To nitpick your nitpick, the Buddha was not merely enlightened, nor does the name refer merely to an enlightened person.
The Pali word arahant refers to an enlightened person. A Buddha is an arahant that also has the ability to teach others to reach the stages of enlightenment; he can see past lives and know what the future holds . While THE Buddha is not the only Buddha - indeed, it’s axiomatic that there have been and will be many Buddhas - it is said that a Buddha will appear only every four kulpa or so.
A kulpa: picture a mountain 7 miles high, and a bird bearing the finest silk in its claws brushing the top of the mountain with the silk once every 100 years. The mountain will wear away before a kulpa has passed.
To nitpick your nitpick, the Buddha was not merely enlightened, nor does the name refer merely to an enlightened person.
The Pali word arahant refers to an enlightened person. A Buddha is an arahant that also has the ability to teach others to reach the stages of enlightenment; he can see past lives and know what the future holds . While THE Buddha is not the only Buddha - indeed, it’s axiomatic that there have been and will be many Buddhas - it is said that a Buddha will appear only every four kulpa or so.
A kulpa: picture a mountain 7 miles high, and a bird bearing the finest silk in its claws brushing the top of the mountain with the silk once every 100 years. The mountain will wear away before a kulpa has passed.
Shodan, I’d very much appreciate it if you’d respond to my post above, especially my distillation of Lee v. Weisman and Santa Fe v. Dole. What do you think?
I got it from Holysmoke.org (link here) which claims that it was in the WaPo 12/5/94. SimonX, I can’t link directly to it since its in the Post’s pay archives.
Shodan, I’m not sure I follow your logic- to me, it seems implied that Allah, Jehovah, Eloiam, et. al. are included in the judges admonition. At the very least, inclusion of their names, as well as Buddha or Mohammed, in the graduation ceremony would at the very least violate the spirit of what the judge is saying. No?
You should write for the wnd. What is prohibited is someone coopting the government sponsored major event of other people in order to showboat their religion. The Consitution is very clear on why that’s not permitted. But go ahead and keep on pretending it’s not.
No, the judge said that prayers of a certain kind were acceptable. They just couldn’t use certain religious references (such as the name of Christ, or Allah), but others were OK.
Which is stupid on several levels.
[ul][li]Neither Buddha nor Muhammed are deities, so that the judge in question is simply demonstrating that he is ruling on a matter on which he is ignorant.[/li][li]‘God’ and ‘the Almighty’ are both translations of terms that would (presumably) be banned, so the ruling is saying that you have to address God using certain languages. [/li][li]The judge has decided that it is not being forced to participate in a religious practice which is offensive, but only to be forced to participate in certain religious practices - specifically Christian or Islamic ones, or anything beyond a sort of generic theism.[/ul][/li]Thus this judge makes a ruling that includes the worst of both worlds. If public prayer at a graduation is an imposition of religion, this judge does not care. That is OK in his book. But not all religions can be imposed - only those of which the court approves. Mushy theism is fine, and the atheists in the audience can go pound sand. But specific Christianity (if that is the religion chosen by the speakers) is out - the judge doesn’t like that form of religion, and therefore it cannot be imposed.
Yes, they are included, but it makes no sense.
You can’t say “Allah”, but you can say “God”. You can’t say “Elohim”, but you can say “the Almighty”. So apparently it is OK to use English translations of “offensive” names for God.
“Jesus” in Hebrew means “Yahveh is salvation”. According to the “logic” of the judge’s ruling, it would be acceptable to pray “in the name of Yahveh-is-salvation”, since that is also a translation of a name for God into English, just like “God” is a translation into English of the Arabic word meaning “God”.
Actually, you would probably have to translate “Yahveh” too, but it means something like “I Am Who I Am”. So it should be OK to pray “in the name of I Am is Salvation”. Or maybe just translate “Christ” as “the Anointed One”, and use that.
