In my case, my lack of it. But, I thought I’d address this recent editorial from the Bugle Observer.
Why must we push God and all religion out of our public view? Just because some people are atheist or have a different religion than others, that does not mean we all can’t display, within reason, what we believe in.
I agree to a point. By all means display your faith on your property if you want to. In your homes, by going to your church, by doing good deeds in the name of whatever flavour of faith it is you follow. The display aspect only gets annoying when a public place, a place for everyone regardless of faith or unbelief can gather, gets co-opted for a specific group display. That’s only fair and right if every religious group gets equal treatment, and also groups not affiliated with religions at all. Everyone should get the same right to state their beliefs or philosophies.
As long as we don’t force what we believe upon others, then we should all be able to live happily and peacefully together.
Define force. For that matter, define beliefs. That couple who let their kid die rather than medicate her – we shouldn’t voice our opinions on what a bad idea that was? We shouldn’t have them in court because we believe they did a bad thing? Society at large is forcing a belief on these people – that children have the right to medical care regardless of religious beliefs – and the courts should drop everything and let them get away with it? At some point, I think a country’s secular laws need to take the wheel, don’t you?
Even though we go to school and work with people of other religions does not mean we all need to put our religion on hold. Ben Stein stated on CBS’ morning show, Dec. 18 2006: “I am a Jew, and every one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me, even a little bit, when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas Trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas Trees.”
Ben’s being quite sensible here and I agree with him. I don’t have a problem with Christians wanting to display their holy rituals. As believers, they have every right to believe the nativity really happened like the bible said, even though I think it didn’t. I don’t see many menorahs around, but I’d never claim that Jewish people shouldn’t set them up because I’m not Jewish. That’s just retarded. I don’t have to believe in Passover. I think it’s kind of disturbing though, to celebrate the mass genocide of the other side every year. I don’t care if it happened several thousand years ago. It seems like a strange thing to be thankful for.
I’m a Catholic and it doesn’t bother me if a Jehovah’s Witness talks to me about their religion. I have my beliefs and they have theirs. I don’t care if they go door to door to talk about how their religion works. I’m not offended by it. That’s what they do. It doesn’t bother me that they are not Catholic and they are openly showing that. It’s not such a big deal!
In the great scope of things, no it isn’t. I don’t get why a group that believes there’s only a set number of seats in heaven tries to recruit more into their group though. Wouldn’t all the seats be filled by the ones who already died? What happens to all these other ones that didn’t gather enough new souls? It’s like a pyramid scheme for the afterlife or something. I’m not offended by their beliefs; I just don’t understand why they believe them.
So many people have been killed because they openly showed their beliefs, and those who killed them didn’t like it. But, if you think about that, the killers are doing the exact same thing – they are openly showing that they didn’t believe in the same thing, Is that what they believe in? Killing others.
If they believe that martyrdom will be rewarded with heavenly virgins, who wouldn’t be tempted to strap a bomb on and kill a few dozen people? Especially if they’re young, horny, and never get to see any women they aren’t related to? Not that I agree with this. I’m just saying. There is a lot wrong with a system like that. They have way too much public religion and it’s hurting people every day in all kinds of sad and terrible ways.
Think about Rachel Scott. She was killed in the Columbine massacre because when she was asked by a peer with a gun, if she believed in God, she answered “Yes”
She should have lied and then asked god’s forgiveness later from the arms of very relieved parents. Why anyone should be happy to see a kid die like that.. There’s no telling that they wouldn’t have shot her anyway. Maybe it didn’t matter what she said.
At religious holiday times, such as Easter, Hanukkah and Christmas, there is little to no evidence of the holiday, besides non-religious items that we associate with that specific holiday. For Christmas, we have no manger scenes, at Hanukkah, there is no Menorah, and, where is the crucifixion at Easter? Why don’t we show these? Because not everybody is of the same faith, and a menorah might offend a Christian. It might not, but we can’t take that risk. Well, I’m a Christian, and even I have put a menorah up! And I know I’m not the only one! I’ve seen others put them up to show we respect others religions.
Little to no evidence? Is this a Catholic who never actually attends mass? I haven’t been to a mass in years but I recall the church we’d go to near our Catholic school had a big wooden cross hanging up inside year round with a thorny Jesus drooping on it looking as emo as any artistic rendering of suffering now. And every year we’d get a tour of the 14 Stations even though they were hanging up year round for anyone bored of the hymnals to contemplate.
All those churches that have to put GPS devices in their displays so they can rescue all the baby Jesuses? And he actually says nobody displays anything related to the “orginal” holiness? Maybe he’s not looking very hard. Maybe he’s mistaking “display” for “public display” or something. If he could look into a few houses Christmas Eve night like Ebeneezer Scrooge, maybe he’d see the Christmas spirit alive and well. He might also see some people have mad riotous sex, but people celebrate in all kinds of ways…
Maybe we should stop worrying about offending someone and worry only when we do offend them! Whatever happened to praying before school started? And reciting the pledge of allegiance?
Prayer isn’t fair in a classroom with kids from other faiths. Prayer should be optional, and if it’s a public run school, it shouldn’t be part of a school day at all unless they actually have a class where they discuss religion. I can’t say about the Pledge, though, as a Canadian I’ll never have to say it. I do think it’s possible to be patriotic without attributing the nation’s success and strength to something supernatural. Can’t you be proud of your country without thinking that has anything to do with how great it is?
We should concentrate more on teaching the generations’ respect and faith than we do teaching things that they will never use. If people want to learn how to calculate the height of a pole by the length of its shadow or whatnot, they can take a math course. If every student knew how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, plus their English, and how to treat people with respect, and learn to accept that others believe different things, the world would be a better place.
Psst! Your ignorance is showing. Math shouldn’t be optional, science shouldn’t be optional. Sometimes you have to learn about things that don’t interest you in the slightest because it’s still a topic or knowledge base you’re going to need whether you can figure out how it relates to life or not. I wish everyone would seek to learn as much as they could and be proud of what they know and glad they know it. As to treating people with respect, I agree with that one. That also needs to be learned. We are not born with an innate knowledge of kindness and goodheartedness. Any desirable human behaviour needs to be taught and encouraged and grown and that takes time – more time than some people seem willing to devote to it. How to trust and be trustworthy, how to be generous, polite, empathetic etc. None of the understanding of the importance of that will happen overnight, so certainly not after 15 minutes with a cardboard book or DVD with singing puppets.
So, by putting religion back into the publics view we might solve a few problems in this world. Is that such a hard thing to do?
This conclusion makes zero sense. Religion doesn’t need to be public. Respect and other properly humane human ideals and attitudes are not dependent on religious thought processes in order to be valid and doable. Anyone with the desire and ambition to be nice to people and useful and thoughtful and stuff can just up and do it, assuming they’ve had experience doing it before, anyway. And if they haven’t done it before, there’s no reason they can’t start from scratch like a toddler does, even if they never dare admit that’s the level of human kindness they’re currently at.
Religion has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with learning how to be a decent human being, except by coincidence. It does not take fear of sin to discipline. Anyone sufficiently motivated can teach those skills and – better yet – demonstrate them each and every day of their lives as often as possible. Show it can be done, even when the situation seems to call for other reactions like rage, and violence and horribleness. Becoming better than we are is a choice we’re all capable of making. More people need to choose to do so.
