This video is a couple years old, but it makes a worthy point for those of us who sometimes get weary of hearing how foolish and vile we are when we are accused of these things by people who don’t even know us.
Erich Vieth is an iconoclastic attorney, musician and writer living in the Shaw neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. He and his wife Anne Jay have two daughters, aged 9 and 11.
Karl, I would not want public monies distributed to any schools espousing a particular religious belief, no. Bad idea.
They creep in, those beliefs, yes, through the biases of teachers, administrators, etc. But the goal is to keep them out, and even when that fails, we should still strive for it.
That doesn’t mean values can’t be taught. Again, for the gazillionth time, Karl, you are missing the freakin’ point. Teaching values is one thing. Attributing a particular deity as the source of those values is a different matter entirely.
The schools my daughters attend DO teach values.
They teach the value of education and lifelong learning, they teach honesty, kindness, compassion and community involvement as admirable qualities for which all should strive. They learn not to bully but to encourage. They learn the value of empathy. By developing those qualities internally, the individual students find and treasure their own strengths and appreciate the strengths of others. They see how each one of them adds to the larger group. They learn to explore and ask and not be embarrassed when they make mistakes, but rather to try again and learn from each error. They learn to laugh, to challenge each other and to set their goals high.
At the appropriate ages, they learn about the physiological changes of puberty, and the parents are included in those lessons on the elementary school level. I’ve just been through the first of those meetings with my youngest - and one that was reinforced was that each family has their own values and standards by which they are comfortable talking about all of these things, and that privacy is paramount. In middle school, they learn all about sex - what it involves and the many risks. They learn how to protect themselves, including emotionally, IF they decide to have sex. They are NOT encouraged to do so, nor are they told they must not do it. The fact that it is a personal and private decision is acknowledged, as well as the fact that it is a very big and important decision, and they are encouraged to discuss their feelings about it with their parents.
Those are all value-laden lessons, but not once does anyone say they should do these things (or not) because Jesus said it was a good idea, or because God will banish them to hell if they don’t. They are not told to ask God for help (as in prayer), nor are they told not to. They are taught, however, that they each have the power to help themselves and each other. They are taught to look within when they have a problem to solve, and to lean on those who care about them when the problem is bigger than they can handle.
When they lean on their families, I have no doubt the religious families will suggest prayer. I’m all for that. I’d be pretty pissed if one of my kids’ teachers told them they should pray for guidance - but I would not be upset if one of their teachers said something along the lines of: “Well, when I’m faced with a dilemma like that, I usually pray for guidance, because that fits my beliefs, but I know that doesn’t work for everyone. If you don’t pray, maybe just the quiet that comes from meditation would help clear your head and let you can think about the problem a new way.”
As far as home being the place values are taught, I sure hope everyone is learning values in their homes. I also know that lots of people learn values that conflict with ours, or don’t learn what I would call values at all. So I do hope that schools teach values. I hope that teachers and administrators model values. Which can be done, and done well, without specific reference to religion at all.
I’ll answer your question: if the playing field were leveled and the same funds went to each school across the board, I’d have no problem with it as long as all these schools met a basic required curricula in math, reading, history, etc. Whatever else you want to ladel on, as long as all the students got the same level of education in the agreed-upon core curricula, fine. We all live here, we all deserve equal services.
I remember in the Sixties that the reason most parochial schools did not want public funding was because such funding allowed state interference in local standards. So in that instance, the separation clause really was protecting religion from the state.
Actually, the values taught at home, good or bad, tend to override any values that might be gleaned from schools, as many in the inner cities know to their dismay.
I have never accused atheists of being any more or any less prone to make a mess of their lives than the typical person who lets the culture, their own selfish interests, and their lack of self-esteem combine to destroy relationships with the people that should be valued the most in their lives. A good number of Christians mess up their lives, but that’s not news to anyone. Even at least one or two modern atheists have made a few mistakes with their lives, either in the past or present, and perhaps also in the future.
I try to respect those who regularly contribute their perspective here on DI, as I realize most do of me. That however doesn’t mean we will likely ever come to see some issues in the same light, because we have fundamentally differing perspectives concerning values and beliefs.
There are however areas where we could come to some kind of agreement on how certain matters like religion and beliefs can best be handled.
I think we agree that religion and beliefs are not best left for a specific school to try and teach about them all. Mark states that more and more public schools are seeing this as impossibility.
This however is trumped by anyone who thinks equal treatment means ridiculing them all as pointless inventions of inferior thinking human beings. And as such these people also reject that their personally held values or collective “humanistic values” don’t count as being able to be considered by others to be religious in any shape manner or form, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Secular Humanism is indeed a religion.
It all depends on if you are trying to win or lose a specific hand as to when you play the trump card. People who want to let others win a few hands don’t play trump unless they have to protect themselves from losing. Then of course not losing most often also ends up meaning a win lose situation as draws in most card games are very infrequent.
These people really think secular means a-religious, much like saying atheist means they do not have anything of importance in their lives which could be considered to have non-scientific value or worth ascribed to it by the atheist.
I think we agree that a specific family’s children should not have the parents’ religion or values attacked or criticized as being of an inferior form or quality. This just shows complete contempt for other perspectives and actually is a form of open hostility towards the values and beliefs of others. I have never suggested that the children of atheists should be taught by evangelical born again teachers, but most atheists have not found it a practical matter to have to establish their own schools because they can pretty much accomplish a dual purpose by the transformation of the public schools that has occurred since the 1960’s.
We may not agree with how the Muslim world treats women, but criticizing their culture criticizes their religion as well and is not how to go about effecting change, that only makes them push in their heels and forces stricter legal regulations in their land. Open discourse and ongoing demonstration of how men and women can manage to treat each other with dignity and honor as equals may take many years to open up such a culture to considering a change, but it is the right way to approach the differences.
By all means, adults should be able to reason and debate and discuss without having to resort to insults and personal attacks, but putting children into the mix and seeking to teach them that their parents are wrong is just detrimental to a society. It also reveals the bias in one’s own strongly held beliefs.
This could and should happen between adults in a free market system where the parents and educators of specific philosophical bents should have to verify to the state that what they are teaching their children is not harmful to their children or to the common good of society for that matter.
Trying to wrestle control of what gets taught to children from parents and giving it to the secular principles of the state is what people like Hitler were all about. I agree that atheists should have a place to teach their children that is free from the educational bias and evaluation of creationists, but I also believe that Creationists should be free from the educational bias and evaluation of atheists.
I have heard of far too many teachers grading controversial issues and projects, not on the basis of the writing or reasoning, but on the bias of what was not the correct perspective to have approached the issue.
I should have flunked out of the University of Life long ago based upon the scathing and snarly comments I’ve received from many here on DI. For some I realize its just part of their nature and I’ve come to expect such treatment, but if a college professor with tenure treated their students in such ways, is there any wonder why so many of our graduates from math and science programs are from foreign lands?
Students who don’t give a rip about any Christian aspects of their heritage manage to get through university education by not giving their professors any reason to question their foundational beliefs.
Students who expect to be vocal concerning their faith in matters of religion had better shut up or tow the agnostic or atheistic line or they will not find favor in the classroom where the professor sees their livelihood threatened if they don’t weed out or destroy the faith of the young men and women entrusted to their care.
In America, this ought not to be, but it is, so I guess I should consider shutting up. That’s what a tolerant, pliable, loving Christian is suppose to model for everyone else.
