dk

dk: Its absurd for modern liberals to blame the crisis of family and public schools upon the Bible. The Bible hasn’t been taught in public schools since the 1930s. The reason for blaming the Bible is clear. The educational moguls pivoted 180 degrees when the planks of both Republicans and Democratic candidates in the 2000 Presidential Election pledged educational reform. Put simply, too many kids graduated after 12 years of public school reading at a 4th Grade level. Too many minority kids dropped out of school to sell drugs, collect welfare and have babies. To many kids graduated public schools ruined by drugs, STDs, violence and cynicism. In 2000 the myriad of social ills that imbue public education rests squarely on the shoulders of the elite secular educators enthroned in the 1960s. In 2000 reform means a reform of the reformers. Secular education must fess up to its own unreliable dogma and methods. Lets be honest now, people laughed when Hillary Clinton blamed her husbands infidelities on a right wing religious conspiracy. The day of when post-modernist liberals could credibly blame religion for their own unreliable doctrine died when public schools needed armed guards, metal detectors, security cameras, no tolerance policies, badge id activated doors and drug sniffing dogs to protect public school campuses from the students.

lpetrich

I think that dk ought to look beyond his quest for scapegoats and look at upper-middle-class schools; students are often well-behaved and well-performing academically. It's not the fault of those that run schools in dumpy neighborhoods that those neighborhoods are dumpy, with their main economic opportunities being drug dealing and living off of welfare.

And I find it difficult to take seriously a partian of theocratic education complaining about school authoritarianism.

And what Hillary Clinton was describing as the "vast right-wing conspiracy" was a big community of Clinton-haters, the sort who would willingly believe that Hillary organized the September 11 kamikaze hijackings in order to assassinate one of their number, Barbara Olson.

dk

dk: I don’t want government playing God any more than Madison, I agree entirely with his sentiments. That’s why I object so vehemently when post modernist governments usurp god like powers
dk: I believe the Supreme Court in Madison v. Marbury affirmed the Supreme Court’s power to interpret the Constitution, The Supreme Courts power is called judicial review.
dk: HEY, WHATS THE SUPREME COURT CASE.
dk: Exactly the US was found on principles. To postulate a nation is secular without examining the founding principles IS ignorant. The Declaration of Independence is the founding document and offers the principle, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness… That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, …” Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address secures the Union (wages war against the Confederate States) on principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Argue till your blue in the face, but the US Supreme Court interprets the constitution, not the President or the Congress. Now please, when was the first time the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution as a secular document. This isn’t a matter of argument but document.

lpetrich

First off, the God of the Declaration of Independence is rather unbiblical; the Biblical God is not described as "nature and nature's God" and never grants rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If I am wrong in this, I can be proved wrong by some appropriate Bible quote, so if such a quote exists, then reveal it.

And the Constitution makes no mention of deities or divine authority; it attributes the US Government to "we, the people" -- which is contrary to Romans 13:1 Yes, that part of the Bible which implies that a government with a pagan state religion, the Roman Empire, is divinely ordained.

dk

dk: Hey, lpetrich to earth, inner city schools in Chicago, Detroit, NYC, Philadelphia,,, have been locked down for 15 years. But social problems that infest people on the fringe of society sometimes move into the mainstream Americana. By the way Colorado’s Columbine, Oregon’s Jonesboro Thurston High School, Oklahoma’s Fort Gibson’s middle school, Pearl, Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky, California, Washington DC, Arkansas and Springfield have put most US and Canadian Schools into lockdown mode. How can a good liberal education put bourgeois school districts in a lock down mode?
dk: That’s the rub on liberalism, and the mainstay of libertarianism. Libertarian’s say government intrusions must be minimized because the principle of government bureaucracy is unreliable, except at building empires. Because of bias you’ve misread me on several counts.
dk: I feel great empathy for anybody so burdened by Hillary-esk idealism they feel obliged to make ideological excuses for her.

bookwoman314

Very interesting discussion on the secularism of the US Constitution, but both of you are ignoring something essential: 'founding documents' and judicial decisions do not necessarily represent the opinions of the people.

