Religion in school

[painted wolf]

infact I will go so far as to say that when they talked about a religion they were talking about different Christian religions,

as well as Diesm, Humanism, and Atheism....

so then if they were talking about christians.. then the rest of us non-christians are out of luck is that it?

"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it." -- Benjamin Franklin, _Articles_Of_Belief_and_Acts_of_Religion_, Nov.20, 1728

"My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting [puritan] way. But I was scarce 15 when, after doubting by turns of several points as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation it self. Some books against deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at [Robert] Boyle’s lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough deist." -Benjamin Franklin

anyway... if you want your children to have religion in school then by all means send them to a religious school... I will send mine to a secular one and let them learn religion elcewhere...

wa:-do

ps... mr spinkles... I for one am greatful everyday for the freedoms that they so thoughtfully put in writing... Thank you for pointing that out :mrgreen:

 

[F_R_O_G]

Mr_Spinkles, I’m saying that the courts were wrong... what are you trying to say?

wolf, I can't prove that the founding fathers were Christian, but you also can't prove that they weren't. And so as before trying to debate the beliefs of the founding fathers is like trying to figure out the exact temperature with only your hand. (Actually it's harder because you have to figure out what it was 250 years ago)

 

[painted wolf]

I have it in thier own writing that some of them were not christian... How is that not proof?

anyway... their already exists a system of religious educaion... I don't see why we have to expand this system to include the secular system.

you have given no addiquite reasoning for this..

wa:-do

 

[Runt]

MOST of them framers were Christian, I will admit that... although there was actually one atheist and three deists, and one who later held Unitarian beliefs (despite the fact that the UU church had not yet been created). However, they may have been primarily Christian, but they were not all the same KIND of Christian... and therefore had very different views on what a "Christian nation" should be. Therefore, they created the establishment clause so that NONE of them would be able to dictate what a "Christian nation" should be, and therefore eliminated the chance of this being a "Christian nation". However, Christian religious education was okay for a while, but as the religious demographics of the nation changed to being even LESS Christian, this no longer became desireable, because OTHER religions don't want have Christianity taught to their children in school.

Framers' Religions:

Congregationalist
Episcopalian
Dutch Reformed
Presbyterian
Deist
Quaker/Lutheran
Quaker/Episcopalian
Roman Catholic
Methodist
Lutheran
Atheist

 

[F_R_O_G]

Exactly, there is no such thing as the Christian belief, but they all believed there is a god, but there is one, as you say runt that may or may not believe there’s a god, I really don't know. The one that could be an atheist and one other guy or two I think believed that Jesus was just another person... but even then, they all agreed that there are certain absolute truths and something has them.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

An atheist does not believe there are certain and absolute truths and something has them.

 

[painted wolf]

wich is why Jesus is never mentioned....

not everyone there believed in him as 'god' or 'saviour'...

wich is why such freedoms of religion were enshrined in the formation of the government.

wa:-do

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Also-- FROG, do you really think the courts were wrong when they decided the Bill of Rights should gaurantee those rights against the state as well as federal government?

States should be able to censor your freedom of speech and religion?

States should be able to convict you without due process or a grand jury?

States should be able to try you twice for the same crime (double jeopardy)?

States should be able to search and seize things of yours unreasonably?

States should be able to stop you from assembling peacefully or petitioning the government?

And that's not even all of them...

 

[Runt]

Actually, it wasn't just a court case that applied the Bill of Rights to the states. It was actually the 14th ammendment, which started the Incorporation Doctrine of implying the Bill of Rights to the states.

Amendment XIV, Section 1: "All persons born or nationalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, libery, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

This implies the First Amendment to the states once and for all. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

 

[VictorP]

i think religion in schools is just fine. maybe it could be taught as an elective history class or something. i mean, religion is very prominent in today's society, and it would only help kids to be more knowledgeable and cultured.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

I agree with you VictorP, but I think FROG is proposing more religion in school than just freely-chosen electives (I think!).

