Mbwuto

Because schools, as a state entity, cannot endorse any religion?

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liquidlight

I'm going to allow you your opinion and I'm going to keep mine, contrary as they are, I'm also not going to post on this anymore seeing that we've now gone completely off topic and I'm not a big fan of thread hijacking.

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lindseylatch

I'm not TOO worried about going off-topic, since that seemed to sort of be the point of the thread. To start a discussion and see where it goes.

My school had NO problems with student praying before, after, or during school. There was even a christian students organization (which might have overstepped that seperation of church and state). A group would gather around the flag pole before class, or in the quad when it was raining, and no one really had a problem. I mean, they stood out of the way, and were always very quiet, and even finished before the majority of the school even arrived.
I think the arguement against school prayer, as in setting aside class time, is that it does single out those people who do not want to pray. And it takes time away from the services that the school is being paid to perform, educating the kids. And not all religions perform prayers. Buddhists do not pray, in the traditional sense, nor do us agnostics or atheists. Now, just because a majority wants it, doesn't mean it's a good idea. A majority of the white south was into lynching...
As long as it doesn't take away from other students, it's fine. But school sponsored prayer DOES take away from other students.
There's no reason to pray in school, either, except perhaps before you eat lunch? There is plenty of time before and after school to pray.
Liquid: I'm just curious why the student were expelled? Did they suggest the song or something? It makes no sense that they would be expelled because of a song at graduation. If you would feel better answering in a PM, please do.

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Stompy

Prayer in school forces exposure of those who do not wish to pray, and maybe they don't want others knowing.

For example, "bow your head and pray" comes over the intercom and all the non-believers don't bow their head... then the students single them out, make fun of them, whatever... maybe they don't want everyone knowing.

That is why there is no prayer... that and public govt schools have no place even TOUCHING religion. If students wanna gather on their own time outside of the school's money/time, that's fine.

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lindseylatch

Actually, I just remember that my brother was picked on and beat up a couple of times at least because he's an atheist. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been if the school actually approved of singling out those that don't pray, and EVERYONE knew that he was non-religious.
Now, my brother is a bit militant about his atheism, or at least he was. One of those fanatics the post was originally about. But the bullies that beat him up were just as fanatical, if not more so for getting physical.

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liquidlight

http://www.skepticfiles.org/moretext/bad-song.htm

It's not a bad article about the story and has more details than I remember. The expulsion was compulsory and completely for political show seeing that it was a graduating student that was expelled, two weeks after school had been dismissed and he'd received his diploma.

The expulsion itself was a gesture, the song had been rehearsed and prepared as part of a tradition at the school and banned by courts due a a sophomore (mind you this is SENIOR graduation) filing a suit. One student in support of his classmates stood up at the ceremony and led the students in singing the song anyway, which pretty much the entire graduating class of 500+ stood up and sang with him, the video made the news, it was pretty entertaining. IIRC the song itself wasn't necessarily religious aside from the fact that it's considered a christmas song and had the words God and Lord in it.

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liquidlight

So was he beaten up for being atheist, or was he beaten up for starting shit about being atheist? The whole non-participating action is what I advocate, and usually my religious beliefs don't come up in normal conversation.

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liquidlight

You seem pretty vehement about this. . . why shouldn't public schools that receive government funding not touch religion? Would you include in this things like the religious undertones that should be understood when studying European history and the initial American expansion? What about current news that centers around religious events or is impacted by religious philosophy? Or how about getting rid of all the literature in the english department that talks about God? What really qualifies as too religious?

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kramus

It seems like there needs to be some understanding about where the line between encouraging thoughts and encouraging belief lies. A very shady place indeed.

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lindseylatch

for being an atheist. he only became militant after he was beat up a couple times...

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roachboy

i think that lindeseylatch made an important point earlier--that this whole thread is shaped by a projection originating with evangelicals, which follows from thieir curious belief that they are the Saved and others are minions of Satan--so there is a symmetry posited from the start, in that both are understood as unified formations that share similar dispositions (even as they are mirror images of each other)--across this you get an element of projection--evangelicals imagingin themselves and their modes of self-organization as the basis for understanding all social phenomena--as a way of putting all social phenomena on the same basis as themselves--so as to give them something they can oppose on their own terms.

so the category "atheists" and the notion of "fanaticism" has to do with a reshaping of the world in the image of evangelical protestants for the most part (in the particular political context we have the ambiguous fortune of moving through in real time--the structure exists across any christian denomination, but seems most operational for the evanglicals)--if you do not find this position to be of interest, then the projections that follow from it are not compelling. so it is with the argument that opened the thread.

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Janey

Actually, there is a very strong separation between Atheism and Agnosticism. And they cannot be grouped together.

As I posited earlier, Atheism is a very strong belief that there is no God. The faith required to support this belief (in the absence of proof) is everybit as strong as the faith required of all the religions that believe in God/gods.

Agnostics, on the other hand are empiracists who require proof before acceptance. They (we) should all live in Missouri. Without hard evidence, they (we) cannot know for certain, and are therefore without knowing (Agnostic).

This requires no faith. just proof.

roachboy

i agree with janey in general on the distinction between atheist and agnostic, but not on the explanation for it:

one can be an agnostic if you take seriously one of the basic assumptions of judeo-christian theology: that god is infinite, man finite, that a finite mind cannot know the infinite, so god is unknowable, the name god is just a name, a surrogate fashioned by finite understanding to plug the gap in its being-in-the-world generated by the simple fact, which follows from the most basic aspects of the belief system, that you worship what you can never know.

you could say that pascal was an agnostic simply because he, like most nominalists, followed the actual logic of this tradition to its obvious conclusion.

of course this position makes the universe huge and human beings rather tiny and puts an insurmountable obstacle in the way of this sense of scale being otherwise. which of course freaks out many people.
so they choose to think otherwise.
usually this otherwise involves a watered-down notion of grace, which at least retained something of its strange relation to finite understanding in luther, for example, but which subsequently became an empty category mostly therapeutic in function that served to erase this scary division between human beings and the god to which some attribute everything and nothing.

so there is a rather terrifying element in this tradition. no wonder that folk try to erase it, replacing it with absurd notions like that the bible is at once the word of god and can be understood literally. whcih has the effect of being a patronizing pseudo-understanding of god, the making of the notion of infinite into an unnecessary rhetorical flourish, replaced with a god rooted in projection, who is just like you, who thinks like you do and who speaks like you do--but at the same time has a certain distance from you and immense Authority--a child's relation to the Father, to Authority dressed up as a theology of liberation.

the nominalist line at least has the advantage of making the Incarnation back into the paradox it was framed as being from the outset, and not into a form of salvation delivery which makes of salvation something like a type of pizza that you order in.

so i think you could end up an agnostic by simply following the logic of the judeo-christian tradition in anything like a strict sense. it also follows that you could be quite deeply religious tempermentally and be an agnostic.

it also follows from the above that an agnostic could make every single argument about the god that most folk carry around with them as an atheist would without sharing anything of the assumptions that would inform atheism.

but the pace where this view would split far from janey's view would be in the status of proof: for an agnostic who followed this trajectory, proof of the existence or nonexistence of god would be impossible by definition. i mean that they could be logically consistent--be true formally--without that truth correlating to anything outside itself. so the question of proof is out. following the same logic, no amount of evidence would enable you to get around the basic division between finite and infinite that shapes the startingpoint for this whole system.

it would seem to me that it would be easier to persuade an atheist with proofs because the startingpoints are otherwise.

what is funny is that anyone would argue that empricism in any of its variants plays any role in any of this.

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it make you sick.

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Janey

A bit to digest. however, I think that there is precedence for the empiricists to actually bridge the gap. That is if you have faith in the achievements boasted by the teachings of buddha and various bhodisatvas...

kramus

Thanks roachboy. Keep posting. A clarity and a distillation is evident and very welcome in your thoughts. A more casual (read intellectually lazy) fellow such as myself appreciates such things

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questone

ust because the majority wishes it does not make it right. School prayer was done away with because it created a situation that bred trouble, students that did not wish to pray would be either forced to or targeted for ridicule. It would violate others rights, besides no where in the constitution does it say that you have the right to school prayer.

c172g

There was an excellent Larry King the other night with the question "Where do we go when we die?". They had a hardline Christian minister (who said that EVERY word in the Bible was gospel, every story absolute truth), a Catholic priest, a Muslim higher-up (sorry don't know the name), a Rabbi, some girl who was pretty into JC, and the president of the American Athiests. They had quite a conversation. It was very interesting, as someone who considers themself to be an atheist, to listen to the dialog.

As someone who does not believe in God (and I promise I won't jam it down your throat unless it's something you bring up first, say Amen) I have to say the bullshit about the pledge of allegiance and prayer in school disgusts me.

My "religion" or way of doing things is to treat people in a manner I would like to be treated. I think many atheists think you have your shot down here to enjoy life & be a good person, since there is no afterlife. That being said, if you want to pray in school, in an airplane, or wherever, go ahead, it does not bother me. If our currency says "In God We Trust" it's true that I don't buy it (no pun intended) but I'm not suing the government for putting it on my money. I also don't care about God being in the pledge of allegiance, once again, it's what the masses believe so it's fine by me. I am not offended.

Way too many people are way too quick to bitch about their rights being violated these days. Shut the hell up & get along with each other. If everybody had the same views the world would be one damn ugly place.

kramus

well said c172g - if we allowed each other to be comfortable within ourselves it would make quite a difference.

