Most of this wasn't meant for 64Digits, but hey.
I currently consider myself somewhat trapped in the Catholic education system. I was raised Catholic, went through Catholic elementary school, and somewhere along the line lost the faith. After elementary school the natural thing happened and I was fitted into a Catholic high school, a place where I feel endlessly oppressed. There is no chance that I can openly state many of my opinions, and admitting that I'm an Atheist often leads to unbelievably inane remarks, from staff and students alike. There is no sympathy for the fact that I can't leave (for purely practical reasons, parents, friends); for many it's impossible to conceive why I would want equal representation in a Catholic school. For many it's even impossible to recognize I have the right to stay in the school. This isn't limited to students, but teachers that have asked flat out why I just don't leave. One thing I know for sure, leaving wouldn't solve the greater issue I see in this. Recently I got a good taste of how the Catholic school system deals with criticism. After handing out anonymously signed articles I wrote along with a friend that protested how the school spent its tax money, my friend (who they mistook to be the author) was quickly told to go to the office. He could not do so at the time due to other obligations, but he did manage to talk to the principal enough to find out that he felt the article was insulting. We didn't stop handing out that article. Two days passed, and I was informed that my friend had received a letter from our chaplain - a written response to our article. The article was entirely religious, calling towards god given rights, and ended on the note that any criticism of Catholic schools was dangerous and destructive. It added that it was the schools duty to discourage "anything secular, humanist, atheistic, or satanic". Not only has the article left me offended, but I feel like there is no sympathy for me here. The students are flooded with apathy, and when told that you are against catholic schools, they are puzzled why.
My sister teaches in a Catholic school. They're pretty overtly Catholic as well, with the whole Mass thing and heavily Christian bias on lessons. Children from Muslim, Jewish and Buddhist families are forced to go to this school because of a lack of teachers, schools and generally funding in the state education system. At least you originally went to the correct school for your parents' beliefs which are, largely, what your own are based on. A lot of British children don't even get this choice.
I'm not attacking you in any way, I sympathise greatly, just making you aware of the situation in Britain.Most of my peers are atheist or agnostic, and I know several atheists who go to the catholic school down the street.
I never went to a Catholic school, but I was raised a Catholic. You probably know that I live in the state of Kansas, and you probably also know that it's one of the most conservative states in the US (despite having a Democratic governor). Ironically, my friend's grandpa recently made a joke about "[Zane] being a Catholic, and that I wouldn't trust him if he had his hands on a stack of Bibles." I wanted to just tell them the truth to shoot down said joke, but I think that would be much worse. He's a nice guy, I didn't want him to think I was a servant of Satan.
I think we've talked about the schooling issue before, and that they're not doing their "job" if they're not discouraging you.Ever heard of a school called Harvey Milk?
You go there and you're forced to act as if the various array of deviant sexualities are perfectly normal. You can get in trouble for not doing so. Of course, I can't see why you'd go there if you don't already believe that… but the same holds true in respect to religion for religious schools.In fact, all told, you're never going to find a perfectly unbiased school curriculum. It's the same situation for Christians in secular schools - when they pick up their biology textbook, chances are Mr. Darwin's face will be staring at them from the pages.I can see why it would be hard for you in a catholic school if you're not catholic, but there just isn't anything to be done. The best advice I have for you is to just stick it out. If you can't go to a secular school, there isn't exactly anything you can do about the school's religious affiliation.->SquareWheel: Because you didn't follow it.->ESA: Try this: "Atheism is fine, but it has no business interfering in education or politics." - Works both ways. You can't ban just one side of an issue.->Rawrspoon: Maybe we shouldn't believe the universe exists. After all, since it goes against several laws of physics (EG mass/energy conservation), it can't logically exist…->PY: Oh, I assure you there are hundreds of books and scholars devoted to backing up Christian doctrine. Ancient historians with records of Jesus, contemporary finds which coincide with Biblical records, etc., etc.->Flashback: Simply forcing evolution isn't very bright. Same with banning See You At The Pole, praying at graduations, etc.