnsoMoG&cd=1
The book is titled Asking about Life, and it’s in a section “What is the Evidence for Evolution”, which covers the Scopes trial among other things. It hardly seems out of place to mention specific challenges to evolution when covering the evidence for evolution (although scientific evidence is more pertinent than legal evidence, presenting Scopes gives the science student grounding in past legal challenges and why they were deemed illegitimate, which is something they may hear about from other sources and need a balanced understanding of the situation).
“History teachers can talk about Galileo and the Church, but they can’t go off on tangents about other stuff the church may be wrong about.”
But then what is a tangent, exactly? The church was wrong about other things over the years, and that is part of the history of thought and inquiry. It just really does come up if one teaches the subject in any depth at all. So all this inhibition and caution looks terribly deadening. It probably is the case that teachers in many areas have to think exactly this way, but that’s not something that should be more or less cheered on.
And it is certainly not something that a secular organisation should be endorsing. Madness. I’m with PZ on this:
I’m also with Ophelia on this:
[This, by the way, in response to De Dora’s imagined classroom scenario:
Ophelia’s response is right on. Just box of facts emptiness. Nothing about evidence, about method, about consensus, about reasonable belief. Just: That’s for you to decide. And this is education as mandated by the constitution?!
I still don’t understand what the issue is, and I don’t understand how someone who is as slight intellectually as De Dora got to be where he is? What’s wrong here? De Dora may respond to comments, but the further along you go in the conversation the more frustrating he becomes. I agree that we are not always going to agree, but to promote as education something so attenuated and etiolated is really beyond the fringe. I simply cannot believe that the American constitution mandates such nonsense, and if it does we should be very afraid.
Nature knows no categories, and neither in its own way does knowledge. No compartments so far created have proven to be leak-proof. Yet the law requires that they be just so. So it looks like the law is a braying ass.
I think one of my comments got deleted. :-/ It was comparing this situation to chemistry classes teaching the history of conceptions of the atom, and how that might offend someone by referring to alchemy as a myth.
Either that, or I left that comment somewhere else … been a long day.
Eric wrote:
I don’t believe it does, and this is where I respectfully part company from Russell and a few other commenters. Stating that the earth is not, in fact, 6,000 years old, is not an impermissible state utterance on religious matters under my reading of the Lemon Test:
Stating that the scientific evidence shows the earth is 4.5 billion years old (and also stating that, therefore, the earth is not 6,000 years old, which logic demands):
1. Stems from a legitimate secular purpose in the context of public science education
2. Does not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion
3. Does not excessively entangle the state with religious matters
I could be wrong, but someone would need to explain to me why, since I don’t see it.
And aside from the parochial, peculiarly American legal neuroses swirling around this issue, it’s just plain obvious, logical, and indisputable that the one statement directly implies the other. De Dora’s contorting himself strenously by asserting that you can say one, but not say the other, as if the actual words “the earth is not 6,000 years old” had some magical status of being inherently “an improper government diss on religion.” It’s hard for me to believe (and stomach) that he doesn’t understand this – it looks like he actually does not comprehend the Lemon Test.
Under De Dora’s formulation, religion can lay claim to any statement of fact and proclaim it to be a religious proposition, and then we’d be instantly barred by the constitution from stating that it isn’t true. Sure, that’s a reductio ad absurdum, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
I asked him if he was familiar with it. He didn’t answer that question.
Ophelia, have you actually read what Michael wrote, or are you just going by the BS that PZ wrote? Michael never said that one cannot point out that a claim is wrong just because it is religious. He simply said that gratuitously insulting religious people in the context of a science class breaches the separation of church and state. Which it does.
Joe – oh dear, sorry, it may have – I was deleting spam and I sometimes fail to spot a real comment among all the junk and it goes. Your name probably makes that a good deal more likely! So sorry, it was a good comment, please re-post the gist if you remember it.
Michael never said that one cannot point out that a claim is wrong just because it is religious.
He said exactly this in the comments to his piece. He has since elaborated on his reasons, but he did outright state that “the earth is 4.5 billion years old” is ok whereas “the earth is not only 6,000 years old” is not ok.
He simply said that gratuitously insulting religious people in the context of a science class breaches the separation of church and state. Which it does.
Which was not under discussion in the first place. Please, find an advocate of gratuitous insults towards religious people in science class.
Massimo, most of this thread is not about PZs article but about a direct quote from Micheal – try reading Josh’s post, the 4th on the current thread, where he directly says what you claim he hasn’t.
Massimo, come on. Several commenters have legitimate, reasonable objections to things De Dora wrote. You really owe it to the discussion to read them and consider them.
