In this day and age, it can be tough to be a public school science teacher who believes in the Bible and questions evolution. I’m sure that many, so that they can keep their jobs and not be “Expelled,” quietly follow the dictates of their local school districts. John Freshwater, who teaches middle school science in Mount Vernon, Ohio, has had his share of run-ins with his bosses in the 21 years he’s taught in the Mount Vernon school system over his views of evolution versus intelligent design.

Last week, Freshwater agreed to a directive from the school district and his principal that ordered him to take down a poster of the Ten Commandments from his classroom door and posters featuring Bible verses from the walls, and to remove Bibles from a shelf, but he has refused to get rid of his personal Bible he keeps on his classroom desk. “[That Bible is] something he draws personal inspiration from,” R. Kelly Hamilton, one of Freshwater’s attorneys, told The Columbus Dispatch. “It just so happens that it’s a Bible. For some people it’s a personal photograph or a coffee mug.”

The school district, of course, fears that a Bible sitting on a teacher’s desk shows favoritism toward a particular religion and violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. (In its statement, the school district did not address any concerns it had over its denial of the Free Exercise Clause.) And, not surprisingly, the ACLU has weighed in, coming down on the side of the school district.

On Thursday, hundreds of supportive students held a rally at the high school and started a petition drive for the teacher who’s affectionately known as “Fresh H2O.” They also made a statement by bringing their own Bibles to school and plopping them down on their desks.

Barbara Smith, a mother of one of Freshwater’s former students, told the Mount Vernon News, “If he was doing something wrong I could understand it. He’s not doing anything wrong. They have taken everything away out of the schools. … When I was in school, we prayed in the morning. Now, they don’t. That’s what’s wrong with the schools today. The discipline has gotten so out of control. The kids have gotten so out of control. They’ve taken everything [the values] out.”

And, of course, we have things like this happening (or, in this case, almost happening) in schools today.

UPDATE (April 23): Today’s Mount Vernon News reported on an investigation of Freshwater’s conduct. (HT: Erasmus)

You’re walking down the street with a toddler and come upon the sight of sneakers tied end to end and draped over the telephone wire. I almost said “thrown” over the telephone wire, but that would be begging the question.

How do they happen to be there, that’s what the kid wants to know. Your adult mind, at this point, races through a rolodex of childhood pranks, and you mentally reconstruct the incident. But until you explain it, for all he knows the things spontaneously erupted from the wire like lichen.

None of us was around when the first human eye appeared, so one could say “your guess is as good as mine” — Evolution or Creation. But nobody believes one guess is as good as another for explaining the wristwatch you find on the beach; nobody countenances for one second that it’s a fortuitous collision of glass and metal. You know design when you see it.

It’s all about choices, isn’t it. One person sees irreducible complexity and considers the staggering improbability of simultaneous and co-adaptive mutations, or a series of cumulative fortuitous mutations just hanging on till the payoff arrives of a whole functioning eye. The other person (perhaps smuggling a little teleology into his atheism unawares) invokes time plus chance to silence all objections.

The mechanisms of biology are complex but the concept is simple enough (Matthew 11:25). I don’t suspend everyday logic and the ordinary rules of evidence which I apply to wristwatches when it comes to the “big” question of origins.

“To the person who does not feel obliged to restrict his search to unintelligent causes, the straightforward conclusion is that many biological systems were designed” (Michael J. Behe, Darwin’s Black Box)

Is a belief in evolution compatible with Christianity? Michael Zimmerman, founder of The Clergy Letter Project and Evolution Weekend, says it is.

In 2004, Zimmerman, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Butler University, wrote the Clergy Letter in response to a Wisconsin school board’s passage of several anti-evolution policies. The letter states that many Christian clergy “believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist,” and that “the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests.” Over 11,000 clergy members have endorsed this letter.

Evolution Weekend grew out of the Clergy Letter, providing an opportunity for congregations to “come together and discuss the compatibility of science and religion,” says Zimmerman. Almost 800 congregations from nine different countries will participate in this year’s third annual Evolution Weekend, February 8-10.

Zimmerman told WoW that many clergy members choose to give sermons or hold lunch forums on the topic. Other congregations view “Paradise Lost: The Religious Life of Charles Darwin” or NOVA’s “Judgment Day – Intelligent Design on Trial” and follow with discussion groups. Zimmerman only asks that participating clergy provide a forum for discussion on the compatibility of science and religion.

Evolution Weekend is not without debate. Casey Luskin, Program Officer at the Discovery Institute, finds it “hypocritical for Darwinists to claim (incorrectly) that intelligent design proponents mix religion with science, when in fact it is the Darwinists themselves who are making a big push to promote pro-evolution theological views.”

Luskin told WoW, “If people want to find ways to reconcile evolution with religion, that’s fine. That’s their right and prerogative. For us, this issue is not about religion, but science. And there are many legitimate scientific reasons to challenge Darwinian evolution.” Luskin said that the Discovery Institute opposes teaching both religion and pro-evolution theology in the science classroom because it “encourages science teachers to violate the separation of church and state by injecting religion into the science classroom.”

Last year, Bruce Chapman, president of Discovery Institute called Evolution Sunday the “height of hypocrisy,” but Zimmerman hopes Evolution Weekend will “continue to increase the quality of national and international dialogue on this topic.”

In this Times op-ed, Paul Davies condemns faith by faint praise.  Of course, he starts out with this line, which is no kind of praise: “In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.”  Not really, Paul.  I might ammend the last half of that line this way: …in religion, having (true) belief without (empirical) evidence (only) is regarded as possible.

It gets better.

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