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hypnotic4502

to me being an atheist just means rejecting religion and being doubtful of the existance of god.yes its true that we have no proof that god doesnt exist,but theists have no proof of his existance either.so its a deadlock as far as thats concerned.
i agree with MageB420666 when he stated that school isnt a place to pray but a place to learn.

what upsets me is when the religious right tries to impose their lifestyle on everyone else dictating the way other people should live.concerning alcohol,drugs,abortion,public schools,censorship of music and media,and dress code.

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Fibrosa

I only bring up my atheism in appropriate venues, such as internet message boards. The moment I start going door to door or 'preaching' it at my place of work then you can talk about me being a fanatic.

Actually I'm fairly certain, however this isn't the time or the place. Have you ever heard of the argument from non-cognitivism?

This just flat-out isn't true.

Look up Socrates and what he got accused of. Please read the "Apology".

I pretty much agree. Evolution doesn't actually disprove god.

Perhaps you are looking in venues that encourage atheists to give their opinions, such as the philosophy section of message boards.

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asaris

So Socrates was accused of 'impiety'. If you'd read any of Plato's other dialogues, you'd know that Socrates was hardly an atheist. If there was any justice to the claim of the Athenian court that Socrates did not honor the traditional gods, it was that he tended more strongly towards monotheism than most of his contemporaries. And, moreover, it seems from the Apology that the proceedings of the court were motivated more from political reasons than anything else.

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Janey

[QUOTE=hypnotic4502]to me being an atheist just means rejecting religion and being doubtful of the existance of god.yes its true that we have no proof that god doesnt exist,but theists have no proof of his existance either.so its a deadlock as far as thats concerned.
QUOTE]


right. a deadlock, and since each position is not (at least not yet) provable they both require faith in order for one to maintain one's belief. I have a question: Does being atheistic also reject the possibility of life after death? or does it just reject religion, and the belief in God. The way I see it, life after death does not necessarily mean that there needs to be a god.

jwoody

I'd consider myself a fundamentalist anti-theist. I am 100% confident that there is no life after death. There is life after birth and it lasts until death.

There's a possibility, depending on how I die, that some signals will continue to flow through my brain for a limited period after I am confirmed clinically dead.

Janey

so you definition of death is the death of our physical bodies as perceived by ourselves?

MSD

When they teach about religion, it's fine. When they blatantly favor or publically practice a religion (like schoolwide prayer,) they have violated the Constiitutional provision prohibiting establishment of a national religion.

jwoody

Consider it from the perspective of this pig.



The pig is dead.

It has lost the use of it's senses. It has lost the ability to think. It is existing as flesh and bones only.

I am certain of this fact.

Janey

so what was it that made it not dead, before it died? it existed as flesh and bones as well, before it died.

By the way, it looks really tastey.

jwoody

I don't know... and I'm not ashamed admit it. I studied architecture, not biology.

hypnotic4502

my belief is when youre alive,youre alive.
when youre dead,youre simply dead and sease to exist.

that makes life all that much more important to me,you have only one chance to be the most compassionate,caring and productive person you can be.

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Slavakion

I realize that not everyone would feel comfortable doing this... but I went to a Catholic high school for two years. Every morning, and at the beginning of most every class, we would pray. Towards the end of my time there, I was an Atheist, (ironically, attending a religious school made me a non-believer ) but I still pretended to pray. I crossed myself, repeated Hail Mary, etc. It was just meaningless words to me, so what did it matter? I was able to blend in just fine. It wasn't until the next year that I "came out" as an Atheist, though my parents still don't know.

As far as being a fanatic... I don't think I'm really a fanatic about anything. I tend to keep my mouth shut and listen. I'm a far-left liberal and one of my friends is a far-right conservative. He says that I'm a good liberal because I don't force my beliefs on others. I think that's a pretty good endorsement of non-fanaticism.

Slavakion

It's a magical thing called consciousness that scientists still don't understand and philosophers still argue over.

Fibrosa

I have read Plato's other dialogues and furthermore Socrates defends himself against the charge of atheism.

You've created a strawman in assuming that I was accusing Socrates of atheism-I wasn't.

I don't know about that; Socrates believed in a Daemon (sp?), but he also believed in the traditional Gods, such as Apollo, who sent him on his quest in the first place.

When I read the apology I was more struck by the need for vengence in Socrates' accusers then I was that it was politically motivated. It has been a while since I've read it, but if my memory holds, the idea was that Socrates was being brought up on fallacious charges to satisfy the petty revenge of three of athenians citizens.

They accused him of atheism and of corrupting the youth, he of course rebutted all of that, but was found guilty anyway.

