school help: Should prayer be allowed in public schools? - Help.com

No, forcing religion on children without parental approval is against the constitution.

I like the french’s idea, keep all of it out

In that case, no. If students want to pray in school they have that freedom.

i think if you want to just do it on your own then thats ok, just bugger off into a corner and swivel towards mecca or whatever

prayer shouldn’t be outlawed in schools either. read the constitution..there’s no such thing as “the seperation of church and state”. It simply says that the government has no right to dictate your religion. whether you’re muslim, jew, christian, hindu, wiccan, etc, you have the RIGHT to pray wherever and however you so choose. Prayer is talking to God right? (whomever you believe he/she is) How can you outlaw freedom of speech?

yes but then the real debate is whether or not schools should impose a religion, for example, my primary school, despite being technically secular, made us sing hymns, now im sure that went a long way to people simply declaring themselves christians when they are in actual fact just agnostics.

there’s a difference between imposing and allowing

That is another debate but no, teaching evolution is not teaching religion because it is based on SCIENCE! Is it teaching evolution to teach kids about cells, or chemistry, or physics?! Evolution came from examining the natural world. Intelligent Design came from reading a religious text and trying to impose that view onto the world despite the evidence contrary.

yes i know but ive never heard of a school ban someone personally having a prayer, after all we kids gotta pray to something prior to exams.

true mal but one of those has significant scientific backing, the other has a book

MalusViscus wrote:
But what about a teacher who states that evolution is the way that everything was formed. Hes pushing his ideas as much as a Christian teacher would by saying that we were mad by intelligent design

Exactly…
faith is defined as the belief of things that are not seen.
No one has seen evidence of evolution and if you truly do your research you will find that out.
It takes just as much faith to believe in evolution as it does in creation.
I’m NOT an argumentative person, so i’m not gonna get into a pointless web debate… but its inncorrect to say that evolution is science. its a theory with very little to support it.

it has a great deal of support to it, the natural selection of specific traits in creatures to adapt to their surroundings can clearly be seen.

intelligent design oft falls apart, for example if we are created by an almighty being then why is the human design flawed. Why for example do we have a point in our field of vision that we cant see?

ok my last post befor work…
it AMAZES me that people can talk about the “science” that backs up evolution. Talk to top scienctists…ask them to explain why there is no “missing link” when there should be MILLIONS. Ask them why carbon dating sets the world at approximately 10,000 years old…ask them why there is no evidence of macroevolution today. Ask them why they find fossils of human footprints in the same stratus as dinosaur footprints…

Arnday the Imbroglio wrote:
it has a great deal of support to it, the natural selection of specific traits in creatures to adapt to their surroundings can clearly be seen.intelligent design oft falls apart, for example if we are created by an almighty being then why is the human design flawed. Why for example do we have a point in our field of vision that we cant see?

arnday..i’m not arguing with you as a person, please no hard feelings :~)
Your right about organisms adapting..thats microevolution and we see it everywhere. However we’ve never seen nor have any evidence of a tadpole turning into a bird.
And as for humans not being perfect..um that actually goes back to evolution..if there were natural selection at a macro level than the humans would never have gotten to the top of the food chain because we are so flawed…that blind spot would have evolved its way right out of us.

Sorry for getting off your topic Malus…but i already gave my imput..i don’t believe you can ban students from praying. basic constitutional right.

Evolution is as accepted of a theory as gravity and the earth being round, deal with its conflicts with your particular mythology or face ignorance. I don’t think students should be banned from praying, but frankly it shouldnt be encouraged, I dont think educators should encourage people to talk to invisible things, thats not helping one to learn. Especially invisible things that tell you not to believe in scientific facts and instead put your faith in one of a thousand mythologies.

This myth that prayer is being banned, that there is some kind of attack on theism is utterly absurd. All people want is the secular government and school system the constitution demands, and yes good sir, it DOES state that seperation of church and state and freedom from religion DO exist in the constitution, if you don’t believe me I guess i’ll look it up for you after I get back from school.

What you’re really upset about is that some teachers push their creationism on students and get backlash because thats not fair to kids. Tough luck, only science is science, only geography geography, and art art. Get it? So don’t teach mythology in our science class.

Snar wrote:
Evolution is as accepted of a theory as gravity and the earth being round, deal with its conflicts with your particular mythology or face ignorance. I don’t think students should be banned from praying, but frankly it shouldnt be encouraged, I dont think educators should encourage people to talk to invisible things, thats not helping one to learn. Especially invisible things that tell you not to believe in scientific facts and instead put your faith in one of a thousand mythologies.

You don’t share a certain set of beliefs, thats great… thats what America was founded on, the freedom to choose what you desire to believe. Try having some respect for what others choose to believe instead of calling them ignorant, or calling what is precious to them mythology.

yeah sweetie, look it up, i promise you that phrase is NO WHERE in the constitution. lol, btw, i’m not upset about any of this, i’m not upset about the backlash on creationism….you don’t even know what I believe…its great fun to play devils advocate, I could argue on either side. BUT I DO BELIEVE IN RESPECTING OTHER OPINIONS.

traiesmam - do you actually know anything about science or are you just repeating what you preaching has taught you?