You see what I am saying? This is an exceptionally muddle-headed ruling, that clarifies nothing, and offends everyone. And it establishes the judge’s choice for religion as acceptable, but no one else’s.
Which makes this a violation of the First Amendment. Voluntary prayers led by private individuals, and not enforced by the state, do not violate the First Amendment.
So if there is a student-led prayer, or the class valedictorian wants to pray to Jesus as part of her speech (or Allah, or the Great Mystery, or whatever), she should be allowed to go ahead. Those who wish to join in may do so; the rest can wait until it is over. And if some atheist winds up in the same position next year, no one can force him to lead a prayer if he doesn’t want to.
It’s no worse than some blowhard telling you the future is yours to command, when the best job you can find is running the press in the local dry-cleaners.
I have been in situations where my relgious rights were violated in the extreme in a public school setting. It happened over and over again despite my protests. Would you also support my rights as a teacher not to have to sit through the hellfire and brimstone sermons which are illegal? Bible readings? Forced public prayer situations?
These situations occured all the time when I was teaching (between 1969-1989, despite the fact that it was illegal. That is where the most frequent breeches of the law were occuring.
I also had harrassment from relgiously conservative school employers for my observance of Ash Wednesday and All Saints Day. And they put me through the hassle every year.
Who already has this? Certainly not the schools! And since that was the topic, do you want schools to have to give equal time to all religions?
The “it” you are talking about is witchcraft? satanism? You want schools to be free to have satan worship? No thanks! Not in my classroom! I was hired to teach English to students. Their parents and their churches were responsible for their relgious training. There were lots of prayers said in my classroom, but they were silent.
EarlyOut, you are aptly named. You managed to basically start off by saying I’m just totally utterly wrong, and then quickly switched to an admission that is no different than saying I’m correct. The judge has grounds to make an injuction AGAINST THE SCHOOL. What grounds does he have to bar a private citizen from speaking about their religion? It’s the school’s Constitutional responsibility to set those rules, not the speaker’s responsibility to follow them. The school has the option of simply not inviting people to speak who would lead coerced citizens in prayer. If someone does, it’s the schools problem, not the speaker’s.
I agree with Shodan initially. You can’t have it both ways. If you are going to leave religion out of government ceremonies, you can’t very well pick and choose among religious references. The sheer diversity of belief makes any such attempt doomed to almost immediate obsolescence.
However, it IS the schools’ responsibility to not invite speakers who intend to turn a government run and essentially legally mandatory ceremony into a platform for their own evangelism. It isn’t a crime for someone to do this, but it is a crime for a school to tolerate it, condone it, or allow it to go on.
For better or worse, religion is singled out as being a special subject when it comes to the government, making it a different matter than blowhards or even political activists who evangelize for recycling programs.
Freedom is the fact that people are free to gather together and pray and evangelize all they want. They just can’t enlist government functions and regulations to aid them in doing so.
I believe it is unconstitutional to send a student to jail because they thanked Jesus for getting them through high school.
However, the judge could require that the school not allow it.
So, if a student did try to turn his speech into a prayer, the school would get him off the stage, and nobody goes to jail. If the school allowed him to continue, they might get punished. But the student did not break any law.
I tell ya, I am not a Christian per se, but I’ll be damned if some farthead judge tells me what I can and cannot say at my graduation.
I’ll name the Son of God’s name out loud and if any US Marshall wants to take my fat ass away, go for it. Then my parents can go to every media outlet in the nation, write our governor, congressman, senators and the President himself and call 30 Rockefeller in New York to get a jailhouse interview with Katie Couric, AMEN.
The prisoners wont screw with me either. “Why are you in jail boy?”, Bubba may ask. “I am here because I said Jesus during a graduation and some peckerwood Democrat liberal judge tossed me in here.” You could lock me up with Charles Manson for 6 monthes and i would not be harmed. I would leave that prison a hero.
To continue…
when I went to school in “the good old days” (1981-1985) there was a CLICK (Christ Living In Christian Kids) group on my public school campus which met every week with about 300 members.
