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Education United States News Politics

Teacher Cannot Be Sued For Denying Creationism 775

Posted by Soulskill from the let-there-be-rights dept.
gzipped_tar writes "A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that a public high school teacher in Mission Viejo, California may not be sued for making hostile remarks about religion in his classroom. The decision stems from a lawsuit filed by a student charging that the teacher's hostile remarks about creationism and religious faith violated a First Amendment mandate that the government remain neutral in matters of religion. A three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the lawsuit must be thrown out of court because the teacher was entitled to immunity."
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Teacher Cannot Be Sued For Denying Creationism More

Teacher Cannot Be Sued For Denying Creationism

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  • So (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stargoat ( 658863 ) * <stargoat@gmail.com> on Saturday August 20, 2011 @09:21AM (#37153034) Journal

    So if a teacher came out in favor of creationism, a radical form, let's say one that proclaimed blacks, asians, and all other non-whites as descendants of evil evil Cain, would it be possible to sue that teacher?

    Clearly and obviously Adam and Eve never existed and this should be taught to any young person as truth is always preferable to falsehoods, but what about someone promoting a falsehood?

    • Anything is possible in today's litigious society, but one has to account for the fact that this lawsuit was based in California.

      Give my experiences in GA and the deep south, especially as regards religion in schools, I don't think we would have seen a ruling like this there...

      • in the south, the teacher would have been fired and it would be the teacher suing for his/her job back.

    • Re:So (Score:5, Informative)

      by AchilleTalon ( 540925 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @09:40AM (#37153236) Homepage

      If you RTFA, the case you are describing was already judged by the same court. A biology teacher did want to teach about creationism and this was refused by the court.

      "In the 1994 case, the Ninth Circuit ruled that religious neutrality required that the biology teacher’s positive views of religious ideas must be excluded from public school instruction. But in 2011, a different panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled that the history teacher’s hostile views of religion and faith must be permitted to protect the “robust exchange of ideas in education.”"

      So, I guess it then all depends what matter you are teaching.

      • Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)

        by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @02:54PM (#37155942)

        This ruling is actually a little more subtle than that. They ruled that the *teacher* can't be sued since the courts haven't decided if criticizing creationism is illegal or not. We've well established a legal precedent that teachers can't pray or teach religion. So the court threw the lawsuit out on the grounds that you can't sue someone for doing something the courts haven't established is illegal. Hence immunity. If the students had brought the case against the school and made it about policy (e.g. to change the curriculum) instead of against an individual then they could establish a precedent legally that criticizing religion is or is not a violation of the establishment clause.

        This case establishes no legal precedent. Quite the opposite this case only establishes that there is no accepted legal precedent upon which to judge this case therefore the default ruling is to rule in favor of the defendant.

        Now that the pedantics are out of the way... Even if they had ruled this is the correct ruling. Advancing *a* religion which is what was going on in 1994 is one thing. Criticizing the logic (using logic) of a religious believer is not to say that Christianity is false or that Atheism is true--it's criticizing a single logical argument. Similarly a creationist could criticize scientific theories if they are logically unsound without advancing creationism. When you dismantle bad arguments for any position you're strengthening it not denigrating it. Which is EXACTLY the argument that the teacher was making. When you criticize evolution you strengthen it by finding its weaknesses and eliminating them or solving them. When you criticize creationism you're "attacking someone's beliefs" and they double down to defend the position regardless if it's sound or not. That's not an attack on religion, that's an attack on narrow minded ideologues who reject learning. And those ideologues are an insult to religious thought.

        If a student said "I know God exists because the bible tells me so." It's not promoting atheism to point out the believer's logical fallacy. In fact that's a huge part of philosophy and theology *WITHIN* a faith.

        Atheism does get an unfair leg up on religion since it's by definition a non-establishment. In spite of the efforts to reclassify it as an equivalent belief system by the religious it depends on no beliefs of its own. Atheism ultimately is the argument that "I haven't heard a sound argument for a God from anyone so I maintain the default position of nothing on the subject." In fact Atheists are the least atheistic of all belief systems. As an atheist I will say "None of the 8 billion theories on God seem to hold any water or have sufficient proof." As a Christian I will say "There is one true God and *all other possible views* of God are therefore untrue"

        The atheist rejects a finite number of belief systems as having insufficient evidence. Most theists reject an infinite number of belief systems other than the one.

