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In God We Trust
I recently wrote a letter to the NC school board as well as our house representative and senators concerning a sign that is prominently displayed in my children’s public schools. The sign is a framed poster reading, “IN GOD WE TRUST.” The letter follows. I will be sure to post the replies I receive…
I am a resident of Lincoln County North Carolina. I have two school age children that attend public schools here. It has come to my attention that in both of my children’s schools there is a framed sign reading, “In God We Trust.� This slogan on display in a public institution of education highly offends me. Not only do such references foster oppression and discrimination they are unconstitutional.
I realize that this motto was adopted by congress in 1956, however this does not make it right or just. Please note this is also the congress that launched communism witch-hunts and trampled the civil rights of numerous people. This antiquated slogan symbolizes one of many injustices forced upon a religious and culturally diverse nation.
This nation is comprised of people from all walks of life. It is their right to live the life they seek free of religious subjugation. Our constitution grants us freedom of religion. Thomas Jefferson speaks eloquently of this freedom in respects to a wall between church and state. This separation of church and state is vital to the livelihood of our great nation.
Ask yourself how could this slogan on display in a public school affect a child of a non-Christian or Jewish upbringing? A Wiccan child prays to a Goddess, Buddhist honor Buddha, Muslims pray to Allah, we may even have those that still believe in Zeus or Thor. How about the family that does not believe in a deity? We cannot assume that all honor the God of Abraham or any other supernatural being. To ask them to do so goes against the very fundamentals this nation was built upon.
Schools are a place to nurture the mind, an institution that embraces all equally. The subject of God and religion is a private matter to be discussed in the confines of one’s home or religious institution. Human history is deeply scarred and stained with blood shed in the name of God and religion. The issue of religion, forced worship and subjugation are among the deepest rifts in the fabric of this nation. To include such a volatile and potentially oppressive subject in our educational system is doing children and this nation a deep disservice. Our government and all government operated institutions are supposed to be secular so that Americans can be theist or not with out fear of oppression and discrimination.
It is time to step up correct the wrongs that have been visited upon this nation and its constitution. This is our home; it is enriched by diversity and opportunity. Please don’t take this for granted. We need to learn to respect one another and to keep our religious dogmas out of public schools and other government run institutions in order to maintain our rights and liberties and create an environment in which we all can flourish. These signs need to be removed from our schools for the sake of freedom. God does not belong in our schools any more than the government belongs in our churches.
on July 21st, 2007 at 6:02 am
Well said, and good luck to you. I suspect that if you meet any serious resistence it will come from a few fundies on the school board.
You know, you are actually very lucky to have an education system as secular as yours is, even taking breaches like this into account. Here in England every single state school has daily acts of worship, and oodles of schools are actually faith schools. There is no sign of this dangerous and evil anachronism coming to an end anytime soon despite the best efforts of the National Secular Society and others. This is one area in which I really do envy you folks in the States. It is definitely worth fighting for.
All the best!
Tim
on July 21st, 2007 at 9:42 am
I applaud your efforts. Unfortunately, I think that courts have already established legal precedent that this is not in fact unconstitutional (although it seems like it should be). From what I recall, the legal argument is that this phrase has lost any true religious meaning through its co-opting by our secular government. Yeah, doesn’t make much sense to me either, but I am fairly sure I’ve read that recently.
Even if I am right on this point, I think your effort is worthwhile because it will hopefully provoke some thought.
on July 22nd, 2007 at 8:08 am
Well said, and thanks for standing up.
on July 22nd, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Hi Tim.
“Here in England, every single state school has daily acts of worship”.
I was born and bred in England, and I lived there for forty years.
I did every second of my schooling in state schools in England.
What you have stated as an apparent fact is not, actually, true.
None of the state schools I attended in England ever had a daily act of worship.
I have just been checking with some friends whose children currently attend state schools in England, and they have no knowledge at all of any daily act of worship.
Methinks it would be helpful if you were to retract a statement which is patently untrue, or (to be charitable) greatly exaggerated.
With thanks ~ Stephen.
on July 23rd, 2007 at 9:07 am
Dear Stephen,
Well, I’m prepared to stand partially corrected, but I’m not going to make a complete climbdown on the point, for reasons I shall explain.
Firstly though, I will happily accept your claim that you never had to attend daily acts of worship at school, and that the friends over here you are in touch with are not aware that their children are doing anything of the sort either.
I suspect however that some of our differing perception over this may be to do with the way individual schools interpret the law. I’m trying to gauge what you’ve said against my own experiences, and what I know of the situation from other sources over here.
I would first ask you to read an item on the National Secular Society website here:
http://www.secularism.org.uk/governmentclimbdownonover-16ssch1.html
This is about the Society’s battle with the Government to continue to allow pupils of 16 years and over to opt out of both Religious Education and the act of collective worship on their own say-so (as opposed to requiring their parents to request their excusal). I draw your attention particularly to the third sentence in paragraph 1:
“At present, collective worship is mandatory in all schools, religious and otherwise, right up through sixth form colleges, unless parents specifically request their children to be excluded.�
Also, another article on the site here:
http://www.secularism.org.uk/derbysecularistslaunchcampaign1.html
Under the sub-heading ‘The role of religion in our school’ we are told:
“The 1996 Education Act imposes a legal obligation on the school to offer religious education and a daily act of religious worship, both “of a broadly Christian nature�.
