Judge Orders Removal of Oklahoma Ten Commandments Monument Within 30 Days

[abucs]

Public schools in the United States may (and do) legally offer comparative religion courses – provided that no particular religious viewpoint is endorsed or privileged. Those courses certainly aren’t “godless”.

Well we are talking here about education systems not courses. An equivalent situation might be where a school run by the Latter Day Saints has a course on secularism. That wouldn’t make the LDS school neutral or secular.

Anyhow, regarding the Comparative Religion courses - they are godless in the sense that I have been discussing. Stripping religion of a lived experience, treating it as a social construct and then giving equal weight to each different religion (social construct) endorses the position that religions are equal and formed by people.

The only people who believe this are the atheists who think all religion is made up by different communities. It in no co-incidence that such courses move many students along to this belief also.

One criticism he makes among many is that these types of courses never teach the religion as the people practising the religion would see it. The obvious question there is to ask from which perspective are they being taught? Philip also mentions that these courses tend take on a morality of their own where liberal universalists try to make students see all religion as equally valid.

Because of this, the different concepts each religion has of itself which make it different are not delved into let alone critically discussed.

Because as you have mentioned, one religion cannot be preferenced over another, thus turns into presenting a course where each religion is equally valid. This means that more valid religions must be more criticised in the course and more nonsensical religions must be less criticised.

Philip Barnes who is a religious education teacher and professor in England has done much writing on the short-comings and problems of courses such as Comparative religions.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Mike you are of course entitled to use your own language and phrases such as ‘your God’.

However I see these phrases as inaccurate and self serving because it tries to define the conversation as a problem between different gods (created in the minds of different people) which your view of secularism solves.

Now you are an atheist and entitled to see the world as you would, but why should an atheist way of looking at the world ‘your god’ ‘his god’ ‘my neutral solution without any (made up) god’ be accepted as the basis for defining the education system for us all? That is clearly not neutral.

You’re again conflating secularism and atheism. Atheism is saying there is no god. State-sponsered atheism is a school teaching that there is no god or a courthouse with signs stating there is no god.
Secularism is a government position that matters of faith will not be discussed and there will be no favoritism towards one. It would not be secular to put up the 10 Commandments or a sign that says “Jesus Welcomes You to Hawkins”. That would be state-sponsored Christianity, and that is in no way neutral. Secular society makes no statements for OR AGAINST any particular faith.

Gong back to language : I think a more accurate phrase would be Christian conception of the divine, Hindu conception of the divine etc.

In this way it is much more clearly seen that a removal from the public square of the divine altogether does not create neutrality. It strongly (and thus unjustly) favours those who would see the world without divinity. And it quite obviously over time has created a larger and larger pool of people who share that vision.

Even your preferred semantics don’t make sense. There are still a multitude of “conceptions of the divine” that are in contrast with each other. And there would be those citizens/taxpayers who would say there is no divine to conceive. A state that supported one such “conception of the divine” or said that there was nothing divine would not be neutral.

Christians are upset that the special priveleges that they long held in the public square seem to be coming to an end, so much so that they will claim that a state that doesn’t favor their specific god or spei"conception of the divine" is being unfair despite it finally being fair to all those other faiths and non-faith.

It removes the divine from history,

Please show where the divine has ever occurred. Make sure you understand that the fact there are many believers and that humans did things in part because of their beliefs is not divine. There are many faiths which you would not consider true that also had many followers acting on their faiths.

from the progress of humanity,

Show where the divine has progressed humanity. Again there have been many faithful – not just Christians – who have done wonderful and awful things based on their beliefs. Those are taught in the school. What is not taught is any divine intervention that assisted the progress of humanity, because it is not verifiable.

from how we should relate to Creation including other beings as well as how we view ourselves.

History classes already teach that those of similar cultures and/or economies and/or religious faiths will often work in conjunction to achieve certain goals. Sometimes those goals are to the betterment of others and sometime to the detriment of others.

It removes the divine from any shared vision of where we should be heading as a society. In short such an education system allows and thus encourages godless philosophies and thought ahead of thought that would consider the divine. This is clearly supporting the atheist position. The result of gradual de-Christianisation in favour of godlessness give proof to this.

