UPPITY Christian pup Chad Farnan, a teenage student at California’s Capistrano Valley high school, has notched up a landmark legal victory by persuading a judge that his European history teacher broke the law by “promoting, or displaying hostility towards, religion”.
Judge James Selna ruled that James Corbett’s remark that “creationism was superstitious nonsense” constituted “improper disapproval of religion”.
The “devout” teenager claimed in his law suit that Corbett made comments that were:
Derogatory, disparaging and belittling regarding religion and Christianity in particular.
In legal documents submitted to the US district court, he said he was uncomfortable going to class, and felt as though Corbett had created an atmosphere in which he could not effectively learn “both because and regardless of his religious beliefs”.
Farnan’s lawyer, Jennifer Monk, who works for a not-for-profit Christian law firm, Advocates for Faith and Freedom, told the Guardian that Farnan’s victory was the first of its kind, proving that the establishment clause applied equally to the disapproval of religion as it did to the promotion of religion.
It is the first case of its kind where a court has held a teacher responsible for the disapproval of Christianity. It’s common for lawsuits to be brought against teachers promoting religion. In general, for years, religion has been taken out of the classroom. I don’t agree with that, but if it’s going to be taken out, at the very minimum you can’t go to the other extreme.
Farnan spent almost 18 months gathering material against Corbett, compiling a dossier that featured secret recordings of the teacher’s remarks.
However, Judge Selna found in a 37-page ruling that almost all the statements cited by the plaintiff did not violate the establishment cause, including Corbett’s view that:
When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can’t see the truth.
This was a reference to peasants who did not support the reforms of the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II for religious reasons. The judge said the statement was made in the context of an historical discussion.
A devotee is blessed by the Flying Spaghetti Monster
He dismissed other comments by Corbett that “conservatives don’t want women to avoid pregnancies – that’s interfering with God’s work” and that there was as much evidence that God created the world “as there is that there is a gigantic spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it”.
Only one of Corbett’s opinions fell foul of the First Amendment – his “unequivocal belief that creationism is superstitious nonsense”.
Judge Selna concluded that there was no legitimate secular purpose to the statement and it constituted:
Improper disapproval of religion in violation of the establishment clause.
The judge said the case reflected the tension between the constitutional rights of a student and the demands of higher education, as well as the tension between Farnan’s religious beliefs and the need for government, especially schools, to carry out their duties “free of the strictures of any particular religious or philosophical belief system”.
Corbett, a teacher with 20 years’ experience, remains at Capistrano Valley high school and has made no public comment since the case started.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
May 8th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
'Advocates for Faith and Freedom'
Now there's a misnomer if ever I saw one. Which one do you want Ms Monk?
You can have one but you can't have both!
May 8th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
So, government can approve or disappove of religion. That seems like a win.
May 8th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
did you notice that the law firm that took this to court are a campaigning law firm, it's not like this kid took on the education system on his own; there are professional, well funded people out there who make these issues the circus that they become.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
I know that I'm going to catch hell for this post, but, I should say it anyway.
I recently read a post on another site by a christian who had an atheist son. He was policing his child's web history when he found the site. He said he allowed his son to believe as he wished without interference. Very rare I think. I have always been the same way with my children. I tell them that I think religion is bullshit and a horrific influence on human history, and I explain why I believe that way, but, I always attached a qualifier. I said,"Don't believe it because I said it, check the facts for yourself."
Now, hardline atheists make an unproveable assumption that because religion is ridiculous myth that therefore, intelligent design does not exist. I cannot refute that. But, the big bang theory implies that out of nothing, all matter and energy spontaneously appeared in an explosion without fuel and formed a universe where life spontaneously generates. Both ideas are counterintuitive. That's why I call myself agnostic.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
I have known a lot of intelligent people who are religious. And I understand the mechanics of religion, selling people an afterlife that they never have to prove they delivered. While science is obviously the answer to our questions, my point is, that some degree of respect should be accorded to the victims of the brainwash. They're not all amoebas.
NL
May 8th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
All in all, this is a win for us. From now on people in California can cite this case whenever a politician says anything slightly religious in the execution of his duties and sue the crap out of them.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
In the words of the great Henry Louis Mencken:
"The way to deal with superstition is not to be polite to it, but to tackle it with all arms, and so rout it, cripple it, and make it forever infamous and ridiculous. Is it, perchance, cherished by persons who should know better? Then their folly should be brought out into the light of day, and exhibited there in all its hideousness until they flee from it, hiding their heads in shame.
