Thank God California Has Gotten Rid of God in the Classroom.

College Confidential Community
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<p>“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” - Article XI of the Treaty of Tripoli which was authored by American diplomat Joel Barlow in 1796, the following treaty was sent to the floor of the Senate, June 7, 1797, where it was read aloud in its entirety and unanimously approved. John Adams, haven seen the treaty, signed it and proudly proclaimed it to the Nation. </p>

<p>And about them all being Christians, many of them were, in fact, Deists. I acknowledge that this is disputable information, but the overwhelming majority of historians qualify many of these men as Deists.
<a href=“http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/ffnc/[/url]”>http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/ffnc/&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.postfun.com/worbois.html[/url]”>http://www.postfun.com/worbois.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Ben Franklin was a deist. Jefferson too, I think.</p>

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<p>There’s a difference. I did not say the U.S. was founded on the Christian RELIGION, I said that most of our principles/laws/ideas from the founding came from the Christian religion. Big difference, one between establishing a state religion (christianity), which the founders emphatically did not want to do, and recognizing that America was mostly made of people from Christian persuasions. </p>

<p>Also, your first source talks about seven founders as not being Christians, three of which I’d dispute and the other four being rather universally well known as deists/non-Christians. But that’s four founders out of (taking a random number sample) 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence.</p>

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<p>Couple of points: As many people point out, the phrase “separation of church and state” does not appear in the Constitution or the Declaration. However, it was first stated by a founding father. I believe it was Jefferson, but not 100% sure. So the separation was very important. The fathers saw too many wars over religion, and wanted the government to stay out of the religion-supporting business.</p>

<p>Second, an earlier poster said the quoted news article gave the full story. That’s not true, if you happen to actually read it. It gives the allegations that are part of the teacher’s suit. This presents only one side. The school declined to comment. I don’t know the full story either. But, reading between the lines, you see that the school had already put this teacher under watch. He says it was because he was a Christian. Do any of you really think the school only had one Christian employee? I have a hunch that what was happening was that this teacher, under the guise of teaching history, was really trying to proselityze (oops, can’t spell that word worth a darn). So the school tried to restrict his activities. </p>

<p>I’m a committed Christian myself, and I am sometimes pressured by my church to try to use my position at work to bring employees to Christ. But I don’t believe that someone in a senior position should try to impose religion on people. It’s not, shall we say, Christian ?</p>

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<p>I never said ALL in any of my sentences referring to the people or the citizens. I know that not all of the citizens of the US are Christians, but the overwhelming majority are. I know that not all of the founding fathers were Christians, but many of them were.</p>

<p>And hayden, who cares what Jefferson said? The only stuff that matters is the stuff that is in the Constitution. If he really would have cared about it that much he would have put it in the Constitution. If stuff that politicians said was always true, then John Kerry would be President, there would be world peace, North Korea and Iran wouldn’t have any WMD, HIV would be eradicated, blah, blah, blah. Do you get the point?</p>

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<p>People who think of “blah blah blah” as inciteful commentary rarely get the point themselves.</p>

<p>The reason stray people, such as supreme court justices, et.al., care about what “politicians” like Jefferson said is because you have a good chance of understanding the words they wrote, if you have a sense of what those words meant to them, and in what contexts they used them elsewhere. The words of the Constitution stand by themselves, but such writings as the Federalist Papers help clarify what their words meant.</p>

<p>“If he really would have cared about it that much he would have put it in the Constitution.” Why do you assume the founding fathers didn’t put it in the Constitution? 200 years of Supreme Court justices happen to think they did.</p>

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<p>They didn’t seem to care about it enough to strike down a ruling on the Pledge of Allegiance, which is almost identical to this case.</p>

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<p>No - the supremes just refused to take the case, on a technicality (i.e., the father was not the custodial parent, and therefore did not have legal standing to bring the case). That’s how they simply don’t rule one way or the other. It’s the legal equivalent of “no comment”.</p>

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<p>Everyone knows that they would have ruled that “under God” could stay.</p>

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<p>Damn people from 200 years ago.</p>

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<p>You people are missing the whole point of my post. Teaching about religion is not a bad thing. Religion has been a major part of society, whether that role has been good or bad. I’m not suggesting we should ban anything which contains “religion” or names of religions in it.</p>

<p>It is one thing to talk about religion in class. I think it’s fine if people talk about Christmas or Ramadan or whatever religious festivals or things they have to talk about.</p>

<p>It is quite another thing to tell children in class that if you have premarital sex, then you shall go to Hell. Or that if you do not fear God, then you will not go to heaven. This is what I am saying should not be allowed.</p>

<p>Religion in history is different. I don’t see how teaching history is imposing personal values. </p>

<p>destiny path wrote:
“1. The teacher was not teaching religion. If you look at the documents he was handing out to his students, they were all original founding documents, not some sort of propaganda. Source documents, friend.”
Yes I agree and I said I felt what happened to him seems unnecessary so what’s your point?</p>

<p>destiny path wrote:
“The history of the United States is not as “multi-ethnic”, “multi-cultural”, and “multi-religious” as you seem to think. Most of the founders and original Citizens were at least professing Christians, and most of those were Christians in earnest. This is fact, not my personal belief just because I want to believe it.”</p>

<p>It was definitely not as multi-ethnic as it is today, but are you telling me the millions of African Americans, Italians, Chinese, Hispanics, Jews were Protestant Christians? And besides, you’re taking that point out of context completely.</p>

<p>destinypath wrote:
“I completely agree with your last sentence, however, the first one is again not based on the facts because most public schools teach that either there is no god or no way of knowing whether there is a god, which are both the religions of atheism and agnosticism, respectively.”</p>

<p>Like I said, actively teaching children that one is better than the other is bad. Public schools do not teach children religion. That is a far cry from teaching them that God does not exist.</p>

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<p>WOW JESUS is the only way you hippies!</p>

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<p>And thus ends the story of the highest amount of fail ever recorded for one single thread on the internet. </p>

<p>And that really says a lot, people.</p>