By being silent on faith one is not being against faith, merely taking no position and only teaching what can be shown to be true. I would say any conversions away from Christianity in recent years stems more from several other things:

1. An exponential increase in knowledge of other cultures and faiths. One learns more about how others believe now then in the past where only specific faith would be taught in a school.
2. The acceptance that one is free to choose their faith has greatly increased.
3. Legal provisions that prevent bias against certain faiths or non-faith. When my mom got her teaching license back in the mid-sixties it specifically required that the signee believed in the Chirstian god. Such violations of individual worship rarely exist nowadays.

{ part 1 of 2 }

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

{ part 2 of 2 }

Many atheists like to tell us that the Christian concept of the divine (my terminology) is no different to the flying spaghetti monster etc etc. But an atheist school system would not be teaching there was no flying spaghetti monster. It just would not give any time to incorporating such views into the curriculum.

Yes, and that’s a point in favor of my argument. First of all, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a parody used in a letter to the Kansas State Board of Education regarding those calling for intelligent design to be taught. No one actually believes in it. Again, it’s a parody. Second you are wrong in stating that an atheist school (a school working like a religious school to push a certain viewpoint) would simply be silent on religion. It would outright tell students that there is no god. It would spend time pointing out flaws of other religions. Both of these acts are nothing something that occur in a secular school system. I can’t stress this enough: Atheism and secularism are not the same thing. One can certainly be both, just as one can be incredibly religious and also be secular.

It is no accident that everywhere there has been secular education where the population has been taught to look at the world without God and think of their own reality and their personal relationships without God that that population has gradually started to live and act as if there is no God.

Yes, if we stop forcing children to believe in your god, if we lift legal restrictions on employment for those not believing in your god, and if we allow for people to make up their own minds then there will be a shift in what the people in a state believe.

It is quite obvious that the population is being enculturated into a non God way of living.

No, we are not telling people to stop believing in god. For once we’re not putting nearly as much pressure on folks and letting them decide for themselves.

That cannot in any way be described as a neutral position. It is on the extreme.

People not being forced to believe one way or the other and using their consciences is not neutral?

A Catholic education system moves people towards Catholicism.

Agreed. When you only teach one belief system it will skew the results.

A Moslem education system moves people towards Islam.

Agreed. When you only teach one belief system it will skew the results.

A secular education system HAS DEFINATELY MOVED ALL POPULATIONS IT HAS BEEN ENGAGED WITH towards godlessness.

Incorrect! A secular education system talks about other cultures but leaves the faith up to the families and the students themselves. Let the arguments for and against each faith stand for themselves as opposed to force-feeding children one faith. It’s the most neutral system there is.

A secular education system is thus not neutral and when having the sole use of public moneys it is clearly unjust.

How would you set up a neutral system of education?

 

[meltzerboy]

{ part 2 of 2 }

Yes, and that’s a point in favor of my argument. First of all, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a parody used in a letter to the Kansas State Board of Education regarding those calling for intelligent design to be taught. No one actually believes in it. Again, it’s a parody. Second you are wrong in stating that an atheist school (a school working like a religious school to push a certain viewpoint) would simply be silent on religion. It would outright tell students that there is no god. It would spend time pointing out flaws of other religions. Both of these acts are nothing something that occur in a secular school system. I can’t stress this enough: Atheism and secularism are not the same thing. One can certainly be both, just as one can be incredibly religious and also be secular.

Yes, if we stop forcing children to believe in your god, if we lift legal restrictions on employment for those not believing in your god, and if we allow for people to make up their own minds then there will be a shift in what the people in a state believe.

No, we are not telling people to stop believing in god. For once we’re not putting nearly as much pressure on folks and letting them decide for themselves.

People not being forced to believe one way or the other and using their consciences is not neutral?

Agreed. When you only teach one belief system it will skew the results.

Agreed. When you only teach one belief system it will skew the results.