True enough, even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights. He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force. He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season. He has a right to teach them to his children. But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge. Did Darrow, in the course of his dreadful bombardment of Bryan, drop a few shells, incidentally, into measurably cleaner camps? Then let the garrisons of those camps look to their defenses. They are free to shoot back. But they can't disarm their enemy."
-jcr
May 8th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
If this judge's ruling, that a teacher violated the Constitution by teaching that creationism is superstitious nonsense, even though that is precisely what it is, is allowed to stand, it will set a precedent that will prevent teachers from identifying Scientology as a confidence swindle posing as a religion, Al Quaeda as the sincerest form of Islam, and Nazism as the sincerest form of Catholicism. On the other hand, it could lead to the prosecution of Catholic propagandists who teach that all non-Catholics are predestined to be tortured with flamethrowers for all eternity in an underworld Auschwitz that can only be described as a sadist's wet dream. While nontheists have a vested interest in having this ruling overturned, the Catholic Church has an even stronger interest in doing so.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Sometimes it is offensive to point out that someone else's beliefs have no logical basis and suffer from a complete lack of evidence. Why progress as a species when we can live in nice little religion bubbles.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
I agree that creationism is superstitious nonsense. On the other hand, the constitution does say "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…" Since this was a public school, the teacher really should stay neutral.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Freedom to criminally demand certain rights based on the tyranny inherent in your belief? I think not.
May 8th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
I`ve just read this post, and I am absolutely amazed at the inference. If, in legal terms, rubbishing Creationism constitutes "improper disapproval of religion", then they are admitting that Creationism is a religious belief and has no basis in science! I think they have well and truly shot themselves in the foot here!!
May 8th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
That’s a weird court ruling. I don’t even really understand it. Is creationism (or Intelligent Design) a religious belief? It seems to me like an unsupportable and bizarre alternate history.
There’s no real theological or faith-related element here, that I can see. It’s just a wrong and discredited old explanation for the origin of species and the organized and purposeful character of living things.
When drafted, it was among the best available options, and for the last 150 years, it has not been among the best available explanations, not at all.
Religion only enters into it because a bunch of religious people cling to it, but so what? Saying that their incorrect/factual assertion about the history of life is nonsense doesn’t seem like a disapproval of religion, because their belief isn’t any more religious than any other wrong set of historical “facts”.
What am I misunderstanding?
May 9th, 2009 at 1:02 am
Congress wasn't involved in the situation… it was a loudmouth teacher who thinks people care what he thinks and a thin-skinned student who is too insecure to listen to other world views. No laws were being established here.
Regardless of that, atheism is an absence religion. The judge effed up when he/she stated the teacher should perform his duties “free of the strictures of any particular religious or philosophical belief system”. That's exactly what the teacher was doing… science is free of it all.
BTW, JCR nailed it a few comments up with the Mencken quote.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:10 am
I think you're on to something there, and I like it!
May 9th, 2009 at 3:03 am
As God is my witness the flying spaghetti monster is evolving into a real religion. I'm convinced in my life time I will see a majestic cathedral in his honor with millions of adoring happily tithing adherents.
May 9th, 2009 at 3:10 am
barriejohn,
I just read your post and am absolutely amazed at your ignorance. (just paraphrasing your post). Let me continue. If in legal terms they are trashing atheism because it has no root in proof, then we are admitting that we are no better than the fundies. We claim to love science, but science doesn't support our theories of the origin of the universe. It's all crap, smoke, and mirrors. Big bang out of nothing, as opposed to a god with no origin. If you think you have the answer, you are an arrogant asshole. I am me, sitting in middle of a busy street wearing a sign that says, "I don't know".
NL
May 9th, 2009 at 3:24 am
"Check the facts for yourself" is a comment I can fully endorse. In one of my novels, which I will not name in case some nitpicker accuses me of being self-serving, a teenage girl asks her uncle, "Has anyone ever proven that the godworshippers are wrong?" His answer, paraphrased and abbreviated, is, "It's not that I couldn't answer Yes or No. But if I did, I would be asking you to take my word for it. If my word, why not the pope's word? Why not Ian Paisley's word?" It is only the nonexistence of "gods" as a class that cannot be proven without examining every cc of the universe.
