I'm not going to get invovled in the debate, because I'll only rant. But yes I have seen that film - and it's a very good example of whats happening in the western world. I would recomend anyone to watch it. ( even stupid people, they're bound to find it funny for all the wrong reasons )Has anyone seen Idiocracy? I watched it the other night. I can't get it out of my head right now.
Yet in this country, falling adherence to faith is coinciding with a decline in both literacy and numeracy - and I'm not arguing that the one is causative of or even associated with the other. I'd argue against even the use of the word correlation; one can't assume a relationship between things just because you observe them happening at the same time - beware the ecological fallacyOriginally Posted by directhex
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as a christian i believe that, yes i have been saved form hell, but also i believe that I am save for... not just saved from... christians are saved to bring heaven to earth, so God can use us to do his will on earth. and i'm not talking about having protests in the street against gay marriage, or abortion, and not to condemn people to hell for not aggreeing with us... but by living as christ commands, for the same amount of money as i spend on a couple of CD's i can release a third world child from poverty, for the same ammount of time i spend watching crap tv in the week i can hang out with a homeless guy... im not saying im a super holy joe, coz i struggle with alot of this stuff, its goes so against what human nature says i should do...
I'm fed up with people who claim Chirst in the name of homophobia, and sexism, and racism... I want to make a confession, and an apology, for the crusades, for hard line politicians who use the name of Jesus... for the fact that I know I dont live the way i should as a christian, and for christians who have wronged you, the Good News of Christ is not one of condemnation but of revolutionary love...
so i think that there are many reason society is the way it is, and i believe that "religion", has at times damaged society... but the tru message of christiany hasn't
Bravo, CMC and very true.
Ooooookay.
so if literacy and numeracy really are falling (relative to when? surely only a very recent trend - there's a reason we call the time when jebus ruled all Europe the Dark Ages) then why do we still waste so much school time on the legally obligated daily xtian worship at every state funded school? and given this is the law, why do the tambourine thumpers still wail about being oppressed? it's hard to imagine how schools could be more skewed towards their minority belief.
why would anyone think that even more religion in our schools would improve anything? Religion is ignorance made virtue,it's the exact opposite of learning.
Firstly, I went to a state school and whatever the law said the idea that there was some daily mandated Christian worship is just bull****. There wasn't, and that was nearly 30 years ago. And given the whining of secularists I doubt that it's any more rigorously enforced now.
As far as literacy is concerned, try England slides down world literacy league - Telegraph - and I don't normally read the Telegraph either, but once you strip away the hyperbole, the bare facts are bleak enough. Leaving aside the "Dark Ages" bollocks (as if secularists would have done any better at the time), as far as religion being the opposite of learning...who exactly were the first people to provide open access education in this country? Cause it sure as hell wasn't the government. Oh...that'd be the churches.
You want your kids to have a secular education, they can have one. Even in the unlikely event that there IS some mandated Christian worship in whatever school it is you can opt out.
I went to a state school with the hymns, the assemblies and the morning prayers.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time at school, and the majority of people who went with me are unreligious despite sitting through the same. And yes, I saw people having it opted out - their (parents) call.
When my wife explain in America everything like that is kept seperate I was surprised - I'd have thought it'd have been even more mixed over there. Ahhh. Assumptions eh?
Well, they've actually formalised the separation of church and state; 1st Amendment to the Constitution:
In essence, it would be unconscionable to require a state school to mandate prayer, as much as it would be to prevent a church school from including it. That said, I think we may be getting a little OT here.Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
As far as I know we call the Dark Ages by that name because there are very few (through the number is growing) historical records (writings etc) from the time to illuminate what went on during those times, not because Xtianity ruled the day. It's all to do with the fall of the Roman Empire. In fact it was mainly due to Xtianity that writing survived.
As for speculating on secularists in those times, well I think that's a "What if..." a little to far. The humanists had been virtually forgotten, and oddly enough thanks to Xtian's again, their works were lying dormant in monastries waiting to be rediscovered. Once they were they helped fuel the rise of the Renaissance, and we've never looked back.
Religion isn't the opposite of learning, but in the West it hasn't helped it exactly has it? Enforcing isn't own interpretations of Aristotle as the limits of science for ages. I'm not so sure about the "open access education" from the Church, as surely you had to say you were a Christian to be allowed access to the education. Hardly free choice there eh? Mind you back then most people would have called themselves Christian anyway, and what better way to make sure people are being raised as good little Christians properly than by taking them in as children and "brainwashing" them from then on.