Simply: money taken by the government from its citizens - tax - should be used in a way that benefits, as far as is practical, as many as possible. From the point of view of religion & education, government-sponsored schools should be neutral on the subject, especially in a nation whose Constitution says that the state must not promote or restrict religion. Secularism - religious neutrality - not for or against. That’s it in a nutshell. If such a thing as an “atheist school” or “gay activist school” ever came into being, I’d want the same thing: state schools should be politically and religiously neutral.
This oft-repeated idea that because atheists oppose state schools endorsing religion means they want atheism to replace it is false. People who continue to employ it are simply being dishonest. I know where it comes from though: clearly, some religious people are willing to do anything enshrine their faith in law (Dover). From these religionists’ point of view, everyone else is trying to do the same and as they falsely view atheism as some kind of competing religion, they make the assumption that atheists are up to the same bullshit tricks they are. It’s projection of the most blatant variety.
Regardless of their religious belief or lack of it, rational, reasonable people simply don’t want their taxes being spent teaching their kids that God magicked the universe into being in science class, or that Joshua’s trumpet destroyed Jericho in history class. When it comes to science in particular, truth and fact aren’t dependent on your philosophy. Whether you’re Muslim or Viking or Jesuit, the Earth still orbits the Sun, the universe is still 13.7 billion years old and we still have common ancestry with all living things on Earth stretching back billions of years. These are facts. Throwing various gods around won’t change any of them, but it will confuse a whole lot of kids who just want to graduate, not to mention piss off a whole bunch of parents who’d prefer to approach religion in their own way in their own time.
I refer again to the Kitzmiller v Dover trial - it may interest Karl and his brethren to know that it wasn’t a pack of strident militant naturalist materialist Dawkinsite Darwinist atheists who initiated the suit against the Dover school board, it was a group of concerned parents & teachers - mostly Christians & one a pastor if I recall correctly - who strongly objected to the school board blatantly promoting religion in the science class. They filed the suit on constitutional principle, not because they were amoral heathen sinners, knee-jerking violently to any public mention of Jesus.
Also, the people who were responsible for that unconstitutional promotion of religion did not do so openly as they knew what they were doing was wrong. They used subterfuge, replaced key words in their fraudulent textbook with less overtly religious ones and even committed perjury. Until the verdict (delivered by a Bush-appointed conservative Christian judge, which no doubt gave Dover the false impression that it was in the bag before it even started) and beyond, they continued to insist they were not lying and that Intelligent Design has no religious roots.
The point is that you don’t have to be an atheist to oppose religion being taught in state schools, nor does being a committed Christian mean you won’t necessarily lie and cheat to achieve your ends. A “secular” education means an education that’s religiously neutral. Leave religious instruction up to parents and pastors & leave teaching to teachers.
Let me just add this. Karl wrote: “‘humanistic values’ don’t count as being able to be considered by others to be religious in any shape manner or form, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Secular Humanism is indeed a religion.”
Wrong again, Karl. This is a myth. In 1961, in Torcaso vs. Watkins, Judge Hugo Black wrote in a footnote:
“Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others.”
This footnote is an obiter dictum; it is incidental to the case at hand and is not legally binding.
From Wikipedia’s article on Secular Humanism:
“The implication in Justice Black’s footnote that secular humanism is a religion has been seized upon by religious opponents of the teaching of the theory of evolution, who have made the argument that teaching evolution amounts to teaching a religious idea.
The claim that secular humanism could be considered a religion for legal purposes was examined by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Peloza v. Capistrano School District, 37 F.3d 517 (9th Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 515 U.S. 1173 (1995). In this case, a science teacher argued that, by requiring him to teach evolution, his school district was forcing him to teach the ‘religion’ of secular humanism. The Court responded, ‘We reject this claim because neither the Supreme Court, nor this circuit, has ever held that evolutionism or secular humanism are ‘religions’ for Establishment Clause purposes.’ The Supreme Court refused to review the case.
The decision in a subsequent case, Kalka v. Hawk et al., offered this commentary:[22]
The Court’s statement in Torcaso does not stand for the proposition that humanism, no matter in what form and no matter how practiced, amounts to a religion under the First Amendment. The Court offered no test for determining what system of beliefs qualified as a ‘religion’ under the First Amendment. The most one may read into the Torcaso footnote is the idea that a particular non-theistic group calling itself the ‘Fellowship of Humanity’ qualified as a religious organization under California law.”
“Trying to wrestle control of what gets taught to children from parents and giving it to the secular principles of the state is what people like Hitler were all about. I agree that atheists should have a place to teach their children that is free from the educational bias and evaluation of creationists, but I also believe that Creationists should be free from the educational bias and evaluation of atheists.”
Well, there ya go. This paragraph, written by Karl after endless responses from several different people explaining, ad nauseum, that no one wants to wrestle anything from parents and that secular schools are religiously neutral as opposed to anti-religion, is exactly why I said I would no longer respond to him - and why I am returning to that position.
Thanks Mindy, I think I missed that paragraph. Stunning.
Karl has done two things by invoking “argumentum ad Hitlerum”.
First, he’s confirmed that he’s an ignorant clown who hasn’t comprehended a single goddamned thing anyone has said in response to his various talking points. Incidentally he reveals he’s pig-ignorant about the Nazis as well. One could presume from that paragraph that he learns history & current events from Jack Chick evangelical comics or Ken Ham’s Magical Bearded Vegetarian T-Rex Museum.
Second, by conflating Hitler and secularism he’s helped me fill in my Fundie Bingo card. Woohoo! “Hitler” goes right on the end there, next to “The Gay Agenda”, in between “amoral” & “immoral” and on top of “OMG they’re persecuting teh Christians” and “Darwinian materialist Dawk-o-bots want to turn you all into fish-ape-men!” I’ve yet to tick my “baby-eaters” bonus box though. Help a brother out …
Karl, you’re hilarious. You got me. Own up: you don’t believe any of this bullshit, you’re just Poe-ing everyone. You’re pulling off a truly brilliant, Phelps-esque, fundie halfwit parody that we’re all mistaking for the real thing. Come on, seriously … oh, you ARE serious? Really?
Good lord. It’s times like this I’m very, very glad my kids will be schooled in Australia.
Karl writes:—”I agree that atheists should have a place to teach their children that is free from the educational bias and evaluation of creationists, but I also believe that Creationists should be free from the educational bias and evaluation of atheists.”
Absolutely not. I think all this shit should be thrown into the same arena and let the best ideas win. You cannot breed tolerance through separation and isolation. I agree keeping religion as a topic out of the public schools is silly, but I believe that because by so doing we “protect” religion from examination on a daily basis. How can anyone form an opinion about something like this when it is not allowed to be discussed?
For the record, I think pitting religion against critical reasoning would result in the latter gaining in acceptance. Once you teach people how to think and show them the flaws in something, all the flying spaghetti monsters in the world won’t save an addlebrained ideology.
I really think if science would get out of the business of being used to discredit other people’s perspectives on values and personal beliefs then secular schools might be possible, but until such time, this is why I teach in a school where I have the ability to think and encourage critical analysis of both science and my own thought process, as well as to foster this in the students I teach.
This is the one of the values that is missing in the public schools and any mention of its needs gets the NAE and Darwin’s modern Bulldog, Eugenie Scott all fired up into attack mode.
Ideally, pure science is taught or concluded in a supposed vacuum of values and belief with no motives for why any specific matter is even under investigation.
