Posted on 08/25/2008 4:20:50 AM PDT by Soliton
In June, Governor Brad Henry vetoed the “Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act,” a piece of legislature authored by Sen. James Williamson and infamous fundamentalist Rep. Sally Kern.
If passed, this bill would have, among other things, guaranteed that “students may express their beliefs about religion in homework, artwork and other written and oral assignments free from discrimination based on the religious content of their submissions.”
You read that correctly.
Answer on a test that the universe began 6,000 years ago with a few words from the mouth of an invisible, magical entity rather than 13.73 billion years ago with the expansion of energy from gravitational singularity? A-plus!
So it might have been if Gov. Henry hadn’t interceded. I’d like to tell Henry: Thank you from the bottom of my heart, and God bless you.
And to those of you who weren’t kicking up a fuss about the bill or at least complaining about it on your blogs: What were you thinking?
This isn’t the first time Kern and those like her have tried to insinuate superstitious nonsense into the curriculum of our state’s children, and it certainly won’t be the last.
Some of you may be too busy to follow each shot fired in the battle between the proponents of intelligent design the nom de guerre behind which creationism usually hides when its proponents seek to incorporate it into educational curricula — and its detractors.
(Excerpt) Read more at oudaily.com ...
Do you believe in socialized health care as well? If not, why the difference?
If you have only fundamentalist schools that exposure to verifiable knowledge is missing entirely. I do not consider that a worthy goal.
Are you saying that the government, rather than a child's parents should make the decisions as to what the children are taught?
“Anything that would lead to educational Balkanism should be discouraged.”
Balkanism primarilly occurs from:
1. Islamo-facists
2. A nation with multiple languages.
A variety of education would primarilly be motivated by parents who want their kids ready for the workplace. Teaching Christian or Jewish values will lead to more harmony — not less. To think that most US religious schools would cause Balkanism is laughable. I mean get serious: kids shooting each other down over the evolution debate?
“Science offers verifiable knowledge; religion does not.”
Some science does. And some science is nothing but leftist hogwash.
” ... extreme religious fundamentalism, is akin to child abuse. ... “
Oooh. Can you make religious schools sound more spooky please?
“If you have only fundamentalist schools that exposure to verifiable knowledge is missing entirely. I do not consider that a worthy goal.”
Competition leads to fundamentalism? It sounds as though you are scared of most religious parents. Do you think the drop in America’s violence has anything to do with our public school system? I believe it’s because of American parents. And note that with the flood of undocumented foreign criminals, we still are enjoying a drop in violence. Such fear appears irrational to me.
Fundamentalist doctrine does not belong in schools
***I agree. And the fundamentalists of scientism have been pushing their agenda for too long and too hard. This new religion needs to be dealt with as a religion in our society. Naturally, from my interactions with you I know that you will not agree with me. But your dishonesty in the past brings up the question over & over again why you have such disdain for the science behind historicity but uphold the science surrounding origins.
Here goes another Flame war!
***That was why I went to the trouble of getting the scientism tag accepted as an ecumenical tag under the religious moderator’s guidelines, so that we could all have more polite discussion. So far, the only folks who’ve been asked to leave such threads by the moderator have all been evolutionists.
Very good points. It seems to me that if everyone took a mind-your-own-business approach to things and didn’t care what Johnny down the street was taught, arguments like these would not be necessary. But unfortunately we have too many people, on both sides, who feel they have to stick their noses into other people’s lives.
The longest nose bends left.
Even when I was an evolutionist I believed in school choice. I wish the discussion could stop there. Choice is freedom. Freedom is superior to tyranny. But no, that’s not enough. OK. Looking deeper.
Currently, I know enough to realise that I don’t know what to believe about our origins, and frankly, I’m Devo. “Are we not men?” Our origins are about as important to me as what color baby booties I had. Science tries to disprove the Bible. That’s why so much energy is driven behind the evolution debate.
What most evolutionists don’t get is that they will never prove the Bible is a fairy tale. They might find a few apparent inconsistencies. But there is too much evidence that backs up the miracle of the Bible to ever completely discredit it. On a more pragmatic level, the Bible does tremendous good and little harm results from those who misread it.
Back to the real debate:
How anyone can think he’s able to twist around ‘choice’ to mean ‘fundamentalism’ and ‘child abuse’, well, such a guy can try. But it’s deception. Choice is choice. Child abuse is child abuse. And slander is slander.
I could have totally written that. I think that's the reason I may come off as a jerk to the people on these threads. It just boggles my mind that people give a darn about this so much, and I tend to be condescending when stating this. It takes all kinds, I suppose.
Well there is the problem....they often do take their kids to the churches who teach them that Christ is a living faith to be lived and taught no matter what the circumstances....another words a non compartmentalized world view.