->ludamad (comment): Yes, they can. They're a school designed SPECIFICALLY for one group of people. You can't complain just because they don't cater to those they weren't designed for. That's like complaining that the knobs on a car aren't labeled in Braille. Or that the signs in New York aren't printed in Swahili.All the same, we're all human. I know that at my Christian college, criticism of the school's policy is allowed - the "forum wall" in the cafeteria is regularly crowded with discussion papers. But at the same time, there are Christians and catholics out there who have just the same ideas about education as professors who publicly ridicule Christians in their philosophy classrooms. We never claimed to be good. In fact, the whole idea of our religion is that we're not good or perfect. Somehow, many people seem to have missed that fact. Atheists in general aren't rampaging Stalins, banning religion from public discourse - yet there are those who would like to do that out there. Christians in general won't tell you to "convert or die…" yet there was the Inquisition. As one of my favorite comic authors put it, "I know that I'm almost never going to measure up to my own message. But please don't hold that against what I have to say." If we were perfect, we wouldn't need God, would we?Random thought:Pandimensionalism implies the presence of the supernatural.Think about it. If all of nature were chemical processes, you could theoretically take a massive supercomputer and run a simulation of the universe. Eventually, it would turn up where we are now. If our decisions are chemical processes, they were influenced by what we ate yesterday. Which was influenced by what the cows in Mr. Rodney's pasture did a week ago. Which was influenced by the gadfly swarm which flew by, which was influenced by the weather, which was….…getting the idea? If this is the case, the current situation of the world was mandated from the moment of creation onwards. There are no decisions to be made because they were defined for you. If physics accounts for everything, pandimensionalism doesn't work.omicron: I don't think you are aware of Ontario's situation; these schools are paid for by everyone's tax money.
Yes, we shouldn't believe that the universe exists, especially since we formulated the theories USING data from the universe. It's like if you have a piece of paper, and using what's on the piece of paper, you make formulas. However, the piece of paper cannot exist even though you derrived all of your formulas from the piece of paper. Therefore, the formula was never created in the first place.
If your theory held true, then it would be a paradox, there would be no universe. And you're right about darwin. We should believe that we were specifically created to worship an invisible being who came down to "die" for us because we did "bad things" like be jealous of your neighbor's stuff. Oh wait, isn't god a jealous god, that's why you can't have other gods? Hmm, yep, god is apparently less moral than we are.Darwin was right, even the fucking vatican agrees that evolution is the right theory, so why can't you agree with the governing body of your religion?Sorry for being so confrontational :P->ludamad: And so maybe the religions in schools should be proportional to the percentages of various religions? So, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States), 79.8% of schools should be Christian, with 25.6% being catholic; 5.2% should be of other religions, and 15% should be atheist. Would that make you happy?
->rawr: Ah, but if we believe the universe exists, physics can't be all that's out there. As you said, it's a paradox. Hence, there's something supernatural responsible. And that's not what you want, is it?The definition of jealous includes "vigilance in maintaining or guarding something," which sounds pretty accurate. English is pretty funny that way - things can have multiple meanings. Not all connotations of the word "jealous" are bad.There are two types of evolution: Proven (micro) evolution, as with the oft-ballyhooed British moths, and not proven (macro) evolution, as with the fake Archaeoptyrex skeleton, fish turning into cats, etc. What most evolutionists tend to do is say "Micro exists, therefore macro exists." Which is like saying there are fifty-foot-tall ants, just because you see a one-inch-long ant.Besides which, I'm protestant. I don't necessarily follow the Vatican.Omicron: You have me boggled. Why did you give me a link about the united states?
Also at Omicron:The idea that small scale ("micro") evolution is of an entirely different nature than large scale ("macro") evolution is a very very confused argument by creationists. They describe the same phenomenon; the change of biology through generations. What's the difference between a small change in one generation and a big change in many generations?Yes, there are people backing it up, but none of it proves anything
Also, I was convinced that was a chatlog for some reason <_<