May 9th, 2009 at 3:33 am
However, the nonexistence of "God", defined as a god with all of the qualities that define the paramount god of all Abraham-based religions, is as fully proven as the nonexistence of a flat earth or a geocentric universe. Anyone who claims that the existence of "God" cannot be disproven is ignorant of available information, and that includes pope Ratzinazi, Richard Dawkins, and certain posters to this site. The book that proves beyond sane dispute that "God" does not exist is Victor Stenger's God: The Failed Hypothesis. Anyone who continues to claim that the God delusion cannot be definitively disproven either has not read Stenger's book, or is willing to place political correctness ahead of objectivity.
May 9th, 2009 at 10:33 am
So at least that seems to have established that creationism is religion, not science.
May 9th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Pope warns of misuse of religion – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wor.....ast/8041...
What next?
Paedophiles warn of the dangers of child molestation?
Landmine manufacturers warn of the dangers of explosives?
Unbelievable, sanctimonious hypocrisy!!!!
May 9th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Canada has a law which could be put to similar use. I should launch a suit against some scientists to make a little money and profit from our Human Rights Tribunals' bad eminence.
May 9th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Norman,
Your gross misrepresentation of BBT is simply childish. I suggest you educate yourself on the subject. Try Simon Singh's Big Bang for a start.
"an explosion without fuel." Seriously.
May 9th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
I would like to stick up for Norman Lycan, although I usually disagree with his posts, I think he plays Devils advocate fairly well and he certainly helps by making us think about our beliefs and why we believe them as we prepare to respond. I would hate to see him get banned as a troll.
Having said all that, I do think that he needs to brush up on his physics. The big bang isn't just an idea that someone just dreamed up as an alternative to God. It is supported by physical evidence.
On the subject of disproving God, there may be a theoretical, vaguely defined, deist kind of god that cannot be disproved, but the Gods of the various religions, Allah, Yahweh and the like can be, and have been disproved, in spades. Agnosticism in regard to these gods is not logically defensible.
May 9th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
OK Norman – you`ve convinced ME that you know nothing, so now piss off and keep your stupid opinions to yourself!
May 9th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Supposing that some fundamentalist group believe, as the Bible infers in several places, that the Earth is flat, and send their children to an American state school to be educated. Does this mean that their geography teachers will now have to give equal credence to this nonsensical belief, and pretend that it is just as acceptable as the view that the Earth is a sphere? Like tai viinikka, I think the ruling is totally bizarre!!
May 9th, 2009 at 9:48 pm
I hate the software on this site. I won't allow me to select a statement without selecting an entire post.
Yes, the Abrahamic religions are bullshit. That does not disprove ID. Whether from religion or science, the theories of the origin of the universe are wild speculation. We find ourselves back to guessing what came first, the chicken or the egg.
One thing is for certain, that if there was an ID he doesn't give a shit whether we live or die. It's all a grand toss of the dice. So, while I call myself an agnostic, I'm also a humanist. Our fate lies in our own hands. And while atheists think that elimination of religion will solve the human condition, I know it is bigger than that. Among the wars for empire in the past, some were religiously motivated, but, many were motivated by greed for power and money. You can find the cure for religion, and that's a huge step, but it's not the answer for the human condition.
NL
May 9th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
James Corbett: Teachers must challenge myths
While dangerous to do so, it is vital in getting students to think for themselves.
By JAMES CORBETT
Teacher at Capistrano Valley High School. A federal judge ruled recently that Corbett violated the First Amendment's establishment clause by disparaging Creationism.
Comments 0 | Recommend 0
Over 2,000 years ago Socrates faced a court for refusing to recognize the gods acknowledged by the state, importing strange divinities and corrupting the young. The judges sent Socrates to his death. He accepted the sentence of the court and committed suicide by drinking a cup of hemlock.
The only virtue for Socrates was "knowledge." He reached it by questioning the most deeply held beliefs of his students by which I mean all of Athens and ultimately all of us. What troubled the Athenians about Socrates, however, was not listed in the charges. His crime was that he prompted people to think.
His provocations exposed the Athenians' shallowness of belief and mindless deference to myth. Socrates was judged because he was successful in provoking his students "examine their lives." [his words]Those who guard the myths must try and strike down any who teach young people to think and question, because myths often shrink in the light of reason, draining power from those in authority who benefit from belief.
