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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 03/20/2008 : 21:25:40 [Permalink]
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Yet you defend intolerant actions like this?
Uh huh.
No kid has ever been expelled from school in the last 50 years for saying "ignoramus" and "ass".
Assuming the account of the event we have is accurate, you are as deluded as the fundies who punished this kid if you believe they punished him for an insult and a word that is arguably not "vulgar".
Just like your continued support for those TX and OK laws/bills. You are high if you think those laws will be used in a secular manner.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 03/20/2008 : 21:58:07 [Permalink]
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| No kid has ever been expelled from school in the last 50 years for saying "ignoramus" and "ass". |
And no kid was expelled in this scenario either. He got in-school suspension for one day. Kids get that for all kinds of minor things.
| Assuming the account of the event we have is accurate, you are as deluded as the fundies who punished this kid if you believe they punished him for an insult and a word that is arguably not "vulgar". |
The people who punished him were not fundies. This happened in frickin' Wisconsin, not Arkansas. From the article: | A meeting with his parents was scheduled. The assistant principal, a police officer assigned to the high school and a social services worker attended, Campbell says, and he was barraged with questions unrelated to the actual incident: What do you do when you get angry? Are there problems at home?…and they ordered him to be examined by a psychiatrist before returning to school. |
If you want to argue that they over-reacted, that they misunderstood him, that they were being overly cautious, fine, but this is hardly a clear cut case of discrimination against a kid for being an atheist.
| Just like your continued support for those TX and OK laws/bills. |
What the fuck, Dude!? I haven't given support to the TX and OK bills. I have made positive commentary about some of the language of the OK bill in order to spark further discussion about how much students should be encouraged to freely express their viewpoints through school assignments.
| You are high if you think those laws will be used in a secular manner. |
This is the second time today you've make a comment suggesting that I smoke up. I'll assume the best and take it as a general rather than personal attack. But for the record, I haven't smoked marijuana in over 6 years and can count the number of times I've tried it on one hand. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 03/20/2008 : 22:03:51 [Permalink]
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| It is also worth noting that the teacher gave the kid a "B". Yeah, those nasty fundies terrorizing the poor, little atheist boy. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 03/20/2008 : 22:12:14 [Permalink]
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| Seriously, am I nuts or did everyone here go to schools where the teachers would have been perfectly fine with a kid swearing and directly insulting other students during a classroom presentation? If I'd done that in school - I mean on any topic, not just religion - many of my HS English teachers would have cut me off in mid-presentation, and certainly not have given me a good grade! I'm not sure that kids should be punished for this behavior - like I stated earlier, to me it is a toss up - but I fail to see how it is extreme for the school to decide to take action to prevent further such behavior from any of the students. Otherwise what if all the students start putting expletives and insults in their presentations? They are teenagers after all. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 03/20/2008 : 22:14:51 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
chaloobi wrote: No more guts than a fundamentalist Christian who makes an equally public and passionate appeal to their religion in a mainstream school. They aren't just denounced as "Jesus freaks" by atheists. I can't commend guts by itself. When the kid called the writers of the Bible "old, smell Mesopotamians" I just rolled my eyes. I was a pretty radical and outspoken agnostic in HS, and I never would have stooped to that kind of empty rhetoric. Kid needs to read beyond Atlas Shrugged; free and critical thinking is about a lot more than atheism. Not to mention how to actually connect with an audience that you are trying to persuade.
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It seems like you think some large portion of students in US public schools are atheists. In my experience, the vast majority of people I encounter are Christian. If I stand up and declare in a public setting that I'm saved, or whatever, people might smile and nod or roll their eyes, but virtually nobody will be openly hostile. But I guarantee that if I stood up in any public setting and started shredding the bible and called the Faithful stupid, some people are going to be furious, perhaps violently so. Culturally, it takes a hell of a lot more guts to diametrically oppose the majority than to take a more extreme stance of the belief the majority already holds. That is, I think your comparison is completely false.
Furthermore the kid wasn't looking to persuade, his intent was clearly to shock, offend and challenge his audience. And I don't think he used 'empty rhetoric', I think he raised some pretty good issues for a teenager. And sure he and most of the rest of humanity would benefit from broader reading, but that's entirely irrelevant to whether or not his speach displayed guts. And lastly, free thinking isn't entirely about atheism, but theism is generally at odds with too much free thinking. |
-Chaloobi
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 03/20/2008 : 22:19:34 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
Seriously, am I nuts or did everyone here go to schools where the teachers would have been perfectly fine with a kid swearing and directly insulting other students during a classroom presentation? If I'd done that in school - I mean on any topic, not just religion - many of my HS English teachers would have cut me off in mid-presentation, and certainly not have given me a good grade! I'm not sure that kids should be punished for this behavior - like I stated earlier, to me it is a toss up - but I fail to see how it is extreme for the school to decide to take action to prevent further such behavior from any of the students. Otherwise what if all the students start putting expletives and insults in their presentations? They are teenagers after all.
