reading through this, I see where you’re coming from. That someone took your heartfelt beliefs and tried to dismiss it with a juvenile remark is, well…juvenile. But that doesn’t change the fact that religion, almost by it’s very defenition, is a matter of your ability to believe. It’s about your faith. Sometimes, it’s about your lack of faith.
Age doesn’t change that. Having thought about it for longer than someone else has been alive doesn’t ensure that you can actually come up with any of the answers to the questions that you’re seeking. That you have is fine. Don’t dismiss others merely because they haven’t had the chance to think about it as long as you have. Maybe they didn’t need all that time to come to their decision.
There are people around the world who spend as much time studying the Bible and the Torah and the Koran as you do reading these boards. They’ve put their whole life into the persuit of God’s knowledge. Some of them would be the first to admit they don’t have the slightest inkling of what’s going on, and they’re humbled by that fact.
The Jewish religion has bar mitzvahs at 13 years of age. Thirteen. We become men, cognizant of the meaning of the Torah,the meaning of Judaism, in the eyes of God. We become adults. No one comes up to us and says “just wait until you’re thirty, then you’ll have figured it all out.”
I also don’t agree with Lsura…to a point. That someone is unable to vote does not make his or her opinion any less valid. It’s an arbitrary age limit. 18, you vote. 17, you don’t. That doesn’t make the 17 year old less qualified to vote. His or her parents just didn’t have sex one year sooner.
No one is ever qualified enough to tell you the correct candidate to vote for. It’s all opinions. There are, however, right and wrong ways to give an opinion. I suspect you and Satan ran into those that acted childish. But you can just as easily attribute it to the actual people talking as you can make the rant and rave about “what’s a matter with kids today?”
Not the point. The point is, that this child(and if you had seen the way they even managed to phrase things, you would agree that this WAS, in fact, a child) had the audacity to try to tell me how I should vote, and then to imply that I was damned to hell if I voted for Bush. All I heard was parroting-if I asked them a question(and I really tried to discuss), I merely received the same answer. There was no opinion(of his own) there, just words.
I have the highest respect for young people who are able to express their opinions. THEIR opinions, not merely parroting what they have heard others say.
now, excuse me. I have to get ready for work, then go vote.
Nothing wrong with having and voicing opinions and ideals.
The thing is that some of us have to work, pay rent or mortgage, run a household and a car, cook and clean for ourselves and generally do all the things that you have to do in order to function as an adult in society. When it comes to making choices about who’s going to make the decisions that affect the above, we probably don’t put too much weight on the opinions of those who’ve never had to live in this grown up world. Don’t take it personally.
But I’d have thought that the adults here would know by now that when you’re a teenager you think that you know everything. I don’t take offence at this. I remember quite clearly being the same. Don’t get into a hissing fit with a 14 y.o. 'cos you’re gonna lose, by definition of the word ‘adult’.
…I’ve read a lot posts tlaking about intellegent youths and whatnot and I won’t disagree with the idea that teens and those even younger can, in fact, have self developed convictions and opinions that they may be willing to share with others. But, to say that the strenght of the arguement produced by an early teen is anything other than other than rhetoric given them through the learning years, is foolish. It’s not a PC thing, it’s not a they are young and stupid thing, it’s a real-world and life-experiences thing.
Think about it, what did you know when you were 14. Really. Be honest with yourself. In the years between 13 and 20, I learned so much it’s silly. In the years since, I’ve done much the same, though more of the knowledge is in depth, rather than increasing the breadth, as compared to earlier years. Gorwing up, you learn a lot about a lot. As you age, you gain a deeper knowledge of issues because you either spend more time researching them or experiencing them. At 14, you haven’t realistically had any real-world experience with the system of government. You don’t know the effect of foreign policy decisions or pro-life v. pro-choice or tax-law. You don’t know about these things because they aren’t part of your world. At 14, your world is school, skating parties, the newest PS2 game, looking forward to driving and hoping to get to second-base.
That isn’t patronization, that is life. Sure, there are kids that have had hard lives. Kids that, by the age of 14, have lived on their own and are world-weary. This isn’t the norm and I think we can all logically agree on that point. Come on people, issues like religion and politics aren’t something a youth can reasonable discuss because haven’t had the years of experience. Fact of the matter.
Being called an adult, as those in the Jewish religion are, at 13, doesn’t make one a viable sourch of knowledge. Would you turn to a 13 year-old or a 22 year-old (or a 50 year-old) in matters of the Torah? Time tells the tale, you learn as you grow.
(I’m not even going to entertain the idea that I am bashing the Jewish faith, I’m bringing it up because Ender used that as an arguement, and that’s all).
Let’s look at it as a sort of logarithmic function, which I feel is rather appropriate (of course, if you disagree with this, there goes my whole argument, but whatever).
The knowledge and experience one acquires tends to grow very rapidly at first, then slow down with age–at least in quantity. The difference between the knowledge base of a 14 year-old and a 20 year-old is orders of magnitude more than the difference between 34 and 40, in much the same way as emotional base functions (14 and 20 dating is creepy, 34 and 40 doesn’t really warrant a second thought).
I may listen to the opinion of a high school freshman, but their opinion on almost anything will count for jack with me without some damn good arguments backing it up (the exception being things with which they have better knowledge than I, like…oh…being a high school freshman). As people get older, the areas with which they have experience expand greatly, and only then do their opinions count for much. Obviously there’s no magical cut-off age, but at 14 goddamn years old your opinion on political issues is worth almost nothing (as was mine at age 14).
Good fucking lord, I don’t presume my opinion on marital issues to be worth a damn, since I have exactly no experience with it. It’s the same reason the military wouldn’t let me go captain a destroyer right now, no matter how many times I’ve read the tech readouts.