Religious education and worship are not compulsory and parents have the right to choose whether or not they want their children to take part in either of them.�
As an aside, although this says they can choose whether they want to take part or not, this is an ‘opt out’ situation, rather than opt in. Remain silent and you get the RE and act of worship by default. I have a friend who is a Head of Science at a non-faith state secondary school in East Anglia and he confirms that the law requires a daily act of worship, and that this is something that Ofsted, the schools’ inspection body, make sure they are doing.
However, I think I know what lies behind the apparent contradiction of your experiences versus the situation I reported.
For starters, although the daily act of collective worship is law, it does not take the form of everybody being frogmarched down to the local church to sing hymns and bow their heads in prayer (not usually, anyway). Typically it is presented as the daily ‘assembly’ as we all used to call it. Undoubtedly most parent and indeed pupils know of it as such and are never even aware that this is supposedly a religious observance. Add to that the fact that there is also considerable staff indifference/apathy over the matter in many places, such that staff will frequently do the minimum they can get away with in terms of making assembly overtly ‘religious’ in any way. I suspect that since the wording of the Education Act apparently requires that the act of collective worship be ‘broadly’ Christian, many schools choose to interpret this as meaning that they must merely present some kind of vaguely western moral message in the assembly, and not make it any more blatant than that. Thus they can escape mentioning Jesus at all.
My own experiences as a pupil at state schools in England have been a mix of the different approaches. It was more blatantly religious when I was at infant school (5-7 years), with hymns sung in assembly, prayers, and religious stories told to us. We also put on a lot of religious plays too. At junior school (8-11 years) it was somewhere halfway between religious and secular. As for secondary school (12-16 years), I cannot recall the assemblies at all, so boring were they, although I suspect they were predominantly secular. We did have the Gideons in though, giving us each a bible. That I recall.
Thus I can well believe that you did not perceive yourself to be on the receiving end of collective worship in schools, and quite possibly many people still don’t (or, more likely, just don’t realise that’s what it is, so watered down has it become).
If a good many schools manage to squeeze out of it in any recognisable way, well, good. Your news makes me a little happier, Stephen. Nonetheless, to the best of my knowledge it is law, and it applies to every state school in the UK. All must have religious education. All must have a broadly Christian act of daily collective worship. Pupils under 16 may opt out if their parents request it. Pupils of 16 or over may opt themselves out.
This is still, in my view, an unacceptable situation. And the lackadaisical attitude that is thankfully taken to the whole subject in many schools still does not address those schools where it is more rigidly enforced, not to mention the problem of our many state schools that are now ‘faith’ schools. Roughly a third of them now, I believe. Some form of religious observance is still the rule in British schools, I’m afraid. It’s official.
I’d be only too delighted if you could show me I was wrong, Stephen. But I’m afraid I don’t think you have. Not completely, anyway. May it one day be otherwise.
Regards,
Tim
on July 25th, 2007 at 5:06 am
Hi Tim,
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
My. Oh. My. That sure is some elaborate giant smokescreen.
Shakespeare’s phrase comes immediately to mind;
“methinks he doth protest too much”.
Let’s play an interesting little game called Sticking To The Facts, rather than moving into the pseudo-political tactics of evasion, deflection, spin and bluster.
Fact is, you published a clear, unambiguous statement that “…in England, every single state school has daily acts of worship”.
Fact is, they do not (which is what I said in the first place).
Fact is, categorically, that is not the case.
Fact is, I am living proof of that, and living proof trumps legislation every time.
Fact is, I attended seven different state schools in different parts of England, and I am, therefore, reasonably qualified to comment.
Fact is, my brother, my sister-in-law, and my brother-in-law are all teachers at (different) state schools in England, and they are as baffled as I am by your statement. My brother used to be a Department Head, and my brother-in-law is a Deputy Head.
Furthermore, most of the schools I attended didn’t even bother with a daily assembly (of any kind, religious, secular or otherwise).
Fact is, in all my years of schooling (in seven different state schools in England), I was never once “frogmarched” into an assembly or a church (or anywhere else, for that matter), the dictionary definition of “frogmarch” being, “carry (prisoner) face downwards with four men each holding a limb”.
No-one I ever went to school with was ever frogmarched anywhere, by anyone (teacher, priest, rabbi or member of the public).
Yours is, therefore, an interesting and curious turn of phrase, and I can only suggest that if you actually know of any actual frogmarching actually taking place anywhere, whether in the name of religion, politics or sport, or whetever, you call the Police immediately.
Cordially, as ever ~ Stephen.
on July 28th, 2007 at 4:46 am
Hi Elaine,
“God does not belong in our schools…”
The problem might possibly be that you appear to be telling Christians that the God whose Presence lives within (The Holy Spirit) has (somehow!) to be left outside school boundaries.
This is not only dictatorial in the way that atheists seem to find deeply offensive, but next-to-impossible.
