06-03-2006, 07:32 PM
Quote:All the reason we need to teach our children MORALITY in school starting at an early age. As Pete said, church and state are separate, but who the hell has the responsibility of teaching the children right from wrong if the parents aren't (i.e. single parent working two jobs just to support family; wardens of the state; plain poor parents)? For some strange reason in this conversation and every other one, I get the distinct impression that everyone assume an adult (someone over the age of 18) automatically knows "right" from "wrong", but if they were never taught it, I surmise they will have constructed their own moral compass of right and wrong based on their experiences in life.
In order to teach "right from wrong" you have to define what that is. Just saying "Kids need to know right from wrong" might get a round of applause, but that's only because it's so utterly vague that nobody will ever disagree with it. Is the problem that kids actually don't know that something they do will get them in trouble, or is it that they don't care? I don't think the problem is a lack of knowledge but a lack of caring. It takes nurturing to get kids caring about other people.
Quote:Personally, I don't think the 10-commmandments should have ever been taken down because they can teach us all a valuable lesson regardless of what god we worship, and that is more powerful than hurting someone opinion of church and state.
Personally, I don't think the Ten Commandments are at all profound and the fact that people insist on parading them around like they're Newton's Principia tells me that we have a lot of people who are either impressed by very little or they've never really thought about just how obvious some of the commandments really are. The prohibitions against killing, theft, and adultery are obvious enough that their presence in the Ten Commandments is probably a result of borrowing them from whatever law existed in the time and place that they were scribbled down; laws against such things surely pre-date the Bible. The prohibitions against blasphemy are specific to religion and do nothing to ensure people will be decent to one another, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if those ideas were borrowed from other religions.
But I wholeheartedly disagree with your stance that the Ten Commandments ought be posted for the knowledge they present. They don't present any knowledge that people capable of reading don't already have. But neither do they teach people how to apply that knowledge. So... what do they do? Advertise. Posting the Ten Commandments is an advertising campaign, folks. It advertises Christianity, primarily. Personally, I got sick of advertising two years ago, and I avoid it whenever possible. I haven't watched T.V. since.
If you want to advertise, buy a damn billboard.
-Lemmy