Tax Money for Religious Indoctrination

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/10/business/10faith.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

hmmm ...

 

Of all the monetary, religious and political arguments for or against the program, i guess it would be deemed 'successful' if it truely, positively helped inmates to to reform and become model citizens again!

Isn't that what incarceration is all about?

Regards...

 

They should just send whoopi goldberg in there to teach them to sing

 

lol ... I like that. I guess all the money is NOT going to train them to be good Muslims or Hindus or Jews or Buddhists or Atheists or Agnostics or Shintos or Wiccans or all the other religions I don't even know about. Last night I went to a big Christmas program in Berlin where the U.S. Ambassador read a Christian text. It is easy to see the necessity for the separation of church and state simply by looking at those countries which are run by the dictates of their religions. The nature of religion is to place a higher authority over the existing government thereby making the laws meaningless. In Berlin a girl was killed by her three brothers because she spoke disrespectfully to her father. For them they were obeying a higher law than the German law.
abri

 

Preach on, Sister Abri!

The United States came close in many ways to being a theocracy, it could still happen, in spite of some pretty significant protections in our Constitution to prevent just that.

 

Oh, really? When was that?

 

When laws that are more or less drafted by our religeous right are passed without major debates. When faith based government programs become the order of the day. Bush and many republicans won on tickets pushing the agenda of our more conservitive religeious bases. When religious beliefs are treated as science by the goverment, and science is rejected as theory because it conflicts with those beliefs.

Case in point, in spite of some fairly significant set backs Kansas is still fighting the creationalism vs. evolution battle. While people were distracted by current events many of the various school board execs have been reelected back into office.

You will hear time and time again that the United States is a Christian country. It's not, most of its citizens may be Christian, but the constitution specifically forbids a state sponsored religeon. The point becomes moot, however, if federal and state laws catering specifically to specific religeous beliefs become the laws of the land, which is what was happening until the last elections. This is an ongoing battle in this country, always has been, but it is easy for a lot of politicians to be disingenious on a lot of these issues.

With the changeover of leadership coming up Global Warming will finally be recognized. The guy in charge about to loose his chairman seat (although he will still be on the committee) is from my birth state, Oklahoma, and I suspect if you could pin him down his convections stem from his religeious beliefs. His entire tenue was to debunk the myth of global warming.

Many times science and religeious CAN'T mix, thier is a significant portion of the United State, people who are intelligent and able citizens, that still believe the earth is only 6500 years old.

The United States, God Bless Us, has always been a little schitzo on these issues.

 

Hi Bill,
lol .. your typo was so perfect! lol
I think it was first put into words (that I can remember) with the no-smoking campaign which started in the 60s, that social perspective dictates laws and not that laws dictate social perspectives. That is why smoking was not outlawed until the campaign through education and advertising had swayed public opinion away from smoking. The brainwashing techniques of the fundamentalist movement are probably not visible to most people whose lives function within the dictates of those particular perspectives and I believe this was true of many of the Nazis of Germany during the 30s. When a group grows to that point where they can dictate laws, then the people standing outside of this whole process are in trouble. I think that's why I found this article I mentioned here so disturbing.
Thanks for your comments.
abri