What, for example, is the believing Christian supposed to do in order to comply with your proposed mandate? Undergo surgery in order to remove the indwelling Presence of God the Spirit? Stay away from school? Die?
As none of those options are reasonable, practical, sensible or fair, it would appear that God cannot actually be barred from schools (or anywhere else) all the while His people are inhabited by the Holy Spirit.
What, then, would you suggest, if you wish to pursue your logic to a workable conclusion?
And yes… I am of course aware that God the Holy Spirit could not possibly be located within a Christian’s body, not even by the most competent surgeon. That does not in any way negate His presence or His indwelling. (That same surgeon would be hard pressed to locate and remove human emotions, but that doesn’t mean to say they don’t exist.)
Removing God from schools could (thankfully) prove to be a darn sight more difficult than you may have imagined. Probably more difficult than removing dust from the universe.
Cordially ~ Stephen.
on July 28th, 2007 at 9:24 am
You base your argument Stephen on the assumption that your God actually exists which would negate the belief in the other deities that Americans and others choose to worship. You are quick to point a finger at an atheist and make the accusation that atheist are dictatorial when in fact it is the quite dictatorial of the Christians to insist that their God hold a place of honor in a school that serves children of all religious and non-religious backgrounds.
You can take your Gods, Goddesses and whatever other idol you wish with you where ever you want. You can bow your head at any time and pray where ever and however you want. What you cannot do is force your dogmas on others, especially young impressionable children, When you insist that your God(s) are to be included in public schools or other publicly funded areas you are disrespecting the religious rights and liberties of others especially when others are not given the same courtesies. We can post the In God We Trust sign but then we are going to have to post all sorts of other fun signs that encompass all the people’s religions including those that don’t have one. I would like mine to say, “God is an imaginary friend for adults.” Seeing as how you seem to feel you have the right to display your ideology in a public school I should be granted the same right. Tell me Stephen how would you feel if my sign was posted in the front lobby of your kid’s school?
on July 28th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Hi Elaine,
A good point, well made. Thank you. I fully agree that equal rights should be the starting point, no doubt about it.
To be honest, it wouldn’t worry me in the slightest (not one iota) if the sign you are suggesting appeared in every school in the country. Fair’s fair, and I can see the logic of your feelings.
Where I beg to differ is with your suggestion (plea?) that we outlaw God from schools. Not only is that blatantly discriminatory, but also impossible. It doesn’t exactly smack of equal rights.
My question, therefore, becomes; why are you making what appears to be a case for discrimination against believers (i.e. the outlawing of God), when you (quite rightly) take umbrage at discrimination against non-believers? To be frank, you appear to be contradicting yourself.
Surely, if discrimination is wrong (and I agree that it is), then surely (by anyone’s logic) it is wrong to discriminate against believers by asking for “their” signs to be removed?
A much more positive and constructive approach would be to respect everyone’s right to freedom of thought and speech, rather than the negative and de-structive “anti” measures you seem to be suggesting.
Having said that, if you agree to leave “my” God signs in place, and I agree to erect “your” non-God signs, we could well end up with a plethora of signs suited to every shade of faith and non-faith…! That might create a problem of logistics, never mind anything else!
I take your point, and I am pleased to see you acknowledge God as a friend. That’s no bad basis for discussion.
Cordially ~ Stephen.
on July 28th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Dear Stephen,
Certainly I am perfectly willing to admit when I’ve got it wrong. Here we go then:
I hereby retract part of what I said in my original posting on this thread, the specific part that “every single state school has daily acts of worship”. I realise that I was completely mistaken about this; it is not true.
Happy?
As you say, living proof trumps legislation every time, and if not everybody is practising what the law is preaching in this particular instance then that is all to the good as far as I’m concerned. I mean, it’s not like I WANT daily acts of worship in school. Quite the opposite.
Anyway, I’m eating my helping of humble pie here.
Now, I’ll submit an amended statement instead:
In the UK the law requires every single state school to have a daily act of collective worship, which should be ‘broadly Christian in nature’. That is THE LAW. However, though many schools comply with this, a vast number of schools do not, and disregard the matter completely.
I’m pretty confident I’ve got that factually correct this time Steve, but please don’t bite my head off if I haven’t. Once again, you may want to check out the following links:
http://www.assemblies.org.uk/resources/r_law.php
http://www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/contentViewArticle.asp?article=1252
http://www.christian.org.uk/briefingpapers/reandschoolassemblies.htm
http://www.slamnet.org.uk/re/Assembly-web/the_law.htm
http://www.cre.org.uk/re.html
I also think that my use of ‘evil’ to describe this state of affairs in my original post was too strong, so I retract that as well, though I do still maintain that it is ‘dangerous’ and an ‘anachronism’.
Interesting that your relatives in the profession were ‘baffled by’ my statement, but fair enough. I accept that if they are not actually doing a religious assembly in their own schools they may well be puzzled by what I said. I’m a little surprised if they haven’t at least heard of the law in question even if they, like many, do not bother to observe it, especially the brother-in-law you say is a Deputy Head. But if nobody is paying any attention to that particular law I suppose it hardly matters.
I’m going to make a few other comments and observations about this exchange (the bits between you and me only).