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I went to a parochial highschool. The kid would have received detention, depending on the teacher, but probably not suspended for the language. But ripping up the bible in advocating atheism? Adios. Public school is for atheists. |
-Chaloobi
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9687 Posts |
Posted - 03/21/2008 : 06:17:33 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by chaloobi
What Dave said, in my mind, was only a matter of the ability to do it immediately vs. doing it over the time whatever the effort requires. I'm not so sure changing beliefs has to take time, though I confess in my own expereince major belief change does require a lot of time. |
I too have first hand experience that it takes time to change belief, especially something like religious beliefs that one has had for a long time. By going to church (or being raised to believe) means programming your brain with religious thoughts, and conditioning your mind to express reactions according that belief. Conditioning becomes deeply rooted over time, and deprogramming becomes much more difficult. Even 15 years after I said enough it enough, and quit church, I still experience mental reactions where my thinking defaults to Pentecostal programming. It happens every once in a while, but these days, I'm aware of my conditioning and quickly recognise and recover from them.
(It still pisses me off that I have to be constantly vigilant. So much energy could have been spent more productively the last 25 years.)
Anyway, what I wanted to say was that changing "burnt in" mental pathways is a major effort. Especially if we're talking about how to process information, rather than if some piece of information is true or false.
The fact if God exists or not, is quite different from interpreting everything you experience in the light that God actually do exists.
| On the other hand, while being indoctrinated in highschool religion class I heard stories of messed up individuals being saved by Jesus, that is acquiring strong belief, in a very short time. Anecdotal of course... |
Two people I used to know (right from the top of my head) was pretty messed up before finding Jesus. They both became strong believers in a short time.
However, I don't think that this was much different from a teen-age infatuation. After a year or two they cooled down. One of them "came over" their belief and left the church within a few years. That break was nasty, because the church elders had high hopes and plans for her. Emotions ran high as elders apparently felt betrayed.
The other one settled down and embraced the community of the church and went to some bible-school that focused on community work. I think he works with youth-groups within the church, but I haven't heard anything about him for 15 years.
The moral of it all is that rapid change is a recipe for blow-back, unless there is long-time close support to let the new found faith to settle and the brain washing to sink in.
My own conversion to Christianity was slow, as was my loss of faith and embrace of rationality. Through it all, my interest in science was the constant.
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 03/21/2008 : 06:30:25 [Permalink]
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chaloobi wrote: | It seems like you think some large portion of students in US public schools are atheists. In my experience, the vast majority of people I encounter are Christian. |
No, no. You misunderstand what I wrote. I said: "They aren't just denounced as "Jesus freaks" by atheists." By that I was saying that many people who are not atheists, in fact many who are what I like to call "slack-ass Christians" use the term "Jesus freak." If a kid is a hard core born again who is constantly bringing up religion and trying to convert their classmates, in a mainstream public school setting they are likely to be annoying a lot of people. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 03/21/2008 : 06:34:25 [Permalink]
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chaloobi wrote: | I went to a parochial highschool. The kid would have received detention, depending on the teacher, but probably not suspended for the language. But ripping up the bible in advocating atheism? Adios. Public school is for atheists. |
I also went to a parochial hs. I went to Catholic school for all of grade and hs. In hs I and my friends were open about our atheism/agnosticism. In fact, my boyfriend and his best friend and I had a band and wrote a song about peace for one of the school masses. While we were practicing with the music teacher, Sister Susan, she tried to encourage us by saying something about praising God. We flatly told her that we all didn't believe in God. She was very surprised, but nothing happened to us and we still got to perform our song at the mass. And this was in a medium-sized town in the heart of mid-Western Ohio! I live in Philly now and find people even way more tolerant of nontheism here. I have no doubt things are totally different in the Bible belt, but Wisconsin is more like Ohio than Kansas. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 03/21/2008 : 06:52:44 [Permalink]
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Marf said:
| What the fuck, Dude!? I haven't given support to the TX and OK bills. I have made positive commentary about some of the language of the OK bill in order to spark further discussion about how much students should be encouraged to freely express their viewpoints through school assignments. |
Positive comments about those laws/bills = support. It is obvious that they are intended to let fundy christians have their kids (and fundy christian teachers) disrupt public schools without fear of legal consequences.
