Lan Barnes wrote:
On Mon, March 26, 2007 12:42 am, Ralph Shumaker wrote:
Lan Barnes wrote:
Nobody is trying to stamp out religion in politics, prayer in school, or
any other religious freedom. What people like me want to stop is enforced
religious observation, no matter how benign. As Molly Ivins used to point
out, there's plenty of prayer in schools, especially just before math
tests. What is NOT acceptible is that any publicly funded school REQUIRE
any kids (or faculty, for that matter) to pray to anything.
... *or* "REQUIRE any kids (or faculty, for that matter)" NOT to
publicly do so on publicly funded property.
The courts have ruled, I think with some wisdom, that almost all of these
"voluntary" pray-with-me events have applied enough psychological pressure
to not pass a reasonable person's definition of voluntary.
I can agree with that, to a point.
I don't know if any cases have been referred in which the prayer event is
more clearly voluntary. If, for example, the valedictorian said at the
start of her speech, "Right after graduation I plan to thank Jesus in the
south east corner of the cafeterria, and if anyone wants to join me, I'd
be real tickled": well, I can't see any court banning that very personal
invitation.
Conceded.
But consider this: You're 16 or 18 and just made the varsity football
squad, and in the locker room before your first real game, the coach
suddenly says "Let's pray to Jesus for victory," and everybody drops to
one knee, bows, and thrusts their hands into a circle; are you going to
hang back and say "aw, come ON, give me a freaking break!", no matter what
your true feelings?
If he says "Let's pray to Odin (or whichever one that is *not* my own)",
I'll be saying "That's ok. I'll pray to my own God. Thank you."
(Actually, I did stuff like that in my high school, where we still had
mandatory bible classes, and it was a source of constant friction. So when
I talk about Paul being anti-sex and anti-woman, I do so from a position
of someone who has read all the epistles, albeit at gun point.)
It would seem that you had motive to villify him. I may have too, given
a different setting.
BTW, I put Jesus in both my examples not because I have anything against
him or people who see his as a savior, but because I wanted to make it
clear that there was sectarian content. It could as well have been "to
Allah" or "to the Earth Mother."
But even unitarian/deist feel-good prayers to no one in particular are
kind of offensive to a secular humanist like me who believes that people
need to take responsibility for their own futures, rather than fobbing it
off on the supernatural.
I don't "fobb it off on the supernatural". My God doesn't support the
lazy and undriven. He expects drive and ambition. He advises us: "A
prudent man sees the destruction coming, and hides himself: but the
simple pass on and are punished." This doesn't say that the prudent man
drops to his knees in prayer when he sees trouble coming. God tells us
to take care of our own daily deliverence. God wants us to work hard
and accomplish things. But He also wants us to confide in Him and trust
Him with our weaknesses as well as our ambitions. He also wants us to
be concerned with our more distant future, our future beyond our mortal
life. He advises us to be more concerned with that future, than with
our mortal future. He doesn't want us to disregard either one, but to
have less regard for the temporal one than the eternal one, because the
eternal one is set within the temporal one, and since none of us knows
when that one will end, "behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now
is the day of salvation". It behooves us to find out ASAP whether or
not God has spoken and what He requires of us. Tomorrow may be too late.
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