Your tone and your attitude have been quite unpleasant throughout. I originally spoke up on this thread to show someone a bit of solidarity and make a comment comparing one aspect of the state education system in the US to that in the UK. I made an error in inferring that a legal requirement for all schools to perform daily acts of worship meant that all schools were actually doing so. This was an innocent mistake with nothing malicious about it, but no one would think so if all they had to go by was your response. I also thoughtlessly said ‘England’ when I should have said ‘the UK’.
On the strength of what I have experienced here you are abrupt, pedantic, and very literal-minded. You’re rude, Stephen.
It started small, I’ll admit.
You:
“Methinks it would be helpful if you were to retract a statement which is patently untrue, or (to be charitable) greatly exaggerated.”
It wasn’t ‘patently untrue’ to me. I thought I was right at the time, which is why I said it at all. I suppose that makes it a great exaggeration. That said, yes, I’ll happily accept your charity on the above. Very kind of you to offer it.
You:
“My. Oh. My. That sure is some elaborate giant smokescreen.”
You also refer to my response as “the pseudo-political tactics of evasion, deflection, spin and bluster.”
No, Stephen. What I did was consider what you had said. I did something called ‘presenting some evidence’ in the form of explaining in greater detail what I understood of the situation, and giving you some links to other data that I felt was relevant. That’s the right way to conduct a debate.
I also made an honest and equally courteous attempt to reconcile what I understood to be the case with what you were claiming.
Apparently this was objectionable to you. Well, my apologies if you feel I struck the wrong note there. Perhaps I just caught you on a bad day, eh? Twice.
You also miss some basic logic. In response to what your first post said, virtually the entirety of my second post constitutes an amendment of my original erroneous claim. This necessarily entails that I am retracting what I originally said. You apparently do not see this though, and demand your two pounds of flesh exactly the way you want it. Well, you just got it above, served up nice and tasty.
Then you start laying in. “Fact is … fact is … fact is … fact is ….”
Pedantic.
You:
“Fact is, they do not (which is what I said in the first place).
Fact is, categorically, that is not the case.”
These two statements mean the same thing, Stephen.
Repetitious. Very pedantic.
I’m idly curious about something. Since you clearly have a serious problem with the honest mistakes of others, did/will you give your brother-in-law the same kind of arse-chewing you’ve given me for his own honest mistake in not knowing about a law that relates directly to his profession, and if not, aren’t you playing double standards?
I’m not really bothered, actually. I merely pose the question.
You continue in the same vein … then it all goes wrong when you get to your final three paragraphs about my ‘frogmarching’ remark.
You:
“Fact is, in all my years of schooling (in seven different state schools in England), I was never once ‘frogmarched’ into an assembly or a church (or anywhere else, for that matter), the dictionary definition of ‘frogmarch’ being, “carry (prisoner) face downwards with four men each holding a limb”.”
You give me the definition of ‘frogmarch’ apparently thinking that the word was supposed to have been used literally. So, literal-minded too. It’s peculiar; you can quote Shakespeare appropriately, but do not recognise something as pedestrian as a figure of speech.
As your anger grows you make more mistakes, and they really are basic. Because, the biggest problem with your above statement and the two that followed it are that I NEVER SAID ANYBODY GOT FROGMARCHED ANYWHERE. I’m putting that in caps so that you’ll get it. Let’s play that ‘interesting game’ you suggested called ‘Sticking To The Facts’. Go and read again what I said, Stephen. You only have to scroll up this page a few inches. I said:
“ … it does NOT take the form of everybody being frogmarched down to the local church ….”
I’ve capitalised the NOT this time so you won’t miss it.
You go on about frogmarching some more in the next para, then again in the final one:
“Yours is, therefore, an interesting and curious turn of phrase, and I can only suggest that if you actually know of any actual frogmarching actually taking place anywhere, …”
You’re losing it, Steve. I make that three ‘actually/actuals’ within the space of seven words. Good going.
“ … whether in the name of religion, politics or sport, or whatever, you call the Police immediately.”
Bludgeoning and belligerent. And finally it’s over.
Well you cracked the nut you wanted to crack so you can put that sledgehammer away now. I have retracted the statement you disputed, and quite rightly, I’ll admit, so let’s turn to your sins now, and forgive me please if I ‘do a Stephen Poxon’ for a moment.
Fact is, you have issued a set of statements clearly implying that I said people WERE being ‘frogmarched’ somewhere.
Fact is, I did not.
Fact is, I actually said the exact opposite of this.
Fact is, your statements about me in those paragraphs are therefore blatantly dishonest in their implication and a complete misrepresentation of what I said.
Fact is, if I cannot be forgiven for my honest mistake over the degree to which a law on the British statute books is actually carried out then you surely have even less excuse for such a gross misrepresentation of a statement that you actually had right in front of your eyes.
Now, as I’m sure you are a man of integrity who will certainly hold himself to the same high standards of honesty that he holds others, I presume I can expect to see you post your own retraction/apology to me on this thread.
How about it? Are you also big enough to be small for a moment? Or are you going to engage in “the pseudo-political tactics of evasion, deflection, spin and bluster”?
One plate of Humble Pie coming across to your side of the table … here’s the knife … bon appetite ….
