& in TEXAS

[Franco]

Read what they wrote. They believed in morality and personal responsibility.

The schools have certainly improved under the current model of morality.

What does school prayer have to do with morality? Some of the least moral people I know consider themselves religious.

The problems in the schools has to do with the parents and students and nothing to do with religious affliation.


This morning, I attended a breakfast meeting and the speaker is a headcoach(manager) of a successful college baseball program.

He started out talking about how the ethnic profile of America’s Game has changed and that within 5 years, the majority of MLB players would be foreign born. He cited the USA with 300 million population compared to the Dominican Republic with a population of 9 million. Yet, 28% of the players in MLB are from the Dominican Republic.

He told the story of attending a 12-13 year old baseball league game. He witnessed a father rolling his son’s bat bag while the son walked behind him text messaging someone. The kid had a $300. Baseball bat, $200 glove, and an expensive pair of batter’s gloves and his bat bag had wheels!
The problem as the college coach saw this is that our kids today can not handle failure. Instead of learning from failure, our kids are so weak-minded that they just quit when they don’t hit homeruns with that $300. bat. As parents we pamper our kids, protect them from failure and promote the, “everyone wins, no one is a loser” mentality. Rather than having our children learn from failure and mature from its lessons.
Whereas, the kids aspiring to play baseball in the Dominican Republic play because they want to play for the sake of the game! They play with whatever bats and gloves they can find! No one is there picking their asses off the ground when they fail. They learn to work through the rough spots in life and are willing to do what it takes to succeed!

[dnf777]

What does school prayer have to do with morality? Some of the least moral people I know consider themselves religious.

The problems in the schools has to do with the parents and students and nothing to do with religious affliation.


This morning, I attended a breakfast meeting and the speaker is a headcoach(manager) of a successful college baseball program.

He started out talking about how the ethnic profile of America’s Game has changed and that within 5 years, the majority of MLB players would be foreign born. He cited the USA with 300 million population compared to the Dominican Republic with a population of 9 million. Yet, 28% of the players in MLB are from the Dominican Republic.

He told the story of attending a 12-13 year old baseball league game. He witnessed a father rolling his son’s bat bag while the son walked behind him text messaging someone. The kid had a $300. Baseball bat, $200 glove, and an expensive pair of batter’s gloves and his bat bag had wheels!
The problem as the college coach saw this is that our kids today can not handle failure. Instead of learning from failure, our kids are so weak-minded that they just quit when they don’t hit homeruns with that $300. bat. As parents we pamper our kids, protect them from failure and promote the, “everyone wins, no one is a loser” mentality. Rather than having our children learn from failure and mature from its lessons.
Whereas, the kids aspiring to play baseball in the Dominican Republic play because they want to play for the sake of the game! They play with whatever bats and gloves they can find! No one is there picking their asses off the ground when they fail. They learn to work through the rough spots in life and are willing to do what it takes to succeed!

What a sad, but illustrative story! There are lessons I remember today from my LL days in the 70s, like they were yesterday. Those were the days when if you struck out too many times, you got to warm the bench!

[ducknwork]

I'm not saying you would be offended, but in all honesty how would you feel if it was a prayer involving Muhammad.

I honestly wouldn't care. I can respect the fact that other people have different beliefs and not raise a big stink so they are no longer allowed to pray to Muhammad. Muhammad means nothing to me, so why would it bother me?

Why is this point of view so difficult to understand for the anti-Christian crowd?

[Koolaid]

Why is this point of view so difficult to understand for the anti-Christian crowd?

I went on to say I also wouldn't care.............not exactly having a hard time here........
What I'm saying is it's a whole lot different for a grown person who is already set in their beliefs (obviously not gonna be a whole lot of converting going on in here) than it is for a child who hasn't had the chance to develop their own yet.
When I was a young boy I was forced to church on a weekly basis. Forced to hang out with other church kids. Forced into church camps. It wasn't for me, but there wasn't another option. School, thankfully, was a place I didn't have to be indoctrinated. Being the only guy at a table of friends not to bow your head in prayer is a lot different than being the only kid on a high school sports team to do the same.