As we are all aware, the US is a representative democracy that is not all that representative and there are often large numbers of people who's voices are never heard.

In discussing whether the US was a secular society before the 1950s it is imperative to consider the religious opinions of the populace and I think that you will discover, if you read documents other than the 'founding' ones or the 'official' government ones, documents such as diaries, newspaper articles, transcriptions of speeches and such, you will discover that the majority of the American population was very religious.

Religious mindsets were repsonsible, in large part, for the settling of New England (think Puritans). Although other parts of the US were settled for fewer religious reasons, the First Great Awakening (1730s-1750s) spread a more evangelical tradition throughout the colonies. There was a _very brief_ resurgence of Deism in the late 18th century (but Deism does not preclude religion per se) but it died rather quickly (around 1800, after the political deaths of Thomas Paine and Elihu Palmer). The Second Great Awakening beginning in the 1820s emphasized the connections between morality and religion that we are so opposed to now (temperance was the big one). Up until the 1960s it was really unacceptable not to be religious, specifically Christian. The place of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, etc. in 18th and 19th century American life was very limited if it existed at all. Furthermore, not every type of Christianity was equal (think Catholic prejudice--even into the 1960s and Kennedy).

Is the US a secular society even today?

More people would rather vote for a minority (woman, African-American, etc.) than for an atheist. Although this is more specific than 'secular,' can you imagine a presidential candidate saying that church/God was not important to him/her?

The laws may be there to protect us, if they are interpreted correctly (which they often are not for political reasons) and if they are enforced (which they are very often not), but that doesn't make the US a secular society.

Vorkosigan

dk: HEY, WHATS THE SUPREME COURT CASE.

As I said in my first post, it was Reynolds v US.

Now please, when was the first time the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution as a secular document. This isn’t a matter of argument but document.

We just went over this. You said it was 1950. I pointed out that it was in 1799. The "wall of separation" phrase was used as early as 1878. However, a foreign treaty -- the law of the land, and ratified by the Senate, thus trumping anything the Supreme Court may do -- a foreign treaty designated the US as a secular state in 1796. So you have no case.

Whether you take 1796, 1799 or 1878, they are all a lot earlier than 1950.

Michael

Ales

If this was meant as an argument against homosexuals, then it is a fallacy "ad hoc". Homosexual women are much less risky group regarding the HIV infection. Lesbian partnerships are more stable than the heterosexual ones. The probability of transmitting the HIV during lesbian sexual intercourse is much less than during the heterosexual one.
But of course you are not better than God, who did not mention female homosexuality in the whole Old Testament.

This argument is either nonsensical or racist. You claim that members of other ethnics have other religious prejudices to sexuality, which help spreading HIV, or they are unable to learn using condoms. Apart from not teaching about save sex enough starting at basic schools (I have even read that there are some laws in the USA against this), I see four other reasons why USA has 30 times larger incidence of HIV than some European countries. USA was earlier struck by this infection. I think this is not probable, and if it happened we would now see the similar numbers in Europe that we saw few years ago in USA, but this is not the case. Second reason could be that HIV positive people migrate from Europe to USA or that HIV negative migrate from USA to Europe. I think this is not probable. Next reason may the supposed migration of Americans in USA. But a little thought reveals that such a mechanism could contribute substantially only in cases the number of infected ones was comparable to the healthy ones. Simply said: HIV positive people could enlarge the number of their healthy partners by migration, but so far this mechanism does not contribute substantially. The fourth possibility is the immigration of infected people from countries like Africa. People who use reason should first let a potential sexual partner from such dangerous areas have tests for HIV, before say changing noncoital sex to the coital one. Thus we are left with not teaching enough about safe sex. You should realize, that you have three possibilities: lie people and tell them that if they have sex not according to the instruction of pope, they will go the hell, or you can lie people and tell them, that there is not a method by which it is possible to diminish the probability of the infection so that it is the same as the probability of a meteor killing you by falling on your head, unless you stay long life under a roof, or you can tell them the truth and teach them about safe sex, further I am convinced that only this last possibility is capable of saving the people from extinction. but it is an unimportant goal in comparison with following the leader, in this case one ordinary polish man.


