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Politics : To be a Liberal,you have to believe that..... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (2254)	9/15/1999 12:30:00 AM
From: Krowbar	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6418

E, As always you hit the nail right on the head. The wrong wing is, with some success, trying to describe public schools that don't allow their theistic views to be taught as "Atheistic". I can't imagine a teacher that actively promoted Atheism in a class not being fired in today's climate. I do have personal knowledge of teachers reading the Bible and promoting their religion in public school classes with impunity however. You are right. They would never go for a real level playing field. Have you ever heard of a challenge of the Bible's validity to balance the challenges to evolution? I would love to see a debating class take on the evidence for and against evolution versus the evidence for creation. It'll never be allowed in Christopher;s so-called level playing field. Del

To: E who wrote (2254)	9/15/1999 1:35:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6418

And an atheist school is merely one in which theist precepts are not promulgated. We disagree. As a believer, I want the chance to say that I believe that God exists, that he/she/it/they has/have certain attributes, and places on us certain obligations as to how we should live and values we should live by, and here is what I believe those are. IMO, atheists want the chance to say that they believe God does not exist, and that therefore they look to certain other sources for their believes on the ways they should live and the values they should live by, and here is what they believe those are. What I think you are missing is that there is no such thing as value neutral teaching, or a values neutral school system. If you deny believers the right to seek to have their values recognized in the school, then where do the school's values come from? By definition, only from non-believers. These can be agnostics or athiests (or the three people in the world who don't even know that there is an issue about the existence of God<g>). But those values come from somewhere and some group. but instead teaching all the children the values that we all, including you and you and me, share. We both believe children should be taught to be kind, honest, fair, responsible. They should be taught the value of hard work and the value of good works. You make a lot of assumptions about the values we share. That is a good topic for a new series of exchanges. But even if I agreed with the words you use, we use them in very different ways. What I mean by being honest is being honest to God. Which you would prohibit in school. So right away, we may share the word honest, but not the meaning of it. Also, I value hard work in a good cause. Hard work can be turned to evil as well as good. Terry Nichols may have worked very hard to blow up the federal building, but I (and I hope you) are not going to point to him and say, well, at least he had the virtue of hard work. So I don't agree that hard work in and of itself is a virtue; I believe that hard work in pursuit of the right ends is a virtue. And so on. I wonder, when we dig down into them, how many virtues you and I really do share. Kindness? Well, depends how you interpret it. Is a doctor kind if he refuses to give a child a vaccination because it will hurt the child? Is a friend kind (or honest to themselves) if they allow a friend to seek an abortion without trying to help them see that it is wrong? You talk about "shared ethical values." I wonder whether, when it comes down to it, we can actually come to full agreement on any ethical value we actually share. So there is the problem. Who gets to define what the shared ethical values will be? If you will let me define them for your children, then great, we're all happy. But you won't. And nor will I let you define them for my children. So we're back where we started, aren't we?