Yes, damn it, he did. He said this:
Commenter Deen asks De Dora:
De Dora replies:
So, yes, Michael did say “one cannot point out that a claim is wrong just because it is religious.” It’s right there, it’s not ambiguous, and if you don’t acknowledge that, I’ll have to believe that’s willful on your part. You castigate people left and right for getting angry at your friends, but they have a perfectly good reason to be angry when they make reasonable, logical objections, and they’re met with De Dora, and now you, ignoring them. That’s not fair play, and you’d object to if you were treated that way.
Do not conflate this with the original argument, which was over the interpretation of the word myth, and whether that was gratuitously insulting.
I think Prof. Pigliucci has not helped to crystallize the disagreement with his latest post.
What qualifies for a thing to be a “gratuitous insult” is difficult to discern. I guess the intuition here is that it’s an insult for a teacher to assert a thing in a science class that is unnecessary in context. i.e., in those few cases where it is said only for the purposes of embarressing members of your student body. So then the question is whether or not it’s reasonable to assert a thing for those purposes, as Russell had pointed out earlier.
If you say “not”, then you had better be ready to trivialize the entire corpus of logic. For if you’re not reasonably able to make a trivial logical inference from a statement that you already know is rationally assertable, then there’s no such thing as “reasonable” at all, in this context or otherwise. I mean, this is as absurd as saying that “Not all swans are black” is rationally assertable, but “Some swans are not black” is not.
I’m intrigued by this apparent legal requirement to avoid denying ‘facts’ derived from religious world views. This suggests a number of problems to me. To expand on the options given by cheglabratjoe above:
(1) It is okay for a science teacher to say: “The earth is 4.5 billion years old.”
(2) It is not okay for a science teacher to say: “The earth is not 6000 years old.”
(3) It is okay for a science teacher to say: “The earth is not 1267 years old.” or “The earth is not 12567 years old.” or “The earth is not 51267 years old.” or any number that hasn’t been suggested by a religion?
What about a science teacher who’s ignorant of YEC claims? What about the numerous claims of religions down the ages of which we’re ignorant? Or do Christians have special dispensation via these laws?
I’m a great fan of a lot of Massimo Pigliucci’s writing, but his attitude to the ‘brashness’ of some new atheists is puzzling. It can’t be about being insulting, since he is just as insulting to new atheists as they are to believers. His insults seem to me more gratuitous than the new atheists; but no doubt he disagrees with that! Funnily enough I think his accusation of gratuitous insults from the new atheists is a gratuitous insult, since it appears baseless to me.
Perhaps it’s a certain prissiness regarding the language employed? So ‘wanker’ is frowned upon, but saying one cannot be accused of subtle reasoning is allowed. Well, I know people who would take greater exception to the second accusation than the first.
The whole argument seems to pre-judge the receivers’ responses, which I’m not qualified to do, even if Massimo thinks he is. I remain bamboozled.
Massimo, yes of course I read what Michael wrote. I quoted from it, for one thing! I also replied to one of his comments on it, though not until about 85 comments in.
Furthermore, Massimo, I’ve now read what you actually wrote, and I must say, there’s an awful lot of strawman stuff in there.
“[De Dora] dared question (very politely, and based on argument) one of the dogmas of the new atheism: that religious people (that’s about 90% of humanity, folks) ought (and I use the term in the moral sense) to be frontally assaulted and ridiculed at all costs”
Come on.
Russell,
I presume, then, that you think that teaching The Origin of Species in public schools violates American law? After all, Darwin constantly contrasts the predictions of his theory with those of creationism. According to you, that’s a gratuitous insult to religious belief.
I think the Lemon test is very helpful here. Somebody helpfully posted the three criteria at Jerry’s, and it seems pretty clear that the passage in that textbook, or teaching The Origin of Species in public schools, would not be unconstitutional. Ron Lindsay says much the same at the CFI blog. (He also says De Dora wrote a thought-provoking post though. Hmmmmmmnot exactly.)
I posted this on Massimo’s blog:
Massimo, you say that the new atheism has dogma, but later you say that the only thing new about new atheism is the brashness. Logically, you hold the other dogmas you impute to the new atheists then?
Surely the notion the world is just 6,000 years old, or that god created species in their current form, by virtue of being widely held (in the USA, at least), are working hypotheses that science teachers are duty-bound to test, if only to teach the scientific method?
The exact age of the Earth – being something that we only know provisionally, since new evidence and new theories may come along – is less important than teaching the scientific method itself so that students are in a position to evaluate these new theories as they emerge – and dismantling commonly held misconceptions is the best way to demonstrate the scientific method’s utility.
Proving that metal fatigue in airplane engines is not the result of gremlin activity isn’t going to teach people much about the scientific method since nobody really holds that belief anyway.
OB, no worries! I think the point’s been made by others, so I don’t think anything was lost.
Massimo Pigliucci, yikes! You’re accusing people of not actually reading what people are writing, but it looks like you’re the one guilty of this. I really don’t follow your work at all, but I have to say that this surprises me (based on what I’ve heard about your work).
Let me clear up one thing, now I’ve slept on it. Though I stand by most of what I’ve what I’ve written above, perhaps I overstated slightly. A public school teacher is an employee of the state, but also one who is involved in the cut and thrust of actually trying to teach and needing to make pedagogical decisions. He or she is surely entitled to exercise some discretion, if acting in good faith.
Courts will take this into account. So, what a teacher says may be seen as subject to some kind of qualified privilege (I should have remembered the importance of this, as it came up in the still-running Corbett litigation) or as de minimis or simply as reasonable in the circumstances. If someone had made THOSE points against De Dora, I would have agreed.
To take Jerry’s comment above, of course it’s not illegal to use On the Origin of Species in a history of science class (which may be part of the science curriculum), and I don’t agree that the original textbook under discussion is a problem. Hopefully, that was clear to everyone. I am not supporting De Dora’s actual post.
In particular, I think that the word “myth” is used correctly to mean something like “culturally important narrative”.
But the fact remains that De Dora’s reply to Deen was not just stupid, and I’m still puzzled as to how someone can see it that way unless very biased by other things that De Dora has said in his post or in the past. At the least, directly challenging religious doctrines that are likely to be subscribed to by your students, when you are a state school teacher in the US, is risky. We know that. (It’s also risky expressing religious beliefs of your own: prima facie, you really are supposed to try to be neutral about the truth of religion in the classroom.)
We also know that the state is constitutionally forbidden to embark on officially endorsing or disendorsing religious doctrines. But we also know, contra Michael Ruse, that it can teach good science (or good history, or good anything else) that happens to contradict various religious doctrines. There is no guarantee that the secular curriculum will teach facts that are consistent with your religion of choice.
And note that I am not an accommodationist. Neither, apparently, is De Dora. We do seem to agree that some religious doctrines and some facts that we might want to teach in the classroom are mutually inconsistent.
All that is demanded is that the state teach science with its eye on the science, not on debunking religion. And, yes, if necessary, courts will make judgments about that. It’s slippery, but the courts have to make judgments about slippery issues of reasonableness, people’s intentions, ulterior motives, good faith or the lack of it, and so on, all the time.
What we don’t actually know, and here is where I think I overstated the point yesterday, is exactly how far the courts will go in protecting teachers who are acting in good faith. The courts can surely apply concepts such as de minimis, reasonableness, privilege, and so on, to the classroom situation.
Judges are not idiots, and Jerry’s expert testimony on good pedagogy will doubtless be helpful to the court if a relevant case arises. ;)
But there simply is not a lot of law on how the reasonable discretion of teachers and the First Amendment cut across each other. Unless the law on classroom teaching starts developing in a way that is very protective of teachers, Michael’s reply to Deen was, at the least, not stupid or lacking in an arguable legal rationale.
That was prompted to me to comment. There seemed to be bandwagon effect, with everyone saying to each other, “How idiotic!” “Yes, I agree!” at something that did not strike me as obviously idiotic at all. As I said, I would have given the same answer as De Dora did to that specific question, even if the answer merits some qualification in retrospect. Even if it’s not strictly correct in law – since it’s hard to predict what a court would actually do – it’s still probably the prudent advice that an American lawyer would give if you went and paid for it. Not that I’m planning to fork out the money to test that assertion.
I’m American lawyer and I know at least as much as the next one about the “Lemon v. Kurtzman” test, Justice Black’s dictum in “Everson,” etc.
Russell is correct that a public school teacher’s in-classroom overt statement about religion could be a clear Establishment Clause violation if the statement:
1. Advocated in favor of religious belief in general or any specific religion
2. Criticized or ridiculed religion in general or any specific religion
3. Argued for the superiority of one religion over another
But context is crucial. In a world history class, the teacher could certainly talk about, and state established facts about religious conflicts or religious differences in covering the Crusades, the Thirty Years War, the trial and house arrest of Galileo, the Salem witch hysteria, etc. In an elective class on religious history or comparative religion (be patient; there will be more and more of these), the teacher will be even freer to not just mention but discuss religion, including competing claims and world views of different religions and, yes, “systems” of doubt and non-belief.