[Koolaid]

This isn't the best example, but it's the first that comes to mind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTRDRP2n4Sk

Kids are assholes...all of us were probably bullied or bullied people at some point in school...anything that makes you stand out is gonna be bad.

[dnf777]

I honestly wouldn't care. I can respect the fact that other people have different beliefs and not raise a big stink so they are no longer allowed to pray to Muhammad. Muhammad means nothing to me, so why would it bother me?

Why is this point of view so difficult to understand for the anti-Christian crowd?

I don't think anyone is "anti-Christian" here?? I'm anti-push-your-beliefs-on-others, if that's what you mean. I'm against someone telling others that they should walk away from their Church because they say something you misinterpret or disagree with. I'm against making children feel excluded because they don't participate in group prayers or are asked to leave the room. A friend of mine in grade school had that happen to him by a group of well-intentioned Christians, myself included. We were praying in our Alabama elementery school, and when we noticed he wasn't, we asked him to leave, so he would not be offended. I think that hurt him more than any of us realized at the time. A few of us felt very badly and invited him back in, he felt very singled out and hurt. I don't think that was necessary. Especially knowing that he has grown up and led his life in a much more "Christian" way than most of the yahoos who asked him to leave the room. (One is in jail, one was shot, and the rest I have no idea what happened to them)

[YardleyLabs]

At a certain level, it comes down to good manners. Few of us would consider it appropriate to walk into a crowd of strangers and immediately launch into a discussion of religion, politics or sexual preferences. Most of us understand that these are areas where people may have strongly divergent beliefs that they may not care to discuss. For that reason, discussions of these topics tend to occur more in pre-designated contexts (ergo, POTUS) where people can easily stay away if they do not care to participate.

If you stand up on a public bus and begin spouting your political beliefs, people will rightly recognize that as an aggressive act because you are abusing the confined environment to impose what you want to talk about on everyone else, whether or not they have any interest. You are invading their space. Similarly, if you stand up and begin urging everyone on the bus to join you in group prayer, that is an act of religious aggression.

In a classroom environment, engaging in such behavior is even more aggressive because classrooms are an authoritarian environment where you cannot readily tell the person speaking to shut up -- especially if the person is the teacher. Because the classroom is also an instrument of government -- a public school which students are required to attend by law unless they are attending and can afford a private school -- that act of aggression becomes an act of government promoting the teacher's religious beliefs. That, happily, is illegal.

[Marvin S]

At a certain level, it comes down to good manners. Few of us would consider it appropriate to walk into a crowd of strangers and immediately launch into a discussion of religion, politics or sexual preferences. Most of us understand that these are areas where people may have strongly divergent beliefs that they may not care to discuss. For that reason, discussions of these topics tend to occur more in pre-designated contexts (ergo, POTUS) where people can easily stay away if they do not care to participate.

If you stand up on a public bus and begin spouting your political beliefs, people will rightly recognize that as an aggressive act because you are abusing the confined environment to impose what you want to talk about on everyone else, whether or not they have any interest. You are invading their space. Similarly, if you stand up and begin urging everyone on the bus to join you in group prayer, that is an act of religious aggression.

In a classroom environment, engaging in such behavior is even more aggressive because classrooms are an authoritarian environment where you cannot readily tell the person speaking to shut up -- especially if the person is the teacher. Because the classroom is also an instrument of government -- a public school which students are required to attend by law unless they are attending and can afford a private school -- that act of aggression becomes an act of government promoting the teacher's religious beliefs. That, happily, is illegal.

For example the person who is on their cell in a crowded environment, say like the checkout counter & won't give up the phone long enough to do their business. , but common.

[ducknwork]

Why is this point of view so difficult to understand for the anti-Christian crowd?

Koolaid and DNF, calm down. I wasn't referring to anyone on here. Rather, I was referring to all the anti's who force others to remove God from every facet of life every chance they get.

[ducknwork]

I'm against making children feel excluded

I don't want to start an argument based on this point, but how is this statement any different than that story about baseball that koolaid posted? Do you think that it benefits children (or adults, for that matter) to tailor the world specifically so that they are never uncomfortable or confronted with something that they may not necessarily agree with or exposed to something different than what they are used to (as long as it is not harmful, of course)?

What's your sig line mean again, dave?