        The fact that every less argument for God gets you one step closer to Atheism does not logically follow that discrediting bad arguments for God is advancing Atheism. My dad is a Christian PhD Theologian and I am an atheist. We more often agree in debates than with most lay people. Why? Because most of the arguments that the religious advance have been rejected by theologians and philosophers for centuries as "nonsense".

        Most people's faith and religion today is largely based on horribly outdated and overly simplistic arguments that are logical and philosophical sink holes of nonsense. Whether it's an atheist or a theologian who is dismissing such nonsense it's good for religion and Atheism that the old (in this court case's instance more than 1500 year old) logical fallacies are removed from public discourse.

        It's not denigrating to religion to force its adherents to use sound arguments and logic for their positions. It *IS* denigrating to religion for idiots and assholes to use the cloak of religion to try and conceal their own stupidity and aversion to education. It makes the religious look stupid and lazy.

        • Atheism ultimately is the argument that "I haven't heard a sound argument for a God from anyone so I maintain the default position of nothing on the subject."

          Actually, that's the agnostic position - "There's not enough data for a rational determination of the existence of God, therefore the I hold no opinion as to whether God exists or not". Atheism is a positive assertion of the non-existence of God.

          • Yes, and the GP position is the atheist version: "There's no data for the existence of God, therefore I hold the opinion that there is no god until such data appears".

    • Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)

      by colnago ( 91472 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @10:00AM (#37153406) Homepage
      "Clearly and obviously?" Not trying to sound obstinate here. How do you know that?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jhoegl ( 638955 )
        Because then you would be my cousin.
        That and, by natural law, Eve was Adams sister.

    • Re:So (Score:5, Informative)

      by mmarlett ( 520340 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @10:14AM (#37153510)

      Yes, you can sue for that. That has been well established. TFA actually mentions such a case from 1994.

      The misleading thing here is that when people read that a teacher "may not be sued for making hostile remarks about religion" one assumes that the remarks were actually hostile. The court basically said that the teacher has no reason to believe that what he said should be taken as hostile. The teacher, for his part, never mentioned a specific creationist theory, but rather said this:

      Aristotle argued, you know, there sort of has to be a God. Of course that’s nonsense. ... That’s what you call deductive reasoning, you know. And you hear it all the time with people who say, ‘Well, if all this stuff that makes up the universe is here, something must have created it.’ Faulty logic. Very faulty logic. The other possibility is, it’s always been there. Your call as to which one of those notions is scientific and which one is magic. All I’m saying is that, you know, the people who want to make the argument that God did it, there is as much evidence that God did it as there is that there is a giant spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it.

      And one more graph from the article:

      Corbett told his students that “real” scientists try to disprove the theory of evolution. “Contrast that with creationists,” he told his students. “They never try to disprove creationism. They’re all running around trying to prove it. That’s deduction. It’s not science. Scientifically, it’s nonsense.”

      Keep in mind that this was an Advanced Placement European History class (that is to say, college level even though it was in high school). Even more interesting is a quote about the case from the defendant himself back in February [wordpress.com]:

      james corbett | 12-February-2011 at 12:09 pm |
      I’m Dr. Corbett. One thing readers should understand is that when my school-provided attorney made the decision to ask a judge rather than a judge decide the case, the law required that all the “facts” be considered in the light most favorable to the plaintiff (Chad). That meant that we could not challenge the validity of the recordings, which were heavily edited. It meant that we could not point out how each and every comment clearly related to the curriculum. I might add, Chad’s recording were in violation of California law.
      This case was never about religion. It was about a whiny little boy who admitted he didn’t do his homework and who’s helicopter parents intervened so often in school and on the water polo team that other students called him “princess.” Neither Chad, his parents nor his lawyers, the so called “Advocates for Faith and Freedom,” ever made an attempt to even talk to me or attempt to resolve the issues prior to filing a lawsuit. It is my opinion that the “Advocates” were far more interested in having a case they could use for fundraising than they were in dealing with the issues. They are a textbook example of exactly what I commented on in class, that some people use the faith of others to line their pockets with gold or to gain political power. I believe such use of religion is vastly more offensive than calling Biblical creation “superstitious, religious nonsense,” which is obviously true.”