And depending on (a) how a public school science teacher phrased his or her statements about the age of the earth / universe and biological evolution and (b) the context of those statements (including whether they were a response to questions or objections from students and whether they were consistent with the approved teach-to-the-test curriculum), the teacher’s statements might well be constitutional. Saying “The claim that the earth is 6,000 years old has no factual basis” is not obviously a criticism of religion, whether or not the teacher rephrases it as “The claim that the earth is 6,000 years old has no factual basis as a scientific claim.” It’s not a criticism of religion, and not an obvious Establishment Clause violation, because Americans, like other human beings, have been and are free to hold and express relgious beliefs regardless of whether those beliefs have any factual basis and regardless of what a state employee may say about them.
Most lawyers and federal court judges here in the U.S.A. are practical people, when it comes to deciding which “constitutional” claims are worth pursuing in court and which are not.
“(I think Father Ted taught it to Father Jack – so they both said it.)”
I think you’re right.
Sorry Dave.
(And they say religion isn’t divisive. ;-) )
Thanks Jeff – that’s a relief. I did think that surely public school teachers couldn’t be simply forbidden to teach basic history of science and the like.
I don’t know, Russell – what De Dora said still looks pretty stupid to me. Sorry. :- )
Russell, right, but sometimes lawyers err on the side of cowardice, not correctness. Take the Yale publication of Motoons example.
And you still haven’t acknowledged a key point. How can one statement be reasonable to assert, and a trivial logical implication of that same statement be unreasonable?
Ben, if you still don’t get it I give up. Honestly, the concept has been explained over and over. It’s not that hard to get your head around if you try.
Maybe Russel Blackford is thinking of a different classroom situation than the rest of us. Maybe he’s thinking of a teacher who is on his own personal crusade to debunk as many religious claims as possible? That of course would be very problematic, as I’m sure we all would agree.
But I’m thinking more of a situation where the teacher is responding to student questions, or addresses relevant claims that students can be expected to come across in the media. I don’t see anything inappropriate in that, as long as the teacher sticks to the science and doesn’t wade into theology. The quote in the book that started all this seems to qualify, even if you may think “myth” was a rather unfortunate choice of words.
As to the Establishment Clause, I still can’t see how it is best served by giving special treatment to scientifically testable claims when they happen to have implications for certain religious beliefs. If this is the general rule, what is its secular purpose?
I would propose a different general rule: if a claim is scientifically testable, it’s fair game for discussion in a science class. If not, the teacher can explain why it’s not suitable for science class (teaching kids about the principles and limits of science in the process, which should make people like De Dora very happy), and move on. No special treatment for religion is necessary, and the secular purpose is crystal clear.
Okay, let me try one more time.
The state, through its employees, can teach scientific findings that happen to contradict various religions. There may be many religions whose doctrines are inconsistent with the fact that the Earth is 13-14 million years old, and with much of modern astronomy, geology, etc. Tough. Michael Ruse is quite wrong about this issue. There’s no guarantee that the stuff taught in schools will be compatible with your religion of choice. NOMA is not true: religions make claims that are inconsistent with science all the time.
But there’s another point here. If in your role as an employee of the state, you single out one of those religions, for disparagement, you’ve done something that breaches the separation of church and state. Once you start talking about a particular religious doctrine being wrong, you start to run the risk of disparaging that religion.
Now, as I said, judges are not going to be stupid about this. Jeff D said it better than I did; and if what he said contradicted what I said at all, I’m happy to defer to him on whatever difference there is (and to thank him for the free legal advice).
But is it really so hard to see that there’s nothing disparaging simply in teaching what the science has to say without mentioning any religious doctrine? Or so the courts will definitely find, and have made clear in the past. It may be troubling to some students when they have to reconcile the information, but the teacher has not mentioned, let alone disparaged, any of the many contrary doctrines.
And is it really so hard to see that once you start talking about the falsity of a particular doctrine associated with a particular religion (in this case, the well-known fundamentalist doctrine that the Earth is 6000 years old) that, perhaps depending on how you said it, what else you said, and other contextual things, you at least run the risk of being seen by a court to have disparaged that religion?
As I said earlier … when I slept on this, I wanted to qualify what I said yesterday. No sensible judge is going to want to find lightly that there’s been disparagement of religion by a teacher. Nor am I suggesting that judges should be quick to do so. But, depending on the context, how it is put, and whatever, you can run that risk. To that limited extent De Dora has a point, and I don’t think it’s that obscure.