Incorrect! A secular education system talks about other cultures but leaves the faith up to the families and the students themselves. Let the arguments for and against each faith stand for themselves as opposed to force-feeding children one faith. It’s the most neutral system there is.

How would you set up a neutral system of education?

A secular educational system is neutral in terms of specific religious teaching or, as some would claim, indoctrination. However, it is not neutral in terms of instilling moral values in students: values of fairness, decency, courtesy and respect, justice, liberty, equality, non-apathy and involvement, inquisitiveness, perseverance, love of learning. This, I believe, is as it should be.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

A secular educational system is neutral in terms of specific religious teaching or, as some would claim, indoctrination. However, it is not neutral in terms of instilling moral values in students: values of fairness, decency, courtesy and respect, justice, liberty, equality, non-apathy and involvement, inquisitiveness, perseverance, love of learning. This, I believe, is as it should be.

I completely agree.

 

[abucs]

Mike I completely disagree with just about everything you have said and I oppose the injustice of your views about life, religion and neutrality being the base of how public moneys are spent on education to the exclusion of all other views.

It is a totalitarian view and reminds me why unbridled government is so dangerous.

 

[abucs]

A secular educational system is neutral in terms of specific religious teaching or, as some would claim, indoctrination. However, it is not neutral in terms of instilling moral values in students: values of fairness, decency, courtesy and respect, justice, liberty, equality, non-apathy and involvement, inquisitiveness, perseverance, love of learning. This, I believe, is as it should be.

Do you think a Catholic education system is neutral in regards to Buddhist and Hindu thought? Does that make a Catholic education system neutral?

You have admitted that a secular educational system is not neutral at least in regards to morals although you have not discussed where we then get our ideas of what respect, liberty, justice, fairness, decency are. You do not discuss the limitations on allowable philosophies from which we can draw these ideas.

Do you agree that the education system teaching morals in a non neutral setting where God cannot be envoked favours an atheist viewpoint of what morality is?

Do you think it is just that such a manufactured morality without God should be the only viewpoint that the state will promote to children with citizens money?

 

[abucs]

meltzerboy,

are you aware that the National Socialist Nazis changed the religion curriculum in state schools to be more secular / less Christian?

Are you aware that the Socialist Nazis closed all Catholic schools before WW2?

Are you aware that during WW2 the Socialist Nazis got the Austrian parliament to pass legislation to close all Catholic schools?

Are you aware that Hitler’s rhetoric was that religion was divisive and that people needed to join together under a state sponsored morality?

That state had their own ideas of what respect, tolerance, fairness, equality etc was.

Other forms of socialist states around the globe also secularised education systems away from Christian principles. They had their own ideas of what respect, tolerance, fairness, equality etc was.

Was there a bigger mistake in the 20th century than those state sponsored ideas of morality?

How many millions of Jewish lives have we lost because of those state sponsored moralities? **Simple words on a screen but very tragic realities of Jewish people - children, babies. old women suffering horribly because the state had sole control on promoting respect, tolerance, fairness, equality etc.
**
Would not a more diverse and balanced educational system had helped to mitigate and/or stop that suffering? No wonder the National Socialists and Communists wanted exclusive control of the education system to promote their values with other people’s money.

How is it possible today that a Jew can support a state giving itself a monopoly on the use of mandatory taxation for promoting values to children?

It is unjust. Public moneys should be returned to the public to school their kids in accordance with the traditional values of the population as they choose and live by. That is a just and healthy situation.

Public money should not be for the exclusive use of secular totalitarians. That is unhealthy as the 20th century has proved.

By all means have secular schools for those that want them. But do not make it mandatory because totalitarian secularists believe they are neutral.

God no.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Mike I completely disagree with just about everything you have said and I oppose the injustice of your views about life, religion and neutrality being the base of how public moneys are spent on education to the exclusion of all other views.

It is a totalitarian view and reminds me why unbridled government is so dangerous.

I believe I’ve made sure to break down my counter-argument to your contention as best as I can. In doing so I’ve asked a few questions of few and present what, I think, are flaws in your description of secularism and atheism.