    • If the teacher doesn't have any evidence support the story of Adam and Eve what with the serpent and all, then they aren't teaching, they're doing missionary work and should be fired if they keep up with it. I'm not sure what the specific comments are, but creationism has no place in scientific inquiry other than as a cautionary tale as to why one must be careful about getting the evidence right.

    • Re:So (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Will.Woodhull ( 1038600 ) <wwoodhull@gmail.com> on Saturday August 20, 2011 @12:46PM (#37154972) Homepage Journal

      My reading on this is that the Court has essentially said "It does not matter at the moment whether the teacher was right or wrong in their actions. What matters at the moment is that filing a lawsuit against the teacher is the wrong approach."

      The plaintiffs should have filed suit against the school, not the teacher. That is why the teacher has immunity. It is school policies that dictate what a teacher may or may not say in classroom; it is the school policies that the plaintiffs should be challenging. Teachers need to be protected against nuisance suits concerning school policies.

    • Clearly and obviously Adam and Eve never existed...

      Actually, they did. Meet Y-Chromosomal Adam [wikipedia.org] and Mitochondrial Eve [wikipedia.org]. They are the ancestors of every human being alive today.

  • One point for Common Sense.

    • In this particular case, I generally agree with the specifics as I am sympathetic to the notion that creationism is indeed superstitious nonsense. But I have to wonder and worry a little about where this can go.

      Do I worry that science teachers who are sympathetic to creationism will somehow warp the young minds of students? Actually, no. By the time they reach a science class, they just about have their minds made up on the topic. I do worry, however, what the next thing will be to follow will be. Afte

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jdpars ( 1480913 )
        Wait a minute. A court opens the door to religion-bashing teachers telling their students how stupid they are for believing in God, and you're worried that the religious people of the country will just get worse? Wow, what a warped perspective.

        • Radical populations have a long and storied history of getting violent when a law they don't like passes. Would you like me to start with the KKK or the anti-abortionism movement? I assume you've never had to deal with extremists face-to-face for very long. This really shouldn't surprise you one bit.

        • I had a Biology teacher that went out of her way to tell us all that the state mandated teachings on evolution were crap and that if she had a choice she wouldn't teach it at all, then proceeded to tell us the "real truth" about where we came from, cracked the bible she carried with her everywhere she went, and proceeded to spend a week on teaching us Creationism, complete with quizzes to make sure we'd properly absorbed the knowledge. She did everything she could to gloss over evolution.

          Granted, this is t

  • That the US constitution is a great boon to the country, yet at the same time being a huge albatross around its neck. FFS suing someone because they expressed an opinion in an arena where they may/may not be allowed to have an opinion, instead of growing a pair, sucking it up and realizing that not everyone agrees with you. And yes I am aware of the protections that the constitution grants, but in this case a lawsuit seems overkill.
    • It seems you and the judge agree, so what's the problem?

      I am not that surprised that the case occurred. I can see why people might be annoyed at being compelled to pay the salary of somebody who denigrates their beliefs, and there's a difference between freely expressing a personal opinion vs one's responsibilities in acting as an agent/employee of the state. But, like the judge said, it is important for education to challenge beliefs, especially when known facts contract those beliefs.

  • Nice to know that it is lawful to have an opinion (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mykos ( 1627575 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @09:30AM (#37153100)
    That pesky Constitution really mucks up frivolous litigation sometimes

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dinghy ( 2233934 )
      Does this mean that you would support a teacher with a belief in creationism teaching his opinion in a public school? I have my doubts.

      • Re:Nice to know that it is lawful to have an opini (Score:5, Insightful)

        by NatasRevol ( 731260 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @10:35AM (#37153678) Journal

        As long as it's factually based....

        Which might make the lecture a little shorter.

  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but a school is not a government institution, and the teacher is not a government employee, is he? So he can say whatever he wishes about religion, and still not invoke the "Church and State, separate!"-clause.