 

[F_R_O_G]

I just don't see how to federal government has any bissness in school... it's up to the states. And a classroom that teaches there are morals and absolutes is not restricting anyone’s rights. it's up to each state to deside how to run there schools.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

Well, FROG, what would you change? Do you think the schools should teach a certain religion as part of the curriculum?

 

[F_R_O_G]

Two things have come to my attention in the last week

The first one being that the first amendment say that congress can not support a single religion, but it may support a religion as long as it gives support for other religions too. So for example a teacher could teach that there is a God since there are many, many religions that believe there’s a God.

The second point that has come to my attention is that churches first started the schools in America, and so for a very long time they were a government funded Christian organization. And they found nothing wrong with that.

see 14th ammendment it clearly talks about states rights and human rights being protected from bad state laws.
Section 1.

The fourteenth amendment only refers to the creation of a law; the state can’t get involved in anything that is not challenging its own laws. All three clauses in section one restrict the government from making laws. “No state shall make or enforce any law…”, “Nor shall any state deprive any person…”, and “Nor deny to any person…” The state can’t create any laws that would infringe on our free exercise of religion.

The pilgrims have everything to do with this they were the ones that made this country. No, most of them did not want to kill witches. Most of them were the ones that cried foul against the people that were after the "witches"

The constitution doesn't support atheism over everything else.... it supports freedom of religious practice as well as the freedom to not practice.

o, so them what are we arguing about? if the constitution supports "freedom of religious practice" then why can't practice my religion? believe it or not this is a Christian nation and for that reason we have freedom of religion.

then you are forcing a child to learn a bible verse and your augment is faulty...

how am I forcing someone to learn a bible verse? that makes no sense, plz explain.

no it makes it clear that government has no place to interfere... otherwise why would he have passed the same laws in the state constitution...
The importance of such letters is to give a full understanding of what they meant when they wrote the constitution... it shows their firm belief that religion should not be mandated by the governments.

huh? where? how?

your augment is silly... its just as easy to misrepresent and try to blurr the issue with falce cleverness.

good, I’m glad we agree, so lets try not to misquote anybody...

I'M NOT AN ATHIEST, I NEVER SAID I'M AN ATHIEST

o good, but I’m sure you can see that this was a quote from somewhere else and so I never meant to call you something your not. but just curious, what do you believe in?

whether you believe that the constitution is made by Christians or not, that constitution supports freedom of religion as we have already agreed.

no session of the C.C ever opened with prayer

um, I don't think anyone else reading this topic will agree so I’m not going to waste another min of my time.

 

[painted wolf]

you forget that there are many religions that don't believe in A god ... and so it would be against the 'fairness' and 'freedom of worship' to teach about 'god'....

they did find problems with churches running schools wich is why we now have the current public education system... if there was no problem with solely chuch run schools then why would they bother to make non-church schools?

I'm not saying you cant practice... but I dont think that 'practice' should include prostilitzing children in the protected learning environment of the school...

by using bible quotes in classes you expect the child to know the context of the quote...ie that it is bliblical and further as it is being used in a classroom-learning environment then the implyed obligation of the student is to understand the quote and if possible use it themselves....

I'm a native american... and I try as much as I am able to follow the ways of my ancestors...

"Trouble no one about thier religion; respect others in thier view and demand that they respect yours." -Tecumseh

wa:-do

 

[F_R_O_G]

Congress can't make AN establishment... meaning it can't make one and only one establishment. and that’s just dealing with separation of church and congress, there is nothing in the constitution that says that there is a separation of church and state.

what happened with church schools is they were not getting enough money for education so the government decided to step in and give these Christian churches money to run the schools, slowly after a few decades the government took responsibility of the schools that were stated by churches. now I understand that right now the states control the schools but back then there seamed to be no problem with church and state working together.

in school and you start learning about Gorge Washington it would be impossible to have a complete education about him without taking about what he believes because that influenced almost all of his desitions. and if you talk about what he believes someone would have to tell them how he came to what he believes. I’m not saying there should be a class that teaches only one religion but that you can't leave things out if they are related to the curriculum.

let me explain what I believe, we should not have one government run religion and we should not have a religion that runs the government, like in England during the 1700s. but we should be able to have limited involvement from either side to the other side if and only if it has reference to what is already being done.

