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Member (Idle past 1435 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Separation of Church and State | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
It shows that they didn't see it as UnConstitutional.
They didn't see slavery as unconstitutional, either. This message has been edited by nwr, 12-04-2005 01:48 PM
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
England has a head of State that is head of the official established Church, and many things one would expect to see in a theocracy, but it is not ruled by the clergy.
The head of state is a figurehead with no real authority.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
I don't think the government should have anything to do with school period.
Your mistake. There are public schools because an educated society is a far better society.
It seems to me that public schools encroach on our freedoms, ...
Not at all. Families are free to make private arrangements for educating their children, if they so prefer.
.., waste money in bureaucracy, ...
Without public schools, you would have far higher crime rates. Have you ever checked the cost of the bureaucracy in the criminal justice system?
and provide a venue for state controlled indoctrination (be it religious or other).
There shouldn't be any state controlled indoctrination. That's what "separation of church and state" is all about.
So let's just abolish public school altogether. Anyone else in favor of that?
Terrible, terrible idea.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Furthermore, IMO, school should not be a place devoid of God. But in public schools, God must be purged. The complete removal of God is a form of indoctrination in itself: an indoctrination of secularism.
I think you are seriously mistaken. There is no purging of God. If students want to discuss God between themselves, there is no restriction on that. What is not allowed, is for the teachers to advocate a particular religious view. There is no indoctrination in secularism. Such indoctrination would be advocacy, and is not allowed. There have been a few cases where schools have gone too far, and those are usually corrected. The situation is not at all what you describe.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
The indoctrination is IN secularism by the very fact that it is practiced, that religious instruction is verboten.
ROTFL Apparently your school did a poor job of teaching the meaning of "indoctrination." If the schools gave religious instruction, you would probably find evangelical children being taught catholic doctrine, and catholic children being taught mormon doctrine. Maybe we should try that for a while, so that people would begin to appreciate why we have that establishment clause in the first amendment. You can have religious instruction at home, in your church, at Sunday school. There is no restriction on that.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
I'm against the public schools, not for teaching any kind of religion in them.
Without public schools, our economy would degenerate into that of a third world country.
And indoctrination doesn't have to be intended. Look it up. Imbue is a synonym for instance.
I went through a secular public school (in Australia). It never caused any problems for my evangelical faith. If there was any imbuing of secularism, I surely did not notice it. AbE: When using "public school" above, I was using the American meaning of the term. That is, I was referring to a state school, not a private school. The private boarding schools were (probably still are) called "public schools" in Australia. This message has been edited by nwr, 12-14-2005 07:33 PM
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
quote:I suspect that WoundedKing was having a little fun. In Britain, the term "public school" means about the same as our "private school". I think they use "state school" to refer to an institution that we would call a public school.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
God was not expressly forbidden, no. But my teachers were afraid to say anything about God.
How do you know that your teachers were afraid? Maybe they were just using good judgement.
If you brought up God in class discussion, everyone would cringe a little inside.
Then I would say that most of the class were exercising good judgement.
If students want to discuss God between themselves, there is no restriction on that. That is just not done by and large. At my high school, there was a small group of us (as evangelicals) that held lunchtime and after school meetings. We would invite occasional speakers. Sometimes we showed Moody Bible institute films. Okay, this was in Australia. But I'm sure that this is possible in the U.S. There have been supreme court decisions that say that if a school recognizes a chess club, it must give equal treatment to an evangelical club (or any other student religious group).
I was not aware of how indoctrinated I was until I came to my private Christian university. I remember for the first couple of days of class I "cringed" inside everytime the teacher opened class with a prayer and devotional teaching.
Cringing was the right reaction. I'm sorry to hear that you have been deprived of a decent university education (and I am saying that with sincerity, not as a cheap shot).
If I have a bucket full of both red and blue m&m's and I take out all the blue one's before I pass them out, am I not advocating the red one's over the blue one's?
You are probably making a statement that you like the blue ones best, so you are keeping those for yourself.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Do you think a Christian can or should cordon off his walk with Christ from the rest of his life in the secular world?
Why should that be necessary. Was anything preventing you from saying a silent prayer at the start of each class? Was there any reason you could not do some Bible reading during your lunch hour?
That is precisely the reason the church in America is apostate. "Christians" are only so from 10:00 to 12:00 Sunday mornings.
If you are correct in that, then America is an atheist nation, wearing a make-believe Christian suit.
The church cannot function when it's limited to an hour of oratory and music once a week.
What is limiting the church to one hour per week? It seems to me that you should try a different church.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
quote:You should be cringing because the teacher is acting unprofessionally. To bring in something that is not part of the subject matter for the class, whether a political position or a religious statement, is unprofessional. By having a faculty restricted to people who are willing to act unprofessionally, your university has deprived you of exposure to the quality and diversity of scholars that should be part of a university education.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
The scare about the economy is just hysteria. Ridiculous. If anything the educational level would rise if Christians left the public schools.
You have just changed from "I'm against the public schools" in Message 76 to "Christians left the public schools." My comment on the economy had to do with not having public schools, resulting in a high illiteracy rate.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
that you would demand this of us and call the practice of our faith "unprofessional" simply illustrates exactly why Christians should get out of the public schools NOW.
That's plain silly. I did not call the practice of your faith unprofessional. But there is a proper time and place for prayers and preaching, and mathematics class (for example) is not that time and place.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Who determines what is "proper"?
The professors of mathematics decide what is professional for them acting within their profession. University professors decide what is professional for them. There is probably a code of ethics supported by the AAUP (American Assoc. of University Professors). I'm not denying that there may be something subjective about such codes. My point is that your university is, in effect, shutting out the majority of the profession from being on their faculty.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Although I have not served on a jury, I have great confidence that the jury is instructed to make their decisions specifically based on our written law.
I have been on a jury, and it isn't as you described it. The judge was well aware the jury could not be expected to be knowledgable in the fine points of the law. As a consequence, the judge was explicit about how to interpret the particular laws on which the case was based. The judge was also clear that the jury members may appeal to their experience in life, as attempt to reach a verdict. Presumably some of the jury members could be quite religious, and the experience in life of those members could have a religious component. Presumably the safeguard is that the jury should represent a cross section of the community. If a jury member brings up God's law, another jury member could challenge the relevance of that.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
When we took prayer out of the schools, we made atheism a religion, and a national one at that.
You have that wrong. Prayer was not taken out of the schools. You can still pray privately in schools. And, according to Matt 6:6, private prayer is what you should be using anyway.
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