    In Hungary, there's something called the National Curriculum, but that only specifies the rough topics and lays out a track to follow to the end of high school. Inside those topics, the teachers are free to subdivide their classes, and teach whatever they wish, since they aren

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jaysyn ( 203771 )

      Correct me if I'm wrong, but a school is not a government institution, and the teacher is not a government employee, is he? So he can say whatever he wishes about religion, and still not invoke the "Church and State, separate!"-clause.

      Yeah, actually it is a government institution. The difference is that this teacher was stating an opinion, religious types tend to claim they are telling the truth.

  • Was he really criticizing religion per se? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @09:33AM (#37153128)

    TFA includes a shortened transcript of the teacher's comments, and it doesn't sound to me like he was criticizing religion per se. Rather, he was criticizing attempts by people to pose religion as science (such as intelligent design), by saying that the "logic" used to argue in favor of creationism is fundamentally flawed and nonscientific. And especially if intelligent design advocates continue to insist that their ideas be taught as science in a science classroom, then such criticisms should certainly be fair game in science classrooms.

    At least from the transcript, it didn't seem like he was directly criticizing those who nevertheless believe in a creator as a matter of faith and not of science.

    • Transcript (Score:5, Informative)

      by BenoitRen ( 998927 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @09:49AM (#37153314)

      Indeed. Here's the transcript for reference for people who didn't RTFA:

      "Aristotle ... argued, you know, there sort of has to be a God. Of course that's nonsense," Corbett said according to a transcript of his lecture. "I mean, that's what you call deductive reasoning, you know. And you hear it all the time with people who say, 'Well, if all this stuff that makes up the universe is here, something must have created it.' Faulty logic. Very faulty logic."

      He continued: "The other possibility is, it's always been there.... Your call as to which one of those notions is scientific and which one is magic."

      "All I'm saying is that, you know, the people who want to make the argument that God did it, there is as much evidence that God did it as there is that there is a giant spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it," the transcript says.

      Corbett told his students that "real" scientists try to disprove the theory of evolution. "Contrast that with creationists," he told his students. "They never try to disprove creationism. They're all running around trying to prove it. That's deduction. It's not science. Scientifically, it's nonsense."

      He gets bonus points from me for including the Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster.

      • Re:Transcript (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Baloroth ( 2370816 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @11:43AM (#37154382)
        Yes, but his ignorance shows pretty clearly. He didn't explicitly state what he thought Aristotle said, but he seems to think Aristotle said that god created the universe. Aristotle thought the universe was eternal, not that it had been created or brought into existence by some god. In fact he argues that neither time nor motion can have a beginning because of what they are. His arguments for the existence of god were, in fact, based on this premise. It would really be nice if people who brought up ancient philosophers actually bothered reading and understanding them for once.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by artor3 ( 1344997 )

        That teacher sounds like an imbecile, and ought to be sued on principle. His counter-argument is for a steady state universe? Wasn't that debunked like, a century ago? And then re-debunked when morons like this guy tried to bring it back by saying that a constant stream of matter was being created from nowhere at just the right rate to keep the universe expanding forever?

        He sounds like the worst kind of atheist. The sort that knows absolutely jack shit about philosophy or logic, except what he picked up

    • Re:Was he really criticizing religion per se? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by the_raptor ( 652941 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @09:51AM (#37153348)

      Who cares if the teacher was criticising religion or not. Individual opinion of people who work for the government is not the same as government policy.

      Here is the part of the first amendment of the US constitution that is pertinent to the case:

      Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

      Nope, doesn't say "government workers have to have neutral attitudes towards religion". Members of government, let alone government workers, in the US can be as rapidly pro or anti religious as they like and they won't break the first amendment unless they start making policy that establishes religion or prevents the free exercise thereof.

      If the nutjob who sued can't even understand what the first amendment protects, they sure as hell aren't going to distinguish between those who say creationism isn't a science (I say that and I am an evangelical Christian) and straight out attacks against religion.

      P.S. I am an Australian and I find it sad that I know more about the US constitution than most Americans and the talking heads on TV.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jfengel ( 409917 )

        Individual opinion of people who work for the government is not the same as government policy.

