Randman's call for nonSecular education...

I'm not keeping up with the details of this topic, but to me your persistent theme seems to be doing something in the public schools that actually should be done in the students church. The public school is not a substitute for non-church attendance, or for the church's failure to properly cover issues.Moose

Why not have your church sponser an open to the public symposium on the history of your religion? They could even go so far as to sponser such symposiums on the history of other religions, and compare said histories of the various religions?Moose {Edit - fixed typo}This message has been edited by minnemooseus, 11-16-2005 03:03 PM

Why not leave the bulk of education about the church up to the church, and leave the education about things other than the church up to the schools? Is the church unable to organize and present an in depth study of their history? Like I said before, sponser public symposiums about your religion, or even also about other religions.Which isn't to say that the schools can't present a light covering of religion in the context of history studies. In college, it might even be a heavy coverage. You really think it's the churches function to teach math, English, and science? Knowing history, including religious history, is certainly a good thing. He who doesn't know history, is doomed to repeat it. Seemingly, even if some do know history, they're still doomed to repeat it. I think that anything that you don't use, at least subliminally, tends to get forgotten. It's all relative to what is significant in your life. If you're using a language, you'll remember the language and probably learn even more as you go. Likewise, if you actually use a science. As a side note, I'll point out that much of the study of geology (my degree) is the study of history.In closing, I wish to stress the subliminal influences of a diverse education. I think people often use a lot of what they have learned (from whatever source) without realizing it.Moose

Ben, I can see why you come to that conclusion. I think I expressed my views poorly in message 140, and ended up saying something I didn't intend to say (and got my first POTM nomination in the process). I was intending to talk about religious and church history and their influences on the bigger picture of history, not some variety of religious indoctrination.Apparently I was subconciously aware of that messages shortcomings - about 1/2 hour later I posted message 142
[fixed spelling errors in quotation]
which I though was much better. It was followed up by message 148.It probably would take a very honest organization (church or otherwise) to accurately self-present it's history, ugly warts and all.Moose

In the final 4 years of my pre-college education I had 1 or 2 (don't recall for sure) semesters of U.S. history, 1 semester of Russian history, and 1 semester of Soviet Union history (semester=1/2 year, 5 one hour classes per week). Perhaps also a year of world history would have been a good thing, but such was not offered where I went to school.I'm not against some coverage of religious history, in the context of such history classes, and I indicated such in a previous message. But how much time is available to be devoted to such?Are you proposing a specific class covering the religious history of the U.S. (for those in the U.S.) and the rest of the world?Moose

Keeping government out of the affairs of religion includes keeping religion out of the affairs of government. If you allow religion to be an influence on government, then government will start to be an influence on religion.Which isn't to say that people of religion can't have their input into the government. For example, one can advocate that murder should be against the law because such is good for society as a whole, but you shouldn't be advocating that murder should be against the law because it is against one of the 10 commandments.Moose