Tell you what, why don’t you and I just cool this down for a second, Stephen? Pour yourself a glass of your favourite relaxing alcoholic beverage, unwind for a moment, and I’ll do the same.
I will reiterate what I said at the start of this post, that I was wrong to say every state school in England actually has a daily act of collective worship, and I apologise for the mistake, though I do stick with my amended statement and the other things I said in the original post. I’m sorry if what I said wound you up so badly.
But you’ve really got to learn not to lose your rag.
Maybe I’m even wrong about you gradually losing your temper as you write, but that certainly is the impression you give from the way you wrote it. This kind of tone is no good to anything, the whole exchange gets more and more aggressive, any real value in the debate is lost and it just becomes a couple of egos banging away at each other, constantly escalating, with nobody prepared to back down.
And look what’s happened – this was supposed to be a thread about Elaine’s challenge to a particular appearance of the religious pledge in a school and it did seem to rather depart from that for a moment and spin way out of control. Your posts seem to be a model of bolshiness and my responses are almost entire books in their own right.
So I think I’ll quit this here and hand it back – hopefully – to what it was originally supposed to be about. I shall not post again on this thread, whatever is said hereafter, so you are welcome to have the last word if you want it. Shout at me, or not, I don’t mind. And I’ll be only too pleased to chat with you again providing we can both keep our cool a bit better next time.
Regards,
Tim
on August 2nd, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Hi Tim,
Sorry for the delay in responding. I’m in the process of moving house just now.
Yes, you are right, and I accept the points you make.
My unreserved apologies are offered, and I hope you will accept them and continue to blog.
Cordially ~ Stephen.
on August 6th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Well written letter. We are going through something similar in Ontario as the official opposition is proposing full funding for all religious schools in addition to the public and catholic systems. A step in the wrong direction I am sure you will agree as I would have just canceled the catholic funding. :)
Anyways i have added you blog to the links directory at SecularEarth.com. Keep up the good work.
on September 7th, 2007 at 11:05 pm
Quite a peculiar perspective.
Firstly, the criticism of obvious faults of the US Congress. Surely the government makes mistakes, but do these mistakes wipe out any possibility that positive or “good” judgements are possible? Mistakes have happened and will always happen because of the inherent, inescapable reality that man is flawed. Citing blemishes in our history as justification for bashing any policy that you don’t like is a weak argument. By this logic, I guess you would agree the New Deal and Great Society were bogus and evil, as well.
Next comes the “separation of church and state” argument, that has been stretched and redefined to something that it simply is not. The constitution requires that no religion be officially sponsored by the state. There is a big difference between a sign in a school, and officially sponsoring a religion (unless you are trying really really hard to eliminate every bit of religion from public display).
The generality that any child of different or no religious upbringing will be offended and oppressed by this signage proves to be another dishonesty. Is it possible this could occur? Yes, but I would argue only when a young mind is trained to react in this manner. I recall growing up with peers of diverse religious backgrounds, and nobody being offended, oppressed, or having their lives ruined by the class reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. In fact, I remember those who felt uncomfortable were not required to take part, and nobody harrassed them. Now, I’m sure one can argue that there have been instances of ridicule or bullying in this scenario. Once again, this would be a result of the imperfection of man, rather than some imaginary oppressive mandate of organized religion. And this is clearly the exception rather than the rule, unless you are on a crusade against religion.
There are religious people who will do evil things. There are atheists who will do evil things. And there’s many shades of gray in between who will do evil things. What do all of these diverse religious and non-religious groups have in common? They are all PEOPLE. People will do evil things. Removing signs won’t change that.
Understanding this reality uncovers the truth that the goal here is not to cease punishment inflicted by religion, but instead to eliminate religion completely. The only reason for this could be because religion makes explicit judgements of what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior, regardless of who is doing it. This scares some people to death.
This deep ideological belief is at the root of every cry for the abolishment of religion. This is yet another attempt, veiled with the sympathy-grabbing notion that atheists are being “held down by the man”.
on September 10th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Hi there,
Just one correction on your letter:
As far as I know… Muslims believe Allah and God are the same thing. Allah is just the Arabic word for God. Even Allah is used by Christian Arabs :)
Peace,
on October 30th, 2007 at 10:32 am
tsk tsk tsk ……. VERY FOOL!! ATHEIST !!!
you better study more… around YOU!!!
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity; There is none that doeth good.
Psalms 53:1
on December 10th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
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on December 19th, 2007 at 9:01 am
Some good points, and I can understand where you are coming from. The problem is, religion will influence people, and I guarantee you if a teacher is a Christian it will affect how they teach, not necessarily a bad thing. There’s a simple problem you have to understand. If that teacher has 30 or so students every year, and she doesn’t mention God or talk about it, how many of those students could have found the Truth if she had? Then you have the problem of getting fired after years of education due to a government misunderstanding of the phrase “separation of church and state”. This was meant to keep the government out of the business of the church, not to keep the church out of the government. We need a strong Christian government, this nation is falling apart, and people are free to worship whatever goddesses or god they believe in, but the fact is, there is only one true God.
on January 30th, 2008 at 9:25 am
I am never surprised anymore about the ugly shenigans in the schools. The proprietors of public schools are using them as the anbil to crush religion.