As for you "smoking", I use it only as a way to indicate that something is interfering with your ability to apply reason to the topic. Clearly I have no way of knowing if you have ever used any drug, nor do I really care.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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chaloobi
SFN Regular
1620 Posts |
Posted - 03/21/2008 : 08:24:25 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
chaloobi wrote: | I went to a parochial highschool. The kid would have received detention, depending on the teacher, but probably not suspended for the language. But ripping up the bible in advocating atheism? Adios. Public school is for atheists. |
I also went to a parochial hs. I went to Catholic school for all of grade and hs. In hs I and my friends were open about our atheism/agnosticism. In fact, my boyfriend and his best friend and I had a band and wrote a song about peace for one of the school masses. While we were practicing with the music teacher, Sister Susan, she tried to encourage us by saying something about praising God. We flatly told her that we all didn't believe in God. She was very surprised, but nothing happened to us and we still got to perform our song at the mass. And this was in a medium-sized town in the heart of mid-Western Ohio! I live in Philly now and find people even way more tolerant of nontheism here. I have no doubt things are totally different in the Bible belt, but Wisconsin is more like Ohio than Kansas.
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12 years of Catholic education here. I grew up in small town Michigan. My education was surprisingly open minded, however. The science classes included real science, including evolution without even so much as the mention of god-guidance. Religion class included discussion of the non-existance of Satan and fire/brimstone hell and the pre-christian roots of a lot of christian belief. Pretty progressive when I look back on it, though I didn't become agnostic non-christian until well after I graduated. But discipline was taken very seriously and I'd guess anyone who ripped the bible up in class calling believers stupid zombies would have been in serious trouble. (I say guess because I never witnessed such a thing) I think atheism could have been freely discussed, but the theatrics described in the OP would have been considered over-the-top disrespectful. |
-Chaloobi
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| Edited by - chaloobi on 03/21/2008 08:26:05 |
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13476 Posts |
 Posted - 03/21/2008 : 08:30:57 [Permalink]
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You know, I don't see what the big deal is. The kid was smart enough to use an assignment correctly, even though he offended a few people. Kids will be kids. At least he is on the road to actual thinking. (He needs to refine his message.) He got a slight reprimand for language, largely for the ad-hom attack on his fellow students, which happens. The father who pronounced the kid a sociopath did not get his way, and instead the kid received a "B" on the assignment.
This is a tempest in a teapot.
Hopefully, one day, he will come over to SFN and learn how to make his case without resorting to ad-hom attacks and insults…
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
Posted - 03/21/2008 : 09:54:32 [Permalink]
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Had I given such a speech, I would not expect a grade above a D. While tearing out pages in the Bible was a good metaphor, the rest was devoid of any intellectual content. Perhaps the 1 day suspension was a bit much, the standard 3 hour detention seems to be more approriate. But do we know the history behind the school? Perhaps they had a rash of profanity and had to increase punishments for it. Perhaps they have always been strict on insulting other students. As skeptics, we should look into what the standard punishment for such actions is at that school, or dammit, at least be curious about it. Making rash generalizations with your personal school experience is not the way to go.
marf, I believe you should drop the Santa clause bit even though it does have a significant amount of shock value. Does anyone honestly think that in 5 lifetimes they would be able to convince themselves to be Christian? I mean to truley believe in God?
Absolutely not, it isn't our way. We can't believe in something without evidence to back that up. We have choosen that evidence is the best way to go. There is no way to support this other than "it looks like it's working". On the other hand, people of a religious view think that belief in a higher power is the best way to go. There is no way to support their view either except "it looks like it's working". And we can shout at them all we want how it does nothing, but in the end, they still think it's working.
Beliefs can change, and certainly do all the time. But when it comes to religion, this is not by want or rational arguments. Rational arguments are useless for views that are not based in rationality.
Dude, if the wording of a bill is not going to be followed as it clearly means, is that a problem with the bill itself? I agree with marf's comments about the bill, and I would support it if it were to be used as it says. But I know it won't, and as such I don't support it. I believe this appropraitely shows your claim that "Positive comments about those laws/bills = support." is utterly false.
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Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov |
| Edited by - Ricky on 03/21/2008 09:58:12 |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
Posted - 03/21/2008 : 09:56:06 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by marfknox
Religious beliefs are no different from other beliefs and they do not deserve any special protection. |
And then later...
| Religion does and should hold the same protected status and race, gender, and sexual preference, and that status does not shield it from criticism. |
This seems like an obvious contradiction to me, unless you are making some distinction between being religious and holding religious beliefs I can't see.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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A student's right to rip up a Bible, insult Xians