Since this is assumed true by atheists, then those who use science to prop up their beliefs concerning origins and life in general should be able to let other people come to their own conclusions without resorting to logical fallacies and ad hominem diatribes.
So much of the contents of the human mind holds to ideas and beliefs that can not be fully proven using science and simple logical deduction. Emotion and personal experience also shape what one decides to accept as valid interpretations of evidence. Much of this then gets turned into facts by those who have a hard time telling actual pure science from hypothetical science, fact from values, and proper opinions from biased perspectives.
The divergent use of language, premises and confirmational bias reveals that people have motives in their thought process that will not be satisfied by simply stating “I don’t know” as an acceptable answer. Rather they rely on their inductive premises by which they approach these matters as their guiding foundation. To rid themselves of the need to have to constantly re-evaluate the truthfulness of their premises they tend to take one of the following approaches concerning the idea of the existence of a God or “the gods.”
These premises include, but ar not limited to ones like these. Any of these could be true ideas based upon the use of language alone.
Theistic ideologies:
If a god exists, then . . .
If the gods exist, then . . .
If some God exists, then . . .
If only the one true God exists, then . . .
Agnostic ideologies:
If perhaps a god does or does not exist, then . . .
If perhaps the gods do or do not exist, then . . .
If perhaps some God does or does not exist, then . . .
If perhaps only the one true God does or does not exist, then . . .
True atheistic “premises” are these
If a god does not exist, then . . .
If the gods do not exist, then . . .
If some God does not exist, then . . .
If the only one true God does not exist, then . . .
However the assumed true “conclusions” of hard line atheism are of a different psychological nature.
Please note all the p’s and q’s are quasi mixtures of one of the ideological above premises, usually combined with materialistic, “real” world scientific observations into associated logical operations.
If some p then some q, therefore a god does not exist.
If some p then some q, therefore the gods do not exist.
If some p then some q, therefore some God does not exist.
If some p then some q, therefore the one true God does not exist.
Please note that the logical conclusions (no longer only inductive premises) from the no longer inductive premise based atheist is grounded upon at least one premise that is ideological in nature and probably also one other premise that could be another ideological premise or a materialsistic or scientific premise based upon interpreted evidence in nature.
Premises that are open to evaluation remain as inductive value statements and are open to re-examination. Conclusions based upon the use of inductive value statements that mix ideological concepts with materialistic or interpreted scientific evidences have violated a simple use of logical scientific reasoning.
The premises of actual science should not include inductive statements of an ideological nature, therefore any conclusions that are arrived at using hypothetical science to associate inductive ideological statements with materialistic interpreted evidences must by necessity have an individual component that draws in the emotional and personal experiential side of life that so enables many people to come to different conclusions relating to these matters.
This is why some believe science can establish “facts” when no one was there to witness what actually took place. This is why ideological inductive premises can be be transformed into scientifically respectable ideology that really is not what science is suppose to be about.
This is why it perturbs me to no end that people like Lyell can even state what their motive was in presenting an alternative geological history, and it doesn’t seem to bother many people outside of the creationist mindset.
Thanks for your second response as well, a bit different from the first!
Interesting, I take you don’t believe an equal playing field can be created for education at any level, from head start schools and Pre-Schools all the way through college.
I’ll take your first response as an idealistic impossibility and the second as the harsh realities of financial, political and educational leadership partnerships that exist in America.
To the degree that some may find it necessary here to continue debating points to which none of the others will admit well founded, I submit another issue:
Debate topic:
“Does a pig enjoy wrasslin’?”
I assert the pig likes it, and the rest of y’all are just gettin’ dirty!
Pro: Karl
Con: everybody else
10 minutes per side for your position, 3 minutes of rebuttal. Pro gets to go first and last.
I agree completely, Mark - IF religion could be discussed rather than taught. I would wager that the zealots will never let it happen the way you describe, because they know full well what would happen if it did. Indoctrination would not hold up, and that is entirely too frightening for them to contemplate.
As for you, Hank, your fundie bingo comment caused me to spit coffee on my screen. That was priceless! I’ll let you know if I find baby-eater references anywhere - -
Karl writes:—”I really think if science would get out of the business of being used to discredit other people’s perspectives on values and personal beliefs then secular schools might be possible”
This is such crap. Science is in the business—partly—of providing a material basis upon which beliefs and values might be posited. If you say “The flowers bloom in the spring because the fairies have awoken from their winter sleep and push the petals open as they leave” you are perfectly entitled to continue to believe that after a scientist has finished telling you that that is not how the process works. So if you therefore do continue believing that claptrap, it’s on your own dime and you can’t rely on any kind of verifiable truth to support it. It also lets people off the hook from paying the least bit of attention to the crackpot who espouses that point of view.
So, yes, science does—as a byproduct—discredit people’s beliefs and values. But if those values and beliefs had any credibility in the first place, nothing could do that, least of all science. You’re just bellyaching because so much of what is postulated by religion is in the fairies in springtime column of belief systems.
(In high school once, working in the office, I had twenty minutes of the most incredible intervention session when as freshman girl was brought in in hysterics. I and a girl there worked with her until we found out that she thought she was pregnant and didn’t know what to do. Then it turned out that she thought she was pregnant because she’d french kissed her boyfriend. Her parents told her that’s how pregnancy happens. Why? They didn’t want her kissing boys. Why? They were firebreathing fundamentalist christians and she had been exempted from ALL sex education classes—we had one—on their demand. THAT”S the kind of peurile crap I find indefensible, and the only way it is supportable is because it is “faith based” whatever that means. And it’s a trap. Not only was this girl in unnecessary torment, but she finally came to understand that her parents were liars. Liars for Jesus, maybe, but liars. And this is why I cannot abide the sanctamoneous resistance to science mounted by people who think god is real. The only possibility this girl had of finding out the truth was in the public arena. She’d already gotten her religion, thank you, and look what it did.)
—”Ideally, pure science is taught or concluded in a supposed vacuum of values and belief with no motives for why any specific matter is even under investigation.”
More crap. The desire to know how things are is a profound motive and the willingness of someone to abandon perspectives that do not abett that knowledge says a lot about his or her values. The quest to understand is a positive value. If understanding means you have to stop believing in Santa Claus, well I think that’s a positive thing, too. The ideal of science is to progress in an atmosphere of example and counterexample, open debate, and a common effort to limit bias. How is that not expressive of value? And the net effect of this is to, little by little, tell us who we are. Damn, what a pointless exercise if there’s a god who has already made that determination for us!
—”Much of this then gets turned into facts by those who have a hard time telling actual pure science from hypothetical science, fact from values, and proper opinions from biased perspectives.”
Well, that describes good portion of the general public, MOST OF WHOM ADHERE TO A RELIGION OF ONE KIND OR ANOTHER AND USE THAT IN LIEU OF REASON. Scientists generally have no trouble telling the differences.
—-”True atheistic “premises” are these
If a god does not exist, then . . .
If the gods do not exist, then . . .
If some God does not exist, then . . .
If the only one true God does not exist, then . . .”
Wrong. An atheist premise, “we have already determine god does not exist, so what is the universe like as it is?” There’s no if in there. Already been through it.
Look: speaking for myself, my atheism is the result of years of consideration. I didn’t just wake up one day and say “I’m tired of believing in all this stuff.” You presume there is a process of indoctrination going on. There isn’t. Where would you go to get that? No where. It does not happen in the public schools, verifiable by the fact that the majority of people in this country have gone to public schools and come out as religious if not more so than when they entered. I was, if anything, indoctrinated as a christian. I had to unlearn all that stuff.
