You posted:  "  I believe that prayer should be brought back into the public schools.  "

 

Well ... you are in luck ....... prayer has ****  NEVER **** been taken out of our public schools. Any child who wishes to pray may. <amy do. Just because your child doesn't an it makes you mad doesn't mean that children can't pray.

 

What actually WAS taken out of the schools was the right for a teeny tiny minority of people to hold down impressionable children and beat them over their heads with ridiculous unfounded beliefs in the Christian dogma.

 

I'm glad I had the opportunity to educate you on this important topic.

What was taken out of schools, of course, was not prayer but compulsory prayer, to the deity of the school's choosing.  Much of the early opposition to school prayer came not from Evil Godless Atheists™, but from Jews and from xtians of the opposite denomination (catholic or protestant) of the xtian prayer being forced upon the students.  Indeed, school prayer should be opposed not just by the non-religious but by every religious parent concerned about the school contradicting the religious teachings they're trying to instill in their children.

What actually WAS taken out of the schools was the right for a teeny tiny minority of people to hold down impressionable children and beat them over their heads with ridiculous unfounded beliefs in the Christian dogma.

 

I'm glad I had the opportunity to educate you on this important topic.

 

I think what you should have said was, "I'm glad I had the opportunity to exaggerate on this important topic."  :)

I think what you should have said was, "I'm glad I had the opportunity to exaggerate on this important topic."  :)

I can't speak for the original poster, but I don't think it's much of an exaggeration.  Children are certainly impressionable--our prime learning years are in our youth.  And xtian beliefs are definitely unfounded and, when seen from a rationalist or atheist viewpoint as being equal to any other silly superstition, also ridiculous.  Can you imagine if your child's school taught that it was a sin to wear blue shirts on Thursdays?  Or that people who don't like chocolate are abominations?  Or that before every meal, you should knock on the table twice, as a way to give thanks to Freyja, Norse goddess of fertility?

How, then, is that any different from teaching a child that it's wrong to eat pork, or that homosexuals are abominations, or that they can ask a god to alter the world on their behalf by praying?  Or that bread and wine are the flesh and blood of a man?  Or of a god that is simultaneously three different entities (son, father & holy spirit)?

The whole point of indoctrinating children at a young age with these beliefs is so that they won't think them ridiculous when they grow up.

BINGO!