From: dpage@ra.csc.ti.com (Doug Page)
Subject: Re: A few quotes from a few years ago
Organization: Texas Instruments
Distribution: world, usa, na
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1992 17:51:52 GMT

In article <1992Sep3.231239.199@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>, tip@lead.aichem.arizona.edu (Tom Perigrin) writes:
|> In article <1992Sep2.173717.18949@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> fusco@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Andrew Fusco) writes:
|> >tip@lead.aichem.arizona.edu (Tom Perigrin) writes:
|> >
|> >>How about not teaching morality, and letting the parents teach it at home?
|> >>Or would you prefer that the government, or it's representatives (teachers)
|> >>instill their morality on your kids?
|> >
|> >Teachers are hardly "representatives" of some anonymous "government." Rather,
|> >teachers are and always ought to be representatives of the parents who make
|> >up the community - and teachers should always have to answer to those parents
|> >who pay the majority of their salary. Seen in this light, perhaps it is 
|> >reasonable to think that parents should have some influence over what is
|> >taught in their schools - even if it is "morality."
|> >
|> >-ACF
|> 
|> 
|> Okay... I grew up in a mid-western town where the protestant and the 
|> catholic kids would gang up and beat the shit out of each other after 
|> school, except when we ganged up together to kick a jewish kid. 
|> 
|> So let us say we have a nice common mix in our community:
|> 
|> A buncha Lutherns
|> A few less Catholics
|> A few Jews
|> An Anglican
|> A couple of Fundamentalist Charismtics
|> A couple of Buddhists (Asian Immigrants)
|> Two or three Moslim families.
|> A Shinto family
|> A few atheists
|> A bunch who really don't care
|> 
|> Now,  what happens when we try to teach religion and morality based on
|> religion?   Do we teach the ten commandments?  What about the Buddhists,
|> do their wishes get ignored because they have the bad taste to be
|> in the minority?  Or do we teach the eightfold path too?   And what about
|> the Shinto family?  Most teachers don't have a clue about that one...
|> 
|> And what do we do when the teacher says that the transubstantiation
|> is not real?  As I remember,  the 30 years war was ought over that one.
|> 
|> And of course, if you ignore the Quran and prefer the Bible then it is 
|> the Moslims duty to take up the sword and compell you...
|> 
|> And the Fundies will be pissed no matter what you do.
|> 
|> Maybe we should just avoid this mess,  and try to teach precepts that
|> are commonly accepted among all religions (murder is bad, theft is bad,
|> being nice to old people is good),  and let the parents provide what
|> they see is the underlying religious or ethical reasons at home...
|> 
|> And precepts which are not universally upheld by all relgions... 
|> well, let the parents teach those.

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)?  With the current "amoral" education
currently teaching the minority world view of secular humanism and claiming to 
be "valueless", perhaps we would all be better off if this country went back
to a private school system (?).

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.

When it comes time to educate students about social problems, the problem
becomes even greater.  Look at the way the NEA/Planned Parenthood wants AIDS
education to be handled.  Briefly mentioning that abstinece is actually the
only "safe sex", and then speaking at great length about the use of condoms
and how to use them.  They don't bother to point out that the HIV virus is
actually small enough to pass through an undamaged condom.  They don't bother
to teach them that condoms fail ~10% of the time and that studies have shown
that in married couples where one of the partners has HIV/AIDS practicing
"safe sex" that 40% of the spouses become infected.  (It's a lot like five
people going sky diving but only having two parachutes - there aren't many
skydivers that I know that like those odds.)

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.  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.  The teachings of Islam clearly do not
allow for a secular state, period.  Atheism, being the reactionary world view
that it is, would not allow for freedom of religion.  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.)

Doug Page

***  The opinions are mine and do not necessarily represent those of my  ***
***  employer.                                                           ***
I am not proposing a state church.  (I have experienced religious
descrimination myself in northern Arizona and Utah.  I have both friends and
relatives who have had to drive 60-100 miles just to buy groceries, simply
because they didn't belong to the correct church and noone in their town would
do business with them.)  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.
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh