From: dpage@ra.csc.ti.com (Doug Page)
Subject: Re: A few quotes from a few years ago
Organization: Texas Instruments
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 22:31:51 GMT

In article <1992Sep8.175152.15724@csc.ti.com> dpage@ra.csc.ti.com (Doug Page) writes:

[me]
>>Your bring up an interesting point.  Perhaps the government should not even be
>>in the education business (?).  Is public education actually mandated by
>>the Constitution, or is it something that we have just come to expect from
>>government (i.e., an entitlement)?  
>
>
[Tom]
>It's an investment.   "If you think education is expensive,  you should 
>consider the cost of ignorance."

True, but so is the cost of little or no ethics/morals.  Not knowing right
from  wrong is perhaps the most costly form of ignorance.  Magic Johnson is
paying/will pay a high price as an individual for his promiscuity in the past,
as is/will his family.  You and I are paying a high price for the lack of
ethics/morals of few S&L executives.  And there were both Republican AND
Democrat S&L executives; it wasn't their political party, but their lack of
ethics/morals that was the problem.

[me]
>>
>>                                        With the current "amoral" education
>>currently teaching the minority world view of secular humanism and claiming
>>be "valueless", perhaps we would all be better off if this country went back
>>to a private school system (?).
[Tom]
>
>One, I don't necessarily buy that there is a unified effort to teach some 
>vague bogeyman called "secular humanism".   I think this is a sound bite term 
>used when people aren't getting their way.    But even if that were so,
>do you really favor a system which only invests in the education of the
>children of wealthy, and leaves large swaths of the population undereducated?

It is the humanists who insist on a vague definition, perhaps so that they can
pretend that there is no such thing even though Isaac Asimov was their
supposed spokesperson prior to his death.

It is interesting that you should mention sound bite, since you apparently
like to call people "fundies" when you disagree with them.  At least I take
the time to find out what others' views actually are instead of calling names.

Do you really expect me to believe that the educational system in the cities
of this nation are different from the description that you gave of the third
world.  Perhaps you should visit the inner-city more often.  Have you forgotten
the number of illiterate people with high school and in some cases even a
college diplomas.  Have you forgotten the number of high school dropouts.
Come back to the real world.

While Perot wants people trained rather than educated in public schools, he
does have a very valid point when he points out that we are not getting what we
pay for in public education.

[Tom]
>>
>>Do you admire the third world educational system?

No, but neither do I admire the education system in the US.  The only thing
that is progressive about the US educational system is that it is getting
progressively worse.

[me]
>>>
>>>I would hope that the common denominator approach to ethics/morals would work,
>>>but it too has its flaws.  For example, murder may have different definitions
>>>than what even the law dictates.  There are many Moslems in Iraq who would
>>>view that the killing of the "enemies of Islam" would be outside of their
>>>definition of "murder".  Being nice to old people would be qualified under
>>>secular humanism to read more like "be nice to old people, at least until they
>>>become an emotional, psycological, or financial burden".  This world view
>>>would actually allow the "elimination" of the elderly that are a "burden to
>>>society", even though this "elimination" might be considered murder under
>>>current statutes.  There are some "mainline" Christian denominations that view
>>>that stealing is OK if your need is great enough; even if it is against the
>>>law.

[Tom]
>I think you have just hoisted yourself with your own petard.   Since some 
>Christian sects preach the acceptability of theft, then which specific brand
>of Christianity do we teach?  Mine, yours, or the Christianity of the guy
>over there with the big gun???
>

Perhaps you didn't notice that I placed mainline within quotes.  I did so
because these sects are referred to as "mainline" by the popular media, not
because they truly represent Christian values but, rather, because their views
more closely match those in the media who call them "mainline".

There was no petard fired here.  On the contrary, I was attempting to amplify
your previous point and to help place my question within that context. 

[me]
>>Getting back to my original post, however, perhaps you can see that this
>>country was founded at least in large part upon (Judeo/)Christian ideals rather
>>than the other religions that you mentioned.  

[Tom]
>But democracy doesn't say that one person (early) one vote,  one person (late)
>one half vote.  Nope, equal votes.
>

Nor does democracy say that one person (late) one vote, one person (early) one
half vote.  Besides, ours is a republic, not a democracy.

[me]
>>                                                    Like it or not, the Ten
>>Commandments did/do have an impact on what is considered right in America. The
>>Buddhist/Shinto/Hindu world view places considerably less value on individual
>>rights than does Judeo/Christianity. 

[Tom]
>As a Buddhist I don't seem to think that's true.   Are you a Buddhist?
>Where did you get your training?

Perhaps you will attain Buddha's level of "right thinking" someday and will
understand someday.  Then there would only be one more level . . .

The individual rights which flow from Buddhism and its parent religion Hinduism
clearly involve the individual "I" rather than the individual "you" (another
"I").  Since there are no real finite selves ("I's") in Buddhism, then there
is no such thing as an I-you relationship between finite selves, nor between
humans and God.  This means that not only is worship impossible, but neither
is fellowship.  All I-I relationships reduce to I.  This results in a love of
self first and an absence of concern for fellow humans.  In almost every area
of the world where Buddhism of any form hold sway, you will find such wonderful
conditions as hunger, disease, and moral and spiritual decay.  The peoples of
the Far East are the slaves of their religions, and Buddhism with its
egocentricity, inherently selfish concept of life and of responsibility to
society, is easily one of the greatest offenders.  Just stay up tonight and see
where we are being asked to send food to save the children and you will notice
that it is usually where either Hinduism or Buddhism.  As Jesus said that "So
then, you will know them by their fruits." (Matthew 7:20, NAS)

[stuff removed]
[me]
>>                                    Atheism, being the reactionary world view
>>that it is, would not allow for freedom of religion.  
[Tom]
>
>Not neccesarily,  I know a lot of athiests who enjoy the spectical of silly
>people bobbing up and down like drinking ducks.
>

Perhaps, but I don't seem to recall hearing of many of these "bobbing" folks
in the former USSR. which was based upon atheistic principles.

[me]
>>                                                       I will not attempt to
>>address agnosticism as its definition often varies from individual to
>>individual and would waste bandwidth. (I have never met a person who was truly
>>agnostic, although I have met many who claimed to be agnostics.  Most were one
>>form or another of theists and a few were actually humanists.  It was simply
>>the fact that they just didn't realize what agnostic really means.)
>>
[Tom]
>
>It must be nice to be the only person who really knwos what an agnostic is.
>Especially, since self professed agnostics apparently don't have a clue...
>
Back to Webster's Dictionary:

 agnostic - n. One who believes that there can be no proof of the existence of
 God but does not deny the possibility that God exists.

Obviously, if someone denies that God exists or believes that His existence can
be proven then they are not agnostics.  The people that I have known that have
claimed to be agnostics were actually atheists (i.e., they denied that God
exists) or they were theists waiting for God to perform a miracle (i.e., God's
existence could be "proven" to them by the given miracle).  In each case, they
had heard a sound bite and decided that that was what they wanted to call
themselves.

[me]
>>                          I am, however, attempting to point out that this
>>nation was not founded on secular humanist philsophies as some revisionists
>>have been proposing in this (and other) news groups.

[Tom]
>
>Yes, well, we all made mistakes when we were young is ignorant.  Even
>this country.
>

So then, you DO agree that this nation was founded upon Christian principles.
That was all that I was saying in my original post.  Whether you or I agree
with what they did or not,  I was simply trying to point out that the claims
that had been posted before were not historically correct.

Doug Page

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***  employer.                                                           ***
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