I understand that you disagree with me, but do you have anything specific in my two most recent posts to you that you believe were in error? Do you believe it is possible to have a neutral governmental position on religion – not just in schools, but in public places, like courthouses and statehouses? Do you believe when public schools had lessons which pushed Christianity (sometimes Christianity that was also against Catholicism) that such setups were fair or neutral, or did Christianity have special privileges that those outside of Christianity did not have? Do you have any opinions or evidence on the other factors that I listed as to why there is more acceptance nowadays of non-Christian faiths as well as no faith in Western culture?

 

[meltzerboy]

Do you think a Catholic education system is neutral in regards to Buddhist and Hindu thought? Does that make a Catholic education system neutral?

You have admitted that a secular educational system is not neutral at least in regards to morals although you have not discussed where we then get our ideas of what respect, liberty, justice, fairness, decency are. You do not discuss the limitations on allowable philosophies from which we can draw these ideas.

Do you agree that the education system teaching morals in a non neutral setting where God cannot be envoked favours an atheist viewpoint of what morality is?

Do you think it is just that such a manufactured morality without God should be the only viewpoint that the state will promote to children with citizens money?

A Catholic educational system does not have to be neutral because it is a private as well as religious institution. It is therefore supposed to teach Catholic dogma, doctrine, discipline, practices, and customs. Hopefully, the instructors themselves are well-versed in Catholic beliefs and practice what they preach (teach).

However, the problem with teaching about G-d in a public-school setting is that each religion has a somewhat different understanding of the nature of G-d (or gods), apart from the different beliefs and practices within the religion itself. I would not want my children to be taught by public-school teachers who might favor a Catholic or otherwise Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Baha’i understanding of G-d. Rather, I would want my children to learn about the Jewish understanding of G-d and the Jewish religion, and the best place to learn such would be in Hebrew school, taught by a knowledgeable rabbi, not by a possibly biased or ill-informed public-school teacher. I suspect you feel the same way about your children, as do Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Baha’i parents.

The above problem was one of the dilemmas for Catholic children and their parents earlier in U.S. history, in that these children were forced to learn about G-d and religion in public schools from a purely Protestant perspective. As you’re probably aware, there was much animosity toward Catholicism altogether. Thus, Catholic schools were formed to teach Catholic children about their own religion, not someone else’s. Nonetheless, Protestant teaching about G-d remained in the public-school system for some time to come.

 

[meltzerboy]

meltzerboy,

are you aware that the National Socialist Nazis changed the religion curriculum in state schools to be more secular / less Christian?

Are you aware that the Socialist Nazis closed all Catholic schools before WW2?

Are you aware that during WW2 the Socialist Nazis got the Austrian parliament to pass legislation to close all Catholic schools?

Are you aware that Hitler’s rhetoric was that religion was divisive and that people needed to join together under a state sponsored morality?

That state had their own ideas of what respect, tolerance, fairness, equality etc was.

Other forms of socialist states around the globe also secularised education systems away from Christian principles. They had their own ideas of what respect, tolerance, fairness, equality etc was.

Was there a bigger mistake in the 20th century than those state sponsored ideas of morality?

How many millions of Jewish lives have we lost because of those state sponsored moralities? **Simple words on a screen but very tragic realities of Jewish people - children, babies. old women suffering horribly because the state had sole control on promoting respect, tolerance, fairness, equality etc.
**
Would not a more diverse and balanced educational system had helped to mitigate and/or stop that suffering? No wonder the National Socialists and Communists wanted exclusive control of the education system to promote their values with other people’s money.

How is it possible today that a Jew can support a state giving itself a monopoly on the use of mandatory taxation for promoting values to children?

It is unjust. Public moneys should be returned to the public to school their kids in accordance with the traditional values of the population as they choose and live by. That is a just and healthy situation.

Public money should not be for the exclusive use of secular totalitarians. That is unhealthy as the 20th century has proved.

By all means have secular schools for those that want them. But do not make it mandatory because totalitarian secularists believe they are neutral.

God no.

I shudder to think what might have been taught about Jews in relation to Christianity in German public schools in the generation or two before the Second World War when the schools were not secular. Antisemitism has a long history in Europe, way before Nazi Germany, and it was too often instilled in children by their parents and their teachers.