They are NOT–and have never been—value neutral on religion, morals, or any other social issue.
The best answer is to simply have the public school defunded.
The providers of shoes make sure that we all have shoes–even the poor–and a truly free market in this heavily unionized area would do the same for education.
Neutrality?
Tis to laugh.
on January 30th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Ever wonder why Christian parents often take the trouble to get the kids out of being good little Germans in the public schools.
“separation of church and state” and other non-Constitutional statements that were never encoded in law any more than Jefferson’s letters to ladyfriends can still be addressed, if we insist that this was TJ’s insight.
Letter to Danbury Baptists notwithstanding.
TJ was not antireligious. However, it IS instructive that this putative “separation” would have been at the Federal Level only.Elsewhere
TJ made commentary that the individual states could establish their own churches.
Eh? That’s right. He did. Not that I advocate that, but that history is more complex than we imagine sometimes. The simplist version given to the kiddies in the public schools leaves out vast swaths of information.
As a sardonic acquaintance of mine recently quipped: “Funny how a nation of knuckle dragging bible worshippers is also the most technologically and economically advanced nation in the world. The mother of all non sequiturs is that progress in science and engineering is hampered by religious belief. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting and the proof in this case is that a nation founded on the principle of inalienable God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is the best thing going. Judeo-Christian belief, whether true or not with regard to divine inspiration, is unquestionably a successful formula for the attainment of high living standards in a free society. I don’t know who said it but Never argue with success and if “ain’t broke” don’t fix it are apt here.”
If Christian belief were actually some kind of “barrier” to science or progress, it is hard to fathom WHY so many founders of modern science were true believers. Paracelsus, Boyle, and Newton wrote extensively on theology as well as science. Others, like Kepler and Helmont–filled their notebooks with prayers and praise and theological underpinnings. Of course there are dozens of others. Which speaking of underpinning soon brings us another point to make. Some historians in the overkill Moonbat Mode try and dismiss these theological insights as but irritating distractions from pure works. Or mere expediency or that “all were theocratic in those days.” False, but more to the point their search for God was the very reason for better understanding Him and thus getting into scientific endeavors in the first place. We find that belief in the God of the Bible WAS the UNDERPINNING of many of these men’s insights into a larger realm. It was more than mere expediency. Many of these early explorers of the Heavens used just that word and studied Creation on the assumption that God would have made an orderly Universe, not a Protean one where anything happens, and thus studied to better know the Creator of such wonders. In many if not most cases this was Prime Motivator One in the quest for greater material knowledge. They studied the Cosmos as a way to better understand God. It is the Christian conception of a God of Order that served as the foundation for almost all later scientific insights–and yet today we see that some of us here think you can by analogy build certain skyscrapers with the basement first and then rip that ideological basement from under the rest and hope it stands. Not so. In the few episodes often mentioned over and over to utter exhaustion, like Copernicus and Galileo, the truth is that on the whole the Church had little to say about the findings per se but the implications of such to the moral order. That might have been in the wrong, but the Church actually (in these cases) defaulted to the SECULAR authorities at the time who were used to a worldview of the Aristotelians, and thus decided to fight along side THAT side of the coin.
Galileo never repudiated his faith. Never. Not once. The positivist modernist approach to historical revisionism like that of JB claims that his religious defense was mere expediency, but the behavior cannot be explained this way if see his determination to fit both realms side by side.
The other difficult reality is that Christianity has been in the forefront of advocating a philosophical stance that bolstered scientific progress. As for the relationship between science and religion, as one Brit scholar has said: “Western science was the product of devoutly religious men and women honestly seeking the mind of God as expressed in His glorious creation: nature. In doing so, they utilized and perfected powerful philosophical and mathematical tools, the same tools that inform theology. Some of the most powerful and correct insights into the nature of the Cosmos came directly from their theological experience. And in spite of some curiosities of how they arrived at the conclusion, there are numerous examples of how science came out of the idea that the universe was made by a God of order who gave man dominion over it.
The great Roman Catholic scientist and philosopher, Pierre Duhem, considered that science was a truly inclusive endeavor as everyone, regardless of their philosophical, religious or cultural background, could join together in examining the objective world of nature. He was absolutely right: the greatest achievements of the early Islamic scientists amply demonstrate this. (note: Hey! PC warriors: paying attention here?) Within the Abbasid scientific enterprise, Muslims worked alongside Christians, Jews, Sabians and very early Deists, avant le parole, such as Rhazes, to create a truly awesome and magnificent scientific achievement, which has informed and fructified science and philosophy.”
