Next month, teen atheist, Jessica Ahlquist, will be honored at Humanist Association conference and receive an award for her efforts to tear down that banner at her school. Despite the fact that the banner had been in the school for decades without protest, and cherished by the majority, one atheist’s complaint has destroyed a message of morality for future generations.
The offending banner read:
Our Heavenly Father.
Grant us each day the desire to do our best.
To grow mentally and morally as well as physically.
To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers.
To be honest with ourselves as well as with others.
Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win.
Teach us the value of true friendship.
Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.
Amen.
First, the banner doesn’t even promote a specific religion. It is a simple creed for all students to follow regardless of their spiritual beliefs. Yet, the rights of believers to express themselves has been overrun by a single atheist. Exactly how is that right, and what is so wrong with this message? It is a solid simple message, giving a young mind the right kind of attitude to approach life.
Atheists are not for freedom of religion which is clearly established in the 1st amendment. They want freedom from religion. Scrub away all messages or displays of religiosity. Today it is a banner. Tomorrow, it will be a law prohiting a Christian to speak on spiritual matters if they happen to be standing on government property. The slippery slope has begun ,and eventually Christians will have to go back to the ancient days of hiding in secret in order to worship, a complete opposition to the original intent of the Establishment Clause.
The fact that this student is being rewarded for destroying a moral message to students is disgusting.
Sorry, there is no such thing as “Christian rights”. Although, as is your pattern, you’re now acting as if religious rights in America are somehow exclusively referencing Christianity. And, of course, you do not have the right to have a public school preach your religious views as it’s a violation of the 1st amendment.
The claim that it doesn’t promote a specific religion is bullshit. There’s only one faith on the planet that refers to “our heavenly father.” Your inability to accurately describe the issue does not speak well for your argument. Nor has anybody been forbidden from expressing anything, despite your bombast. You can express anything you want on private property or on public property under the correct circumstances. That you don’t understand the difference between a government representative (like a school) posting an official banner and two people talking in public shows that you have no place in an informed discussion of the 1st amendment.
Likewise, of course atheists are for freedom of religion. Freedom of religion, of course, entails freedom from religion. However, as many fundamentalist Christians pretend that being unable to force their beliefs on others is somehow them being persecuted, it’s hard to drive that point home to some of the populace.
Yes a banner carrying the schools OFFICIAL “school payer” that replaced the lords prayer with until SCOTUS decided the school couldn’t compel people to pray does not “promote a specific religion”
Note that Christian’s are well within their rights if they wish to pray as individuals, having the government forcefully officiate as your mouthpiece is not a right.
The implications of the school being officially “Christian” is the issue, your personal rights have not been limited one iota by this decision.
Tell me something: if the value of the banner is its “moral message”, what’s wrong with:
The moral message is the same, yes? Whatever benefit the original banner might have offered shouldn’t be affected by the removal of references to religion, yes?
Oh great pantheon of Gods and Goddesses who watch over us.
Grant us each day the desire to do our best.
To grow mentally and morally as well as physically.
To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers.
To be honest with ourselves as well as with others.
Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win.
Teach us the value of true friendship.
Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.
I wasn’t aware that hanging a banner in a school was an inalienable right. If there was a school-sponsored banner proclaiming “We will all now pay homage to the truth that There Is No God” hanging there, I’d be just as in favor that it should be taken down, because a public school should not be endorsing any religious philosophy to the detriment of some of its students.
(cherished by the majority, my ass. 99.9 percent of the students probably never noticed it till it was announced that it would be taken down. Just like anything else permanently hung on the walls, those kinds of things become background scenery.)
Call me when kids get expelled for quietly saying grace at the lunch table. Now that’s a free speech problem.
We have that on the Atheist AntiChristian Agenda, it’s scheduled for mid 2013.
Speaking of the Agenda… hypothetically, where would one go to purchase, say a dozen lions and an arena?
As an agnostic, the prayer doesn’t offend me. But I do see it as bad form when prayers are hung in public schools, courts and government buildings. What if the prayer had begun “Allah”? I’m sure that the Jehovah’s Witnesses would feel slighted if their representative was asked to leave school grounds, but you can’t say that act was anti-Christian. It was necessary for the students not to feel like they are being coerced to follow a particular religion and focus on studies.