It is not true. You should confess your sin. Neisseria gonorrhoeae is killed by benzylpenicillin, ceftriaxon, spectinomycin, ofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, pefloxacin. The problems of antibiotics-resisistance is more important in infectious diseases, which occur more often, various faringitides, and when antibiotics are used without proper previous microbial analysis. Resistance to antibiotics is of course problem, but so far new antibiotics are being discovered fast enough, great danger poses Christianity, and churches who feel their doctrines are endangered by further research e.g. in the realm of human cloning, but people should better get rid of these obscurantists, it is not impossible that without knowledge from this area mankind will not be able to resist some new plague, realise that there are constantly many new ones emerging, eg. CJD/BSE.

Perhaps it is not dangerous, if people do not go to the doctor. It is treatable by antivirotic drugs. Remember this:

No recent surveys of the estimated number of people
currently infected with gonorrhea, syphilis, trichomoniasis,
or bacterial vaginosis have been conducted.
(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Tracking The
Hidden Epidemics:Trends in STDs in the United States, 2000 (Atlanta,
GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2000), p. 2.)

Unless you provide relevant information of the incidence of this cancer and how HPV adds to this, it is non information. Besides, the steroid contraceptives, which pope hates, prevent ectopic gravidity, reduce occurrence of preeclampsia, pelvic inflammations, sideropenic anemy, dysmenroea, problems of premenstrual syndrome, menstrual epilepsy, intermenstrual bleeding, carcinoma of endometrium, carcinoma of ovarium, benign mastopatias, folikular and corpusluteal ovarial cysts and it is also prevention of osteoporosis.

I congratulate you if you had an orgasm when you wrote this, but I am not your buddy. Condoms most probably are protection against HPV, but so far there is not enough evidence to claim so. Visit and read carefully

<a href="http://www.siecus.org/pubs/cdc_latexcondoms.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.siecus.org/pubs/cdc_latexcondoms.pdf</a>


Look carefully at this steady decrease of incidence of gonorrhea:

<a href="http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats/2000Gonorrhea.htm" target="_blank">http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats/2000Gonorrhea.htm</a>

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: Ales ]</p>

Ales

As I tried to show above it is probably because of not teaching safe sex enough.

Since rhinitis and flu are sexually transmitted, it seems to be true.


…and dk uses these words to impress others but he has not the slightest idea what he is talking about. Normal distribution belongs to the set of continuous probability distributions, e.g. the height in population can be approximated by this, I.Q. in population can be approximated by this. But sexual orientation is a discrete random variable, it can never be described by normal distribution.

Again you are lying, now you have many sins to confess to your priest. The Central limit theorem states this:

Let X1, X2, ... be a sequence of independent identically distributed random variables with finite means m and finite non-zero variances s^2, and let Sn=X1+X2+...+Xn. Then lim (Sn-a*m)/Sqrt(a*s ^2)-&gt;(D) N(0,1) as n-&gt;Infinity.

dk

dk: I was taught the Creator mentioned in the Bible created the physical universe i.e. what the physical sciences understand in empirical units of mass, time and length.
dk: Very true, and the Constitution doesn’t mention a public school system either. Hey, did you ever notice that phrase in the constitution, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,,,, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America..”
The pivotal word is “ordain”. No doubt the Founding Fathers ordered an establishment of government, not of priests, ministers or rabbi. Ordain seems to indicate they did so by law or another authority, but doesn’t specify which. How can “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union… establish a constitutional by another authority? Answer: A higher authority, higher than the people or law. Seems to me its open to interpretation, and the US Supreme Court in the mid 20th Century interpreted the Constitution as a secular document.

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>