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Post by RandiKthxxx on Mar 26, 2010 21:54:36 GMT -5
Lol it's a free country, she's allowed to believe what she wants. She wasn't preaching. She just made a simple statement. "I don't believe in evolution" There's nothing wrong with not believing in evolution. She was just making a point that we don't have to necessarily believe what we have to know in order to pass a class. So just like she doesn't have to believe in evolution, you don't have to believe the religion but if it's on the test, just know what to write down. That's like saying "it's a free country so you're allowed to believe that the holocaust didn't happen." Sure, you can delude yourself if you want, but you're still an idiot for doing so. And when it's a teacher saying something like "I don't believe in the theory of evolution" my first reaction is "How intelligent can this teacher be?" and my second is "Should someone stupid enough to actually think that be teaching children?" I know that you can't take action against someone for just a statement like that (unless of course she was a science teacher and actually trying to teach students that evolution was a lie as though it were in the curriculum) but I expect my teachers to be generally intelligent people, and that comes into major question when they claim that they don't "believe in" what is a certain scientific fact. Her beliefs have no effect on her ability to teach Sociology. In fact she does one hell of a job if I may so myself. To call her an idiot because of her beliefs is unfair. She's a very bright woman and she's inspired me to think about things I probably would have never given thought to if I hadn't taken her class. We may not see eye to eye on everything, but I certainly wouldn't call her stupid. It would be stupid of me to call her stupid, clearly she isn't. And may I remind you that the THEORY of evolution is still a THEORY. You and Dan may call me whatever you please, I know I'm not an idiot and as far as I'm concerned....that's all that matters :]
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Post by Lex on Mar 26, 2010 22:02:52 GMT -5
And may I remind you that the THEORY of evolution is still a THEORY. So is gravity.
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Post by Joey on Mar 26, 2010 22:24:26 GMT -5
Well first off, I am currently attending a Catholic School, and I find this offensive. If a school is private, they don't get tax dollars, and they don't have to let everyone in. This is a matter close to me because My friend in a Public School got a detention because he was talking about his faith. Here they act as if Religion is a Taboo subject. I think there should be a push for Theology Classes, allowing every faith that wants to to put a teacher in there to teach a religion class on a completely optional basis. Schools should also teach an optional class on Faith in general, as a way of studying all of the religions of the world throughout history and today. Religion did and still does have a major impact on society, and its wrong to completely shun it.
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Post by Johncoyne on Mar 26, 2010 22:41:52 GMT -5
Let me clarify. I went to Catholic school for around 7 years. We weren't taught that anything was fact (Except for Catechism). We were taught, "This is what they believe," That was a great way of teaching.
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Nakor
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Non-Prophet
Posts: 991
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Post by Nakor on Mar 27, 2010 2:10:33 GMT -5
The 'theory' of evolution has such an incredible amount of evidence for it that, while science refers to it as a theory (the same way that science refers to EVERYTHING as a theory -- read up on the scientific method) it is effectively fact.
If you do not believe in evolution, you are being stupid. Period. There really are no two ways about this. Now that may be the only area in which she's being an idiot, but it doesn't change the fact that a belief that evolution is a lie is idiotic. It flies in the face of science and education.
To quote myself from the main religion thread:
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Post by RandiKthxxx on Mar 27, 2010 7:27:31 GMT -5
I don't disagree with you on the theory of evolution, where I disagree with you is calling people idiots based on one belief. It's not fair to discredit someone's intelligent just because of one belief. I just can't agree with you there.
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bleabot
Moon
Set phazors to dance, Mr. Warf.
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Post by bleabot on Mar 27, 2010 7:41:43 GMT -5
I found myself lucky in that my time at a Catholic school (Kindergarten - 8th grade...quite a while), we weren't force-fed anything. We got taught creationism, but none of the "earth is only 6,000 years old". In junior high science, though, we were taught evolution. We had an entire book on it.
