Forums | MacLife

charon wrote:

To begin with, that really doesn't address the problem of being compelled to support a doctrine that violates your religious beliefs.

That aside, I think you're way too dismissive of the problem.  If public schools were teaching that there is no god, is this the position you'd take?  Granted, public schools don't do anything quite as egregiously bad.  Yet they do implicitly yet very clearly teach that God didn't do certain things (such as literally create the world in seven days), contrary to the religious beliefs of many.  Those beliefs aren't as widely or fervently held as the belief in God's very existence, but this is a difference of degree only.

Yes, I would easily take the exact same position if states taught there was no god. I think it is a weakness to assume that it falls upon society to validate your own system of belief.

Pundit Guy wrote:

StaticAge wrote:

I said I think he is wrong in suggesting that we are a religious society. Its not like there are only two options here, either all religious or all business, as though one is the binary opposite of the other. US society is defined by neither.

What I'm asking is in what way are we NOT a secular society? We've got, as you've admitted, a secular government. Our media is generally more secular than not. Our workplaces are almost exclusively secular. Ditto the public schools. If you don't work for a faith-based operation or attend a church school, you can live a very comfortably secular existence in the US. You almost have to be consciously seeking religious notions to run into them.

I am a Northerner, though. (Can't get too much more nothern without being a Canuck.) Maybe that has something to do with it.

You seem to see people in general in the US want to live in an irreligious, layperson/working-stiff, secular society; I think that so narrow a focus is not any better than a religious society where eveything seems centered around a devotion to a church. I dont know many people who would describe themselves as a "secular" person, so to create a society reflecting that does not seem as desirable to me.

Pro_ wrote:

Camp David wrote:

Pro_ wrote:

That does not mean they have faith in their religion.  I know many prople that go to church solely for social reasons...

So? The fact that there is a hot divorced blond with big jugs that sits in the third pew at Church at 10:00 am service might be a social attraction to going to Church, but hardly changes the religious belief of parishioners, save perhaps breaking the 7th Commandment.

Camp David

How many people do you know that harbor no doubt that their religion is right?

At least one!

Camp David

Camp David wrote:

Pro_ wrote:

Camp David wrote:

So? The fact that there is a hot divorced blond with big jugs that sits in the third pew at Church at 10:00 am service might be a social attraction to going to Church, but hardly changes the religious belief of parishioners, save perhaps breaking the 7th Commandment.

Camp David

How many people do you know that harbor no doubt that their religion is right?

At least one!

Camp David

Would it bother you if you died and found out you were wrong?

Pro_ wrote:

StaticAge wrote:

Pro_ wrote:

How many people do you know that harbor no doubt that their religion is right?

the fact that there are is than 1 religion means that any rational person WOULD doubt their beliefs.  yet all the religions I have seen preach blind faith and ignorance of differing viewpoints.

Thats a pretty scarey argument, seeing as how there are differences and factions among politicians, arguments about what is right/wrong economically, there are wars fought between nationalities and races, there are even arguments made by factions of scholars in science and the humanities as to what is the correct view of things. To follow your argument, a "rational" person would look at the scene and conclude there is no basis to believe anything.

damn dude, you just like--- explained my life.

Sounds like you believe that you cant believe in anything... hmm.

Pro_ wrote:

Camp David wrote:

Pro_ wrote:

How many people do you know that harbor no doubt that their religion is right?

At least one!

Camp David

Would it bother you if you died and found out you were wrong?

If I died and, like you said, I "found out" I was wrong... I would, in fact be right.

Think about it!

StaticAge wrote:

Pro_ wrote:

I apologise if I did not make the point of that more clear, the point is that I believe the student should be the one that makes the decision on which assumption to start from, not the parent.  Children(small children) believe in in Santa Clause because their parents tell them Santa exists.  Why do they believe in god?  shouldn't they get all the information available before they are forced to make a decision? Would you rather have them decide what to believe in or assume what to believe in?

First, if thats the case, shouldnt the child then make every discovery for themsleves independant of someone telling them about any subject? Why is teaching moral values or religious beliefs to a child "forcing" belief and teaching them about slavery and the civil war or general relativity not?
Second, teaching children does nor force belief. Once a kid decides there is no Santa, no authority, the parents, the teachers or whoever could convice them otherwise. Teaching only offers a possiblity for belief, it is up to an individual as to which they adopt as true.