But here’s the real thing: I grew up and got over it. It is precisely the same as believing in Santa Claus, except with more convoluted subtext.
—”This is why some believe science can establish “facts” when no one was there to witness what actually took place. This is why ideological inductive premises can be be transformed into scientifically respectable ideology that really is not what science is suppose to be about.”
Wrong. But for you, if it disagrees with your a priori determination that there must be a god with all that such entails, ideology MUST be geared into it.
Scientifically respectable ideology…
There’s no such thing. There are ideologues in the scientific community, but the system is designed to out them and discredit them if they are in error on the science. You mistake the presence of personality types for programmatic intent. Just as you claim my assessments of religion are in error for the same reason—there are bad christians, doesn’t mean christianity is bad—you are consistently in error over this. It’s your guiding presumption. And it is bullshit.
Religion doesn’t do that. Religion could not be religion if it did.
—”Interesting, I take you don’t believe an equal playing field can be created for education at any level, from head start schools and Pre-Schools all the way through college.”
As long as individual communities are allowed to tax themselves and fund their school districts separately, no. Basic human nature—where possible, parents seek to buy an edge for their children. It guarantees the impossibility of an even playing field. That doesn’t even begin to address the problems with poverty in the community.
—”I’ll take your first response as an idealistic impossibility and the second as the harsh realities of financial, political and educational leadership partnerships that exist in America.”
Impossibility? No. Unlikely in the extreme? What do you think?
I’ve yet to ever see a pig “wrastlin” with anything, it can’t grab onto anything except with its mouth, which normally is just something it wants to eat.
I’ve seen pigs trying to escape the clutches of those trying to catch the pig. Like waise I’ve seen/heard of various kings of people trying to catch greased pigs but I guess that would be a different debate, and a different kind of pig wrastlin.
The fact that many think that pigs likes dirt and mud is only because that is its best method for cooling them down to prevent overheating. You stick an animal out in the hot sun and expect it to ignore any source of cooling and then think the animal has no common sense. The fact that the food it eats is often found in various degrees of decompositiuon already means that to eat the slop the pig needs to be willing to forage through all manner of slop which it also finds help to cool him down when left out in the hot sun.
Enough said.
The topic is beyond being reclaimed at this point in time. Most atheists are not vile, I never said they were. Most atheists are presently not so foolish according to the modern standards that people could use for such comparisons and I never said they were. Some atheists are outright vile, and foolish, but so are many people of various religious faith, at least for some part of their lives when they make stupid pig-headed decisions.
What amazes me most is that when opportunities for reasonable shows up, throwing mud/dirt/slop into the equation just helps to cool down the pig.
My theory is that ALL public schools should receive the same amount of per-student funding, regardless of location. Buy a big home in a high-dollar area for the atmosphere, square footage, high-dollar neighbors, lot size, street maintenance, suburban covenants, etc. etc. But not for the schools. All that means is that kids of poor parents - through absolutely no fault of their own - are penalized and not given the same opportunities as their wealthier peers. It makes no sense, unless you are one of the wealthy ones. And by opposing equal funding for schools in lower income areas, one would seem to be saying that it is OK for kids to lie in the beds their parents made.
Impossible as long as the system favors the convoluted ideas/attitudes of separation of church and state and since atheism has no churches, there is no need to separate it from what the state does.
The state can favor what the atheist would like to say, discuss, or silence, but when it favors what anyone of any religion might think, it needs to be censured.
Except for a couple of passages I’ll stay silent. Mark & Mindy (nanu nanu?) have already replied eloquently and any “rebuttle” (ahem, teacher) I embarked on would be redundant & pointless. Unlike all my others *cough yeah right cough*
There are only so many times a person can clearly explain what science, secularism and atheism are (and what they’re not) and be utterly & comprehensively ignored before he realises what a complete waste of time this kind of wrasslin’ is. Even if you think you beat your dang pig fair and square in every round there’s no way you’re gonna change his mind.
@Karl “I really think if science would get out of the business of being used to discredit other people’s perspectives on values and personal beliefs then secular schools might be possible….”
If creationists like you would keep their religious values and personal beliefs out of science class, there wouldn’t be a problem.
@Karl “The premises of actual science should not include inductive statements of an ideological nature, therefore any conclusions that are arrived at using hypothetical science to associate inductive ideological statements with materialistic interpreted evidences must by necessity have an individual component that draws in the emotional and personal experiential side of life that so enables many people to come to different conclusions relating to these matters.”
(Wow, that’s an incoherent paragraph!)
I think Karl is saying that everybody just believes what they want to believe, which he said before.
“I really think if science would get out of the business of being used to discredit other people’s perspectives on values and personal beliefs then secular schools might be possible….”
For the last time, science doesn’t dictate values or personal beliefs. Science is a tool; a collection of methods used to ascertain, in an unbiased way and to the best of our knowledge, facts about the universe.
If other peoples’ perspectives and viewpoints on scientific facts can be shown to be WRONG, then that’s just too damn bad. It isn’t science’s fault if some people think the world was magicked into existence in a week and that dinosaurs, thylacines and polar bears were all on the Ark together for a month and none of them tried to eat each other. That stuff simply is not true.
I can’t believe after so many people have spelled out what science is, you still think it’s some kind of competing ideology or belief system that’s just as fallible, parochial and intent on winning converts as your own. People are very patient with you - more so than you deserve - but in the end, every single time someone attempts an explanation or a correction you just choose to ignore everything they say because you already have the answers you need.
You’ve progressed from being challenging to being flat-out boring. I’m starting to bore myself saying the same effing thing over and over.
This whole crisis will just be repeated again because the way W and Obama have stacked the deck.We, the taxpayers are the payors of last resort, and there's no risk, civilly or criminally for the thieves, jackals and vultures who will pick over the last of the bones of the Middle Class at the end of the next crisis when the whole world is thrown ba... »
Erich-It seems that the Chinese are acting as though peak oil were here or something. From the article:This green spending is concurrent with their ongoing efforts to lock up remaining supplies of oil, as I briefly mentioned here. See also this article on Chinese oil buying. »
Jay, I agree. A lot of the house bill, particularly where Medicaid reform is concerned, references specific paragraphs in the Medicaid laws. Understanding the full effect of the changes wil require reading those as well. I've often thought it would be fun to get an amendment to repeal or suspend an obscure law of physics, such as the chandrasekha... »
Ya know, I thought NO ONE actually read those bills. I've always wanted to slip in weird, off the wall statements and regs that make no sense into the middle of such a document to see if anyone is actually reading them. »
Palin quit some appointment to an oil board because of GOP "corruption."Palin says the McCain people didn't let her have her say. The media just did "gotcha" moments on Palin.Palin quits being governor two years early because of conservative allegations of her being "corrupt." Just after Palin pays back Alaska for bilking the state for travel for h... »
Niklaus: I admire your determination. There are probably only a few hundred people in the entire country who have read the first 1,000 pages. When you finish, I'll invite you to read the Senate version too, so that you can do a comparison. »
Well I'm up to page 1000 in the house bill. A lot of the bill addresses specifically the loopholes that have been exploited by large corporations like Wal-mart that have permitted those companies to put most of their employees on public health care or to deny them access to coverage. Some actually includes provisions for making those corporations p... »
Get Over It, It's not about a difference of opinion. Mrs' Palin has repeatedly and proudly her voiced opinions in ways that exhibit a wanton ignorance of current events, world history, and global politics. She has on many occasions voiced opinions that show grounding in the prejudices and stereotyping common to those who prefer to leave the he... »
Hey, Get Over It,What do we do if someone actually happens to BE stupid? I suppose we could say they're rationality challenged.But seriously, I don't for a minute think this woman is stupid. I think she's opportunistic and such a thorough-going politician that she'd use just about anyone, including her family, to win.BTW, American Right To Life (... »
Ya'll need to get over it. Name calling conservatives will never get independents like me. Try to be more balanced and analyze Sarah's actions/remarks to the same degree as your beloved Obama. Also, please stop judging people to be stupid just because they don't agree with you! This elitism in the liberal party is just sickening. »
Aw, bugger! I'm in a "fight?" Who do I punch in the nose? My faith there is a God means I cannot accept that others don't believe as I do? Or that some might believe that I'm delusional and believe in mythical beings?There's some unforseen armageddon between theism and science which will result in the inevitable destruction of theism? Dammit, I gue... »
I've been working hard to not post anything on Sarah Palin, who continues to gather publicity for reasons I can't fathom. I must say, though, that I am aghast at her recent position on the illegal Jewish settlements. http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/11/palin-on-israel.html »
These words by Karen Armstrong bear on this discussion. When we insist that there has to be a "winner" to a "debate" instead of a discussion, we might all be losers:http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html »
Ebonmuse: I don't know anything about Mooney's position other than what I heard on this interview with D.J.Grothe. I thought that what he said there sounded reasonable and that's why I posted on it. It now seems, however, that my position is actually somewhat different than that of Mooney. I'd be the last person to tell anyone that they shou... »
Karl, I would not want public monies distributed to any schools espousing a particular religious belief, no. Bad idea.