@ Courtney:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
That's all it says in the entire constitution about separation of church and state. Everything else is what people argue and infer, but what I said is all there really is. "...no law respecting an establishment" means that no religion can be supported by the government or called the official Church of the USA. "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"...yeah, that's easy enough. =P
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Post by Joey on Mar 27, 2010 9:36:13 GMT -5
Here we are not force fed our religion. Here its "Here is what we believe and here is what they believe, and this is why." We learn creationism, but not that the earth is 6000 years old. Our religion class is more of a thought class than a learning one. We always thinik about things and most of the class is discussion. And personnaly I do believe in Evolution, because I think its getting to the point where its as sure of a theroy as gravity is. On the other hand, I dont think that it has everyting right. I don't think we came from apes, but maybe ape-like creatures that God created in the beggining.
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Post by cadetpewpew on Mar 27, 2010 13:09:54 GMT -5
In my country generally there are a lot of different religions,so we end up having like jewish,muslim and christian kids in one place. And I honestly don't see how you would teach for example Christianity to Muslim kids. Especially here,where Muslims and Christians are archenemies. If we're talking about religions in general,then yes it would be interesting. But if we're talking about the country's main religion I don't think it's appropriate.
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Post by Joey on Mar 27, 2010 13:17:43 GMT -5
I was speaking more for my own personal area, the USA. Here in public high schools I think if a faith wants to put a volunteer teacher in the high school to teach an optional elective like band, They should be able to. That means there would be an optional Christian faith class, an optional jewish faith class etc.
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Post by UnfairBear on Mar 27, 2010 13:31:53 GMT -5
I was speaking more for my own personal area, the USA. Here in public high schools I think if a faith wants to put a volunteer teacher in the high school to teach an optional elective like band, They should be able to. That means there would be an optional Christian faith class, an optional jewish faith class etc. I don't think that'd be a good idea, since it'd allow people to come in and try to convert kids. It'd be easier for classmates or teachers or whatever to influence them into going to those classes if they were actually going on in the school. Also, if someone got curious (which is fine), and decided to go to one of the classes they could be unfairly converted. I say unfair because they may not have as much information about other religions. And it wouldn't be right if only a couple of religions were taught and the rest werent, just because they didnt volunteer to teach it. In general it just seems very unbalanced and troublesome. Thats pretty stupid. Fair enough if he was bullying someone or ostracising them because of their faith/lack thereof, but getting punished for just talking about it? That's pretty.. fascist O.o
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Post by Joey on Mar 27, 2010 13:55:14 GMT -5
No, he was simply answering one of his classmates questions and he said jesus and the teacher talked to him how it's innaproprate to talk about things like that.
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Post by Dimstow on Mar 27, 2010 15:31:20 GMT -5
UnfairBearWhile I'm against religion in school (Not from a student perspective, I think students should feel free to talk about their beliefs and to speak their mind so long as they stay civil) I think my reasoning is sort of the Opposite of yours I think that is a student had access to a wide variety of religious classes then it would make student HARDER to convert. If students had an easy access to a wide variety of religions then they wouldn't feel pressured to convert, or 'pick one' or any time on unfair conversion and instead it would allow students to base their religious views on a body of knowledgeBut like you said before it really only works if students have access to a wide variety of religions or if religion isn't taught
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Post by UnfairBear on Mar 27, 2010 15:34:54 GMT -5
Yeah, I get what you're saying. I'm certainly all for having classes on the actual curriculum that teach about all religions, but if there wasn't that option I dont think pjpinc's idea would work in place of it.
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Nakor
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Non-Prophet
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Post by Nakor on Mar 27, 2010 15:53:46 GMT -5
I don't disagree with you on the theory of evolution, where I disagree with you is calling people idiots based on one belief. It's not fair to discredit someone's intelligent just because of one belief. I just can't agree with you there. Oh, I'm not saying that an otherwise intelligent person couldn't come to that one wrong conclusion, but that particular conclusion in and of itself is still a really, really stupid one. If I knew that aside from that one point of dogma they were otherwise intelligent, then fine, but it still strikes me as dogmatic and foolish thing to believe, and I would probably be spurred on to double check anything they claimed or taught outside of the curriculum that might be similarly dogmatic in nature.