        It is, and must be, official government policy that individuals working for them, especially in a position of educating children, stay out of religious matters. Students are ordered to go to school and told to believe everything that the teacher tells them. What the individual says in that context has a lot of force, more than ordinary first amendment right to free speech.

        From what I read in that transcript, the teacher is out of line. A generous reading can exonerate the teacher from actually denying the

        • Re:Was he really criticizing religion per se? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by supercrisp ( 936036 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @10:21AM (#37153554)
          He points out nonsensical logic used to justify the existence of god. Even cursory reading of Christian theologians indicates that calling out people on nonsense is an established scholarly tradition--even among the orthodox. And often, of course, the contest is for who will be orthodox. For example, the contest between Augustine and Pelagius (Augustine won), or Luther and All Comers (title contested). And saying that deductive reasoning isn't science is a fair statement. I suspect the reason this teacher is out of line is that you can infer that he is an atheist. But that is his business. And, frankly, adults should give young people enough information to infer such things. That's how most children of backward parents learn that atheists, socialists, Jews, and homosexuals don't actually eat babies in the name of their Dark Lord Satan.

    • a: "What makes the Bible true?"

      b: "The Bible is the word of God."

      a: "How do you know the Bible is the word of God?"

      b: "Because it is in the Bible."

      a: "What makes the Bible true?"

      b: "Because the Bible is the word of God."

      a: "How do you know the Bible is the word of God?"

      b: "Because it is in the Bible."

      a: "What makes the Bible true?"

      b: "Because the Bible is the word of God."

      a: "How do you know the Bible is the word of God?"

      b: "Because it is in the Bible."

      *** Warning: Infinite loop detected. Discussion halted.

  • Clearly Established: a useful standard. (Score:5, Informative)

    by GrifterCC ( 673360 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @09:33AM (#37153138)
    I am a lawyer, and about a third of my cases are representing state employees, and about a third of those involve cases with a "clearly established" defense, though I practice mostly in the Fourth Circuit, not the Ninth.

    The "clearly established" standard is a way for courts to keep these kinds of suits from dinging innocent state employees. Basically, not only does the employee have to violate someone's right, but it has to have been pretty much unreasonable for the employee to think ze wasn't violating that right. Here, in fact, the panel didn't even hold that the kid had a right not to have this stuff said to him. So this case won't be precedent for future cases to reach back and say, "Well, as of the time the Corbett opinion was issued, the right not to have a teacher make fun of your religious beliefs was clearly established."

    There are several other possible doctrines for protecting an employee in such a situation, and they're all salutary.

  • Prayer in School (Score:2, Insightful)

    by readin ( 838620 )
    So we have to assume if a teacher or football coach or principal leads a class, football team or entire school in prayer that person would be similarly entitled to immunity?

    Interesting quote from TFA:

    In the 1994 case, the Ninth Circuit ruled that religious neutrality required that the biology teacher’s positive views of religious ideas must be excluded from public school instruction. But in 2011, a different panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled that the history teacher’s hostile views of religion and faith must be permitted to protect the “robust exchange of ideas in education.”

    It looks like the Ninth Circuit is hostile to religion and faith. They clearly didn't get that from the First Amendment.

    • I can see the sense in having a disparity there. Leading a school or whatever in prayer is clearly going in favour of one particular religion, while views critical of religion as a whole do not exclude anyone.

    • It looks like the Ninth Circuit is hostile to religion and faith.

      They are certainly hostile to the state establishing a particular religion and/or faith. That hostility happens to be codified in the first amendment to the constitution.

