“. . .What’s next? Whales talk French at the bottom of the sea?”
25 September 2007 by Stardust
This really pisses me off:
Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn’t literal
A community college instructor in Red Oak [DesMoines IA] claims he was fired after he told his students that the biblical story of Adam and Eve should not be literally interpreted.
Steve Bitterman, 60, said officials at Southwestern Community College sided with a handful of students who threatened legal action over his remarks in a western civilization class Tuesday. He said he was fired Thursday.
“I’m just a little bit shocked myself that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people who have been through college and have a master’s degree, a couple actually, have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job,” Bitterman said.
Of course, the director of the school’s campus declined to comment, and the school president simply blew it off saying that Bitterman was fired because of a “personal issue.”
“I can assure you that the college understands our employees’ free-speech rights,” she said. “There was no action taken that violated the First Amendment.”
[BULLSHIT!]
Bitterman, who taught part time at Southwestern and Omaha’s Metropolitan Community College, said he uses the Old Testament in his western civilization course and always teaches it from an academic standpoint.
Bitterman’s Tuesday course was telecast to students in Osceola over the Iowa Communications Network. A few students in the Osceola classroom, he said, thought the lesson was “denigrating their religion.”
[WELL, BOO-FUCKING-HOO!]“I put the Hebrew religion on the same plane as any other religion. Their god wasn’t given any more credibility than any other god,” Bitterman said. “I told them it was an extremely meaningful story, but you had to see it in a poetic, metaphoric or symbolic sense, that if you took it literally, that you were going to miss a whole lot of meaning there.”
There’s that persecution complex again the minute their sky daddy beliefs are challenged. Do they pray to gawd? Nope…they run out and pay for lawyers to get their way.
Bitterman said he called the story of Adam and Eve a “fairy tale” in a conversation with a student after the class and was told the students had threatened to see an attorney. He declined to identify any of the students in the class.
If this happened to me I would be so furious I wouldn’t be able to stand it. Colleges and universities are supposed to be places where ideas and thoughts are exchanged in intellectual discourse, aren’t they? It’s bad enough that the bible thumpers try to interject their mythology into elementary and secondary education, but it’s just going too far when these freaks want to infiltrate our institutions of higher learning and take away one of our most valued rights…the right to free speech.
Bitterman said Linda Wild, vice president of academic affairs at Southwest, fired him over the telephone.
Wild did not return telephone or e-mail messages Friday. Bitterman said that he can think of no other reason college officials would fire him and that Smith, the director of the campus, has previously sat in on his classes and complimented his work.
“As a taxpayer, I’d like to know if a tax-supported public institution of higher learning has given veto power over what can and cannot be said in its classrooms to a fundamentalist religious group,” he said. “If it has … then the taxpaying public of Iowa has a right to know. What’s next? Whales talk French at the bottom of the sea?”
Reading about this incident is both maddening and depressing at the same time.
25 September 2007, on 10:53 pm
Be forewarned. This is yet to come in the main. Fascism has gotten it’s bloody fingers entwined here. Ugh. This is very depressing. Get ready to seek political asylum.
http://atheisthaven.blogspot.com/
25 September 2007, on 11:28 pm
“Gee willikers, Stardust”…I actually remember just enough of my (1961?) college French class to be able to translate: “Yes, and I love Jeebus”!
[OK...where's the Ancient Latin speaking whale?]
My weird take on the pic; Pardon moi?:
[The French one; to him/her self]:
“WTF…we wales don’t talk! Now what?…
We’re suddenly woo-woo New Age whales who’re reading each others minds…and thinking just like those land-lubber human fucks? What’s next? Past life readings?”
Seriously…
The whole story just highlights the enormous depth of fucked-up-ness going on in our educational system. Religious “Brain Rot” has seeped into every level of American so-called higher education.
“Yes my University level kiddies…don’t ya know the talking snake was Gords favorite fallen angel; masquerading as a snake…after all; maybe it was Halloween. That’s it; and Gord (as Jeebus) & the snake dipped for ‘apples’ later!
Ya know, Adam and Eve…those two silly predestined batshits…just didn’t catch on. Of COURSE the rest of the animals didn’t talk. [Coitenly not French! Maybe Spanish?] Everything in our precious bibble is absolutely true. Now everyone just settle down…and carefully put what’s left of your brains back up your asses…You know…
where they usually are!”
On another note…What! “B double flat”? [OK...A 440!]
Somehow, Stardust, your post is reminding me of today’s UN “Sermon” by Iran’s quasi-Imam Fundie fuck! In spite of a few salient points about “Nuclear armed, ‘Bully’ nations (like the US)”; in my opinion, he totally blew away any semblance of being a rationalist with his over the top, religious blathering.
I’m still hoping there MIGHT be a few atheists in the UN…but I’m not holding my breath!
(Cough, cough!)
The world seems, especially these days, to be completely run by various leveled, delusional, Gord believing asshats! Am I wrong? Is there really any hope for this planet?
Now I’m really depressed!
What!…time for a snack? Or maybe…
My ‘talking’ snake?
25 September 2007, on 11:33 pm
Whales…Sheesh…sorry!
26 September 2007, on 6:37 am
Jeebus, the French in the photo doesn’t make any sense. Some editorial control is needed when using foreign languages.
There are two possibilities here:
“Oui, et moi, j’aime jeebus” or “Oui, et vous, aimez vous jeebus?”
26 September 2007, on 8:58 am
bernarda, I never studied French and used Babel Fish for translation since I was just doing a quick amusing photo. But thanks for the correction! I will see if I can fix it.
26 September 2007, on 9:17 am
There bernarda…picture fixed, just for you!