They creep in, those beliefs, yes, through the biases of teachers, administrators, etc. But the goal is to keep them out, and even when that fails, we should still strive for it.
That doesn’t mean values can’t be taught. Again, for the gazillionth time, Karl, you are missing the freakin’ point. Teaching values is one thing. Attributing a particular deity as the source of those values is a different matter entirely.
The schools my daughters attend DO teach values.
They teach the value of education and lifelong learning, they teach honesty, kindness, compassion and community involvement as admirable qualities for which all should strive. They learn not to bully but to encourage. They learn the value of empathy. By developing those qualities internally, the individual students find and treasure their own strengths and appreciate the strengths of others. They see how each one of them adds to the larger group. They learn to explore and ask and not be embarrassed when they make mistakes, but rather to try again and learn from each error. They learn to laugh, to challenge each other and to set their goals high.
At the appropriate ages, they learn about the physiological changes of puberty, and the parents are included in those lessons on the elementary school level. I’ve just been through the first of those meetings with my youngest - and one that was reinforced was that each family has their own values and standards by which they are comfortable talking about all of these things, and that privacy is paramount. In middle school, they learn all about sex - what it involves and the many risks. They learn how to protect themselves, including emotionally, IF they decide to have sex. They are NOT encouraged to do so, nor are they told they must not do it. The fact that it is a personal and private decision is acknowledged, as well as the fact that it is a very big and important decision, and they are encouraged to discuss their feelings about it with their parents.
Those are all value-laden lessons, but not once does anyone say they should do these things (or not) because Jesus said it was a good idea, or because God will banish them to hell if they don’t. They are not told to ask God for help (as in prayer), nor are they told not to. They are taught, however, that they each have the power to help themselves and each other. They are taught to look within when they have a problem to solve, and to lean on those who care about them when the problem is bigger than they can handle.
When they lean on their families, I have no doubt the religious families will suggest prayer. I’m all for that. I’d be pretty pissed if one of my kids’ teachers told them they should pray for guidance - but I would not be upset if one of their teachers said something along the lines of: “Well, when I’m faced with a dilemma like that, I usually pray for guidance, because that fits my beliefs, but I know that doesn’t work for everyone. If you don’t pray, maybe just the quiet that comes from meditation would help clear your head and let you can think about the problem a new way.”
As far as home being the place values are taught, I sure hope everyone is learning values in their homes. I also know that lots of people learn values that conflict with ours, or don’t learn what I would call values at all. So I do hope that schools teach values. I hope that teachers and administrators model values. Which can be done, and done well, without specific reference to religion at all.
Karl,
I’ll answer your question: if the playing field were leveled and the same funds went to each school across the board, I’d have no problem with it as long as all these schools met a basic required curricula in math, reading, history, etc. Whatever else you want to ladel on, as long as all the students got the same level of education in the agreed-upon core curricula, fine. We all live here, we all deserve equal services.
I remember in the Sixties that the reason most parochial schools did not want public funding was because such funding allowed state interference in local standards. So in that instance, the separation clause really was protecting religion from the state.
Actually, the values taught at home, good or bad, tend to override any values that might be gleaned from schools, as many in the inner cities know to their dismay.
I have never accused atheists of being any more or any less prone to make a mess of their lives than the typical person who lets the culture, their own selfish interests, and their lack of self-esteem combine to destroy relationships with the people that should be valued the most in their lives. A good number of Christians mess up their lives, but that’s not news to anyone. Even at least one or two modern atheists have made a few mistakes with their lives, either in the past or present, and perhaps also in the future.
I try to respect those who regularly contribute their perspective here on DI, as I realize most do of me. That however doesn’t mean we will likely ever come to see some issues in the same light, because we have fundamentally differing perspectives concerning values and beliefs.
There are however areas where we could come to some kind of agreement on how certain matters like religion and beliefs can best be handled.
I think we agree that religion and beliefs are not best left for a specific school to try and teach about them all. Mark states that more and more public schools are seeing this as impossibility.
This however is trumped by anyone who thinks equal treatment means ridiculing them all as pointless inventions of inferior thinking human beings. And as such these people also reject that their personally held values or collective “humanistic values” don’t count as being able to be considered by others to be religious in any shape manner or form, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Secular Humanism is indeed a religion.
It all depends on if you are trying to win or lose a specific hand as to when you play the trump card. People who want to let others win a few hands don’t play trump unless they have to protect themselves from losing. Then of course not losing most often also ends up meaning a win lose situation as draws in most card games are very infrequent.
These people really think secular means a-religious, much like saying atheist means they do not have anything of importance in their lives which could be considered to have non-scientific value or worth ascribed to it by the atheist.
I think we agree that a specific family’s children should not have the parents’ religion or values attacked or criticized as being of an inferior form or quality. This just shows complete contempt for other perspectives and actually is a form of open hostility towards the values and beliefs of others. I have never suggested that the children of atheists should be taught by evangelical born again teachers, but most atheists have not found it a practical matter to have to establish their own schools because they can pretty much accomplish a dual purpose by the transformation of the public schools that has occurred since the 1960’s.
We may not agree with how the Muslim world treats women, but criticizing their culture criticizes their religion as well and is not how to go about effecting change, that only makes them push in their heels and forces stricter legal regulations in their land. Open discourse and ongoing demonstration of how men and women can manage to treat each other with dignity and honor as equals may take many years to open up such a culture to considering a change, but it is the right way to approach the differences.
By all means, adults should be able to reason and debate and discuss without having to resort to insults and personal attacks, but putting children into the mix and seeking to teach them that their parents are wrong is just detrimental to a society. It also reveals the bias in one’s own strongly held beliefs.
