This is just too good to be true. Well, “good” probably isn’t the right word for it. Interesting should work just fine though. But every once in a while we have the fortune of hearing about something so interesting and bizarre that it just so happens to be true. This is one of those occasions.
The situation we’re talking about is the controversy surrounding Steve Bitterman, a 60-year-old western civilization professor at Southwestern Community College in Iowa. Bitterman was recently fired from his job due solely, as he claims, to his teaching of the Christian creation story of Adam and Eve as a “myth.”
Now, this obviously isn’t the first time a story like this has surfaced to shed light on exactly how backward people can be. It definitely won’t be the last time someone feeling slighted writes an angry letter or expresses his or her opinion, just to solve a petty disagreement, by getting the supposed “aggressor” fired. But this is just ridiculous.
It’s completely understandable to have conviction for your own set of beliefs, and the wish to have those beliefs honored and respected by people around you is natural.
But what is so utterly bull-headed and blind about all of this is that Bitterman’s firing wasn’t just a childish attempt to prove “We’re right and you’re wrong.” It was the outright proof of just how easily we continue to let bullies take control.
And that’s really all this is: a case of some zealot fundamentalists nagging until they get their way – just to prove a point. It’s an attempt to once again pull in to question the seperation between church and state, begging every “freedom-loving American” to really think about how little freedom Christians in this country really have.
But that argument is tired. Let’s be honest: It’s really just a lame excuse. In all reality, there doesn’t seem to be much weight to the argument of the nation’s religious majority claiming such injustice.
Especially in this case, whether the students who’ve complained realize it or not, they’re paying for academic instruction in fields they probably have no expertise in. So why take something so personally when a professor is obviously just trying to teach objectively?