You say there are no ‘missing link’ fossils? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_…

“Missing link” is a popular term for transitional forms. Transitional fossils are the fossilized remains of transitional forms of life that illustrate an evolutionary transition. Did you know fossils are extremely rare, most bones usually completely decay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transiti…

Where did you hear that carbon dating shows the Earth’s age to be 10 000 years old? I have never seen that written anywhere. Carbon dating can and has dated things up to 60 000 years old. This is a common fact that can be found in many places, unlike your claim.

There’s no macroevolution today? Of course not - marcoevolution takes millions of years to see noticeable differences.

As for the dinosaur/human footprints? http://paleo.cc/paluxy/paluxy.htm

You believe in microevolution. Wouldn’t this build into “macroevolution” eventually, given enough time? The fossil lines showing birds evolved from dinosaurs is fairly concrete. http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9806/…

Blindspot argument? Evolution doesn’t just happen to ‘fix’ mistakes. It occurs when a genetic mutation creates a slighty difference in a member of a species. If it is beneficiary, this new mutation will survive to breed and pass on its genes while the other members die out. The fixing of eye vision mutation just hasn’t happened, nothing more, nothing less. We rose to the top of the food chain because of our intelligence not our bodies.

tut the true story of the end (being an account of the creation) is as such…

1. in the beginning there was the word and the word was “oops!”
2. and Eris didst create the night and the day and saw that it was good
3. and Eris didst create the light and the dark and saw that it was good
4. and Eris didst see the fundamental illogic of the order of 2 and 3
5. and Eris didst saw “bugger this for a lark” and didst dispel dark by creating the electric lightbulb. And Eris didst become bored and didst leave it to another deity to sort it all out

and that should explain absolutely everything that you need explaining to you

If you meant allowed, yes.

If however you meant what you wrote, a loud, no.

you cannot stop a prayerful man from praying… he can and does do that softly or in his own spirit.

We don’t endorse, believe in, or even remotely agree with the insipid resolutions
of any government, government branch, organization, or secret society
that imposes their aneristic illusions upon the rest of civilization. We will
not stand by and allow Oreos to be eaten whole.

we already answered yes bow your head wherever you want. preferably not whilst someones trying to talk to you but if you really feel it necessary to drop to your knees in the playground noone is stopping you. Noones ever tried to either. people are trying to stop state sanctioned ones, that is being told to pray with everyone else in unison.

and sep of church and state, amendment 1, congress can have no business in ecclesial matters. amendment 1 also means you can bugger off and pray in schools if you want to, noones disputing that

traiesmam you may want to check some supreme court cases

McCollum v. Board of Education Dist. 71
Engel v. Vitale
Abington School District v. Schempp
Epperson v. Arkansas
Stone v. Graham
Wallace v. Jaffree
Edwards v. Aquillard
Lee v. Weisman
Santa Fe Independent School Dist. v. Doe

so you see, according to a long list of supreme court cases, that is, the interpretation of the constitution by 9 well educated justices, ranging from conservative courts to liberal ones have repeatedly noted that the constitution, specifically the 1st amendment outlines seperation of church and state.

mal,
it almost seems a moot point. now, in the u.s., a moment of silence is observed. that respects people’s right to pray or sit there and fidget. you can fold your hands, roll out a prayer mat or levitate. a formal prayer is not read or recited in public schools and that is a good balance. if a formal prayer were allowed and it was a majority-rule thing, which is usually the case, you might be required to pray to someone or something you don’t like. agnostics and atheists should not be offended by allowing a moment of silence. christians, muslims, jews, etc. should not be ridiculed for observing their faith. just remember that the more outward you make it, the less inward it matters.

Mandatory “prayer time” in public schools should be banned, as it is a public school and not every child prays. It’s a waste of class time and can lead to students being ostracized since they don’t pray with their classmates.

Students themselves can pray whenever they want…at recess, between classes, at home, on the way to school. It should not be a mandatory issue forced on all of the students. It also directly breaches the 1st Amendment of our Constitution; the Establishment Clause, where no law shall be made regarding the oppression or endorsement of religion.

And to those earlier in the post who don’t think “Separation of Church and State” is in the Constitution, you are right in the sense that that particular Phrase does not appear. That phrase is a summarization of the Establishment Clause:

The Constitution wrote:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Religion can neither be prohibited nor endorsed by the Legislators of this country. The founding fathers did not want the government to be a sacred government run by religion, since that’s exactly the type of government they wanted independence from.

This Clause makes it so a school can not Force students to pray in a mandatory prayer time, but also prevents the school from banning prayer altogether. Completely banning prayer is not the issue….just the removal of “prayer times” that infringe on class time. Certain parents that don’t agree with a prayer time will be unhappy to know that their tax and tuition dollars are going towards something they do not want for their child. Everyone’s views must be respected in a Public setting since it’s a culmination of all faiths and lack of faiths.

The answer, again, to the entire issue, is that a mandatory prayer time in school is constitutionally illegal, and students can pray whenever they want.