Separation of Church and State

[sollunaestrella]

Buddy said:

Yes, you may have to learn it, but you don't have to believe it. No one's asking you to believe anything - only to understand the concept. In truth, whether or not you believe it shouldn't come into play. Not believeing it doesn't - or at least, shouldn't - disable you from learning it.

So why are you against creationism being taught? You don't have to believe, that, either. You just have to "understand the concept." School is about education so that we can learn about other cultures and people, and you can't argue that creationism isn't a part of that just as evolution is.

Buddy said:

We can't even afford school books for every child. How are we supposed to open schools for every different religion? Furthermore, that would simply be a horrible idea, even if it were possible.

All we'd be doing is seperating people by religion, placing them into classes (not saying these classes would unequal to each other, but if we ever hope to have peace and coordination in this world, we can't be dividing up people by religion).

Why not? Obviously, different religions should have understanding and respect for each other, and those schools should teach about other religions. But what's wrong with it as long as they do that?

I'm not really for that sort of thing - it would just get too messy, not to mention there would be problems even within the religions about what the schools were teaching (such as liberal schools or conservative ones, all of that kind of thing). But people can have a strong bond with their own religious groups without a war breaking out. And what do you think we do when we go to church or a synagogue or a mosque?

Buddy said:

And yes, it would act as an "offical" religion. When we say Christian prayers, that's a way of saying "This is the prayer we choose to say. This is the religion we choose to accept and pray to."

That's not what Stal was talking about! He said he was asking for a time-slot for silent prayer - not necessarily Christian prayer, not necessarily Muslim prayer, not necessarily Hindu prayer - just a time for anyone to pray. Five minutes within the day that was silent and respectful of whatever Deity (or lack thereof) an individual chose to pray to.

At least... I think that's what he meant.

[ghostision]

Excuse me, but evolution is NOT a doctrine of atheism. I had a friend who didn't have a religion, but didn't believe in evolution either, I don't think she really cared how we got here anyway. It's not an either or sort of thing, not either you believe in God, or you believe in Evolution, evolution is simply a scientific theory. The only belief (or lack therof) that all atheists have in common, is disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods. If you're Christian, you obviously have to believe in God, but if you're an atheist, where in the definition of atheism does it say, "Disbelief in any gods, and belief in Evolution?" All the branches of Christianity believe in God and Jesus, but that doesn't mean Catholics believe in the Book of Mormon.

Imagine, with all the sue-happy people these days, if you added a class about, lets say, Christianity, then some other religion would file a suit saying that the state is endorsing a religion. Then the school would have to make a class about that too. And then another would sue, and eventually, schools would be teaching nothing but religion, math, and English. Sound improbable?
Yes, but even if all of the lawsuits didn't succeed, it would have been a huge waste of money and time, and stir up a lot of bad feeling. Best to leave things as they are, if you want to go study religion, go to a private school.

And I agree with Smiley.

[sollunaestrella]

ghostision said:

Imagine, with all the sue-happy people these days, if you added a class about, lets say, Christianity, then some other religion would file a suit saying that the state is endorsing a religion. Then the school would have to make a class about that too. And then another would sue, and eventually, schools would be teaching nothing but religion, math, and English. Sound improbable?
Yes, but even if all of the lawsuits didn't succeed, it would have been a huge waste of money and time, and stir up a lot of bad feeling. Best to leave things as they are, if you want to go study religion, go to a private school.

Who's wanting a class about it?

Normally, different religions are covered in Social Studies classes (although many have biases, as Crystal pointed out a while ago), and that's okay. I didn't hear anything about a Christianity class.

As for the creationism thing - I don't care if I'm taught evolution as long as it isn't taught to me as a fact. And it was taught to me as a fact, without spending so much as five minutes on any other alternative beliefs. Obviously, there has been evidence, but it's still a theory. We know for a fact that the Earth does revolve around the sun because humans have studied it closely and observed it firsthand. We as humans will never know about evolution unless some heavenly creature comes down and tells us that it really happened.

As for private schools... well, many people can't afford it. My family probably couldn't at this time.

[ghostision]

I'm using the class thing as an example of what may happen if they incorporated religion into public schools.

Don't they have to print "evolution is a theory, not a fact" into new textbooks now?