There are thousands of teachers who agree with Socrates that, "[t]he unexamined life is not worth living." Every teacher who makes a student think takes the risk that he will be attacked by parents and others who see themselves as guardians of cherished political and religious myth. The teachers willing to take that risk should be rewarded, not punished. After the verdict, the Athenian court asked Socrates what his punishment should be. He responded that he should get free meals at the Pyrataneum, a celebration hall for Olympian athletes. Socrates went on to explain that those who passed judgment were not harming him, but rather themselves. He said, by killing him they corrupted their own souls and revealed the weakness of their own belief. A true believer does not fear that a few questions can undo years of parental teaching. Those who would "protect" students from self-examination have little faith and great fear.
Chad Farnan, the boy who sued me, was an average student, who admitted under oath that he did not do the required reading for the class. If Chad's lawyers, the "Advocates for Faith and Freedom," and his parents were actually concerned with protecting the boy, why didn't they simply come to me and ask me to explain my comments? Neither they nor the Farmans ever expressed concerns to me nor to any administrators before they came to school with attorneys and reporters in tow to drop a lawsuit on the desk of Tom Ressler, our principal. Perhaps more importantly, the Farmans were aware long before Chad took my class that I go out of my way to be provocative. Every year in July, I send a letter home to students who have signed up for my class. Chad admitted under oath that he received that letter. The letter says, in part:
May 9th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
J
"Most days we will spend a few minutes (sometimes more) at the beginning of class discussing current events from either The Orange County Register or the L.A. Times. I may also use material from a variety of news Web sites. Discussion will be quite provocative, and focus on the 'lessons' of history. My goal is to have you go home with something that will provoke discussion with your parents. Students may offer any perspective without concern that anything they say will impact either my attitude toward them or their grades. I encourage a full range of views."
I included my home phone number and e-mail address in that letter and encouraged parents to contact me if they had any concerns. Chad admitted under oath that my lectures prompted many discussions with his parents. I might add, that in 20 years in the CUSD, I have never had a complaint filed against me, save this one.
Every teacher in California (this was a federal case after all) now works with the knowledge that any student, at any time, and in violation of California law, can sneak a tape recorder into a classroom, record the teacher and use an out-of-context five second comment as a bludgeon to threaten, to intimidate and, ultimately, to destroy the teacher's career and good name.
Challenging myths is dangerous, but it is the essence of getting students to think for themselves. The Athenian judges, like some parents today, would have students accept myth without question, because myth is the foundation of their parental, political and/or religious authority. Ms. Farnan objected to my challenging the myth of the Puritans as a pious people who fled religious intolerance to found America. As Ms. Farnan sees them, the Puritans are quaint, pious people with buckles on their hats and shoes as portrayed in the national mythology, but they may also be seen as intolerant, misogynistic and homophobic religious bigots who hanged Mary Dyer, a Quaker girl, for preaching something other than Puritan doctrine and several other women for the crime of "witchcraft."
Questioning may make students and parents uncomfortable, but students have a right to think for themselves. It is not "bullying" to demand that students think.
Ms. Farnan also objected to my challenge of another national myth, that the United States was founded as a "Christian" nation. There is some truth to that notion, but embracing that myth and excluding other views can be used to unfairly gain political advantage. Another view of the founding fathers can be seen in the writings of Thomas Jefferson, the man who authored the Declaration of Independence. He translated the Bible. The last words of the Jeffersonian Bible might shake Ms. Farnan's faith: "There laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulcher, and departed." There was no resurrection for Jefferson, he rejected all the Biblical miracles, as contrary to reason. I doubt with his view would be called "Christian" by Ms. Farnan or anyone else. James Madison, who penned the Constitution, warned, "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and units it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect." If Jefferson and Madison were alive today, I doubt they could be elected. The guardians of the national myth would rise up and smite them as unbelievers.
We respect the guardians and their myths at our peril because history (and science) changes and improves with knowledge, but the same force damages myth based on belief. That's why the guardians fear the knowledge begat by questioning. For them, "knowledge" is gained in rote memory of approved truth. They chant in the school, temple, church or mosque and fool themselves into thinking they've acquired knowledge.
All those teachers, and there are many of us, who understand the value of questioning sacred myths serve this nation as faithfully as other patriots. What is true will be strengthened. What is false will be destroyed, as it should be. Such teachers should be honored. There is no greater gift teachers can give to students than to teach them to think. Don't sue them for it. Try taking them to the Pyrataneum for dinner, conversation and a cup of coffee, no hemlock.