These kids then enter a school system which tells them that they can have any sort of self, non compartmentalized world view they want except to express ideas about faith and Jesus Christ;that is compartmentalization of thought and situational ethics. They end up not only mistrusting religion which doesn’t seem to be “scientific” but they also end up not developing a true respect for science because the way the schools teach it strips the humanity from the human...science offers no hope...just a certain enoxorable philosphy that all things lead to entropy and chaos. Our secular schools create “men without chests”! And every-one wonders why our schools are failing??!!
In the end it will always be about faith vs materialism...trite little comments about tax dollars don’t even begin to define the depth of the conflict.
Could you give me an example please?
Then why not send their kids to private school?
“The educational system of Jesus was rooted in an utterly different approach: living in and with a community, so that theology was not only taught but also lived in the context of community prayer. Jesus’ educational system is not objective in the least—it is decidedly not interested in knowledge that helps us remain unbiased and neutral about life. Instead, it is profoundly subjective, that is, concerned with creating an irrational loyalty to Jesus and over-the-top concern for others. It is not the mind that is the center of attention but the whole person—mind, body, and spirit—and the whole person in community.
This type of education is costly in other ways. My wife and I supplemented our children’s Sunday school by encouraging their participation in Christian summer camps, running anywhere from two to eight weeks in length. These intense experiences can transform people for a simple reason—they imitate the Jesus model of education outlined above. But such camps are not cheap, and I have sometimes been sorely tempted to tell my kids to skip them and other similar experiences.
I need to be regularly reminded that the cost of discipleship is not paid just by people who suffer persecution. For people like me, it costs money (maybe even helping other families send their kids to camp!). And it costs time. And vulnerability. In the life of faith, we certainly need classrooms and curriculum. But we especially need community, where two or three are gathered to work out their education in Jesus—face to face, so we shall know more fully, even as we have already been fully known.”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/122-43.0.html?start=2
“The educational system of Jesus was rooted in an utterly different approach: living in and with a community, so that theology was not only taught but also lived in the context of community prayer. Jesus’ educational system is not objective in the least—it is decidedly not interested in knowledge that helps us remain unbiased and neutral about life. Instead, it is profoundly subjective, that is, concerned with creating an irrational loyalty to Jesus and over-the-top concern for others. It is not the mind that is the center of attention but the whole person—mind, body, and spirit—and the whole person in community.
This type of education is costly in other ways. My wife and I supplemented our children’s Sunday school by encouraging their participation in Christian summer camps, running anywhere from two to eight weeks in length. These intense experiences can transform people for a simple reason—they imitate the Jesus model of education outlined above. But such camps are not cheap, and I have sometimes been sorely tempted to tell my kids to skip them and other similar experiences.
I need to be regularly reminded that the cost of discipleship is not paid just by people who suffer persecution. For people like me, it costs money (maybe even helping other families send their kids to camp!). And it costs time. And vulnerability. In the life of faith, we certainly need classrooms and curriculum. But we especially need community, where two or three are gathered to work out their education in Jesus—face to face, so we shall know more fully, even as we have already been fully known.”
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/122-43.0.html?start=2
Nothing's stopping you from using scripture in your child's education.
Just don't ask me to let you use my tax dollars to do so.
Unfortunately, the taxes people are forced to pay to send EVERYBODY’s kids to the govt/NEA schools for indoctrination leave many or most with insufficient funds to send their own kids to any sort of a real school. Evoloserism is just one facet of it; the ultimate goal is to turn the entire universe into one gigantic demokkkrat voting block.
That's just an excuse. I moved states so my kids could go to good schools. I drive a 10 year old car so I can pay for my son's college. Too many people put themselves before their children.
Your kids go to private or public schools?
No, I moved from Florida to a suburb of Pittsburgh known for its schools. We weren't able to sell our house in Florida so we ended up renting for seven years right on the edge of the playground of the elementary school. I gave up golf and other silly things so my kids had the best chance possible.
Normal in may parts of America over the last few decades has been seeing public schools spending 7K - 12K/kid/year while doing little more than teaching the kids to loot and pillage while Christian schools next door in buildings abandoned by the public system do a perfectly good job educating the kids on a third of that and in the occasional odd case like the Fairfax or Montgomery county schools in the D.C. area which are still halfway functional, you have to ask at what cost? If they're really doing no more than spending twice or three times what a private actor would spend doing the same job, then half to two thirds of that money ought to be being saved for kids' college educations.
You have experts like John Gatto basically claiming that many if not most kids would be better off being raised by chimpanzees in the jungle like Tarzan than attending public schools and, near as I can tell, any useful purpose the things ever served is water gone over the dam long since. We'd be better off without them.
That would, of course, amongst other things, end the debate about evolution or religion in schools since parents would simply choose schools for their own kids. The present debate assumes a quasi-socialist world as an axiom.
Congratulations! You have the new record for the most words without a single fact.
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