This could and should happen between adults in a free market system where the parents and educators of specific philosophical bents should have to verify to the state that what they are teaching their children is not harmful to their children or to the common good of society for that matter.
Trying to wrestle control of what gets taught to children from parents and giving it to the secular principles of the state is what people like Hitler were all about. I agree that atheists should have a place to teach their children that is free from the educational bias and evaluation of creationists, but I also believe that Creationists should be free from the educational bias and evaluation of atheists.
I have heard of far too many teachers grading controversial issues and projects, not on the basis of the writing or reasoning, but on the bias of what was not the correct perspective to have approached the issue.
I should have flunked out of the University of Life long ago based upon the scathing and snarly comments I’ve received from many here on DI. For some I realize its just part of their nature and I’ve come to expect such treatment, but if a college professor with tenure treated their students in such ways, is there any wonder why so many of our graduates from math and science programs are from foreign lands?
Students who don’t give a rip about any Christian aspects of their heritage manage to get through university education by not giving their professors any reason to question their foundational beliefs.
Students who expect to be vocal concerning their faith in matters of religion had better shut up or tow the agnostic or atheistic line or they will not find favor in the classroom where the professor sees their livelihood threatened if they don’t weed out or destroy the faith of the young men and women entrusted to their care.
In America, this ought not to be, but it is, so I guess I should consider shutting up. That’s what a tolerant, pliable, loving Christian is suppose to model for everyone else.
I’ll have to think about that.
Simply: money taken by the government from its citizens - tax - should be used in a way that benefits, as far as is practical, as many as possible. From the point of view of religion & education, government-sponsored schools should be neutral on the subject, especially in a nation whose Constitution says that the state must not promote or restrict religion. Secularism - religious neutrality - not for or against. That’s it in a nutshell. If such a thing as an “atheist school” or “gay activist school” ever came into being, I’d want the same thing: state schools should be politically and religiously neutral.
This oft-repeated idea that because atheists oppose state schools endorsing religion means they want atheism to replace it is false. People who continue to employ it are simply being dishonest. I know where it comes from though: clearly, some religious people are willing to do anything enshrine their faith in law (Dover). From these religionists’ point of view, everyone else is trying to do the same and as they falsely view atheism as some kind of competing religion, they make the assumption that atheists are up to the same bullshit tricks they are. It’s projection of the most blatant variety.
Regardless of their religious belief or lack of it, rational, reasonable people simply don’t want their taxes being spent teaching their kids that God magicked the universe into being in science class, or that Joshua’s trumpet destroyed Jericho in history class. When it comes to science in particular, truth and fact aren’t dependent on your philosophy. Whether you’re Muslim or Viking or Jesuit, the Earth still orbits the Sun, the universe is still 13.7 billion years old and we still have common ancestry with all living things on Earth stretching back billions of years. These are facts. Throwing various gods around won’t change any of them, but it will confuse a whole lot of kids who just want to graduate, not to mention piss off a whole bunch of parents who’d prefer to approach religion in their own way in their own time.
I refer again to the Kitzmiller v Dover trial - it may interest Karl and his brethren to know that it wasn’t a pack of strident militant naturalist materialist Dawkinsite Darwinist atheists who initiated the suit against the Dover school board, it was a group of concerned parents & teachers - mostly Christians & one a pastor if I recall correctly - who strongly objected to the school board blatantly promoting religion in the science class. They filed the suit on constitutional principle, not because they were amoral heathen sinners, knee-jerking violently to any public mention of Jesus.
Also, the people who were responsible for that unconstitutional promotion of religion did not do so openly as they knew what they were doing was wrong. They used subterfuge, replaced key words in their fraudulent textbook with less overtly religious ones and even committed perjury. Until the verdict (delivered by a Bush-appointed conservative Christian judge, which no doubt gave Dover the false impression that it was in the bag before it even started) and beyond, they continued to insist they were not lying and that Intelligent Design has no religious roots.
The point is that you don’t have to be an atheist to oppose religion being taught in state schools, nor does being a committed Christian mean you won’t necessarily lie and cheat to achieve your ends. A “secular” education means an education that’s religiously neutral. Leave religious instruction up to parents and pastors & leave teaching to teachers.
Thank you, Hank.
Let me just add this. Karl wrote: “‘humanistic values’ don’t count as being able to be considered by others to be religious in any shape manner or form, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Secular Humanism is indeed a religion.”
Wrong again, Karl. This is a myth. In 1961, in Torcaso vs. Watkins, Judge Hugo Black wrote in a footnote:
“Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others.”
This footnote is an obiter dictum; it is incidental to the case at hand and is not legally binding.
From Wikipedia’s article on Secular Humanism:
“The implication in Justice Black’s footnote that secular humanism is a religion has been seized upon by religious opponents of the teaching of the theory of evolution, who have made the argument that teaching evolution amounts to teaching a religious idea.
The claim that secular humanism could be considered a religion for legal purposes was examined by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Peloza v. Capistrano School District, 37 F.3d 517 (9th Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 515 U.S. 1173 (1995). In this case, a science teacher argued that, by requiring him to teach evolution, his school district was forcing him to teach the ‘religion’ of secular humanism. The Court responded, ‘We reject this claim because neither the Supreme Court, nor this circuit, has ever held that evolutionism or secular humanism are ‘religions’ for Establishment Clause purposes.’ The Supreme Court refused to review the case.
The decision in a subsequent case, Kalka v. Hawk et al., offered this commentary:[22]
The Court’s statement in Torcaso does not stand for the proposition that humanism, no matter in what form and no matter how practiced, amounts to a religion under the First Amendment. The Court offered no test for determining what system of beliefs qualified as a ‘religion’ under the First Amendment. The most one may read into the Torcaso footnote is the idea that a particular non-theistic group calling itself the ‘Fellowship of Humanity’ qualified as a religious organization under California law.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_humanism
“Trying to wrestle control of what gets taught to children from parents and giving it to the secular principles of the state is what people like Hitler were all about. I agree that atheists should have a place to teach their children that is free from the educational bias and evaluation of creationists, but I also believe that Creationists should be free from the educational bias and evaluation of atheists.”
Well, there ya go. This paragraph, written by Karl after endless responses from several different people explaining, ad nauseum, that no one wants to wrestle anything from parents and that secular schools are religiously neutral as opposed to anti-religion, is exactly why I said I would no longer respond to him - and why I am returning to that position.
Thanks Mindy, I think I missed that paragraph. Stunning.
Karl has done two things by invoking “argumentum ad Hitlerum”.
First, he’s confirmed that he’s an ignorant clown who hasn’t comprehended a single goddamned thing anyone has said in response to his various talking points. Incidentally he reveals he’s pig-ignorant about the Nazis as well. One could presume from that paragraph that he learns history & current events from Jack Chick evangelical comics or Ken Ham’s Magical Bearded Vegetarian T-Rex Museum.
Second, by conflating Hitler and secularism he’s helped me fill in my Fundie Bingo card. Woohoo! “Hitler” goes right on the end there, next to “The Gay Agenda”, in between “amoral” & “immoral” and on top of “OMG they’re persecuting teh Christians” and “Darwinian materialist Dawk-o-bots want to turn you all into fish-ape-men!” I’ve yet to tick my “baby-eaters” bonus box though. Help a brother out …
Karl, you’re hilarious. You got me. Own up: you don’t believe any of this bullshit, you’re just Poe-ing everyone. You’re pulling off a truly brilliant, Phelps-esque, fundie halfwit parody that we’re all mistaking for the real thing. Come on, seriously … oh, you ARE serious? Really?