  • interpret the ruling (Score:5, Informative)

    by cellocgw ( 617879 ) <cellocgw@gmaEINS ... minus physicist> on Saturday August 20, 2011 @09:38AM (#37153206) Journal

    Seems to me, from the brief notes in TFA, that the judge suggested it was ok to say that creationists were completely failing to follow scientific principles in claiming their position was correct. The teacher didn't directly attack religion, just the absurd methodology of the religious folks in this case.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • The fact that there may not have been a previous decision to warn the teacher that this was unacceptable behavior doesn't mean that htis behavior was acceptable, and the court shouldn't have ducked the issue in this way. Moreover, when the issue has been teacher who were presenting their religious views rather than their atheistic views, the 9th circuit has not ducked the issue in this way. The "giant spaghetti monster" line that the teacher used is not a neutral symbol, but a deliberate and overt attack

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by colnago ( 91472 )

      Yes, this passage surprised me:

      “We are aware of no prior case holding that a teacher violated the establishment clause by appearing critical of religion during class lectures, nor any case with sufficiently similar facts to give a teacher ‘fair warning’ that such conduct was unlawful"

      I am not a judge, but I'm thinking it's their opportunity and their job to be the first ruling in a case like this. Someone has to establish precedent.

  • The decision stems from a lawsuit filed by a student charging that the teacherâ(TM)s hostile remarks about creationism and religious faith violated a First Amendment mandate that the government remain neutral in matters of religion.

    1. Yes, if the school is public then the salary of the teacher is paid from taxes, however it's not necessary that the taxes are Federal in nature, though of-course States cannot dismiss parts of US Constitution as it stands (but they can and need to challenge the federal government that it is not following the US Constitution, but that's a different topic).

    2. No, even if the teacher was clearly a government representative, his remarks do not violate anything in the Constitution. His remarks are in fact his

  • Science or religion? It can't be both! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Swoopy ( 101558 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @09:51AM (#37153344)

    So is creationism science, or is it religion?
    I thought that creationists argued that their ideas were "scientific" or was that the intelligent designers?
    Anyway, either it's a religion, the basis for the creationists' case here, and would therefore have no place in a proper education system to begin with,
    or creationism is a science, giving it a place in the education system but allowing teacher to have & express a negative opinion about it.
    This seems the kind of circular reasoning we've come to expect from creationists and intteligent design proponents, in yet another interesting new form.

    • So is creationism science, or is it religion?
      I thought that creationists argued that their ideas were "scientific" or was that the intelligent designers?

      It's a religious belief.

      There was once a Creation Science movement (in the 1980s, IIRC), which tried to use real science to support the modern interpretations of the myths in Genesis, but since (unlike ID) they mostly tried to be honest with it, it failed - the evidence doesn't support biblical myths - and thus the movement died.

  • She works for the government. She should neither disparage nor encourage religious viewpoints. Preferably, she should not discuss the matter of religion at all. As for creationism, it's not science (i.e. not a falsifiable theory backed by evidence) and has no place in a public classroom. The right answer is, "don't discuss it there."

    Mythic explanations for creation are a dime a dozen and popular ones can be heard every Sunday in the USA. Virtually all children are exposed to them. Some will recover. Others

    • I'm all for it! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by bussdriver ( 620565 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @10:51AM (#37153834)

      The science teachers should bash religion all the want. Send your kids to church to learn mythology; or allow the humanities teachers to discuss religions equally.

      The constitution is against promotion of a religion -- NO pushing of religion. period. Keep religion out of government is the whole point. (remember, the king of England was heavily connected to religion...) Somebody making comments against any of the many idiocies of our primitive ancient (older than mid-evil) beliefs is not violating this at all! Heresy could be a crime if if it wasn't for the prohibition of religion in government. Heresy includes a lot of science, logic, philosophy etc.

      Furthermore, my point is that government can bash all religion equally without promoting any single one of them; some could argue that the banning of religion is possible to a degree but I'm not going there (human sacrifices and many other religious practices are illegal and its constitutional.) Non-religion is not a religion. So you are not promoting 1 religion over the others if you are "attacking" them all fairly.

      "FREE PRESS" but we tax them... That severely limits the press of today where the real news comes from papers who are going broke. Religions, they don't get taxed yet they get less empowerment in the constitution than the press does.

  • TFS vs TFA (Score:5, Informative)

    by drb226 ( 1938360 ) on Saturday August 20, 2011 @08:28PM (#37157872)
    After RTFS, I get the impression that the teacher said something like "Creationism is false. Creationism is garbage."
    After RTFA, I realize the teacher basically said "creationists rarely use scientific arguments to support their belief."
    Long live exaggerated and misleading Slashdot summaries.

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