May 10th, 2009 at 9:07 am
"I hate the software on this site. I won't allow me to select a statement without selecting an entire post."
Norman, I have just selected and copied the first para of your comment without any problem, so there is nowt wrong with the software as far as I can see,
May 10th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Excellent post Mr. Corbett, I think I will have to return to it to mine it for my quote file. I wish that there had been teachers like you at my school, I attended a bog standard comprehensive in the nineteen-seventies and looking back I think it was a pit of mediocracy. I was a pretty unimpressive student but I consider myself to be of above average intelligence and could probably been much better had anyone at that time inspired me to be. My twelve year old daughter now attends the same school and it has changed beyond recognition, much better.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Perhaps you would care to explain to Professor Stephen Hawking the reasons why, in your learned opinion, you consider his theories on the origin of the universe to be "wild speculation"! I`ve never read anything more stupid in my life!!
May 10th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Three proofs that humans were not intelligently designed : urine, excrement and menstruation. Anyone who thinks ID is something other than unmitigated religion should ask himself why all books defending ID have been written by persons who make no secret that they view "ID" as a synonym for "God," and why no legitimate, peer-reviewed science journal has ever published the desperate doublethink of any ID proponent., including Behe and Dembski. For the definitive debunking of ID, see Unintelligent Design by Mark Perakh; Intelligent Design ed by Robert M. Baird; The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins; God, the Devil and Darwin by Niall Shanks; Why Intelligent Design Fails by Matt Young; Scientific Malpracttice by Ivan Zabilka; and Scientists Confront Creationism ed by Laurie Godrey. In the light of evidence no further away than the nearest university library, anyone who still calls himself an agnostic (the situation was quite different a century ago) is deluding himself that what HE does not know is unknowable.
May 10th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Barriejohn,
If you have issues with statements I made, make your counterpoints here in front of the forum, and I will answer them. Please keep you mindless insults, desperate bile, and childish vitriol out of my email.
Then explain how you make something out of nothing, and I will be your convert. The origin of the universe will be solved.
Here's something for you to ridicule. The universe equals zero. Something like the more you love someone, the more you suffer at their inevitable loss. If you could force apart zero, into negative one(electron) and positive one (proton) you'd have a hydrogen atom. The most plentiful element in the universe, which make up stars. The collapse of those stars is known to have formed all the other elements. So the universe starts at zero, and of course ends at zero, all you have to do is explain how zero was split.
Ridiculous right? But the big bang is no different. It's the old question of the chicken and the egg. No matter how far you go back, you are always left with a valid intellectual question of origin.
May 10th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Listen Barriejohn, I've done my homework. I've read theories ranging from superhot subatomic particles that spawned all matter, energy, space , and time. Theories about eruption from nothing and moments after involving theoretical particles called quarks. I know about dark matter that masks astrophysicist's bad math. Dark energy accelerating the galaxies apart (yet they are still colliding). I can talk to you about tacheons and how if they did exist, it disproves Einstein's theory of relitivity.
Keep your shit out of my email and bring a point to the forum, besides the top of your skull.
NL
May 11th, 2009 at 10:29 am
For those who may be in the dark, my "email" to Norman went like this: "Perhaps you would care to explain to Professor Stephen Hawking why, in your learned opinion, you consider his theories on the origin of the universe to be `wild speculation`! I`ve never read anything more stupid in my life!!" Apparently that constitutes a "mindless insult" in dear Norman`s eyes! I rest my case!!
May 11th, 2009 at 10:37 am
PS I wonder what he thinks of the contributors who have actually referred to him as a TROLL?
August 17th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Regardless of my religious views (which differ from yours), Corbett is considered by the students at CVHS to be the finest teacher on campus. I have a junior & senior at CVHS and was shocked at the alums who lined the streets in support of this excellent teacher. I am disgusted by parents who would support (or dare I say engineer) this type of destructive attack on an educator who truly has passion for his work. I am much more concerned about other teachers who complain to the students (during valuable class time) about their contracts and salaries!
April 7th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
I believe the objectionable part of the teacher’s statement was “superstitious”; if he had said “creationism is nonsense” I believe he would have escaped unscathed from what was apparently an otherwise ridiculous lawsuit.
Realistically, the teacher was sued not only because the student is apparently offended by reality, but because he was openly disparaging religion, or at least christianity. Expressing himself without the cultural commentary would probably be a good idea, in any case.