Comment

Comment by Joan Denoo on December 16, 2012 at 7:14pm

 

James Kz, Yes, Huckabee is declaring “his god is not omnipotent and omnipresent” and he “could go anywhere he likes.“

 

If prayer has to be adopted in public schools, which I will will work to see never happens, I would never choose one from monotheism, polytheism, or any of the theisms.

 

I would want to acknowledge appreciation for having an opportunity to learn; discover my talents and ways I could make a living, not a dying; acknowledge my classmates as participants in finding solutions to complex problems; learn how to resolve conflict without violence; learn how to learn, not what to learn; learn how to perform the basics of reading writing and arithmetic, and sciences; develop my ability to think critically and reason; and finally, I would want to know the difference between legal and just, and to live for peace. .

 

Oh! I know, this is not what a six year old would want to do at the start of each class day, but it is what this 76-year-old woman has found to be the most valuable things I had to learn. 

 

Comment by Joseph Corder on December 16, 2012 at 8:58am

Last night, I read what Huckabee had to say.  I was so pissed I couldn't stop shaking!  How can ANY compassionate human being say such S.B. immediately after this horrendous tragedy?  My beliefs have been strengthened and set in concrete!!  Believing that there is no afterlife Makes life , in my opinion, that much more precious and should be cherished!

Comment by James Kz on December 16, 2012 at 5:15am

It seems to me that Mike Huckabee is making an argument that his god is not omnipotent and omnipresent, if mere humans can throw him out of schools.

I would argue that his alleged god, if he were in fact omnipotent, could go anywhere he likes.

And no one has banned prayer in school (consider what happens before a test).

Government-led prayer enforced on those who may or may not believe as those who wrote such prayers were banned.

Folk like Huckabee make such arguments because they believe it is their prayers that will be adopted. But if someone were to impose the Rosary, or perhaps a Hindu prayer, they would be arguing just as strongly for the separation of Church and State as they are now against it.

The problem needs to be painted differently for the religious, like the example above. The best defence of religion is the disinterested, secular state. A state which guarantees the rights of all, equally, all the time, religious and not.

And as I recall from the New Testament, Jesus said something about public prayer and hypocrisy.

Comment by Joan Denoo on December 15, 2012 at 6:31pm

Richard, talk to some people with some knowledge about science and I wonder what kind of response you will get?
As I predicted, but I thought it would be Pat Robertson first on the track blaming atheists. The blame game is the only game they have and tapping into fear, when populations of the world already feel jittery about the economy and politics. They exploit lack of knowledge. They use fear, it gets the uneducated every time.

Yes, there are converging factors coming together at this time in history that makes it seem possible some super-spiritual being punishes us for our transgressions.

We have reached peak cheap oil and any oil we suck out of the ground will be more expensive and dirtier than the oil that gushed into the air until capped.

We have mined much of the easy to find coal veins, and what is coming into use is dirtier coal.

We are fracturing the Earth's crust to get access to gas, creating problems for ground water, and changing the pressures on the Earth's crust.

We have reached the carrying load of the planet when it comes to potable water and there comes  a time when we have to ration it. Sadly, I am afraid water will be privatized, making it even more hazardous to be poor.

We have in place political policies that suck assets out of working-class resources, enriching wealthy.

We reduce the safety net for people who cannot find work due to the higher numbers of available workers and not enough jobs to provide living wages for them. Labor disputes between laborers, and disputes between owners of labor and owners of capital increases as the income gap grows larger. 

Some higher power may be punishing us for these misdeeds, but not for abandoning religion as viable solution to problems. Religion is a creation of man to assuage fears and an easy process to feed to the gullible.  

We can say for certain he is wrong because having two or more events coming together at one time is not a sign of punishment by god. Correlation does not prove cause. These things happen whether there is a god or is no such thing. What would convince me that god has a hand in this is the end of greed, poverty, hunger, disease, exploitation by religion. 

Comment by Glen Rosenberg on December 15, 2012 at 5:30pm

How can we say for certain he is wrong?

Had we the foresight to create a city of god theocracy and impose morality from without we would have eliminated satan's schools. Or even if those schools continued to operate under the auspices of theocracy that the perpetuation of buggery would be so prioritized that the vicars would have reestablished the teutonic knights to protects those young bodies.

Comment by Napoleon Bonaparte on December 15, 2012 at 2:02pm