I dont know, I don't even think it is possible to know the 'truth', and the difference between the tooth fairy and god, is that the kid can test the existence of the tooth fairy if (s)he so desires.  Starting a child with fundamentalism as the only filter the child has for looking at the world, you are telling the chld there is no reason to doubt anything the kid already believes, because everything else is a deception and a lie.   I think willfull omission of information is lying, especially to children.  That makes a lot of fundamentalist christians hypocrites.

Children will almost always trust their parents until they have a reason not to.  Taking advantage of that innocent trust to get your child to close their mind to other possibilities is IMO, just plain wrong.

charon wrote:

StaticAge wrote:

Yes, I would easily take the exact same position if states taught there was no god. I think it is a weakness to assume that it falls upon society to validate your own system of belief.

The question isn't about "society," it's about government that uses tax-payer funds and effectively compels many children to attend public school.  It also isn't about "validation," it's about negation.  We're not simply talking about some private school teaching atheism to someone else's kids.  We're talking about the government taking the money of religious people and using it to teach that there is no god.  Moreover, the children of those people may have to attend the public school where this is taught because there's no other viable way to meet compulsory education requirements.

Teaching atheism in a public school would clearly violate the 1st Amendment--the Supreme Court would at least agree with me there.  And for good reason--it's a clear violation of religious liberty.  Maybe you don't care, but I don't see how you can disagree.

Sure it might go against the 1st Amendment, but the rest of your argument is flawed. The government does a lot of things that a wide swath of its citizens to varrying degrees are against and yet pay taxes for. I am also convinced that if "values" are really so valued, there is nothing an education or political system can do, whether its a religious person being taught atheism or an atheist whose taught religion, so that a person should feel incredibly threatened by. "You can put a bullet in my head but you cant kill a word I've said." The individual is more powerful than the state, and as such is not threatened by imposed values.

Q: Solve x^n +y^n = z^n where n is an integer and n > 2:

Creationist Mathematics:
A: God says n = 42

Intelligent Designist Mathematics:
A: n = 42. The fact that we got the same answer as the Creationists doesn't mean we copied.

Flat Earth Mathematics:
A: There is no z.

charon wrote:

We're talking about the government taking the money of religious people and using it to teach that there is no god.

No, we're talking about the government taking the money of religious people and using it to teach that the only viable scientific theory is Darwin's. The kids can still believe whatever the hell they want to. But if you put a religious answer down on a science test, it'll be marked as incorrect. Because it's not scientific.

Last edited by The New Guy (2005-02-24 11:24 am)

Pro_ wrote:

I dont know, I don't even think it is possible to know the 'truth', and the difference between the tooth fairy and god, is that the kid can test the existence of the tooth fairy if (s)he so desires.  Starting a child with fundamentalism as the only filter the child has for looking at the world, you are telling the chld there is no reason to doubt anything the kid already believes, because everything else is a deception and a lie.   I think willfull omission of information is lying, especially to children.  That makes a lot of fundamentalist christians hypocrites.

Children will almost always trust their parents until they have a reason not to.  Taking advantage of that innocent trust to get your child to close their mind to other possibilities is IMO, just plain wrong.

I think it is important for parents to teach kids what is "bad" and "good," "true" and "untrue," and I believe that these decisions are best made by parents. Religious or not, that will eventually come down to a subjective filter, so therefore, asserting that a religious filter is "close minded" is a "close minded" assertion in that it assumes that an irreligious filter is more desirable or more "truthful."

I am proposing Philosophy as a required elementary level course, IMO, kids need to know the nature of belief.

Pro_ wrote:

teaching in a secular manner is not teaching kids to become atheist.

I know, I was posing a hypothetical.  On the other hand, "teaching in a secular manner" inevitably tramples some religious beliefs.

Pro_ wrote:

if something you are taught at school contradicts something you are taught at church or home, it is YOUR responsibilty to study further and resolve the conflict.  It is your school's responsibility to teach the truth to the best of ability and knowledge, not to skip over the tidbits not everyone agrees with.  Every thing you are taught should be able to be backed up with a place o get more information on the suject.

More or less, I agree with you--except for the fact that we're talking about schools that are run by government.  That runs into problems that don't apply to schooling in the abstract.  Schooling in the abstract doesn't involved the compelled taxpayer support, nor the symbolic government support, nor the compelled attendance, that is involved in public schooling.

Charon, are you saying religious beliefs are in a way, alive?  An entity of their own?

it does not really matter if the belief dies, it will just mean that the government wasn't trying hard enough to kill it.

(I have no doubt that if it was the intention of the government to limit the disemination of information in the hopes of smothering a point of view, that the subversive status of that idea would grant an immense following.)