It might also be instructive to peek at the writings of historian John Hedley Brook’s taxonomic rehash on the numerous ways in which Christianity influence the development of science. Long story made short: Christian teachings have served as presuppositions for the whole scientific enterprise in the first place. Despite the mythology of Galileo and the Church which suckers in people like Bronowski and some others with coloring book notions about history (which is always to be read in context—on the whole the Church was actually not so much upset with his scientific ideas but rather what it perceived as repudiation of Aristotelian philosophy, which in turn THEY got from secular philosophers beforehand), the Church since the time of Aquinas has usually relegated the realm of science to scientists and philosophically mentioned that a Universe that ran according to rational laws was biblically one that actually made the most sense, from a deity that organized according to certain precepts. See historians Martin Rudwick and Rodney Stark on this and other common mythologies (like Copernicus) about how wildly modern revisionists with a chip on the shoulder have left out VAST swaths of context concerning those few incidents where religion and science got into a donnybrook. Thus for example, as Rudwick reminds us, modern types of religion bashers proudly boast that the Church fight with Copernicus was over mankind’s “high place” in the Cosmos—when nothing could be further from the truth.
So when goofballs like Sam Harris and some others tour the nation and tell the kiddies and assure their parents that Darwinism or Atheism means nothing one way or another, Period, or that atheism, again per Harris, is “not a philosophy. It is not even a view of the world. It is simply an admission of the obvious noises that reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified beliefs”, we know who’s talking through the hat. Public schools are monstrosities–and we all know it.
Their other comments belie this claim about value-neutral education
. Sam Harris apparently goes to another page in the mind’s eye and tells another group that belief in Christianity is like belief in slavery. In this amazing comparison he throws out, he says “I would be the first to admit that the prospects for eradicating religion in our time do not seem good. Still, the same could have been said about efforts to abolish slaver at the end of the eighteenth century.” So for Harris, the non-philosopher, it seems some thought has gone into how to make Christianity as oppressive as the Antebellum South.
Elsewhere often one hears of organizations like the ACLU happily suing over God on coinage, the Pledge of Allegiance, forcing the Boy Scouts to have atheist troopmasters, and the like. But this is just droll to some. Did they remind you the backbone of this belief–err, disbelief, is darwinian thought? The real problem comes in when you have this combined with organizations that CLAIM to “merely” be defending “science.” The National Science Foundation here in the States claims this, as do dozens of other outfits and tax exempt clubs that have “science” in the letterhead or local citizens councils (so they say) like the South Carolinians for Science Education, the National Association of Biology Teachers, and so forth. What is interesting, as pointed out by writers like Dinesh D’Souza, for example, is that in all this worry and froth over “failure to teach REAL science” in the public schools and how our schools are failing us and religious types get in the way of this, there is something mission. Actually several things. First, a look at just what certain kinds of science are showing results. Second, why are other nations making better use of their resources? Third, you NEVER hear in all this “science” jabber any such thing as a lawsuit to a public school about the meaning of tectonic plate movement, photosynthesis, or the ACLU getting upset over the mishandling of Boyle’s Law or Issues in Entropy and meanings for the Universe. Yet ask a high school student about any of these or Einstein’s famous equation and you’ll likely get little response outside the science team. Yet no lawsuits. Two reasons, says Dinesh. One, education is not the actually goal here. And certainly little about science is what spills beer at the biology conventions. It IS ABOUT Darwinian evolution being taught.
ONLY—-that aspect of science. Second, and more importantly, the issue is not so much inculcation of ideas even on this but a way to “mitigate” superstitious “belief” and “supposition”, which is exactly how religion is seen by these Enlightenment wizards of public education advocacy. Thus for example, Richard Lewontin, science will establish itself as the only access to reality and source of Truth. All else is mush and gush. Says he “The objective of science education is NOT to provide the public with knowledge of how far it is to the nearest star and what genes are made of. Rather, it is the problem of getting them to reject irrational and supernatural explanations of the world, the demons that exist only in their imaginations, and to accept a social and intellectual apparatus, science, as the only begetter of truth.”
The issue is clear. For the defenders of Darwinism, no less than for the critics, religion, not education per se, is THE PROBLEM, to be overcome.
Paul Blanchard, long held in esteem as one of the “pioneers” of public education here in the US and a leading member of the Humanist’s association, proudly boasts of education’s accomplishment. Singular, it seems. Says he ..“we might not be able to teach Johnny to read or write or count to 10, but we’ve got him for at least 16 years of his life in the (public schools) and that tends to mitigate against superstitious belief.” John Dewey, famous educator, John Dunphy, Supreme Court judge Oliver Wendell Holmes (who once said he saw no difference in the moral attributes of a human being versus a baboon), and Darwinian attorney who helped formulate “positive law” Clarence Darrow of the nonsensical circus Scopes Trial fame (which was also a setup and media fake, BTW), made similar statements up and down his career path of empathy for murderous predators and that fact that all morals are relative. And we don’t mean your sister.
Richard Rorty also made similar noises and hopes, per him, that those “fundamentalist” kids entering into college could be turned around in opposition to what mom and dad thought at home and disdains this “quaint notion” that our kids are ours to teach. For Rorty, college will finish the job missed in high school in turning kids to his side of secularism: Rorty notes that students are fortunate to have had people like him around “under the benevolent “Herrshaft” of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents…we are going to go right on trying to discredit (the parents) in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.”
