Although I would not advocate the teaching of any single religion to any young kid I would fight and die for your right to do this. ( That was not coined by me BTW ! ). This is the basis for democracy and the freedoms of the West, flawed as they certainly are.
The basic fact here is that we do not need religion to be good people or to treat others with kindness and respect. Neither morals nor ethics rise from organised religion, they rise from inside the person via the conscience.
Every human that is not mentally ill KNOWS when they do wrong and they do not necessarily become better people just because they have a religion to teach them how to behave.
That, my dear, is a copout !
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CF> I agree with you, but your history is a bit off. The religious people came to the US to escape worldly sin. It's accually quite interesting.
And ABout thanksgiving, it was basicly the biannual harvest festival that the Puratins had in England, but yes it was blown outta proportion.
FE> every school Does NOT need to turn into a religious brainwashing propaganda house. But I guess it would be fun to rebel against all the teachers. I wanna go to school to learn, not to have beliefs shoved down my throat.
Just to clarify my statement above about all the state-schools in Britain teaching religion.....
The majority of state schools in Britain are what are called NON-DENOMINATIONAL.... but this just means that they accept pupils from all of the denominations without actually teaching those individual denominations to the individual pupils.
Having said this it IS true that all state schools in Britain are built around a loose base of Christianity where the Christian ethic gets the edge over all of the others. Some of these state schools are very weak when it comes to RI ( religious instruction ), but even these schools must follow the national curriculum, which includes basic Christian teaching.
These non-denominational state schools also try very hard to educate their pupils about the other religions of the world as this is part of general learning.
The other "faith" state schools are run by teachers, priests and nuns that are all specifically interested in pushing one faith in particular.
The Roman Catholic state-schools teach the national curriculum from a base of Roman Catholicism and the very few Jewish and Muslim and Sikh state-funded schools are the same as the Catholic schools.
Strangely...in Britain, our "Public" schools are in fact our private schools that may be subsidised by the state but they are in the main financed by the parents of the pupils that attend.
Here too many of these "private" schools are single-denominational !
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Last edited by Papaumau on Aug 25th, 2004 at 06:19 PM
Pap. As I said earlier the whole of europe as we know now it is formed for a great deal by christianity, to build state schools around a loose base of christianity where christian ethic gets the edge over all of the others is not such a bad idea.
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I didn't say that it was a "bad" idea as even the religious schools do not teach how to be "bad", I just maintain that if a person wants to be religious they should decide to be religious from an open and mature mind.
If children are indoctrinated - when they are very young - into one religion over all others then they will find it very difficult to un-learn about that religion when they start to think for themselves. I know, "I was that soldier" !
To let you understand a bit better where I am coming from:
I was indoctrinated into bigoted Protestant Christianity while I was growing up in Northern Ireland and it was not until I was about sixteen or seventeen that I started to question this indoctrination. I did not become a fully-fledged atheist until I was about thirty years old. This conversion was a difficult and painful process that could have been avoided if I had not been indoctrinated in the first place.
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Bullshit. The reason we have more school shootings in school today than we did a hundred years ago is because guns are more easily accessible to kids. My dad owns some guns, and I know how to shoot them. However, he drilled into my head from day one that guns can kill people and to never, ever point a gun (even an empty one) at a person. Every time I even picked a gun up, he always made sure I checked to see that it was loaded... I could go on, but you get the general picture. My father has never been a religious person.
The other reason for school shootings is kids getting picked on and bullied by "cool" kids. That's something that used to happen to me a lot, and honestly, if I had been older and had access to my dad's gun cabinet... The results wouldn't have been pretty. And I'm not a violent person, I'm very opposed to using military force unless it becomes absolutely necessary. Guess who the kids who bullied me all the time were? The ones I saw in Sunday school every week. Obviously they weren't the only ones, but they were the "ringleaders", so to speak.
CF> Actually, you have the Thanksgiving thing a little backwards... The first thanksgiving that we talk about today was attended by almost a hundred local indians and a handful of European colonists. It was basically a big party... But you're right when you say that it didn't come to much historically. This country has a history of being racist, sexist, and homophobic. The "Texas Rangers" that we glorify so much today got started by driving out Mexican immigrants in the 1800's for no reason at all.
I never said anyting shld turn inot a brainwashing propaganda, i just things its a bunch of BuLL to say, you can pray cuz it offends someone at their graduation, thats a bunch of Bull...it OFFENDS all of us christians ther person saying that, there is no diff there.
Now this is where I have to say something. I am truly AMAZED at how many young people complain about having the say the pledge of allegiance in school. It's a pledge to your COUNTRY not a religious statement......if you are going to go off on that kind of tangent then I highly suggest you switch currency if you live in america because the currency says "In god we trust", and you are living by a double standard if you really believe one and not the other. I think when people go to this extreme it's silly. I said the pledge my entire first 8 years of school and I never EVER once thought of it with a religious connotation.
Revan, the reason we have the school shootings etc is mainly the PARENTS of these students. People simply dont pay attention to what their kids are up to these days because they are busy earning the almighty dollar to live the good life. The parents of the Columbine kids were completely CLUELESS. You cant blame all this on the bully thing there have ALWAYS been bullys. In my opinion the whole damn country has gone to hell in a handbasket. I have seen kids at school speak to their teachers in ways that would have gotten me slapped SILLY when I was in school by my father when he got wind of it. Parents cant even discipline their children anymore without fear of social services stepping in. When my son was in 4th grade one morning right before school he told me to F off and I promptly slapped the crap out of him. I will NOT tolerate that kind of mouth out of my kid. But I didnt send him to school for the day because his cheek was red and I was scared to death they'd call social services. Would I do it again today.....he's 21 now......damn skippy I would. I am appalled the way kids talk today.
I have always wondered......suppose you die and find out there IS a god.......what will you say to him then? I mean Id really like an answer to that from anyone who's an atheist. SUPPOSE you are WRONG. What then? I mean if I die and find out there ISNT a god what have I lost really? But if an atheist finds out there IS a god and hes been denying them all this time I think thats gonna be kinda messy for your soul Please understand Im not being flip, I really want to know.
I thk it's also utterly ridiculous that peeps complain about the Pledge of Allegiance....I agree w/the JP, switch countries if you disagree so highly w/it. This is America, this country was founded on God!!!!!!!
JP atheists believe there is no god, so they normaly don't even consider that possibility.
Well if the Law (and the first amendment seems to do so) allows ppl for not saying the pledge if they don't feel like it, I don't see why they should switch countries JP
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to say the pledge of allegiance should be a voluntarily task. When I lived in Arkansas they took pride in saying it so good for them, me being a Norwegian could only observe, standing beside my classmates of course. Standing out of courtesy and respect for the US and their will to pledge an allegiance to the flag.
Fire hun, I know they dont consider the possibility. What I am curious to is the WHAT IF part.
And my point about the pledge was that if you arent going to do it for the "god" reason and yet you are willing to carry currency that says basically the same thing, then in my book thats a double standard.
You can survive without saying the pledge, but you won't get very far without any money. People who choose not to recite the pledge can do so with a minimum of reprise, but there's nothing you can do about it being on our money. It isn't a double standard at all.
There are two ways that "seperation of church and state" can be viewed I guess. Either as a total seperation of the government and god or as the seperation of the government and any single religion. The latter meaning that it can support god without supporting a church.
But, those who view the latter as the case are saying that the christian god is valid and over another. So, when you get right down to it, there must be a total seperation of the government and any religion. What goes on in another country is the buisnes of that country and it's people. But here in America(no matter who founded the country and why they came here) there is a LAW that says there is a SEPERATION of CHURCH and STATE.
Debates like the guy who wanted a monument to the ten commandments on the court house lawn can not take place. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and make a comparison...the religous right say that the mayor of San Francisco disregarded the law by allowing gay couples to marry in turn support the govenment endorsing one religion over another. Then when they get over ruled, they say "It should be up to the people of that community to decide" if they want the ten commandmants to be memorialized on the lawn of the county court house or posted in schools....but by the same standard, why isn't it up to the people of that community to decide on gay rights in THAT community?
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Last edited by Devil King on Aug 26th, 2004 at 02:19 PM
weird constiution, they are nagging about the division between state and church all the time but then according to some there is something about god in the consitution WEIRD
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Aug 25th, 2004 05:50 PM
Please understand Im not being flip, I really want to know.