 

[painted wolf]

now your trying to hard to read into it... I don't think the founders were being so obtuse when they wrote it.... if that was what they wanted they would have stated it plainly and not left it for us to argue the definition of AN...

also what happined is that they realized that there were more than just christians in america... very early on there were jews and Diests and Humanist and hosts of other 'non christian' religions.
Eventually the very idea of church run education began to loose its luster... so much so that the major universities began to secularize and get rid of thier religious restrictions...

While I don't disagree with mentioning that people in history had particular religous beliefs, I don't think that should be an excuse for teaching thier respective religions. Remember that Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were both Diests... shall we teach Diesm? What about John Adams?
What is important about the faiths of our 'founding fathers' is that they were intelligent enough to set aside thier faith differences in order to make 'a more perfect union'....

I believe that we have the best of the limited involvement... ie, churches don't have any say in the running of government.. but thier followers can say whatever they want and freely run for office.

if religion is such a non power today then why do politicians spend so much time courting them?
Look at the 'religious right' and the 'christian coalition'....

wa:-do

 

[F_R_O_G]

I’m not readying anything into it, don't you think that if they didn't want any religion at all to be recognized they would have said "congress shale make no law respecting any establishment of religion" I think they chose there words very carefully and meant EXSACTULY what they said. besides the fact is it says congress and not state...

Ben Franklin "if a sparrow can not fall without Gods notice, can a nation rise without his aid" many of the founding fathers thought there was a God... I not saying we should teach a specific set of beliefs but there are many people who try to fallow one book but have different beliefs from the same book. infact I will go so far as to say that when they talked about a religion they were talking about different Christian religions, but I don't think I have a strong augment for that, though I have looked at everything and found it to be true.

 

[Mr Spinkles]

>>"congress shale make no law respecting any establishment of religion" I think they chose there words very carefully and meant EXSACTULY what they said. <<

EXACTLY what they said? And what "exactly" did they mean by "no law respecting any establishment of religion"? There is a lot of room for interpretation here, which is what the Framers intended (see also the vague language with which they write the rest of the Bill of Rights- what exactly defines a search and seizure as "unreasonable" anyway?)

>>besides the fact is it says congress and not state... <<

This is the first ammendment of the Bill of Rights, which has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to apply to states and the federal government alike.

And isn't it good that this applies to state as well as federal government? Aren't you glad, after all, that NO level of government can restrict your freedom of religion/speech/press, conduct unreasonable searches and seizures, deny you a fair and speedy trial or a state-appointed lawyer, or try you twice for the same crime?

 

[painted wolf]

infact I will go so far as to say that when they talked about a religion they were talking about different Christian religions,

as well as Diesm, Humanism, and Atheism....

so then if they were talking about christians.. then the rest of us non-christians are out of luck is that it?

"I cannot conceive otherwise than that He, the Infinite Father, expects or requires no worship or praise from us, but that He is even infinitely above it." -- Benjamin Franklin, _Articles_Of_Belief_and_Acts_of_Religion_, Nov.20, 1728

"My parents had early given me religious impressions, and brought me through my childhood piously in the dissenting [puritan] way. But I was scarce 15 when, after doubting by turns of several points as I found them disputed in the different books I read, I began to doubt of Revelation it self. Some books against deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at [Robert] Boyle’s lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough deist." -Benjamin Franklin

anyway... if you want your children to have religion in school then by all means send them to a religious school... I will send mine to a secular one and let them learn religion elcewhere...

wa:-do

ps... mr spinkles... I for one am greatful everyday for the freedoms that they so thoughtfully put in writing... Thank you for pointing that out :mrgreen: