I guess this week is education week. One of our gawd loving trolls in the previous posting did a very good job of showing us just how much religion hates education.
What this really shows is the dismal failure of the public schools…If Dave is really supportive of this then he would also be supportive of school vouchers to help poor families get their kids out of failing public schools…
And into those really good sectarian ones, right? Where there are no damn liberals and their gawd awful unions standing up for the right of teachers to better pay, benefits and working conditions. Now comes Utah. The really nice Xian folks are using “push polling” to advocate for a voucher law by asking those who oppose the law whether their vote would be affected if they knew that a group that opposes vouchers, the “liberal national teachers’ union,” supports same-sex unions and higher taxes.Huh? Gay marriage and higher taxes is part of the voucher issue? See how the neo-conservative irreligious change the subject from the issue at hand to denigrating the opposition. This is one of their best known techniques. Pay particular attention to Public Research Associates second tip on dealing with the religious right.
Decode the Right?s agenda on your issue.The Right often attempts to pass laws that take rights away from groups or individuals. Under the guise of addressing some compelling societal need, they often frame the issue by appealing to prejudice, myth, irrational belief, inaccurate information, pseudo-science, or sometimes even by using outright lies. Further, right-wing organizers often appropriate the rhetoric of the civil rights and civil liberties movement to portray themselves as victims of discrimination. Actually, they most often are seeking to undermine the existing protection of individual rights, increase their freedom to accumulate profit, and undermine the wall of separation between church and state.
Just read any posting by our xian trolls. They pull the same gambit time and time again here. They never discuss the issue. They use name-calling against those who oppose their side of any given issue. So vouchers are opposed not for taking the few dollars spent on education away from public schools to fund Catholic and other sectarian schools. Those who favor vouchers complain about the bad, liberal, national teachers unions who also support gay marriage and higher taxes.Peter Nuhn
we need living space, it is americas manifest destiny to rule this hemisphere.we must harden our hearts and do what is needed.
TXatheist,
I agree we need to keep trying. Overpopulation is certainly one of the worst problems and will be difficult to fix. If we don’t try, well, all the little kiddies and grandkiddies are screwed. Ummm, maybe shift that one generation but still, the same result.
and before you bleeding hearts start crying you know mexican people would be better off under benevolent rule of anglos then their own immoral ruling class.same for rest of latin america.
Lebensraum huh reason?!
I just voted on Larry King’s poll and atheism is really running away with the lead.
Spanders
I’ll be on vacation for a few days. I’ll try to restart this conversation then.
I just voted too. Love the current result, but makes me wonder if a few atheists are voting over and over or if perhaps atheists are simply more interested in the subject.
Whatever, hope everybody votes.
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/larry.king.live
What does the poll achieve? Is it going to be part of his show or if the result is unfavourable to his beliefs will he air the result at all?
The poll probably won’t achieve anything except a little gratification for we non-believers. I haven’t heard that it will be part of the show or that the result will air, but I’d certainly lean toward it never being mentioned if the percentages don’t change.
Can’t you imagine the Falwell-type garbage that would follow if they announced the high atheist numbers? I’m sure there would be scripture quoted to show this country has gone straight to hell.
TX:
Move north of the Manson/Nixon line mon ami, 10 years exp & you’ll be there. Texas sucks.
karen:
That’s a society problem, parents view school as a babysitting joint. And since it’s “free”, they don’t see their kids wasting any money. I say start charging parents directly, Jr pulls a below average grade for the semester? Mom & Dad pay. Jr has to repeat a grade? Mom & Dad foot the entire cost of repeating, adn I guarantee they take an active interest.
And I agree that anyone who is good at their job should be paid more than everyone else. But there is no company out there willing to cough up 10% every other year to an ass busting employee, but another company will gladly kick out 10% extra to get you to jump ship.
That is a valuable lesson that my first boss taught me.
Busting your ass at an established company for more than 5 years gets you nowhere. All the grey-hairs have the upper positions locked up & there’s a slew of 20 year middle managers waiting for them to croak. The easiest way to get a 10-15% raise is to get a new job.
Since I’ve been an engineer, I’ve had 3 jobs in 4 years, and I’ve busted my ass at all. When I realized the first 2 were going to keep fucking me with promotions, I moved on. Both of my bosses were pissed that I was quitting, because they knew they were getting good work cheap. I tell them it’s a pay issue, they say their hands are tied. So I move on.
That’s how you get a 130% salary increase in 4 years.
Comment from: What
What Phreedy fails to admit, despite the facts, is that it is private religious schools that are failing relative to public schools.
Phreedm “Prove it…on a national scale and not just with a one school example…”
Sorry guys Phreedm is right on this one,many public schools in America today are failing to produce literate graduates.These children fail to meet the national standards and many drop out of high school.
However, private schools are doing a better job and private schools have higher academic standards
Most of the private schools are religiously based in one way or another.
However,in the field of science (my field) most christian schools are sadly vacuous.Teaching “goddidit” does not take very long, so there is more time to concentrate on other subjects!
Of course many of our public schools are not a great deal better in this area but hopefully that will change soon.
PP. recent studies by Kozol,Witte and Grimes all agree with my opinion.
mx, yeah my bro is an engineer, he doubled his salary by getting 10 years experience and an MBA. My wife and I were discussing leaving Texas last night and I am really going to have to fight that battle. I really don’t get what is so appealling about this vast waste land to her or others. I moved here because there is no competition or little in the professional job market.
MX,
My experience in the the advertising industry echoes your comment:
In four years time (via four different jobs), I went from making $18,500 a year to making $65,000 a year by being good at what I did and moving on to other companies who wanted me more than the previous (and was doing so by my mid-twenties). My wife and I used to joke that if you wanted a ten-thousand-dollar-a-year raise… get a new job. It was easy in the advertising industry, in southern California, to do.
Damn, I sometimes wonder why I gave it all up…oh that’s right, because I had to listen to clients who thought they were art directors and work an obscene amount of hours. That and fine art is WAY more fun. : )
mxracer
Good for you for being able to move around and raise your salary so much. But haven’t you now about locked yourself in at near the top of your salary range for a while? Can you expect more than cost of living raises for a long time, without a promotion?
A bit OT, but you might be interested in this opposite of Camp Quest. This is from the Salvation Army, if ever you had the silly idea of contributing to them.
http://www.salvationarmy-usaeast.org/SApublish/priority/pr_article.cfm?article_id=260
“The children spent the weekend in such teaching sessions as “Who God Is,” “Who Satan Is,” and “How Do We Hear from God?” They meditated and prayed. They walked through prayer stations showing them how to set up their bedrooms as places of prayer. They went on an early morning prayer walk.
One activity that might seem like a challenge even to adults was spending a lunch in silence, meditating on Scripture and on questions like, “How does God show His love to me?” “How can I show love to God?” Yet the kids did it! They also enjoyed fun activities and games that taught them, for example, to pray loudly against the Enemy by saying, “Go away, go away, In Jesus’ name I pray, go away!”"
A lot of fun and games for the children, aren’t there?
And with that said the school bully stomped on the Xian kid and stole his lunch money.
Another example of the efficacy of prayer:)
I doubt that many people have read the Salvation Army’s statement of faith:
Secondly: That the religious doctrines professed believed and taught by the Members of the said Christian Mission are and shall for ever be as follows :
#4 We believe that in the person of Jesus Christ the Divine and human natures are united so that He is truly and properly God and truly and properly man.
#5 We believe that our first parents were created in a state of innocency but by their disobedience they lost their purity and happiness and that in consequence of their fall all men have become sinners totally depraved and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God.
#11 We believe in the immortality of the soul in the resurrection of the body in the general judgment at the end of the world in the eternal happiness of the righteous and in the endless punishment of the wicked.
The rest is just as humorous.