Now what about the teacher being fired for telling it like it is with the mythical Adam and Eve fable?
26 September 2007, on 10:54 am
As a healthy skeptic- and maybe an eternal optimist, my suspicions initially made me wonder what this professor really did to get himself fired. Surely, a college would never don the thorn mortarboard of Bibliquor Inebriation? Say it ain’t so, Southwestern Community College! Then, remembering the maxim; “there is no parody so rich as the reality of that which is being parodied“, remembering that no sooner do we dream up some absurd excess with which to caricature the godtards, than we find they’ve gone and done it(to wit, the Idaho State Representative seeking to abolish funding for both preschool and kindergarten because they encourage women to not stay at home…
‘Rep. Steven Thayn, R-Boone’s Farm, is chairing a House-only task force on the family. Thayn addressed the Senate task force and told the group that if Idaho invests any money into pre-kindergarten education programs, it should pay the same amount per child to parents who successfully raise their own young children.
“If they did the work, they should have access to the money,” Thayn told the senators. “If we’re going to spend money on early childhood education, the parents should have access to it just as the teachers have access to it.”
Questioned by Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, Thayn said he would oppose a pre-K program in his local public schools even if two-thirds of the people in his legislative district wanted it.
“Every time we start a program that costs money, we’re actually forcing more mothers out of the home,” Thayn said’)
…I realized that it must be true and that, further, Linda Wild is probably Opus Dei, with a cilice gouging the thigh flesh beneath her skirt and a throwback, Lane Bryant hairshirt.
26 September 2007, on 12:40 pm
Anyone else here about the teacher at a xian school who got fired because she was a woman and a woman, according to the babble, cannot have any authority over a man?
26 September 2007, on 12:42 pm
AUM, no I hadn’t heard that one. Where was that?
26 September 2007, on 2:50 pm
AUM,
I think you are thinking about this story maybe?
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=2339673
26 September 2007, on 6:40 pm
^ I just read that story, AUM, poodles.
You know what? Good. I’m glad the pastor and his church are following the babble to the letter, especially such backward passages like Timothy’s misogynistic exhortation. The more extreme and literal their interpretation, the more brightly it will highlight the sheer obsoleteness, irrelevance, and downright meanness of the book and so many brands of xianity (I mean, come on; firing an 81-year-old woman who’s been doing the job for umpteen years to the satisfaction of your predecessors? The new pastor is basically telling the previous pastors that they weren’t acting as True Xians (TM)).
Let the decision lead to people questioning it, being confronted with the fact that the babble really does say that, and leaving the church, even if it’s for another church. Hopefully someone, even if it’s just one individual, will perhaps end up questioning even their faith. Confusion to the enemy!
26 September 2007, on 7:32 pm
If indeed this professor did get fired for the reason he stated, it just illustrates one more reason I left the midwest (although you can’t seem to totally get away from such numbnettedness anywhere in God’s US of A these days.)
Honestly, this kind of thing is not entirely surprising in the midwest–I wish it weren’t so, but I could see something like this happening in Iowa or Nebraska.
Somewhat OT–check out this link:
http://www.adultswim.com/video/?episodeID=8a25c39215224fdf01152350a39b0035
for an incredibly hilarious and irreverent take on religion in politics. If Gifsters out there haven’t seen Frisky Dingo, you are missing one of the best shows on TV. Even though it is a series, you don’t have to know a lot about the back story to appreciate this episode. (Killface and Xander Crews are running against each other for President.)
26 September 2007, on 9:03 pm
The school officials are gutless.
27 September 2007, on 7:08 am
Stardust, glad to be of help.
Another reason Americans don’t understand the world is their reading habits–well, not only, publishers deserve a large part of the blame.
http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article.php?lab=ShouldAmericans
“In the April 23 edition of the New York Times, an article by Dinitia Smith on PEN World Voices: The New York Festival of International Literature, revealed an unsurprising but nonetheless distressing fact: “Andrew Grabois, the senior director of the R. R. Bowker company, which keeps track of publishing industry figures, said this week that of the 185,000 books printed in English in the United States in 2004, only 874 were adult literature in translation. [Salman] Rushdie called the low number of translated books ’shocking.’”
27 September 2007, on 8:11 am
Do you laugh or cry or should you scream and run? A little while ago I was playing for a church service and they had a guest pastor. This was a fairly mainstream church, well-to-do people, and I don’t think most of them really had much of an idea what he was talking about.
He got up, had quite a frown on his face and told them that ‘belief’ was in trouble because blasphemy was allowed to to happen and was not punished. He futher opined that the ideal society should be modeled after John Calvin’s Geneva, and that much as he disliked Catholics, thier actions long ago on St. Bartholomew’s Day made sense, and should have worked but for mamby pamby weaklings who stopped too soon.
Their god called them to be strong, and the call to believe the absurd because it was absurd were trotted out.
The man who talked about what you started to burn after the books was right as rain, I think.
27 September 2007, on 4:34 pm
I wonder if he has the right to sue. At least doing so would force the college to justify their reasoning. One or the other is not being truthful. Based on experience I’m guessing its the school officials.
28 September 2007, on 9:20 am
Exactly what legal action were the students going to take? I don’t like what you said so I’m going to sue you? If that’s the case, then couldn’t a instructor sue a student if he/she didn’t like an answer on a test?
28 September 2007, on 6:48 pm
^ Good point, Captain Al!
Sarge, every description I’ve ever read of Calvin’s Geneva, not to mention Calvinism itself, makes me shudder. Then again, look at the deity they worship; is it any wonder people who believe in such a nasty being should look up to such examples?