 

[arthra]

Meltzer wrote above:

“However, the problem with teaching about G-d in a public-school setting is that each religion has a somewhat different understanding of the nature of G-d (or gods), apart from the different beliefs and practices within the religion itself. I would not want my children to be taught by public-school teachers who might favor a Catholic or otherwise Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Baha’i understanding of G-d. Rather, I would want my children to learn about the Jewish understanding of G-d and the Jewish religion, and the best place to learn such would be in Hebrew school, taught by a knowledgeable rabbi, not by a possibly biased or ill-informed public-school teacher. I suspect you feel the same way about your children, as do Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Baha’i parents.”

Well I happen to be a Baha’i parent and uh grandparent… and I was asked once to share some information about the Baha’i Faith at a public school class… It was a senior class re. religions and society… They were primarily interested in the religion and not so much re. the “understanding of the nature of God”.

We also have an active Interfaith Council where I live and routinely they have inter-faith services… They meet at synagogues, churches and an Islamic Center…so the idea is to have a forum where the different faiths can share and people can be educated about the variety of religious experiences in their community.

 

[eazyduzit]

The Ten Commandments do endorse a particular set of religious beliefs on state property. Therefore, I believe they should be removed. First, the commandments as a whole were given to Moses and the Jewish people, and thus they endorse Judaism. They were adopted by Christians and therefore also endorse Christianity. That leaves out Islam, which believes the Hebrew Bible and New Testament were corrupted, as well as Hinduism, Buddhism, and a host of other U.S. religious minorities. It also omits various forms of Paganism, which believes in multiple gods rather than monotheism. And of course non-believers are confronted with religious endorsement on public government property as well.

OTOH, certain of the commandments are moral principles which most sane-thinking people would agree with, apart from differences in the details. For example, moral principles forbidding murder, theft, and adultery and honoring parents are beneficial for the social fabric of the whole society. Nonetheless, the focus on the existence of G-d in the first place as well as on only one G-d, plus the commandment that speaks of honoring a Sabbath day, are too specifically oriented toward particular religious beliefs to be advertised on state property.

Would you have God to abandon our nation? Would that be a good thing? Do we not owe our very freedom to God. Would we have any kind of nation without His Divine Providence?

 

[meltzerboy]

Would you have God to abandon our nation? Would that be a good thing? Do we not owe our very freedom to God. Would we have any kind of nation without His Divine Providence?

Our nation is comprised of a multiplicity of people of diverse cultures and faith traditions as well as those who have no faith tradition. For the benefit of BOTH people of faith and the government, it is best that Church and State remain separate. This means no endorsement of any particular religion on state property.

 

[Doormouse]

if people of faith work, pay their taxes, you would think that they have a say in how the government is run wouldn’t you?. I mean the government work for the people, not the other way around!!! do people of no faith out weigh the people who do at the voting? or is the USA ran by a handful of people and the rest follow? it seems that way to me. a bit like every country in the west is run like this… so church and state is one way really.the people of the church feed the government, but the government don’t look after the church.

 

[Faithdancer]

Time to demolish the Statue of Liberty too, then, since it represents a Roman goddess. As a Christian, I find such public displays of paganism highly offensive!

 

[MartinJordan]

time to demolish the statue of liberty too, then, since it represents a roman goddess. As a christian, i find such public displays of paganism highly offensive!

:d

mj

 

[JonNC]

christiannews.net/2015/09/12/judge-orders-removal-of-oklahoma-ten-commandments-monument-within-30-days/

Just pondering: what would happen if the Oklahoma legislature and governor agreed on legislation to allow its continued presence, and set the state police to protect said presence.
And simply ignored the judge’s order, you know, like states who ignore bans on pot, and cities that ignore federal immigration laws.
Jon

 

[Faithdancer]

This one’s gotta go too-- the statue of Athena in Athens, Georgia. Can’t get any more pagan than Athena, and the statue is on public property! Outrageous!

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[MartinJordan]

What are the Sacred things that are alluded to in the Athena monument?

MJ