Nor, in saying this, am turning into some sort of accommodationist. I believe as strongly as ever that there is an epistemic incompatibility between the emerging worldview from science and the various religious worldviews.
I do, however, think that sometimes there’s a tendency on “our” side to engage in wishful thinking about the law and to forget that it (quite properly) gives rights to the bad guys (including people with comprehensively false worldviews) as well as the good guys (sensible people like regular B&W commenters). The current rash of fairly naive responses that I’m seeing across the internet to proposals to arrest the pope in the UK have driven this home to me.
In this case, state primary and secondary teachers can neither endorse a religion nor disparage a religion. Judges may be sensible about what that means in practice, but it’s the point to try to keep hold of.
If the above still doesn’t work, I really do give up.
Just to review, you’ve made a bunch of your own independent arguments about the prudence of silence in contentious contexts. That’s all fine in the abstract. What I’ve said, and others have picked up on, is that this advice must be abandoned in cases where a trivial logical inference is involved. We have to allow a trivial logical inference. Otherwise, “reason” can’t possibly be a criterion one way or the other — logic, especially drawing a trivial inference from a single statement, is the minimal core of what it means to be reasonable.
So, yes, I don’t get it.
Perhaps I haven’t been clear about what might count as viable objections. You might argue that “reason” just means “expedience”. If so, say that. Or you might argue that there’s nothing at all surprising about trivially inferring an unreasonable statement from a reasonable statement. If so, give uncontentious examples.
Or perhaps you take Robert Bruce Thompson’s view. For he, at least, made himself explicit by arguing that the law doesn’t care about logic. (Which even still misses the point by a hair — we’re not even talking about logic in general here, we’re talking about the minimal use of logic that is involved in trivially rephrasing a statement. But anyway.) Assuming this were true, then by implication it would suggest that the law doesn’t care about reason. But that’s consistent with our “bandwagon” reaction — because it would imply that, when we ridicule De Dora, we also ridicule the legal regime that does such violence to the meaning of “reason”.
I agree with Russell on his legal points to the best of my knowledge (and I’d be an idiot not to, I’m no legal mind). However, I do object to the implication that the people who were “against” De Dora on this little bit of blog drama were “engag[ing] in wishful thinking about the law” and “forget[ting] that it gives rights to the bad guys”. At first glance, the whole situation De Dora was railing against easily passes the Lemon Test. I have absolutely no formal law training and that was obvious right off the bat.
I should say that I also recognize his point on political naivety on the “arrest the pope” movement, inasmuch as the people that think it’s a foregone conclusion that charges can be brought (which seems to have driven his current tack of pointing out people in the atheist blogosphere oversimplifying or not recognizing opposing legal theories). I have argued that it could be feasible to bring charges under the “crimes against humanity” statute much like some others have discussed, but it is by no means a sure thing. In my opinion it should still be attempted.
@Russel Blackford:
Just for the record, I don’t think you’re an accommodationist. I still don’t think De Dora’s reply to me was very smart though, if only because it was so simplistic and absolutist in nature, while it surely must be more complicated than that.
I agree with your remark about being realistic about the law, and the way it’s currently interpreted and implemented, and the society it operates in. It’s often too easy to reason from what we ideally would want the law or our society to be like, rather than from what they currently are.
On the other hand, we do need to talk about what we want to change, and what to change it into. There’s definitely something not quite right in a society where it’s OK for a science teacher to say that the local radio host is wrong that the earth is cooling, but not OK to say that the local priest is wrong that the earth is young. I don’t think I’m wrong to argue for a society where religious ideas are treated just like any other set of ideas. I doubt you’d disagree.
Sure, Russell – I think that “worked.” I’m certainly not urging that state school teachers should take on religions. The worry I have is about the borderland where claims overlap – as in Jerry’s example of teaching TOoS. I don’t disagree with you about that, but I think I may disagree with De Dora – depending on what he meant by his claim.
Russell,
So you really don’t think that an evolution teacher can legally assign passages from Darwin’s Origin to a biology class? I’m sorry, but my agreement with you stops at something like this. And, after all, if it’s illegal to discuss The Origin in science class, then it’s also illegal to teach it in history-of-science class, for in both cases you’re presenting views that criticize a faith-based empirical claim.
I’m not going to quibble with the Supreme Court’s claim that having “In God We Trust” on our currency is ok; in return, I think advocates of reason should permit science classes to learn about the falsity of widespread (albeit religiously based) assertions about nature.
Oh, and several universities (including public ones) are using my book as a supplement to teaching evolution. Are you saying that’s illegal because my book sometimes shows how creationist assertions are wrong?
