Fossil discovery...

[zeus3925]

Well Kim what you're seeing is not less religion but less parental responsibility.

[Cody Covey]

those damn liberals


(btw i am kidding)

[zeus3925]

Pete:

I sent you a private message.

[kimsmith]

Well Kim what you're seeing is not less religion but less parental responsibility

It's evolution, we start out by having 2 moral parents, then over time parents start to drift away from God and no longer hear about Gods word, no longer feel a need to stay together. Then the kids start to learn bad behavior from the parents and they grow up worse than their parents did. Then we start using Time Out to Correct our kids instead of listen to Gods word about correcting and loving our children. Then children no longer Honor there parents, they no longer have respect for life because they were taught they started as a worm and will go back to the dirt with the worms. Life has no meaning because nothing happens after death If prayer, Ten Commandments or any other religious material that could save just one of these kids from a life of destruction, it would be worth it......

[dnf777]

And while we're at it, let's reinstitute corporal punishment...

kg

Heeling stick or e-collars?

[dnf777]

Could you please tell me what document this comes from?



What is wrong with a paddle or 2 when our kids misbehave. How many of you deal with schools today? I'm in schools everyday with my job and man how things have changed. I've watched teachers, principles and others drag kids (I'm talking about Elem School kids) to the office because they wouldn't walk. I've been knocked off ladders and had things thrown at me while I was working. When I was in school if we did something like this we would have gotten a few licks at school then we would have got it at home.



Do a little research and find out what happen to our school system after prayer and God was taken out. What was wrong with prayer, the little bible and Ten Commandments? I guess we don't care that kids are killing kids, drugs are killing kids, teen pregancy, sucide and everything else that are kids are going through today. Here are just a few facts...

A. Young People

• 1. For 15 years before 1963 pregnancies in girls ages 15 through 19 years had been no more than 15 per thousand After 1963 pregnancies increased 187% in the next 15 years.
  2. For younger girls, ages 10 to 14 years, pregnancies since 1963 are up 553%.
  3. Before 1963 sexually transmitted diseases among students were 400 per 100,000. Since 1963, they were up 226% in the next 12 years.

B. The Family

• 1. Before 1963 divorce rates had been declining for 15 years. After 1963 divorces increased 300% each year for the next 15 years.
  2. Since 1963 unmarried people living together is up 353%
  3. Since 1963 single parent families are up 140%.
  4. Since 1963 single parent families with children are up 160%.

C. Education

• 1. The educational standard of measure has been the SAT scores. SAT scores had been steady for many years before 1963. From 1963 they rapidly declined for 18 consecutive years, even though the same test has been used since 1941.
  2. In 1974-75 the rate of decline of the SAT scores decreased, even though they continued to decline. That was when there was an explosion of private religious schools. There were only 1000 Christian schools in 1965. Between 1974 to 1984 they increased to 32,000.
  
  • a. That could have an impact if the private schools had higher SAT scores. In checking with the SAT Board it was found that indeed the SAT scores for private schools were nearly 100 points higher than public schools.
    b. In fact the scores were at the point where the public schools had been before their decline started in 1963 when prayer and Bible reading/ instruction was removed from the schools.
    c. The scores in the public schools were still declining.

3. Of the nation's top academic scholars, three times as many come from private religious schools, which operate on one-third the funds as do the public schools.
D. The Nation

• 1. Since 1963 violent crime has increased 544%.
  3. Illegal drugs have become an enormous & uncontrollable problem.
  2. The nation has been deprived of an estimated 30 million citizens through legal abortions just since 1973.

"American Theocracy", Federalists papers, U.S. Constitution, "Founding Brothers", "John Adams"

As for your arguments, the U.S. abortion rate was the lowest in recent history under Bill Clinton. Not saying why or how, but that's a fact, and so we need to be careful of association versus causation. I could also get into a tit-for-tat in requesting prime-source-verification, because frankly, I don't buy those numbers you put up....

As for the numbers, ANY sociologist worth his weight in kibble will tell you that society is a multifaceted beast, and to say those changes (if true) are all related to church in school is bunk!!!

In 1963, blacks couldn't ride in the front of a bus, women could only be teachers, secreteries, or nurses, and if they did happen to find a job, weren't paid anywhere NEAR their male counterparts. Sociology is a complex beast.

[kimsmith]

"American Theocracy", Federalists papers, U.S. Constitution, "Founding Brothers", "John Adams"

Could you please show me were to find this in our Constitution, Federalists papers or from John Adams. Thanks for your help....

Sociology is a complex beast

You are correct it is a complex beast and one we created. I can't believe you wouldn't agree if people would Love their Neighbor as themselves, Honor there parents then we wouldn't have the problems with our society that we have today. When we start believing that life after death doesn't mean anything why would we care anymore. At that point we are just living for ourselves, our actions don't have any consequence's.

[YardleyLabs]

Could you please tell me what document this comes from?

...

Thomas Jefferson:Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in January 1, 1802:



"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State."


John Adams: "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" [1787-1788]


"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.
". . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."

James Madison: Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments (1785)

"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."

Ben Franklin: Autobiography

". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a through Deist."

Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church. "
"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity."


The fact is that at the time of the Revolution, church attendance was relatively uncommon. Many of the framers of the Constitution were Freemasons -- deists but unwedded to notions of Christian orthodoxy -- and that was a factor promoting their view of a secular state. There was a subset of the population that lobbied for designation of the country as a Christian nation, and that attack was actually part of the campaign against Jefferson. However, Jefferson was elected and the push to make religion more a part of the fabric of the country largely dissipated.

[kimsmith]

Thanks Yard, the only place you will find the words separation of Church and State is in that letter that Jefferson wrote to the Baptist Association. It's been taking out of context every since. Now most think it's in our Constitutions and every other document that our founding fathers wrote. I agree the government or state shouldn't tell you how to worship or if you have to worship but it never intendant for us to take God out of our country.

[YardleyLabs]

Thanks Yard, the only place you will find the words separation of Church and State is in that letter that Jefferson wrote to the Baptist Association. It's been taking out of context every since. Now most think it's in our Constitutions and every other document that our founding fathers wrote. I agree the government or state shouldn't tell you how to worship or if you have to worship but it never intendant for us to take God out of our country.

Let me add, from Thomas Paine's Common Sense:

"And here, without anger or resentment I bid you farewell. Sincerely wishing ... ye may always fully and uninterruptedly enjoy every civil and religious right; and be, in your turn, the means of securing it to others; but that the example which ye have unwisely set, of mingling religion with politics, may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America." (emphasis added)

It is impossible to read the texts of our forefathers without understanding that they sought a truly secular state and believed that wedding religion to government was a certain road to the elimination of freedom of personal conscience. This commitment is expressed both by what is in and not in the Constitution. No where in the Constitution is their mention of God or Christ or religion except in an exclusionary form:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; " (First Amendment)

"no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." (Article VI, US Constitution)