Jessica Ahlquist is an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years. A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neutrality in religion.
This riles up the religious crazy's something fierce and I shit you not there are plenty that wish/want and would enjoy hurting this girl.
What I find important here is in the very words of this prayer. Take the header and the amen away and you then have a statement any student there or any where else can aspire to do and be without infringing on those of us who do not agree and want this or any thing like it kept out or removed from the public school system because that's the way it's supposed to be.
The same can be said of values espoused by "believers" in the sense that they create the illusion that because they "believe" their values and positions on them deserve all the credibility over those of us who do not.
That is pure bull shit of course but is the name of the game here in this country at this time.
I will put the values atheists have over any believer anywhere any time for the one simple reason that we are not hypocrites!
I am a firm believer in separation of church and state and I do applaud this girl and her efforts. You are so right: the words stand alone without the opening and closing. Ethics are ethics and if a person chooses to attach their spiritual beliefs to that, I'm fine with that, I do it myself, but it has to be within their own life and not within the public school system. I would stand with those who attempt to prevent schools from pushing a particular dogma. It's a very slippery slope.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that Teresa. Do you agree she put herself in danger?
ReplyDeleteMore harm has been done to humanity over the centuries in the name of religion than anything else.
ReplyDeleteIn our modern world, Catholicism and priest child-rapists rank at the top.
But Islam sucks too. I have no use for any of it.
Nor I Christopher.
ReplyDeleteThe irony of it is that the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was established as a refuge from the religious intolerance of the Massachusetts Bay colony. Now it is the crazy corner of New England.
ReplyDeleteTeach the Truth!
ReplyDeleteYMIR was the father of six-headed son nourished by the cosmic cow AUDUMLA. Audumla fed herself by licking the salty rimestone, until that stone was licked into a shape of man.
Ye, but verily did WOTAN slay the Mighty Frost Giant Ymir and from his bones made the earth and from his blood made the seas and rivers and his skull became the Vault of the Heavens!
ODIN!!!!!!!
I agree with you and Theresa - remove the religious references at the beginning and the end, and it's the sort of thing we should all wish for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteToo bad some folks only care about what's at the beginning and the end.
It's a no win as they blind to the fact that being a believer there can be no other way but their way. These people are downright dangerous as we know.
ReplyDelete