By praying to their god that the girl does not share.
She did. This was considered unacceptable to the good Christians of that school.
Isn’t this exactly what she did? She didn’t participate in the prayer and then was harassed by her teachers and the principal and her father was harassed by the police. Only a couple people are saying that the basketball players shouldn’t be allowed to pray, what we are arguing for is her ability not to pray. Do you have a problem with that?
Should they have also respected her beliefs? Why or why not?
Basically, you don’t understand atheists at all.
Prayer in school means nothing less than proselytizing in school. Nobody concerns themselves with individuals engaging in prayer. The only reason to try to organize groups to pray is to influence others to feel that they should join in.
How often do you think invocations to prayer include explicit support of people’s right not to join in? “Let us pray, except of course we wholly support the decision that people may want to make not to join us in prayer. Please don’t pray unless you want to/” I don’t think so. Generally, these things begin with commands to kneel, join hands, bow heads, etc.
I was on the football team in high school in the 80’s, and we were told by an assistant coach, under the eye of the rest of the coaches, to engage in prayer before every game. Of course I went along with the process - kneeling, bowing my head, and thinking what a crock of bullshit it was. There’s no way that a player on a football team, and I suspect any team, could be expected not to join in without repercussions, explicit or otherwise.
This kind of shit goes on all the time all over the place. Only a few people are brave enough or concerned enough about the matter to stand up, and it seems to me that they are routinely treated to condemnation and ostracization. Perhaps I am wrong, and we just don’t hear about all the times that Christians react with understanding and support to the overt rejection of their proselytizing.
Well, yeah, of course, because they are trying to shove their atheism down everyone’s throats, and kill God, in this great nation that was founded on God’s own law.
Merely by opting out.
The needs of the one don’t outweigh the needs of the many. The needs of the many are amply filled in many places. There is nothing whatever to prevent students from praying all they want. What they can’t do is force others to sit and endure their private needs during class time.
I don’t quite understand all this hullabaloo that “the secularists have kicked God out of school.” I grew up in a small Iowa town. I started school in 1928 and graduated high school in 1940. In all of that time we never had any religious observance during school hours. No group prayers at sporting events. Not even when those dirtry bastards from Le Mars were on our two yard line. The only religious thing I recall was a short invocation at our graduation. A minister gave God credit for all the hard work of the staff and the efforts of the community to provide schools for our education.
My take is that a goodly number of those who are so hot for school prayer are only interested in showing how righteous they are, just as Matthew said.
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Neither could I, but then again I said it first. He merely repeated my exact words in what I presume was some sort of childish mockery.
Let me correct your mistake. I don’t hate your god, any more than I hate the Easter Bunny, unicorns or Skeletor.
No, according to her own words she told them she was an atheist.
Correction: I have to admit that Skeletor does tick me off sometimes.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. They were there first. She could have kept quiet.
Probably not. Enlighten me, as to why the hate, and name calling about religion.
It is not smart to hate anything.
The girl was harassed by her school and teammates. Her dad was targeted for killing by the town sheriff.
And you’re saying that atheists are the hateful ones? Wow. Just wow.
Well, we do hate being harassed, slandered, threatened and chased out of town.
Some of us believe that “going along” with religious rituals from religions other than our own is wrong. Some religions explicitly say that- some Quakers won’t take oaths and some Orthodox Jews won’t visit churches. Some religions even say that it’s wrong for someone who isn’t a member to participate in certain rituals- Catholic Mass or a Jewish aliyah, for example.
People who, for whatever reason, believe that they shouldn’t take part in a religious ritual should, of course, be as civil as possible without going against their beliefs. But religious beliefs are a very serious subject to a lot of people, and it’s not right to force someone to do something their religious beliefs say they shouldn’t do.
But what kind of freedom of religion or speech does anyone have if they can’t tell people their religion? I’d be very unhappy in an environment where I couldn’t tell people I was Jewish, and I suspect most Christians wouldn’t like not being able to tell people they were Christian, either. It would be even worse if telling people your religion resulted in sanctions from the Powers that Be (in her case, getting kicked off the team).
There are, of course, rude and polite ways to tell someone your religion. We don’t know how she told them she was an atheist. If she was being rude about it, then kick her off the team for being a jerk, by all means (if that’s the usual penalty for that sort of jerkishness). But just saying that you disagree with someone else’s religious beliefs doesn’t inherently make you a jerk.
There are polite ways to not go along with what everybody else is doing. There are some people who seem to think it’s inherently offensive that not everyone wants to participate in their rituals, even if those people do so in a way that doesn’t interfere with the ritual in any way. These people need to grow up.
Is this in and of itself offensive? I find myself confused. Surely *not * giving a reason for praying with them would have been more offensive? After all, as an atheist, she has a good reason not to pray. Giving no reason could be seen as being petty.
Plus, she herself claims that one of the reasons she didn’t join in was that she felt it would be offensive for an atheist to join in with their prayers. In other words - she didn’t hate them or what they were doing, but chose to act respectfully.
No, you misunderstood, to hate is not smart means any kind of hate by anyone.