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Janey

what maintains consciousness then? can it be maintained after the physical support system dies? or does the vacating of the body by the consiousness cause death? where does the consiousness go to? does it disipate? I'm glad this thread esists, i have a ton of these questions...

Slavakion

On second thought, consciousness isn't really the right word. But I'm not sure what is. Consciousness is your awareness, and what you're talking about I can only describe (lamely) as animation. Since they're closely related, I'll try to answer your questions from both points of view. Keep in mind that I'm not a theologian, psychologist or biologist.

Consciousness is maintained by the human body in order to preserve life. Animation, on our level, is the byproduct of coexisting cellular structures trying to keep themselves alive. Animation on the cellular level is maintained by the interplay of organelles. Animation below that...?

After the support system dies... is the person on artificial life support? If so, the human body will tick along just fine. If not, animation and consciousness will cease.

Without consciousness... To what level? If someone is unconscious, for example because of too much alcohol, life can continue. If someone is permanently no longer aware of their surroundings, perhaps not. If you are completely unaware of what is happening, then how would you know that you need to breathe, or pump blood, etc. If animation ceases, there is nothing to keep you alive. Animation is what causes the peculiar things to happen that cause life. The only thing is that somebody can be clinically dead, devoid of animation, and be brought back to life. Reanimated, so to speak. Hmm...

Consciousness should return if somebody passes out. If it involves brain damage, maybe not. Where does it go? It's nothing physical, so it can't go anywhere. Consciousness is... caused by electrochemical signals racing through the brain to produce something wonderful. Animation is the same way.

If you are religious, then you could much more easily sum this up by saying that animation is caused by your soul, which floats out of your body after death.

archpaladin

Umm......so this part is completely off topic.

I completely understand that you are not speaking as a biologist in presenting these ideas. However, if the above quote were true, I believe we would theoretically be able to bring people back to life after a longer amount of time than when we are capable of doing now. This is suggestive that whatever you consider to be "animation" is not electrochemically based, but instead something different. If there are any biology/medically trained people out there who could shed some light on this, it would be great.


So this part is not off topic.

Atheists are quite capable of being fanatics. While the connotations of "fanatic" generally imply religious conviction - to which I could understand some atheists being completely against the use of the term for themselves - the word itself simply means a person who is vocally (and perhaps physically) adamant about a belief. Some atheists are extremely fanatical (may I use the term anti-God?) just as some nonatheists are fanatics of their own religions. The fact that Christianity and other religions have a few centuries of bloodshed and debate behind them changes nothing about this point.

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Holdem Dvorak

first off, I have met more religious fanatics then atheists.

and second, off who are you to group atheists as one big group?

Seriously I'm sick of this bullcrap.

Agree to disagree? I think that making up theological arguments with yourself is being an F'ing fanatic.

I'm not religious or an atheist, I just don't give a flying f$#%.

archpaladin

That changes nothing about the possibility of atheists being fanatical. Just because you haven't met many doesn't mean they're not out there.

I did no such thing. You're reading more into my statement than I intended.

I wasn't making an argument with myself. I was discussing the possibility of atheists being fanatical, which was the original subject of this thread.

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Holdem Dvorak

Archpaladin, I wasn't talking about your reply.

In fact I kinda like yours, makes sense.

Now your off topic remark I can help out with. Conciousness is not a factor in bringing somone back to life. Because anyone who us pulseless and not breathing have better not be concious because that person would be a zombie. (you should check out my zombie movie thread! in entertainment) Don't get me wrong conciousness is a big factor of someones injuries/illness. (oh I forgot to mention I'm an EMT) Conciousness is brain related. And all brain function relies on electrochemical signals to relay stuff. Conciousness plays a part in all of this. Now psycology says that your conciousness and your mind represents your perceptions and experiences. Just as parts of the brain can cease to function due to a stroke or something of that nature, your conciousness will be affected because it lies in the mind. If the stroke causes you to never wake up again (coma) who the hell knows where it went. Can't be proven. Only in exploratory brain surgery, unfortunetly some coma patients don't qualify for that.

iamnormal

What is the point of this thread? Is it to prove who is less intelligent?

Anybody can be fanatic about anything.
Not believing in a god, is a believe.
Believing in a god , is a believe.

tspikes51

You win. All I was trying to say is that we all believe in something, and that any ethos has the chance for fanatacism. It seems like the tone of most on the TFP is that "my dick is bigger than yours because I'm atheist." Notice I said most and not all. It is just some imaginary pissing contest that no one side will ever win. If you can be offended by somebody praying in public, then somebody should be allowed to be offended by you telling them there is no god.

One thing that people have been failing to realize here:

The chance of there being a god is exactly equal to the chance of there not being a god.

Anybody debating this is a stupid asshole.

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