I did not agree with this, but…when the school wanted to warn us teens about suicide, sex or drug abuse, they brought in the local baptist church to give us a secular lecture about such nonsense. Really. Our principal would of gave the ACLU a heart attack. I will say if that judge pulled that bullshit in our school, our principal would be the first in line to go to jail.
Apos, a bit of friendly advice: never, ever tell a judge, “You can’t stop me from doing that!”
Sure sounds to me like this judge, hyperbolic though he may be, was telling the students that if any of them violated his order, he’d have them arrested for contempt of court. Judges don’t make a habit of issuing threats that they can’t back up with action. The 5th Circuit affirmed his decision; I can’t honestly say that I’ve read the decision (no law library at my disposal), but I haven’t seen anyone else in this thread saying that, while the judge’s decision was affirmed, the appeals court said that he went over the line in threatening the students with a contempt citation.
Now, what would have happened if he had actually had, say, the class valedictorian hauled off to the pokey? Since it didn’t happen, we may never know. But a judge’s powers, when it comes to enforcing his orders, are very broad.
So long as the school is making its facilities available for other groups, then this is not a violation of SOCAS.
Whether you agree with it or not has no bearing on its constitutionality. See above.
{bolding in this quote is mine}
You must’ve forgotten the meaning of the word I’ve bolded. If the individual (somehow, I seriously doubt the entire local Baptist congregation came in and commenced singing, “Just say ‘no!’”) who was “brought in” happened to be both a member of that congregation and a qualified counselor, then–again thanks to the lecture being secular in nature–there’s no violation of SOCAS.
“Would have.” At any rate, since there’s no violation of SOCAS in the event you relate, why would the ACLU have a problem with it?
The judge isn’t pulling anything in any school. What he’s doing is performing his lawful duties in the venue provided for same: the court.
Citizens of the United States have the equal right to practice any religion, or no religion, without it being interfered with or enforced by the State.
Student-initiated and -led prayers during a graduation ceremony do not constitute enforcement by the State, since students are private citizens. Court orders by a judge, dictating what kind of prayers must be said and what words can be used, do constitute both an infringement and and enforcement of religious practices by the State.
So, Shodan, as I’ve mentioned, I’m friends with a Wiccan priest and priestess. How would you feel if they came to your neck of the galaxy and led an invocation to the Lord and Lady at your local high school’s graduation, especially if that was the only religion mentioned?
You’re reaching here. Those who use the name ‘Allah’ have something real specific in mind, don’t you think? And if someone want’s to talk to you about Jehova, they probably mean something particular, too.
Let’s turn the tables for a moment, shall we? Let’s say that a High School in the USofA has a predominantly Muslim student body. We should also assume that there are Christians, Buddists, Jews, and all, but the majority are Muslims. With me so far?
Now at the Graduation cerimony, the Validictorian (a Muslim) wants to share the good news of Islam and specifically, Allah. Let us further say that the school has invited a Muslim speaker to address the student body and parents.
You see what I’m getting at, right? The Christian kids and parents might feel a bit like they’re getting a bit of Islamic indoctrination, and they might be upset about. They may feel that they shouldn’t have to put up with that, their views on faith being, at the very least, equal. They might say “This kind of thing isn’t allowed!”
How would you feel about it?
Would you say “Hey, let the kids say what they want. The Muslim speaker, too. They’re the majority, after all.” Or would you have some qualms about it? Would you feel differently if your child was a student there? I’d like to know.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve known a lot of religious Christians and they’d be up in arms if Allah were mentioned in a positive way in the presence of their children. They would look upon it as something sinister. As if someone were trying to convert them and lead them away from the true religion.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Early Out *
**If you don’t care about the issue under discussion, I suggest you refrain from posting. Do you plan to open every GD thread, and tell everyone in it that they shouldn’t bother debating the issue? How very thoughtful of you.
Your not really debating the issue now are you? Your just complaining about my post. Now, what’s really going on here?
Thank you.