Jerry, we need to await more cases before we know where the line is drawn in American constitutional law. I don’t know where exactly that will be, and I doubt that anyone does. That’s a problem. But as I said at some length in my last two substantive comments, I’d hope that judges would be sensible.
My guess is that a helluva lot is going to be okay. Let’s watch the case involving Corbett as it works its way up the court system. That will give us some guidance. For now, he was found to have committed a constitutional breach on one issue, but no remedy was awarded against him. Or so I gather (I haven’t seen the final judgment on the question of remedy).
So, in effect, he won the case. But it’s under appeal, and I’d guess we’ll see a decision from the appeal court later this year.
The legal issue as I see it is whether what the teacher is saying or doing can be seen as disparaging religion to the class (or, conversely, as conveying her endorsement of religion to the class). Now, I’m sure that an experienced teacher could do a lot of pedagogically useful things without crossing that line.
But there’s still a potential danger once you stand in front of secondary school class and single out a particular religious doctrine as being false.
So, yes, the combination of your country’s constitution and its excessive (viewed with Australian eyes) religiosity does cause potential difficulties for state teachers at levels of the educational system where they may be taken as speaking on behalf of the state to a semi-captive audience.
To take your specific examples .. well, I don’t know why you bring up On the Origin of Species again. I thought I said above, in response to your earlier comment, that I don’t see a problem with putting it on the curriculum for study. Merely doing that is not disparaging religion, despite some of the things that Darwin said.
And I also see no problem at all with universities using your book in the way you described. That actually seems like a very straightforward situation.
I can well imagine taking students through the 18th-century controversies about the age of the Earth, and how diluvial geology failed. I might choose some of my words carefully if it were secondary school, but I’m sure it would be fine.
Remember, I am against De Dora on the main issue (regarding the textbook).
Similarly, I see no problem with setting the poetry of the Catholic priest Gerard Manley Hopkins as part of the English literature curriculum. Or that of the atheistic A.E. Houseman. Or a book like Pilgrim’s Progress. I’ve never suggested that secondary students can’t be presented with material that expresses viewpoints that they might disagree with.
When you teach poetry or fiction, which is something I’ve done, the material may contain various religious or anti-religious messages. But you can still teach it in a way that won’t be experienced by an atheist student as an endorsement of any religious message or by a religious student as disparagement of religion. You try to get students to enter imaginatively into the vision of the author, whether or not it is their own. In fact, as I’m sure you and all here know, learning how to do this is a large part of the point of studying literature.
However, if an English teacher in a state secondary school used the teaching of Hopkins’ poetry as an opportunity to launch into a personal confession of faith in the classroom, there’d be a problem. You’d be appalled, and so would I. There’d also be a problem if the teacher used it as an opportunity to launch into an atheistic attack on Catholicism. Both “sides” have rights here. Secondary school English teachers in the state system should not do either of those things.
This is what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about setting challenging material. I’m talking about finding the line where a teacher may come under fire for endorsing or disparaging religious. That was the context in which I thought De Dora had a point.
The point is that there really is an asymmetry between (1) stating a scientific fact that contradicts various religious views (which Ruse says you’re not allowed to do); and (2) going out of your way to identify and one of those religious views and point out that it is falsified by science.
Doing (1) is fine. Even if you do (2), maybe it’ll be fine. Maybe the particular teacher in the particular context will be able to do it in such a way that it falls short, maybe even well short, of disparaging the religious views. I can imagine all sorts of scenarios. But it’s not wrong to note that (1) is completely unproblematic whereas (2) won’t always be.
Huh, De Dora has a Bachelor’s degree in “Rhetoric and Communication”, and is working towards a Masters in Political Science. I never would have guessed.
“going out of your way to identify one of those religious views and point out that it is falsified by science.”
I can accept that. The teacher doesn’t need to pause in an explanation of the history of the earth to say with a leer “and by the way this means the earth is not six thousand years old, in case you hadn’t figured that out yet.” Not until the students are 18, or 17 if they’ve skipped a grade.
:- )
Russell made a crucial point, and I basically agree: With respect to a particular truth claim or a group of “truth claims” (in either case with a religious or mythological or superstitious origin), it is possible and perfectly legal to state, in a public school classroom, that the claim or claims have no basis in fact or have been disproven empirically or scientifically. One key element is that the teachable moment or in-classroom statement has a primarily secular purpose. But the teacher and school corporation may be at risk of a lawsuit if the teacher goes beyond such a statement and “disparages” a particular religion or religious belief in general.
