Professor Banned From Teaching for Beliefs on Creation and Intelligent Design
A Louisiana professor is suing his school, claiming that the university discriminates against his beliefs on creation and intelligent design, according to OneNewsNow.
John Oller is a communicative disorders professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He frequently writes and lectures on creation and intelligent design presenting arguments that attribute genetic complexities to a creator rather than random chance.
The university decided to act against Oller and his beliefs by restricting his teaching opportunities, according to David Hacker of the Alliance Defense Fund.
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“Despite a stellar academic record, this professor has found himself exiled from participating in the instruction of any department’s students simply because he holds views that some university officials don’t favor,” said Hacker to OneNewsNow.
Oller countered this action taken by the University by filing a lawsuit. “Universities, which are supposed to be a marketplace of ideas, are increasingly censoring views that challenge campus orthodoxy,” Hacker added. “It is our hope that this lawsuit will vindicate Dr. Oller’s academic freedom while demonstrating the right of professors to pursue the truth without censorship when their academic conclusions don’t match the fashionable consensus.”
Critics of intelligent design and creationism feel that teaching about a creator in a science class promotes one specific type religion discriminating against those who hold different beliefs.
“Simply put, as the courts have determined, teaching intelligent design in public schools tramples on the constitution’s first amendment protection by promoting one particular form of religion in the name of science,” wrote Dr. Michael Zimmerman in a Huffington Post editorial piece criticizing two bills recently introduced to New Hampshire legislature that debunk evolution and propose that it is taught as theory along with others such as intelligent design.
Reps. Gary Hopper of Weare was instrumental in introducing the second of these bills. He told the Concord Monitor that he hopes for teachers to “instruct pupils that proper scientific (inquiry) results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis… and that scientific and technological innovations based on new evidence can challenge accepted scientific theories.”
To him, Evolution teaches that life is just a by-product of the universe or an accident. “But more and more scientists are coming to the conclusion that it was not even remotely possible that it happened by accident,” said Hopper. “I want to introduce children to the idea that they have a purpose for being here.”