What happens when the majority opt out of Christian worship?
Perhaps educations standards are falling simply because of HMG's attitude towards it, making it just tests rather than about learning itself.
Last question first; then they also opt out of any daily prayers at school and if they want the mandatory prayer (assuming it's enforced) removed, they'll get it.
I'd argue that the mere fact that churches established schools that were open to all and promoted literacy and numeracy DID help learning in the West; indeed unless you're arguing that learning is actively inhibited by literacy and numeracy, it could hardly do otherwise. You say that the church was in error regarding science; you're right, and it's largely due to the tools that the church provided (in terms of education) that they were proven to be in error. It took far longer than it should, I admit, and I wouldn't defend that.
As far as taking things a "what if" too far, we already have people here speculating that the same laws and standards would have arisen if there hadn't been faith, so I see nothing wrong with turning that around and assuming that all other things being equal, secularists at the time would have done no better.
Anyhow, this is taking things a long way OT.
You can... I don't know about anyone else but in our school you could opt out but it was very much frowned upon. Yes, you're quite welcome to your rights, if you want to put yourself in the position that the teachers and headmaster would treat you as a troublemaker for it.
End of the day, in a lot of cases kids feel they can't opt out dispite their rights. School is full of social pressures as it is and I would very much prefer a world where adults didn't put kids in that awkward position in the first place.
1.21 GIGAWATTS!!!!!
FWIW, I feel that in a state school such a mandated act of worship, especially one of one specific faith, is inappropriate. I'd support its abolition; it is disrespectful toward people of other faiths or of none. Conversely, however, I see nothing wrong with, for instance, a CofE school having acts of prayer since the children who are there are sent to that school on the understanding that it is a faith-based school. Any such school must conform to the national curriculum, but there is room within that for people's different beliefs to be acknowledged and accommodated.
Look, the thread was about the decline in social standards; if you want to have a discussion about faith-based schools, or faith practice in schools, there's a thread for that.
Um, I do believe I was replying to you in this thread
I notice also you throw in your bit about CofE schools before telling me to keep on topic
Anyway, I've replied to the OP and I'm not convinced there is a social decline, it's probably just a change of points of view. If that's all we're sticking to then I've nothing more to say in this thread.
1.21 GIGAWATTS!!!!!
I didn't "tell" you to do anything; I merely pointed out that it might be more appropriate to deal with the issue in another thread, and I'd already pointed out that we were going pretty far OT before you posted. I didn't raise the issue of schools in this thread, and I wouldn't have. I hope you'll also note that my last point was in support of your objection to mandated acts of prayer in state schools, but OK, go ahead and kick me for being on your side...
(Kidding, OK?)
As far as social decline is concerned, as I've said all along, I'm not a golden-ager looking back to some mythical past when everything was rosy, but I do think that there is significantly less adherence to shared values than was previously the case. I've mentioned above what I think might well be significant contributory factors - any comment on whether you agree or not?
I think the recent social decline can be quite simply attributed to a lack of respect for others.
Where this lack of respect comes from though is a more complex question - certainly most faiths teach respect, but I'm certain that respect for elders and people in authority is also a virtue present in civilised societies without specific religious teaching.
I do believe people have a tendancy to remember the good bits of the past over the bad, but I'm not sure that it's a good/bad thing that's happening.
Take a little country village, and a city.
The village is close, everyone knows everyone really well and they have fairly deep interactions with each other.
The city is vast, every person has brief interactions with hundreds of the millions who live there every day. It's not possible to know everyone, so people often don't try.
What I see happening is a shift from village to city mentality. Everyone having more relationships, more links, media, the internet and so on = less value placed on each relationship.
This may be regarded as a bad thing... but take a born & bred city person out to the country village to live and watch their reaction (and imagine a world with no Hexus!!)
I imagine it'd be somewhat similar to taking someone from now back to those times that we remember so fondly.
So all in all my POV of social decline is that it's not necessarily that, more just a change in society.
As for how falling faith comes into it, I don't think it's really a factor. It's causing some problems as we're no longer a vastly one-faith country, but that has it's positive and negative points and I think it's a separate issue.
1.21 GIGAWATTS!!!!!
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