EDIT: Actually, for the class thing, I was also trying to argue Stal's school for every religion thing:

Yuki said:

As for the adoption of religion, it wouldn't be the official religion of the country. Think of it this way...they could also set up schools with muslim teachings. They could set up public schools with athiest teachings. You would be able to go to a government funded school with faiths being taught. And it wouldn't be imposed on anyone.

but it got messed up somewhere, probably because I have the memory of a goldfish, but anyway, the concept is the same, and if you were to build an individual school for every single religion, that'd probably take up the whole entire budget for your state. How many religions are there in the world? Far more than there are schools for every area. And a lot of the smaller religions would have about five people for every school, but if the government didn't build it, they could file for discrimination.

[Oily]

I like the way my school does it. We cover teachings of different religions, including Christianity, in a RE lesson. So we get to know Creationism as an aspect of a certain religion. In Biology textbooks, there's evolution, which is a scientific theory.

Evolution is a science - and many Christians believe in it too. Creationism is a belief. You don't have to believe in any aspect of evolution to understand the theory. However, the theory of creationism requires room for a belief in a god. Plus, evolution is underpinned by much scientific study. I personally don't think creationism has a lot of proof going for it - just a question of your belief.

I did try to get out of Physics by saying my religion forbade gravity, instead believing in tiny ants with tongs hanging onto our feet, and believed the planets revolved around me. Sadly, I still had to do my Physics exam
The fact is schools do have to teach some form of science, regardless of individual beliefs.

I wish our school did a minute's silence rather than a school led prayer. I could just sit there and think over the day ahead instead of praying, after all.

We have private religious schools, and some state funded religious schools. It only causes segregation, really, and makes little impact. Plus, some people lie anyway to get into the better state schools I think there should be allowances made for different religions within mainstream schools though.

[Stal]

I think SLE pretty much said all I needed to.

And Buddy, thanks for reminding me I intended to stay out of this. If anyone wants to know why I'm withdrawing, it's simple...

I need to learn to keep my mouth shut and ignore topics I disagree with. If I don't learn to do so, I will get myself in trouble when I go off to college. Do we really want that? No...so in the long run, it's best for me to not debate. But I'm not conceding my points...

[mushroom]

SLE said:

Why not? Obviously, different religions should have understanding and respect for each other, and those schools should teach about other religions. But what's wrong with it as long as they do that?

What happened to Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka? Separate public school facilities are inherently unequal.

And I wouldn't be against five minutes of silence, except that you can fit five minutes of silence into a day on your own without needing the school to provide it. You can sit at home for five minutes in silence if you want to; you just have to set your alarm five minutes early. You can go sit in the bathroom at lunch for five silent minutes if you really want them to occur at school. Five minutes is not hard to fit into a day if you want it, but it's a long time to sit doing nothing and it has nothing to do with school.

Also, as has been previously mentioned, creationism isn't a scientific theory. How do you teach it in school? "Some religions believe a conscious entity created the world and all organisms in it exactly as they appeared at the beginning of human history." That's not much of a chapter, but there's nothing else about it to study unless you go into the different creation myths, which have nothing to do with biology class.

Evolution's full name as "evolutionary theory" doesn't mean anything. "Atomic theory" is the idea that matter is composed of fundamental units called atoms. "Cell theory" is the idea that the cell is the fundamental unit of an organism. Evolution's status as a theory doesn't mean that it isn't accepted by scientists.

Yuki said:

I need to learn to keep my mouth shut and ignore topics I disagree with. If I don't learn to do so, I will get myself in trouble when I go off to college. Do we really want that? No...so in the long run, it's best for me to not debate. But I'm not conceding my points...

The world can't progress if everyone keeps their mouth shut. I disagree with your ideas, but you're not unreasonable or insulting when you debate, so I can't and have no desire to object to you debating and don't understand why anyone else would.

Thank you for as much as you did participate in; I'm not conceding my points either, but the mental jousting was fun (at least from my point of view)

[Stal]

KKM -- The world will never return to the way it was or it should be...or at least not for awhile. Keeping my mouth shut in this debate means nothing in the long run, just as getting into it with my professors at college will not be advatageous to my college "career".

In fact, I'd say society is going to get much much worse than it is now. I say that based on my own Biblical and religious beliefs based on end time prophecies. So, yeah. I can't change prophecy, and there's no way it can be avoided, so yeah.

[Jessica Coconut]

Creationism. Evolutionism. You guys should check out my thread on the outrageous religous website. Worth a laugh. Or, if you're desperate, a change in beliefs too.

[Buddy]

Yuki said:

And Buddy, thanks for reminding me I intended to stay out of this. If anyone wants to know why I'm withdrawing, it's simple...

Whew! Thank God! I've been wanting to withdraw for two days now, but I didn't want to do it before you and look like a wimp or anything!

*is lame*