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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (142890)	10/14/2005 8:11:25 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793903

There are two aspects of this, I think. One is fairness and the other is effectiveness. Re fairness, I really didn't want to get into dhimitude. I was just trying to get you and others to look at it from the shoe on the other foot perspective. What if some alien religion were being stuffed down your throat or if you were treated as second class because of your religion? I'm reminded of the exercise for sharing a piece of cake where one person cuts it in two and the other person gets to pick the share that he wants. I think that so many Christians are looking at this from a power position. It seems fair to them because they have the power. They get to both cut the cake and pick the bigger piece. I think they should cut it in a way that either piece would be acceptable to them. That seems to me the Christian thing to do, the decent thing to do, and it further seems to me that many decent people have gotten so caught up in the power aspect and have become so strident that they've lost their basic decency. the tradition of a prayer before a football game since the school was built I recognize that the tradition aspect of this is important to you. I understand that. I'm not much of a traditionalist. I'm more pragmatic. It's pretty easy for me to give up tradition when it loses its utility, particularly when it becomes counter-productive. I understand that it's not so for many people and I'm sympathetic to that. But I'm mostly thinking effectiveness. If you think about the football/prayer tradition, what sense does it make? If there were no such tradition, would you start one? If you were a football coach going to a school that didn't have that tradition and you were looking for a hook for your pre-game pep talk to your team, what would come to mind first? Would it really be Jesus? Surely not. Surely the Gipper is more potent in that scenario than Jesus. How does Jesus improve passing and tackling and teamwork? I don't know how. If that hook doesn't improve game performance, then why are we hanging on to the tradition. I'm operating at a disadvantage. I've never experienced a religious pre-game pep talk. I've watched the little rituals that teams do before games, the chants and the chest bumping etc. I wouldn't begin to know how you incorporate God into that or why you would want to. Maybe someone here could outline what a religion-centric motivational speech would be like. I really don't get it. If the tradition didn't exist, would you invent it? And, if so, how might it look and sound? EDIT: There's an intervening post about creative destruction. Can't have both creative destruction and tradition. IMO, creative destruction makes us better. Tradition is great for the peripheral things like Thanksgiving dinner and summers at the beach. For serious matters, it's expendable.