The atheist bus

[rusmeister]

the only responsibility of an education system to the questions 1 and 2 is to provide the tools for an individual to find the answers themselves and then to also find that the questions are answered differently by each individual....

Well said Lurch.

--A

Hey, Avatar, I wonder if you'd EVER say 'Well said, Rusmeister"...

[rusmeister]

You MUST be able to answer Stormer's questions if you propose to do so.

No. There is not a single, objectively correct answer to those questions that can be verified by any method. Until any given answer can be verified, it is all opinion. As I said, teaching such answers is the job of churches, mosques, etc. It is wrong to base our public education system on any specific answers.

Fist, it looks like you're misconstruing what I'm saying. I'm saying that the people who formed our system HAD definite answers to those questions - whether they were good answers or bad, right philosophy or wrong we may dispute, but that the formers had a specific philosophy at the various stages of formation of the existing system there is no doubt. But it is not something that is advertised. It is something that at its core works against the mission statements that are fed to the public. It is about forming a certain kind of people, a docile people that will provide a stable state that supports the oligarchy/aristocracy in perpetuity - the opposite of free minds. The Matrix is more like it.

Humor me for a minute. If people really were indoctrinated in the existing school system in the way that I describe, how could they possibly know it? Would they not go into immediate denial if anyone suggested something along the lines that I am? If I'm wrong - there is no problem. Everything is fine. Our world is continually improving. The US has the best educated people in the world.

In short, our education system was founded on specific answers to the questions (like it or not), and the answers are wrong.

[rusmeister]

the only responsibility of an education system to the questions 1 and 2 is to provide the tools for an individual to find the answers themselves and then to also find that the questions are answered differently by each individual....and wait, theres more!..but to further find, that the answers one finds today,,may soon dissolve to a different answer tomorrow. What are the " tools"? A healthy inquisitive, questioning mind. This is the challenge for every generation's education systems.

There is the subtle supposition that Agendas rule the education systems, then therefore its justified for the religious right to have an agenda of their own,...to that I say this is more of the Holy Church of Victims R Us. I do not accept the Agendas rule our education systems as a basis for having an agenda of your own. To reach back to the "Prussian" model is weak. How is it you stop there? Lets go all the way back to the blow hard Greeks. Heck they were the one who introduced Logic to Mans way of thinking and seeing, and we've been victimized by it ever since. Talk about Agendas!! Trading one supposed agenda for another is what? Give the kids the ability to comprehend the world around them and the world inside of them,,then the ability to create from that.

Every generation does not make up its own education system. The one we have in place was formed over the 19th century, and was pretty thoroughly implemented after the First World War.

There are historical events and periods that hold special significance, and mark changes of particular importance - sometimes completely revolutionary. THAT is why you should take a special look at Horace Mann and the adoption of Prussianism, and at the Prussian system itself, from Frederick the (so-called) Great onward. It represented a radical departure from the classical education that had been the rule for centuries prior to that, going back to the medieval insistence on learning Latin (and where possible, Greek).

Speaking of agendas is mere rhetoric unless you determine whether the philosophy behind an agenda is right or wrong. It looks like you are going beyond merely teaching children to think independently and apply critical thinking skills. Based on your words, it appears to me that the logical conclusion of what you are advocating is to have every human being reinvent the wheel and learn everything on their own from scratch, without the benefit of tradition, knowledge and wisdom passed down from those who came before us (which you seem to also see as "agendas" - although perhaps I have misunderstood you completely). A specific agenda of people advocating and organizing a system to train people to not think is radically different from an agenda that really seeks to free the people it is teaching.

The agendas of traditional religions are not generally based on the proposition that other faiths or philosophies also have them but rather on their own internal principles and core tenets, and by no means produces primarily "victims" (I think a lot of your terms and understandings, particularly regarding Christianity, come from a perspective that may be limited to what has been observed in the US in the late 20th century, which is hardly representative of the faith over its 2,000 year history.

[rusmeister]

You guys are missing something big, with all due respect. How on earth do you propose establishing an education system with no philosophy whatsoever??? You MUST be able to answer Stormer's questions if you propose to do so.

Who says we have to answer Stormer's questions? As I said, the questions are completely irrelevant and no one can answer them anyway.

It sounds like you are saying the system is broken which justifies your problem with the education system for promoting atheism. I really don't see what the problem is. I went to school and then university and got an education which allowed me to further educate myself and earn an income. The system works . . . .unless you are advocating a Christian agenda?

What I'm saying is that the questions WERE answered at some point (right or wrong, like it or not), a modern education system was based on those answers and it produced many of us. Of course the system works. It was designed to work. If my thesis is true, then it should be obvious to an intelligent human who had undergone the conditioning that they would be unlikely to be aware of the conditioning, and thus, not see the problem.
Like I said, our schools are working great, America has the smartest kids in the world and life is getting better and better. The Star Trek future is just around the corner. Excelsior!


(Seriously, I don't NEED to promote a Christian agenda at this point. Only get across the idea that indoctrination that causes a subject to react automatically and largely without thinking on certain questions (behavioral control) without the subject's awareness is entirely possible, and even on a mass scale. I would hope that even atheists would find that disturbing. )

[Fist and Faith]

Hey, Avatar, I wonder if you'd EVER say 'Well said, Rusmeister"...

Well, it's certainly possible. He and I have both said such things to or about people whose beliefs are very different from ours.

The thing I congratulated you on was pointing out an assumption I was making - That an uncaused universe is more likely than an uncaused creator of said universe. True enough, I have nothing on which to base my judgement.

And, to be fair, your basic premise that a universal desire to find meaning is significant is, imo, a very good point. Alas, you then jump to a rather extreme conclusion without bothering with intervening steps; a conclusion which is not supported - indeed, is actually refuted - by the history of humanity.

Fist, it looks like you're misconstruing what I'm saying. I'm saying that the people who formed our system HAD definite answers to those questions - whether they were good answers or bad, right philosophy or wrong we may dispute, but that the formers had a specific philosophy at the various stages of formation of the existing system there is no doubt. But it is not something that is advertised. It is something that at its core works against the mission statements that are fed to the public. It is about forming a certain kind of people, a docile people that will provide a stable state that supports the oligarchy/aristocracy in perpetuity - the opposite of free minds. The Matrix is more like it.

Humor me for a minute. If people really were indoctrinated in the existing school system in the way that I describe, how could they possibly know it? Would they not go into immediate denial if anyone suggested something along the lines that I am? If I'm wrong - there is no problem. Everything is fine. Our world is continually improving. The US has the best educated people in the world.

We are both saying that America's public education system is flawed. You are saying it's because of the specific philosophies used at the various stages of its formation. I'm saying that that may or may not be the case, but I agree that it's got problems.

As for the theory that it came about the way you say, and that it actually goes against the mission statement that it gives to the public... Well, I've never heard anything about it other than what you have said (I heard someone else say the same thing once. She home-schools her children.), so I can't support or dispute anything specific. Obviously, it sounds like a conspiracy theory. But, of course, there are conspiracies out there, aren't there. But to say the founders of such a system were geniuses would be one of the biggest understatements I've ever uttered. To fool, well, everybody, at every stage of the game... The very first students and their parents; the very first teachers; all students, parents, and teachers since then until this very day; the many, many people who have studied various education systems; all the politicians; and on and on. Of all these people, how many have noticed what was happening? Since as far back as we know, people have noticed the lies and/or inaccuracies they were being taught by their religious leaders, scientists, and everybody else. Except in this one situation. Only a handful of people were genius enough to notice it. Alas, none of them were genius enough to figure out how to change it, as folks like Galileo and Martin Luther apparently were.

If you can give me any reason to believe this seemingly outlandish story, I'm all ears. Er, eyes. However, "Read this book of X pages" isn't a reason. Tell us! How were those questions answered? What is it about learning how to read and write, math, science, and other things that is making us docile? What agenda has it fulfilled? And what should we be learning about instead?

In short, our education system was founded on specific answers to the questions (like it or not), and the answers are wrong.

I'm saying that those questions need not be asked when forming an education system, and that, because I do not believe there are objectively correct answers to them, I strongly disagree with any education system that is based on specific answers.

[aliantha]

I dunno, Rus. When I was in 2nd grade, my teacher gave me a secondhand Bible because I'd said in class that I didn't have one. This was in a public school. If indoctrination was happening, that lady was not a party to it.

I've always attended public schools, and I've always thought that the lack of religious instruction was due to the separation of church and state. The educational philosophy, as I understand it, was that religious instruction should be left to the parents; if they wanted their kids' education served with a side of Jesus (or Mohammed or whoever), they could choose to send them to a parochial school.

My kids did, in fact, have some instruction in comparative world religions in high school. I remember in particular that they talked about Buddhism. Altho that's more of a philosophical system than a religion, I guess.

I would be among the first to advocate a comparative religion class in the public schools.

[Gadget nee Jemcheeta]

The problem with comparative religion classes is that the instructor always has an opinion and it is almost impossibe to avoid getting that across.

How my professor handled this: He actively espoused each religion he taught, with the perspective of conversion At the end of the semester, we tried to get him to tell us what he ACTUALLY believed, and he said "Well, a lot of stuff... but really, the Roman gods were the coolest!"

[lurch]

...separation of State and Religion..if you don't agree with that..too bad so sad..Schools aren't broke because they don't teach religion. Schools don't get " fixed" because they start teaching religion. Sorry seen it rite here in Phoenix. The school system got fixed and religion had nothing to do with it.

...rus,, all of your argument, at the foundation ,is based on busting the Separation of State and Religion. Our founding fathers were wise enough to put that in the constitution. How is it that you can't accept that? You are confusing atheism with separation, as are your sources. Apples and oranges. Please straighten your thinking out.

btw..take a look at your pre Fredrick example..church run education systems garnered what?..europeans going after each others throats every 30 years or so for hundreds and hundreds of years..Yea.. its about Free Thinking..research our founding fathers in any public school library and youcan find all you want about those free thinkers. Its not dead. The Opportunity is Free. Where is your paranoia coming from?

[rusmeister]

My thanks for your patience, Fist, Ali.

Yes, I know it seems outlandish. It's also risky coming out and saying my conclusions without the context of how I got there - I decided it was preferable to a possibly patronizing approach of gradually leading you into it. That's why I offered the link to what I wrote on the other side - so as to not have to do reams of posting here. I will post one piece here so you get the idea as to why it would be more efficient to follow the links. But it really is unfair to expect me to attempt to condense down into one paragraph stuff that requires a considerable amount of background knowledge (ie, minus all of the context) with the result that it just looks...crazy. I will say in your defense that the person I was 8 years ago wouldn't have believed me.

As Gatto said (FTR, he leans toward Buddhism, not Christianity) :

With conspiracy so close to the surface of the American imagination and American reality, I can only approach with trepidation the task of discouraging you in advance from thinking my book the chronicle of some vast diabolical conspiracy to seize all our children for the personal ends of a small, elite minority.

Don’t get me wrong, American schooling has been replete with chicanery from its very beginnings.*

Indeed, it isn’t difficult to find various conspirators boasting in public about what they pulled off. But if you take that tack you’ll miss the real horror of what I’m trying to describe, that what has happened to our schools was inherent in the original design for a planned economy and a planned society laid down so proudly at the end of the nineteenth century. I think what happened would have happened anyway—without the legions of venal, half-mad men and women who schemed so hard to make it as it is. If I’m correct, we’re in a much worse position than we would be if we were merely victims of an evil genius or two.

If you obsess about conspiracy, what you’ll fail to see is that we are held fast by a form of highly abstract thinking fully concretized in human institutions which has grown beyond the power of the managers of these institutions to control. If there is a way out of the trap we’re in, it won’t be by removing some bad guys and replacing them with good guys.

Who are the villains, really, but ourselves? People can change, but systems cannot without losing their structural integrity. Even Henry Ford, a Jew-baiter of such colossal proportions he was lionized by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, made a public apology and denied to his death he had ever intended to hurt Jews—a too strict interpretation of Darwin made him do it! The great industrialists who gave us modern compulsion schooling inevitably found their own principles subordinated to systems-purposes, just as happened to the rest of us.

Take Andrew Carnegie, the bobbin boy, who would certainly have been as appalled as the rest of us at the order to fire on strikers at his Homestead plant. But the system he helped to create was committed to pushing men until they reacted violently or dropped dead. It was called "the Iron Law of Wages." Once his colleagues were interested in the principles of the Iron Law, they could only see the courage and defiance of the Homestead strikers as an opportunity to provoke a crisis which would allow the steel union to be broken with state militia and public funds. Crushing opposition is the obligatory scene in the industrial drama, whatever it takes, and no matter how much individual industrial leaders like Carnegie might be reluctant to do so.

My worry was about finding a prominent ally to help me present this idea that inhuman anthropology is what we confront in our institutional schools, not conspiracy. The hunt paid off with the discovery of an analysis of the Ludlow Massacre by Walter Lippmann in the New Republic of January 30, 1915. Following the Rockefeller slaughter of up to forty-seven, mostly women and children, in the tent camp of striking miners at Ludlow, Colorado, a congressional investigation was held which put John D. Rockefeller Jr. on the defensive. Rockefeller agents had employed armored cars, machine guns, and fire bombs in his name. As Lippmann tells it, Rockefeller was charged with having the only authority to authorize such a massacre, but also with too much indifference to what his underlings were up to. "Clearly," said the industrial magnate, "both cannot be true."

As Lippmann recognized, this paradox is the worm at the core of all colossal power. Both indeed could be true. For ten years Rockefeller hadn’t even seen this property; what he knew of it came in reports from his managers he scarcely could have read along with mountains of similar reports coming to his desk each day. He was compelled to rely on the word of others. Drawing an analogy between Rockefeller and the czar of Russia, Lippmann wrote that nobody believed the czar himself performed the many despotic acts he was accused of; everyone knew a bureaucracy did so in his name. But most failed to push that knowledge to its inevitable conclusion: If the czar tried to change what was customary he would be undermined by his subordinates. He had no defense against this happening because it was in the best interests of all the divisions of the bureaucracy, including the army, that it—not the czar—continue to be in charge of things. The czar was a prisoner of his own subjects. In Lippmann’s words:

This seemed to be the predicament of Mr. Rockefeller. I should not believe he personally hired thugs or wanted them hired. It seems far more true to say that his impersonal and half-understood power has delegated itself into unsocial forms, that it has assumed a life of its own which he is almost powerless to control....His intellectual helplessness was the amazing part of his testimony. Here was a man who represented wealth probably without parallel in history, the successor to a father who has, with justice, been called the high priest of capitalism....Yet he talked about himself on the commonplace moral assumptions of a small businessman.

The Rockefeller Foundation has been instrumental through the century just passed (along with a few others) in giving us the schools we have. It imported the German research model into college life, elevated service to business and government as the goal of higher education, not teaching. And Rockefeller-financed University of Chicago and Columbia Teachers College have been among the most energetic actors in the lower school tragedy. There is more, too, but none of it means the Rockefeller family "masterminded" the school institution, or even that his foundation or his colleges did. All became in time submerged in the system they did so much to create, almost helpless to slow its momentum even had they so desired.

Despite its title, Underground History isn’t a history proper, but a collection of materials toward a history, embedded in a personal essay analyzing why mass compulsion schooling is unreformable. The history I have unearthed is important to our understanding; it’s a good start, I believe, but much remains undone. The burden of an essay is to reveal its author so candidly and thoroughly that the reader comes fully awake. You are about to spend twenty-five to thirty hours with the mind of a schoolteacher, but the relationship we should have isn’t one of teacher to pupil but rather that of two people in conversation. I’ll offer ideas and a theory to explain things and you bring your own experience to bear on the matters, supplementing and arguing where necessary. Read with this goal before you and I promise your money’s worth. It isn’t important whether we agree on every detail.

A brief word on sources. I’ve identified all quotations and paraphrases and given the origin of many (not all) individual facts, but for fear the forest be lost in contemplation of too many trees, I’ve avoided extensive footnoting. So much here is my personal take on things that it seemed dishonest to grab you by the lapels that way: of minor value to those who already resonate on the wavelength of the book, useless, even maddening, to those who do not.

This is a workshop of solutions as well as an attempt to frame the problem clearly, but be warned: they are perversely sprinkled around like raisins in a pudding, nowhere grouped neatly as if to help you study for a test—except for a short list at the very end. The advice there is practical, but strictly limited to the world of compulsion schooling as it currently exists, not to the greater goal of understanding how education occurs or is prevented. The best advice in this book is scattered throughout and indirect, you’ll have to work to extract it. It begins with the very first sentence of the book where I remind you that what is right for systems is often wrong for human beings. Translated into a recommendation, that means that to avoid the revenge of Bianca, we must be prepared to insult systems for the convenience of humanity, not the other way around.

END

*For instance, for those of you who believe in testing, school superintendents as a class are virtually the stupidest people to pass through a graduate college program, ranking fifty-one points below the elementary school teachers they normally "supervice," (on the Graduate Record Examination), abd about eighty points below secondary-school teachers, while teachers themselves as an aggregate finish seventeenth of twenty occupational groups surveyed. The reader is of course at liberty to believe this happened accidentally, or that the moon is composed of blue, not green, cheese as is popularly believed. It's also possible to take this anomaly as conclusive evidence of the irrelevance of standardized testing. Your choice.

www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue8.htm

Again, there is no real short cut to reading lots of info. Gatto convinced me because I WAS a certified public school teacher who had left the system, bewildered and confused as to why the system had blocked my best efforts to improve standards of teaching for immigrant kids in my district, and all of the experience that ultimately led to my conversion to Christianity (after the public education experience).

I suppose I could post stuff bit by bit. But if you want to quickly access a lot of information, just read the stuff - it'll take a while. (BTW, Fist, have you made any headway with "The Everlasting Man"?)

www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm (a fast intro)
www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/ (Gatto's book)
christianforums.com/showthread.php?t=6072877 (My incomplete writings on my experiences)

Again, I think the involvement of ideologues more important than Gatto does - from the Fabian Society and Shaw to Taylor (and Gilbreath - a connection which really surprised me - although Mr. Cheaper-by-the-dozen was not involved in or have much influence on schooling) to Dewey - but he is certainly right about the involvement of big business and its aims.

Lurch, I'm not sure you're understanding what I'm saying here. It would probably be a good idea to read the links and get a little context. I'm light-years from talking about teaching religion at school.

Again, I am grateful for your courtesy and patience! I have found this an extremely difficult topic to broach with anyone, and find that assumptions and knee-jerk reactions usually get in the way.

[Avatar]

The problem with comparative religion classes is that the instructor always has an opinion and it is almost impossibe to avoid getting that across.

Nice to see you're still kicking around Jemcheeta.

--A

[Cybrweez]

lurch, do you know what the Constitution says about separation of church and state? Nothing.

Whether religion should be taught in school in one issue, but you say to get your thinking straight, I say you should get your facts straight. And while you're reading about the founding fathers, check out some of the state constitutions from that era. Let me know what you find about religion.

This is what I've been talking about in this thread, an ignorance of this country's history leading to statements like separation of church and state is constitutional. lurch, do you know where that statement comes from?

[aliantha]

Hey rus -- I used to make a living by condensing stuff into manageable bits. Let me take a crack at the piece you posted by this Gatto fellow.

The following seems to me to be the meatiest bit (I've bolded the meatiest of the meatiest):

The Rockefeller Foundation has been instrumental through the century just passed (along with a few others) in giving us the schools we have. It imported the German research model into college life, elevated service to business and government as the goal of higher education, not teaching. And Rockefeller-financed University of Chicago and Columbia Teachers College have been among the most energetic actors in the lower school tragedy. There is more, too, but none of it means the Rockefeller family "masterminded" the school institution, or even that his foundation or his colleges did. All became in time submerged in the system they did so much to create, almost helpless to slow its momentum even had they so desired.

So what he's saying is that schools in the US (and not just the public schools -- the University of Chicago is a private institution, if I'm not mistaken) are designed to turn out worker bees, cogs in the wheels of commerce, and not teachers. Or thinkers.

I think that's true, as far as it goes. There's that canard about English majors who should practice saying "Do you want fries with that?" because that's about all they'll be able to do with their degrees upon graduation.

But the fact that such a joke exists demonstrates that there *is* such a thing as a liberal arts education in America. Not everybody goes to college to learn a trade. Which, I gather, is what you mean by the Prussian model of education -- yes?

[rusmeister]

lurch, do you know what the Constitution says about separation of church and state? Nothing.

Whether religion should be taught in school in one issue, but you say to get your thinking straight, I say you should get your facts straight. And while you're reading about the founding fathers, check out some of the state constitutions from that era. Let me know what you find about religion.

This is what I've been talking about in this thread, an ignorance of this country's history leading to statements like separation of church and state is constitutional. lurch, do you know where that statement comes from?

I think the truly big problem is not in the facts - which do get taught - at least some of them, selectively, more or less - but in the interpretation of facts. Kids are indoctrinated by everything in the programs to see that truth, other than material truth, is relative, and to view things outside material truth skeptically, particularly religion, most particularly Christianity. And they perceive their view as normal for the simple reason that that is what they were taught. This often contradicts what parents teach at home and at church, and so the typical pattern is for the 18 or 19-year-old, suddenly free to choose religion or not (rather than simply be brought to church (for example) by his parents) drops religion like a hot rock - or gradually - but either way, the system has defeated the efforts of the (religious) parents in most cases. Thus in a few generations we have an entire generation professing beliefs polarly opposed to those of their grandparents and it is hailed as "progress" - something that can only be measured by first applying absolute standards. The question really is "Whose standards are right?" and our grandparents turn out to be wiser than we are and the progress is in the wrong direction - a fatal one.

[aliantha]

So you don't think people should ever question the religion they were brought up in?

I don't think that's realistic, Rus. Maturing is the process of separating oneself from one's parents. It starts in infancy, when the child begins to define him/herself as separate from Mom -- which is well before any sort of organized educational system gets involved.

I think it's hardwired into the organism to continually refine the definition of "me" as an individual, and questioning religious assumptions is part of that process.

Anyway, I think there's a fair case to be made that many people who break away from their religion of origin (if you will) go back to it later. You've been arguing that yourself, when you say we don't know how we will react when our faith (or lack of it) is tested in extremis.

[rdhopeca]

lurch, do you know what the Constitution says about separation of church and state? Nothing.

Whether religion should be taught in school in one issue, but you say to get your thinking straight, I say you should get your facts straight. And while you're reading about the founding fathers, check out some of the state constitutions from that era. Let me know what you find about religion.

This is what I've been talking about in this thread, an ignorance of this country's history leading to statements like separation of church and state is constitutional. lurch, do you know where that statement comes from?

I think the truly big problem is not in the facts - which do get taught - at least some of them, selectively, more or less - but in the interpretation of facts. Kids are indoctrinated by everything in the programs to see that truth, other than material truth, is relative, and to view things outside material truth skeptically, particularly religion, most particularly Christianity. And they perceive their view as normal for the simple reason that that is what they were taught. This often contradicts what parents teach at home and at church, and so the typical pattern is for the 18 or 19-year-old, suddenly free to choose religion or not (rather than simply be brought to church (for example) by his parents) drops religion like a hot rock - or gradually - but either way, the system has defeated the efforts of the (religious) parents in most cases. Thus in a few generations we have an entire generation professing beliefs polarly opposed to those of their grandparents and it is hailed as "progress" - something that can only be measured by first applying absolute standards. The question really is "Whose standards are right?" and our grandparents turn out to be wiser than we are and the progress is in the wrong direction - a fatal one.

Personally, I find that your religious organization du jour is equally responsible for loose "interpretation of facts". And the idea that thinking for yourself rather than blindly going along with your elders is a "fatal" mistake is simply hyperbole.

I would suspect that a person's faith would be stronger if they thought about it and chose it rather than having it thrust upon them...that the person who leaves their religion and then chooses to return would have a stronger faith than one who has never given it any thought. If Faith is such that it cannot stand up to intellectual challenge, it isn't much faith to begin with; and if the child is not granted the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they believe or not, then their belief is blind.

[Prebe]

This is what I've been talking about in this thread, an ignorance of this country's history leading to statements like separation of church and state is constitutional. lurch, do you know where that statement comes from?

I'm sure he does. It's all right here

The separation of church and state is a legal and political principle derived from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Now it doesn't say "Separation of church and state", but denying that it is implied is, well, funny.

The phrase "separation of church and state", which does not appear in the Constitution itself, is generally traced to an 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists, where Jefferson spoke of the combined effect of the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. It has since been quoted in several opinions handed down by the United States Supreme Court

[Cybrweez]

No prebe, denying what is meant by the phrase today is not funny at all. Thinking the phrase was meant to silence religion in public isn't funny either, its ignorant. Did you read your wikipedia article? About the religious acts done by Jefferson and Madison? And these 2 are upheld as the only founding fathers in many "works" of history b/c they were the least religious among the hundreds of founders. However, they were the least religious, not irreligious.

As Jefferson closed his inaugural address:

"And may that Infinite Power which rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and prosperity."

Also, the separation was at a federal level, as wikipedia states, it was shot down when tried to be forced on states, b/c the majority of founder didn't agree w/it.

So the "separation" is no establishing a state church, and it was for the federal govt.

Have you read the Northwest Ordinance? Article III:

Relgion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, shools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

The Enabling Act of 1802 required states to form a government in accordance w/the Ordinance. So as an example, Ohio's Constitution:

[R]eligion, morality, and knowledge being essentially necessary to the good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of instruction shall forever be encouraged by legislative provision.

I can only assume by separation, you and lurch are not talking about leaving religion out of public education, in terms of constitutionality?

[Prebe]

So the "separation" is no establishing a state church, and it was for the federal govt.

And also NOT favourizing any particular religion by government. And that is not separation of church and state to you?

[Fist and Faith]

(BTW, Fist, have you made any headway with "The Everlasting Man"?)

I knew you'd ask eventually.

Despite having no religious beliefs, I decided to try to read Conversations With God after it was recommended to me. It's one of my favorite books. Top 10 or 20 for sure. And I read a lot of Mere Christianity after I read The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, because what Francis Collins (the author of LoG, the head of the Human Genome Project, and a man of very strong faith) said about it sounded very good. As I've said, I don't agree with Lewis' (I guess we could call it an) axiom, but after he states it, he does a good job of following a logical progression of thoughts.

I read the first two chapters of The Everlasting Man entirely, twice. I tried several times to read some of the other chapters. I'm not, literally not, going to get into a discussion of the book with you. Suffice to say it's not my cup of tea. As extraordinary as you think it is, that's how bad I think it is.

Now let's move on instead of fight about it.

[lucimay]

I can only assume that people are going to interpret phrases, wikipedia articles, bibles, constitutions, poems, songs, stories, histories, cartoons, and laws the way they damn well want to interpret them.

people suit themselves. they hear what they want to hear, see what they want to see, and believe what they want to believe regardless of anyone else or any other viewpoint.

nobody really gives a damn about anyone else's SOUL, only about being right or...not being wrong.

i don't know about any of you, but when i was in high school i was not mature enough to sort out a comparative religion class. i think it's correct to say that whoever teaches a comparative religion class will have their own opinions about religion and will hardly be able to keep from imparting those opinions or bias' to students. THEREFORE, i would rather not HAVE a comparative religion in public schools. several of you have made good arguments for doing this and i had to think on it a bit, but...no. i was not mature enough to CHOOSE FOR MYSELF or figure out what my OWN opinions are about spirituality and religion at high school age. i'm not saying there aren't high school age kids who ARE mature enough. (for the most part, high school kids seem much more mature to me in the last 10 years than me or my crowd in the mid-seventies.) i allege the vast majority of high school kids are waaaaay too impressionable to be able to sort out for themselves how they feel about spirituality or religion.
and so, i'd rather it be left out of high school curriculum. comparative religion classes that is. religion altogether frankly.

it's a college course. that makes sense to me. comparative religion should stay a college course. if you want to make comparative religion a general requirement for a Bachelor's degree, i'd be fine with that.

if you want your child schooled in a parochial school, send them to parochial school.