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Post by Joey on Mar 27, 2010 17:35:31 GMT -5
Yeah, I get what you're saying. I'm certainly all for having classes on the actual curriculum that teach about all religions, but if there wasn't that option I dont think pjpinc's idea would work in place of it. I didn't mean in place, I mean in the same curriculm, maybe even a requirement before taking a single religion class you have to take a semester of world religions.
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Post by UnfairBear on Mar 27, 2010 18:18:53 GMT -5
Yeah, I get what you're saying. I'm certainly all for having classes on the actual curriculum that teach about all religions, but if there wasn't that option I dont think pjpinc's idea would work in place of it. I didn't mean in place, I mean in the same curriculm, maybe even a requirement before taking a single religion class you have to take a semester of world religions. Fair enough. But couldn't they just as easily take them extra curricularly outside the school? It would make things far less complicated. And it's already possible anyway. Besides, I think one of the reasons religion is kept out of schools in the US at least is so that people of certain religions arent put into groups, ones that might be discriminated against or ones that might gang up and discriminate against others. What you're suggesting would probably lead to that. Also if someone wants to keep their beliefs private this could undermine that, through the fact that they don't go to certain classes. For example if someone is, say a Bhuddist, and dont tell anyone, if there was a class on Judaism, others might question whether or not the person was Jewish. They could then discriminate against them for not being Jewish. Any beliefs can be stuck in there, and it'd still be an issue.
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Post by Joey on Mar 27, 2010 18:29:38 GMT -5
I didn't mean in place, I mean in the same curriculm, maybe even a requirement before taking a single religion class you have to take a semester of world religions. Fair enough. But couldn't they just as easily take them extra curricularly outside the school? It would make things far less complicated. And it's already possible anyway. Besides, I think one of the reasons religion is kept out of schools in the US at least is so that people of certain religions arent put into groups, ones that might be discriminated against or ones that might gang up and discriminate against others. What you're suggesting would probably lead to that. Also if someone wants to keep their beliefs private this could undermine that, through the fact that they don't go to certain classes. For example if someone is, say a Bhuddist, and dont tell anyone, if there was a class on Judaism, others might question whether or not the person was Jewish. They could then discriminate against them for not being Jewish. Any beliefs can be stuck in there, and it'd still be an issue. Okay, I agree. But I don't think it should be taboo, like my friends situation.
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Post by fredrik on Mar 27, 2010 18:33:37 GMT -5
In Norway, we used to have a subject called "KRL" (Christianity, Religion and Life stance), but they had to change it to "RLE" (Religion, Life stance and Ethics) in 2008, I think, because the European Court of Huamn Rights decided that it would be wrong to center the learning around christianity.
Personally, as an atheist, I think learning about religions in general is necessary, but not to learn about a specific religion if you do not want to yourself.
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Post by smilee on Mar 27, 2010 21:58:33 GMT -5
In my school, we got taught about Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The teacher presented the facts said "This is what they believe in no way do they reflect my beliefs on the matter. I am not saying that this religion is better than any other religion in any way. Please don't insult this religion." And then we moved on to the next religion. Anyone who implied a certain religion was better than any other religion was written up.
But yeah, I really liked this and I feel that it's a great way to learn about other world religions. I feel that other schools should do this as long as they don't show any bias. (This should be possible as this school was located in the Bible Belt, though admittedly the teacher was from the North and I'm pretty sure she was Atheist.)
However, my school is very Christian-centered. The principal has lead the school in prayer before (this is a public school), and since I live in Mississippi, there's a In God We Trust poster in every classroom. As an Atheist, this really annoys me and makes me feel suppressed and like I could never tell anyone about my belief.
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