Suppose that the teacher adds, “The people in other cultures, some of them quite ancient, created these stories to express their beliefs about how they related to or fit in with the rest of nature; or how they thought the world or living things came to exist. They didn’t have the knowledge and the info-gathering tools that we have; and there is disagreement about whether this culture or that culture actually intended to write what we’d now call science or history. But in any event, people who have religious faith have always found ways to continue to believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts. And that is their right here in America. But this is a science class / history class, and here we are concerned with evidence, with careful analysis of evidence, with testing of potential explanations, and with the ways of avoiding mistakes in understanding the world.”
Would that sort of “appendix” to the teacher’s statement be an unconstitutional attack on religion? I’d say no, not under American law.
There was a lawsuit in California brought by the Association of Christian Schools International, alleging anti-religious (or anti-free-speech) unconstititutional discrimination, and brought against Univ. of California employees who developed an admissions policy that did not approve course work (completed by college applicants) that involved “Christian education” high-school textbooks either published or pushed by the Association. Most of the courses were history and science courses.
The court granted a motion for summary judgment, dismissing the case. Here is the opinion,
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/acsi-stearns/ruling0808.pdf
which cited the seminal U.S. Supreme Court case on alleged anti-religious animus, Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993). The animal-killing Santeria worshippers lost that case.
Jeff D.: The U.S. Supreme Court case you cite was a free exercise case, not an establishment clause case, and it went the opposite of the way you suggest. The Santeria worshippers won, because the legislative history of the act demonstrated that it specifically targeted Santeria practices.
Jim’s right, the Santeria folks won that case. But the facts were pretty extreme. On the facts found by the courts, the law concerned was obviously contrived to try to drive the Santeria folks out of town. It was a very thinly-disguised case of religious persecution.
Jeff’s point stands in the sense that, even applying the law as articulated in the Santeria case, where the religionists won, teachers and school systems are going to get a fair bit of protection from the courts. The courts in America have been decidedly friendly to reason and science at a time when a lot of politicians and others are not so friendly.
All of which confirms that De Dora’s original attack on the textbook was misguided.
Maybe some of you think I’m bending over too far to find a grain of merit in his subsequent discussion with commenters. But we do have to think about these things carefully. Well, I do, since I’m trying to write a book about freedom of religion. This business about what teachers can say is exactly one of the issues that I want to say something about in the book (and I’m painfully aware that somebody or other is going to call me an idiot no matter what line I take).
I’m grateful to y’all for the discussion here, and especially for getting Jeff’s perspective. I feel that I’ve made some intellectual progress as a result.
What is brought home to me whenever I think about such issues is one of the points that my book, if it ever gets written, will have to stress: we now live an era where many religious beliefs are not just untrue but plainly irrational. By that, I mean they blatantly contradict what we now know about the world through rational inquiry. Yet people cling to them.
Galileo notwithstanding, there wasn’t a lot of that back in Locke’s day. In principle, separating church and state was easier than it is now for many reasons. Among those reasons is the fact that the contemporary state is justified in saying all sorts of things that are going to offend somebody or other who holds to a plainly irrational religious viewpoint. In particular, it will say some of those things in the classroom, through its employees.
In pointing that out I’m not suggesting that the state should shut up and not say those things. I’m certainly not joining Michael Ruse in saying that Jerry and Richard, and all the rest of us, should shut up in our advocacy of atheism and stop pointing out the contradictions between science and religion. That’s a different discussion.
Sorry about my mis-remembering of the result in the Santeria case.
“Free Exercise clause” case law and doctrine (and not just are relevant in situations where the “state action” (a law, or a statement in an officially prescribed textbook, or a statement by a public school teacher) is alleged to burden or to discriminate against a particular religion or religion in general without favoring another religion.
From Justice Kennedy’s opinion in the Santeria case:
“In our Establishment Clause cases we have often stated the principle that the First Amendment forbids an official purpose to disapprove of a particular religion or of religion in general. [citations omitted] . . . These cases, however, for the most part have addressed governmental efforts to benefit religion or particular religions, and so have dealt with a question different, at least in its formulation and emphasis, from the issue here. Petitioners allege an attempt to disfavor their religion because of the religious ceremonies it commands, and the Free Exercise Clause is dispositive in our analysis.
At a minimum, the protections of the Free Exercise Clause pertain if the law at issue discriminates against some or all religious beliefs or regulates or prohibits conduct because it is undertaken for religious reasons. . . .
. . . .
“The Free Exercise Clause, like the Establishment Clause, extends beyond facial discrimination. The Clause ‘forbids subtle departures from neutrality,’ [citation omitted], and ‘covert suppression of particular religious beliefs,’ [citation omitted]. Official action that targets religious conduct for distinctive treatment cannot be shielded by mere compliance with the requirement of facial neutrality. The Free Exercise Clause protects against governmental hostility which is masked as well as overt.”
I’d like to see more of the 2-page section in the Tobin and Dusheck textbook from which P Z quoted. In a biology textbook, I’d rather have seen those 2 pages devoted to demonstrating why and how a 4.5 to 4.7-billion-year-old earth, etc. is a well-established fact, instead of summarizing court decisions involving creationism and “equal time” statutes. Still, if one applies the Free Exercise analysis to the direct quotation that P Z supplies from the Tobin and Dusheck textbook, that text is pretty obviously not a violation.
That’s all interesting, Russell – it’s interesting that we’re feeding into your book this way.
“In particular, it will say some of those things in the classroom, through its employees.”
Quite. I ponder that fact a lot, actually, along with the fact that modern life teems with those things. De facto secularization – car mechanics, bus drivers, dentists, mail carriers, and so on, don’t say God made your car break or God changed the address on your package – at least not where I live. We’re used to a lot of non-goddy explanations for all sorts of things – natural, mechanical, electronic, social, political – all sorts of this-world causation. In that sense most of modern life says those things. What’s my point? I forget. Partly that it’s surprising that doesn’t do more to erode goddy explanation and partly a faint sympathy for people who prefer goddy explanation.
The church was wrong about other things over the years, and that is part of the history of thought and inquiry. It just really does come up if one teaches the subject in any depth at all.
Yes, and if you were teaching the history of thought and inquiry then you’d be able to talk about this just fine. On the other hand, if you were teaching (say) European history in general (which is more like what a high school class would be like), then continually harping on the church’s wrongness (rather than moving on to the next topic in the book or something) might be an establishment-clause violation. Context is key.
Right. Continually harping, not good; inclusion where it belongs, surely necessary.
But the original issue was even more nit-picky than that – the word “myth” for Christ’s sake.
(A high school AP class might well have in depth stuff on intellectual history. Just saying.)
The issue that I found most interesting was whether or not a teacher’s utterance of a “not 6000 years” comment was verboten. De Dora expressed his point categorically: even when all other things are equal, you can’t say this. In discussion, I think we’ve subsequently found out that there are three senses of “can’t” that sometimes run together: there’s what you can legally say, there’s what it’s reasonable to say, and there’s what it’s expedient to say.
The first — the discussion of what the courts would say — seems to have petered out, because it isn’t interesting to talk about something that is so context-sensitive and largely dependent on yet-to-be-determined precedents.
The second, what it’s reasonable to say, falls entirely on one side. There is simply no argument, nor any attempt at an argument, to the effect that a trivial logical reformulation of an assertable sentence is unreasonable. But for all practical purposes, if this condition comes in conflict with (1), then that would be an argumentative dead end… unless you happen to be an activist and/or advocate of civil disobedience in conscientious cases.
The third has taken over as the force of the discussion, both here and at PZ Myers’s thread. But even so, the question is whether or not that utterance is or isn’t expedient all other things equal. So far as that goes, talking about context is useful if you want to talk about concrete cases. But each time we add more details to the context — “suppose you brought it up out of the blue”, “suppose you kept repeating it over and over”, and so on — all other things become less equal. It might seem bullish and ungenerous to criticise De Dora if he only had those cases of mean-spirited teachers in mind. But his categorical language suggests that he was speaking far more generally: even to teachers who are answering sincere questions. If it’s not expedient for a teacher to say even this, then they must live in a state of terror, and hence have an obligation to join the nearest teacher’s union, get involved in its leadership, and fight for robust and sensible protections of their right to teach the facts.
For some, it may be tempting to view these categories as irrelevant and impractical. Often, in a legal grey area, lawyers give advice as if they were insurance agents. For a lawyer, the definition of the reasonable collapses downward into the path of least resistance, and hence, the greatest expedience.
This is a valid, but merely optional, way of thinking. The free, informed, autonomous citizen has the liberty to make sense of these different levels on their own terms, and modify their behavior in whatever way is the most appropriate.
Very nicely clarified and nailed down. That is a general problem that De Dora has, I think – he makes his claims much too general and sweeping when in fact even he apparently doesn’t actually mean them that generally and sweepingly. If he could learn to clarify and nail down his own claims then he would get a lot less flack. This of course also applies to Mooney, as we found through endless circular spats last summer and early autumn. The fact that Mooney is now making his claims more cautious indicates that he did learn to do more clarifying and nailing down (though not the manners to admit that he’d learned anything, of course); De Dora would profit from doing the same. So would Massimo, for that matter.