Trouble is the church or mosque will almost always add a school, then they get their way.

Please be careful slinging the word myth when talking about Hellenism, some of us around here DO believe in the Hellenic Gods. Thank you.

On a side note we do need more Hellenic temples in this country.

Even though I think its wrong to be forced by your religion to attend any sort of organized-religious services, or change how you live your life.

:nope:

Why a believer demands respect for himself or his faith because he believes something, forever will be beyond me. He seems to assume that he has collected some merits by believing in something, as if he has accomplished something fo value for himself and for the community, deserving him the right to demand special status for himself.

Myth or not, believe what you ant, and but save others from needing to take note of it if they do not ask you. as long as you claim the right to make public your private beoief issue, peope like me will claim the right to ask critical questions about it, and call it a myth - or even a folly.

Because the fact that you believe in something - earns you no credits or special rights at all. ;) and where belief is made public, it is an object of public interest, public discourse, public disagreement, and any demand not to do so, please, is a political demand to give religion a special status that protects it from free speech, free thought, critical questioning, etc.

And that is unacceptable, always.

So you will need to live with people mentioning "myth" when pointing at your belief's objects and mechanisms. ;) Because we non-believers have no obligation at all to obey any implicit rules of behavior deriving from your belief. We are not part of your club, and don't want to be.

It's simple, Skybird. Your belief in something untestable and unprovable is a myth. My belief in something untestable and unprovable is the truth.

Get it yet?

Not really :timeout: - as long as you do not try to be ironic. :06: I admit I sometimes have difficulties to catch your humour.:)

Sorry about that. Not ironic, but sarcastic. Put more simply it's easy to fall into saying that very thing - "My faith is real, the other guy's is false".

Whatever, but is it necessary to become rude by calling people "ants"?

Or am I a bit oversensitive today? :-)

You keep casting lures at me but i'm just not going bite. You addressed my only point (finally) in the first paragraph. The rest of it is about you trying to pin me down on a subject that is irrelevant to my point.

Making fun of someones religious beliefs is rude. Do you seriously think that the size of the group you're insulting makes it any less rude?

I dont think a believer demands respect because they believe in something. They just demand the common courtesy not to be ridiculed anyone else demands. You cant mock someone for being a believer and you cant mock someone for being a nonbeliever. I agree though if you make your private faith public, or attempt to impose it on others you have opened yourself up to challenge. Though faith can be argued without resorting to ridicule, it seldom is so its best not to even bring it up to begin with. Its best to just drop it. You wont convert anyone to either side.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Let's say I agree with you, and apologize for being rude for insulting someone believing a religion. You'd not then make fun of a "cult?" What about those spaceship nuts that were here in NM for a while, then moved to CA—they had some sort of suicide pact as I recall, remember that? They deserve equal respect to, say, baptists?

As you say, the number of members doesn't matter.

If it is OK to make fun of ANY religious belief, it's OK to make fun of all of them.

True enough.

I brought up non-muslim literalists in the US (creationists) because they indeed try to impose their belief on others via education. IT's an example of where muslim and christian fundie views are coincident.

There is an idea put forward by many conservatives—I'm a conservative, BTW—called "vouchers" for schools. The base point is for the State to subsidize religious education, though that is always unsaid. They couch the debate in terms of school quality and "choice," but there is no disguising the real goal, taxpayer funded religious schools. I disagree with vouchers for very conservative reasons—I am fine with a write-off for private school, but I disagree with giving people money for school that they have not paid in (vouchers are wealth redistribution, plain and simple). In addition, from a Separation standpoint, they open the floodgates. Strict separation is in fact conservative. Then muslim kids can go to madrassas in the US, and get taxpayer money to do so. That is a terrible idea. The only way around it is to not pay for private/religious schools. Of course we need our stupid, PC school boards to also not make "special" schools for different demographic groups, either. they also need to pay ZERO attention to their religious needs.

Look at State universities that have special prayer rooms for muslims. Outrageous, IMO.

Strict Separation is all that is between the US with its explicit freedom of religion and the abyss.

Indeed sir.

I agree that on the one hand it's taxpayer funding of religious schools, but on the other it means that parents have to send their children to schools they don't like simply because they can't afford to send them elsewhere. The government does require by law that children attend school at least until age 16, and if they can't afford anything else they are required by law to attend a school they not of their choosing.

It is my understanding that in The Netherlands all money is tied to the student, not the school, and the result has been an improvement in state-run schools since it has become a necessity to weed out bad teachers.

It is a tricky situation. I don't agree with biblical creationism being taught as "science", but I do think that if children are forced to go to schools at taxpayers expense, there ought to be some choice allowed.

In the Netherlands it is my understanding that they have state-sanctioned (and funded) Islamic schools.

In general, the problem with "schools" is NOT the teachers. The notion that choice weeds out bad teachers is patent nonsense, IMHO.

In terms of schools (way OT, here), the problem is the students and parents, not the schools. School "choice" works for one, simple reason. It selects for parents that are involved—which means families that value education.

This is why private schools are better. The teachers at my kids' school are great, but I don't think they are really any better than at our public school system at all—this is a pretty serious observation on my part since the private school we use costs a small fortune—more than tuition (in state) here at UNM. The student population, however, is sorted mostly by income in private schools. Since educated people make more in general, that means that private school are filled with kids that have educated parents. Our school also gives scholarships to kids of police/fire/military, so it sorts for that too—but still, the parents are motivated to find a good school for the kid.

Public school systems with "choice" built in see similar results. There are schools judged to be better, and kids from more marginal parts of town with involved parents get driven across town to go to a "better school." The school is still APS, the only difference is the students.

In CT growing up, we had kids bussed in from Bridgeport (a very rough town). There were not too many, and they ended up doing great because they in effect absorbed the "culture" of our rich, suburban school system. Trying to achieve was the norm. Bad SAT scores got people made fun of. This was partially because kids had to be signed up for this by their parents—it sorted for involved families.

CT decided to expand the program in a test near Hartford, and apparently when the bussed in urban student population got above ~10% of the suburban kids, they dragged the suburban school down with them. This expansion bussed ALL the kids, no parental effort required.

Public schools are government schools, and government employees are notoriously hard to get rid of, even the bad ones. When public schools have to compete for funding they become more concerned with performance. As I understood it at least one Dutch public school teacher said that in their case it made a huge difference, which is why I mentioned it.