Helen Calderone, as well as Margaret Sanger in her day, (who was, like Peter Singer, big on infanticide and sterilization and sex as the noble path to human salvation) tells us that public education and specifically the ethics of new sex and other orgasmic discoveries (which she says the orgasm is the divine and ultimate goal of human development) asks “what kind of person are we to evolve” and proudly answers that the new “sexual human” should be forcible removed from the negative influences of parents and church and other “oppressions” that teach people to keep their pants zipped until marriage. For Calderone, orgasm is akin to a religious experience and is the prime directive and thus ultimate goal for the human race.
To achieve this, the public schools will be the force, the “anvil” on which (per Sanger), the “rotting corpse of Christianity will finally be crushed and swept away.” Sanger’s views on racism and euthanasia and eugenics are not often heard today. Nor her hatred of “unfit” classes of human “debris”, nor her addiction to Demerol and her promiscuious sex life with multiple “voluntary partners”, as she called them. Nor much about her committed Darwinian ethics that included removing undesirables from the earth including those who found comfort in spirituality and not just those of us not qualified to go to Cambridge or Harvard or had too many rugrats to feed at the tenement housing. But now that Planned Parenthood and other spin-offs and brainchilds she began or inspired are in full swing and teach the kiddies that cucumbers are just as good as real men, who cares? As you know by now Richard Dawkins takes no prisoners. In the UK it seems he’s issued a set of DVDs called Growing Up in the Universe, based on his Royal Institution Lectures of children. The lectures promote (per one reviewer) “Dawkins secular and naturalistic PHILOSOPHY for life.” Popular brain researcher and fellow Darwinian spear carrier Daniel Dennett picks up and urges that the schools finish the job by promoting the idea of religion as a purely materialistic brain phenomenon. Says Dennett, parents just need to step aside here. Privacy, legal norms, and freedoms we take for granted now are passé in the New Liberation: “some children are raised in such an ideological prison that they willingly become their own jailers…forbidding themselves any contact with the liberating ideas that might well change their minds….the fault lies with the parents who raised them. Parents don’t literally own their children the way slave-owners once owned slaves, but rather are their stewards and guardians and ought to be held accountable by outsiders for their guardianship, which does imply that outsiders have a right to interfere.”
Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey argued in a recent lecture that just as Amnesty International works to liberate political prisoners around the world, secular teachers and professors should work to free the kiddies from the “damaging influence” of their parents’ religious instruction. “Parents have no god-given license to enculturate their children in whatever ways the personally choose; no right to limit the horizons of their children’s knowledge, to bring them up in an atmosphere of dogma and superstition, or to insist they follow the straight and narrow paths of their own faith.”
Dawkins’ notion of domestic tranquility and parental rights? Similar but more aggressive even than Rorty’s:
“ Isn’t it always a form of child abuse (sic) to label children as possessors of beliefs that they are too young to have thought about?”
Noting that the Constitutional provisions of the freedom of religion and the privacy of the home and childrearing have upper limits he just can’t tolerate, Dawkins follows up by adding that “how much do we regard children as being the ‘property’ of their parents? It’s one thing to say people should be free to believe whatever they like, but should they be free to impose their beliefs on their children? Is there something to be said for society stepping in ? What about bringing up children to believe manifest falsehoods?”
Strong language of the use of force. Not to be outdone (and guess who can match even this), Christopher Hitchens writes “How can we ever know how many children had their psychological and physical lives irreparably maimed by the compulsory inculcation of faith?” One wonders if Hitchens might be a mite damaged in some degree or another. He concludes that “If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the ‘age of reason’(sic), we would be living in a quite different world.”
I’m quite sure he’s right. More than he knows. Noted biologist E.O. Wilson wants educators to make sure the kids know from here on out that the brain is the product of evolution only and that “free moral choice is an illusion……if religion….can be systematically analyzed and explained as a product of the brain’s evolution, its power as an external source of morality will be gone forever.” A prospect no doubt he finds exhilarating. Physicist Stephen Weinberg, popularly quoted favorably in many physics textbooks and covered for nifty quotes, says “I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive of religious belief, and I’m all for that……if scientists can destroy the influence of religion on young people, then I think it may be the most important contribution that we can make.”
There went all the claims to scientific neutrality. They just leaped (or more likely got knocked) out the window of the lab.
Carolyn Porco, a researcher at the Space Science Institute in Colorado, at a 2006 conference on science and religion said “ We should let the success of the religious FORMULA guide us…..Let’s teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome and even comforting than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know”
In a “libertarian” magazine called Reason, Jonathan Rauch applauds a development he calls “apatheism” which he defines as a “disinclination to care all that much about one’s own religion, and an even stronger disinclination to care about other people’s” Rauch argues that many self-proclaimed Christians today are really apatheists. It is not a lapse, he says, but rather “an achievement” worth a gold start and he hopes the entire culture will soon follow suit.
Seeing that neutrality is a myth, and that yet even rehashed morals come from concepts like God and those things beyond ourselves–and goals and aspirations that lie outside our own inward desires, it is no wonder some of us take the short-circuit tack and just homeschool our kids. Which is a mite better than having them warehousing in government schools.
on February 16th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
[…] In God We Trust Posted in Atheism, Education, Guest Bloggers by Elaine on the July 20th, … of education highly offends me. Not only do such references foster oppression and discrimination source: In God We Trust, The Atheist Mama […]
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