Holy shit, Neosutra making a religion thread?! Say it isnt so..
The following article in the New York Times was pretty facinating, if not a little scary.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/ma...l?pagewanted=1
Anyways, wanted to keep this one focused on on main premis:
Was the United States founded on christian values and should it be reshaped to those values if so?
Liberal atheists like myself would say that most of the founding fathers were deists or atheists at best and went to a large amount of trouble to ensure America did not fall into the theocracy that they were so adamently against.
Conservative theists say that the very core principles of the founding fathers were indeed christian and the theistic undertone to the constitution ("under god" and so on) leads to an obvious foundation in judeo-christian values.
It is the conservative christian belief that has lead to an active (and somewhat terrifying) national movement to reshape our education, as stated in the above linked article:
"The ideas that shape our classrooms today will shape our government in the next generation".
Christians are all too aware that they cannot battle reason and evidence straight on, so why not out-breed the dirty liberals and raise an entire generation of pre-programmed zealots!?
Anyone else find this appaling? Or am I just ignorant of the true christian foundations of America?
A few quotes from the article:
“We as a nation were intended by God to be a light set on a hill to serve as a beacon of hope and Christian charity to a lost and dying world.” But the true picture of America’s Christian founding has been whitewashed by “the liberal agenda” — in order for liberals to succeed “they must first rewrite our nation’s history” and obscure the Christian intentions of the founders. Therefore, she wrote, “this battle for our nation’s children and who will control their education and training is crucial to our success for reclaiming our nation.”
"In general, the board members don’t know anything at all about content,” Tom Barber, the textbook executive, says. Kathy Miller, the watchdog, who has been monitoring the board for 15 years, says, referring to Don McLeroy and another board member: “It is the most crazy-making thing to sit there and watch a dentist and an insurance salesman rewrite curriculum standards in science and history..
And worse: "The current board remains in place until next January. By then, decisions on what goes in the Texas curriculum guidelines will be history."
Pretty much nothing we can do about the changes they have already made, even if they didnt get in the famous "strengths and weaknesses" language in there last time.