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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (41137)	6/20/1999 2:58:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 108807

I don't ordinarily argue about religion, but I am starting to worry that we are approaching a time to stand up and be counted. That's what I thought. See where it got me! <g>

To: Ilaine who wrote (41137)	6/20/1999 3:10:00 PM
From: Edwarda	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

If well-meaning people truly believe that keeping religion out of public schools is destructive to religion, I don't think it is going to be fruitful to reason with them, because our understandings are so far apart as to be irreconcilable. And, the difference between what we believe shouldn't make any difference, except that now these same well-meaning people want to do something about their beliefs, by inserting them into these same public schools. If so, I have no choice but to fight them. I think that one of the problems is that the people who seek to insert religion in the schools are not thinking through the whole issue. I remember responding to a coworker who remarked that he saw no problem with prayer in the schools by asking, "Fine, to whom should children be praying?" He hadn't thought about the difficulties posed to a child of faiths other than Judaism and Christianity--never mind to one whose parents might be highly moral and ethical but also happened to be atheists. One of the problems of all of the "everything is relative" nonsense of our salad days is that it did undermine a certain societal moral compass. Unfortunately, pushing religion into the schools does not seem to me to be a reasonable answer to a real dilemma.

To: Ilaine who wrote (41137)	6/20/1999 3:44:00 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

I have no problems with people who are religious in their temples, in their mosques, in their churches, in their homes. I DO have a problem with people who need to spread the word to other people who do not WANT the word- that is assault (imo). I never go door to door in my neighborhood trying to spread the "good word" of agnosticism. Out of respect of the feelings of others I did not even put the little Darwin fish on my car (though I wanted to). But as I do not foist my personal views on others (and my silence is not equivalent to evangelicism) I do not want my children anywhere near the fundamentalist views I find morally reprehensible and spiritually bankrupt. This is the political aspect of which you speak- the aspect of religious speech in public forums, like schools, where children are legally required to be (unless homeschooled). In order to justify foisting their faith on others fundamentalists equate the absence of discussions of faith, to "anti-faith" and the teaching of a theory, to posting the 10 commandments. If they can't see the illogic of that then they are beyond all help imo. And they do not answer posts that have anything to do with rational arguments like that. They just bounce from emotional argument to irrational emotional argument- hoping to win by a sheer landslide of bullpucky? That is not how you win the hearts and minds of rational men (not that there are that many rational men).