Good lord. It’s times like this I’m very, very glad my kids will be schooled in Australia.
Karl writes:—”I agree that atheists should have a place to teach their children that is free from the educational bias and evaluation of creationists, but I also believe that Creationists should be free from the educational bias and evaluation of atheists.”
Absolutely not. I think all this shit should be thrown into the same arena and let the best ideas win. You cannot breed tolerance through separation and isolation. I agree keeping religion as a topic out of the public schools is silly, but I believe that because by so doing we “protect” religion from examination on a daily basis. How can anyone form an opinion about something like this when it is not allowed to be discussed?
For the record, I think pitting religion against critical reasoning would result in the latter gaining in acceptance. Once you teach people how to think and show them the flaws in something, all the flying spaghetti monsters in the world won’t save an addlebrained ideology.
Thanks for you responses Mark and Mindy.
I really think if science would get out of the business of being used to discredit other people’s perspectives on values and personal beliefs then secular schools might be possible, but until such time, this is why I teach in a school where I have the ability to think and encourage critical analysis of both science and my own thought process, as well as to foster this in the students I teach.
This is the one of the values that is missing in the public schools and any mention of its needs gets the NAE and Darwin’s modern Bulldog, Eugenie Scott all fired up into attack mode.
Ideally, pure science is taught or concluded in a supposed vacuum of values and belief with no motives for why any specific matter is even under investigation.
Since this is assumed true by atheists, then those who use science to prop up their beliefs concerning origins and life in general should be able to let other people come to their own conclusions without resorting to logical fallacies and ad hominem diatribes.
So much of the contents of the human mind holds to ideas and beliefs that can not be fully proven using science and simple logical deduction. Emotion and personal experience also shape what one decides to accept as valid interpretations of evidence. Much of this then gets turned into facts by those who have a hard time telling actual pure science from hypothetical science, fact from values, and proper opinions from biased perspectives.
The divergent use of language, premises and confirmational bias reveals that people have motives in their thought process that will not be satisfied by simply stating “I don’t know” as an acceptable answer. Rather they rely on their inductive premises by which they approach these matters as their guiding foundation. To rid themselves of the need to have to constantly re-evaluate the truthfulness of their premises they tend to take one of the following approaches concerning the idea of the existence of a God or “the gods.”
These premises include, but ar not limited to ones like these. Any of these could be true ideas based upon the use of language alone.
Theistic ideologies:
If a god exists, then . . .
If the gods exist, then . . .
If some God exists, then . . .
If only the one true God exists, then . . .
Agnostic ideologies:
If perhaps a god does or does not exist, then . . .
If perhaps the gods do or do not exist, then . . .
If perhaps some God does or does not exist, then . . .
If perhaps only the one true God does or does not exist, then . . .
True atheistic “premises” are these
If a god does not exist, then . . .
If the gods do not exist, then . . .
If some God does not exist, then . . .
If the only one true God does not exist, then . . .
However the assumed true “conclusions” of hard line atheism are of a different psychological nature.
Please note all the p’s and q’s are quasi mixtures of one of the ideological above premises, usually combined with materialistic, “real” world scientific observations into associated logical operations.
If some p then some q, therefore a god does not exist.
If some p then some q, therefore the gods do not exist.
If some p then some q, therefore some God does not exist.
If some p then some q, therefore the one true God does not exist.
Please note that the logical conclusions (no longer only inductive premises) from the no longer inductive premise based atheist is grounded upon at least one premise that is ideological in nature and probably also one other premise that could be another ideological premise or a materialsistic or scientific premise based upon interpreted evidence in nature.
Premises that are open to evaluation remain as inductive value statements and are open to re-examination. Conclusions based upon the use of inductive value statements that mix ideological concepts with materialistic or interpreted scientific evidences have violated a simple use of logical scientific reasoning.
The premises of actual science should not include inductive statements of an ideological nature, therefore any conclusions that are arrived at using hypothetical science to associate inductive ideological statements with materialistic interpreted evidences must by necessity have an individual component that draws in the emotional and personal experiential side of life that so enables many people to come to different conclusions relating to these matters.
This is why some believe science can establish “facts” when no one was there to witness what actually took place. This is why ideological inductive premises can be be transformed into scientifically respectable ideology that really is not what science is suppose to be about.
This is why it perturbs me to no end that people like Lyell can even state what their motive was in presenting an alternative geological history, and it doesn’t seem to bother many people outside of the creationist mindset.
Mark,
Thanks for your second response as well, a bit different from the first!
Interesting, I take you don’t believe an equal playing field can be created for education at any level, from head start schools and Pre-Schools all the way through college.
I’ll take your first response as an idealistic impossibility and the second as the harsh realities of financial, political and educational leadership partnerships that exist in America.
To the degree that some may find it necessary here to continue debating points to which none of the others will admit well founded, I submit another issue:
Debate topic:
“Does a pig enjoy wrasslin’?”
I assert the pig likes it, and the rest of y’all are just gettin’ dirty!
Pro: Karl
Con: everybody else
10 minutes per side for your position, 3 minutes of rebuttal. Pro gets to go first and last.
Then, it’s over.
Amen.
I agree completely, Mark - IF religion could be discussed rather than taught. I would wager that the zealots will never let it happen the way you describe, because they know full well what would happen if it did. Indoctrination would not hold up, and that is entirely too frightening for them to contemplate.
As for you, Hank, your fundie bingo comment caused me to spit coffee on my screen. That was priceless! I’ll let you know if I find baby-eater references anywhere - -
Karl writes:—”I really think if science would get out of the business of being used to discredit other people’s perspectives on values and personal beliefs then secular schools might be possible”
This is such crap. Science is in the business—partly—of providing a material basis upon which beliefs and values might be posited. If you say “The flowers bloom in the spring because the fairies have awoken from their winter sleep and push the petals open as they leave” you are perfectly entitled to continue to believe that after a scientist has finished telling you that that is not how the process works. So if you therefore do continue believing that claptrap, it’s on your own dime and you can’t rely on any kind of verifiable truth to support it. It also lets people off the hook from paying the least bit of attention to the crackpot who espouses that point of view.
So, yes, science does—as a byproduct—discredit people’s beliefs and values. But if those values and beliefs had any credibility in the first place, nothing could do that, least of all science. You’re just bellyaching because so much of what is postulated by religion is in the fairies in springtime column of belief systems.
(In high school once, working in the office, I had twenty minutes of the most incredible intervention session when as freshman girl was brought in in hysterics. I and a girl there worked with her until we found out that she thought she was pregnant and didn’t know what to do. Then it turned out that she thought she was pregnant because she’d french kissed her boyfriend. Her parents told her that’s how pregnancy happens. Why? They didn’t want her kissing boys. Why? They were firebreathing fundamentalist christians and she had been exempted from ALL sex education classes—we had one—on their demand. THAT”S the kind of peurile crap I find indefensible, and the only way it is supportable is because it is “faith based” whatever that means. And it’s a trap. Not only was this girl in unnecessary torment, but she finally came to understand that her parents were liars. Liars for Jesus, maybe, but liars. And this is why I cannot abide the sanctamoneous resistance to science mounted by people who think god is real. The only possibility this girl had of finding out the truth was in the public arena. She’d already gotten her religion, thank you, and look what it did.)
—”Ideally, pure science is taught or concluded in a supposed vacuum of values and belief with no motives for why any specific matter is even under investigation.”
More crap. The desire to know how things are is a profound motive and the willingness of someone to abandon perspectives that do not abett that knowledge says a lot about his or her values. The quest to understand is a positive value. If understanding means you have to stop believing in Santa Claus, well I think that’s a positive thing, too. The ideal of science is to progress in an atmosphere of example and counterexample, open debate, and a common effort to limit bias. How is that not expressive of value? And the net effect of this is to, little by little, tell us who we are. Damn, what a pointless exercise if there’s a god who has already made that determination for us!
—”Much of this then gets turned into facts by those who have a hard time telling actual pure science from hypothetical science, fact from values, and proper opinions from biased perspectives.”
Well, that describes good portion of the general public, MOST OF WHOM ADHERE TO A RELIGION OF ONE KIND OR ANOTHER AND USE THAT IN LIEU OF REASON. Scientists generally have no trouble telling the differences.
—-”True atheistic “premises” are these
If a god does not exist, then . . .
If the gods do not exist, then . . .
If some God does not exist, then . . .
If the only one true God does not exist, then . . .”
Wrong. An atheist premise, “we have already determine god does not exist, so what is the universe like as it is?” There’s no if in there. Already been through it.
Look: speaking for myself, my atheism is the result of years of consideration. I didn’t just wake up one day and say “I’m tired of believing in all this stuff.” You presume there is a process of indoctrination going on. There isn’t. Where would you go to get that? No where. It does not happen in the public schools, verifiable by the fact that the majority of people in this country have gone to public schools and come out as religious if not more so than when they entered. I was, if anything, indoctrinated as a christian. I had to unlearn all that stuff.
But here’s the real thing: I grew up and got over it. It is precisely the same as believing in Santa Claus, except with more convoluted subtext.
—”This is why some believe science can establish “facts” when no one was there to witness what actually took place. This is why ideological inductive premises can be be transformed into scientifically respectable ideology that really is not what science is suppose to be about.”
Wrong. But for you, if it disagrees with your a priori determination that there must be a god with all that such entails, ideology MUST be geared into it.
Scientifically respectable ideology…
There’s no such thing. There are ideologues in the scientific community, but the system is designed to out them and discredit them if they are in error on the science. You mistake the presence of personality types for programmatic intent. Just as you claim my assessments of religion are in error for the same reason—there are bad christians, doesn’t mean christianity is bad—you are consistently in error over this. It’s your guiding presumption. And it is bullshit.
Religion doesn’t do that. Religion could not be religion if it did.
—”Interesting, I take you don’t believe an equal playing field can be created for education at any level, from head start schools and Pre-Schools all the way through college.”
As long as individual communities are allowed to tax themselves and fund their school districts separately, no. Basic human nature—where possible, parents seek to buy an edge for their children. It guarantees the impossibility of an even playing field. That doesn’t even begin to address the problems with poverty in the community.
—”I’ll take your first response as an idealistic impossibility and the second as the harsh realities of financial, political and educational leadership partnerships that exist in America.”
Impossibility? No. Unlikely in the extreme? What do you think?
This won’t take ten minutes.
I’ve yet to ever see a pig “wrastlin” with anything, it can’t grab onto anything except with its mouth, which normally is just something it wants to eat.
I’ve seen pigs trying to escape the clutches of those trying to catch the pig. Like waise I’ve seen/heard of various kings of people trying to catch greased pigs but I guess that would be a different debate, and a different kind of pig wrastlin.
The fact that many think that pigs likes dirt and mud is only because that is its best method for cooling them down to prevent overheating. You stick an animal out in the hot sun and expect it to ignore any source of cooling and then think the animal has no common sense. The fact that the food it eats is often found in various degrees of decompositiuon already means that to eat the slop the pig needs to be willing to forage through all manner of slop which it also finds help to cool him down when left out in the hot sun.
Enough said.
The topic is beyond being reclaimed at this point in time. Most atheists are not vile, I never said they were. Most atheists are presently not so foolish according to the modern standards that people could use for such comparisons and I never said they were. Some atheists are outright vile, and foolish, but so are many people of various religious faith, at least for some part of their lives when they make stupid pig-headed decisions.
What amazes me most is that when opportunities for reasonable shows up, throwing mud/dirt/slop into the equation just helps to cool down the pig.
My theory is that ALL public schools should receive the same amount of per-student funding, regardless of location. Buy a big home in a high-dollar area for the atmosphere, square footage, high-dollar neighbors, lot size, street maintenance, suburban covenants, etc. etc. But not for the schools. All that means is that kids of poor parents - through absolutely no fault of their own - are penalized and not given the same opportunities as their wealthier peers. It makes no sense, unless you are one of the wealthy ones. And by opposing equal funding for schools in lower income areas, one would seem to be saying that it is OK for kids to lie in the beds their parents made.
Impossible as long as the system favors the convoluted ideas/attitudes of separation of church and state and since atheism has no churches, there is no need to separate it from what the state does.
The state can favor what the atheist would like to say, discuss, or silence, but when it favors what anyone of any religion might think, it needs to be censured.
I guess that was my rebuttle. Debate over.
Except for a couple of passages I’ll stay silent. Mark & Mindy (nanu nanu?) have already replied eloquently and any “rebuttle” (ahem, teacher) I embarked on would be redundant & pointless. Unlike all my others *cough yeah right cough*
There are only so many times a person can clearly explain what science, secularism and atheism are (and what they’re not) and be utterly & comprehensively ignored before he realises what a complete waste of time this kind of wrasslin’ is. Even if you think you beat your dang pig fair and square in every round there’s no way you’re gonna change his mind.
Yeah, one can only hope he doesn’t teach language arts.
Maybe a ‘rebuttle’ is a rebuttal based solely on scuttlebutt? Because that’s always dependable, yes?
@Karl “I really think if science would get out of the business of being used to discredit other people’s perspectives on values and personal beliefs then secular schools might be possible….”
If creationists like you would keep their religious values and personal beliefs out of science class, there wouldn’t be a problem.
@Karl “The premises of actual science should not include inductive statements of an ideological nature, therefore any conclusions that are arrived at using hypothetical science to associate inductive ideological statements with materialistic interpreted evidences must by necessity have an individual component that draws in the emotional and personal experiential side of life that so enables many people to come to different conclusions relating to these matters.”
(Wow, that’s an incoherent paragraph!)
I think Karl is saying that everybody just believes what they want to believe, which he said before.
Yup. Debate is definitely over.
“I really think if science would get out of the business of being used to discredit other people’s perspectives on values and personal beliefs then secular schools might be possible….”
For the last time, science doesn’t dictate values or personal beliefs. Science is a tool; a collection of methods used to ascertain, in an unbiased way and to the best of our knowledge, facts about the universe.
If other peoples’ perspectives and viewpoints on scientific facts can be shown to be WRONG, then that’s just too damn bad. It isn’t science’s fault if some people think the world was magicked into existence in a week and that dinosaurs, thylacines and polar bears were all on the Ark together for a month and none of them tried to eat each other. That stuff simply is not true.
I can’t believe after so many people have spelled out what science is, you still think it’s some kind of competing ideology or belief system that’s just as fallible, parochial and intent on winning converts as your own. People are very patient with you - more so than you deserve - but in the end, every single time someone attempts an explanation or a correction you just choose to ignore everything they say because you already have the answers you need.
You’ve progressed from being challenging to being flat-out boring. I’m starting to bore myself saying the same effing thing over and over.
Debate totally over.