garys@bunkerb.UUCP (Gary Samuelson) (10/12/83)
Well, I certainly caused a stir. I have apparently offended a great many people, and offer the following apology (and, to a lesser extent, defence): Dear readers of net.politics and net.religion: I am sorry for the anger and misunderstanding I caused. I obviously did not express myself well, yet I think I have been unfairly accused as well. I do not believe that all Christians are honest, ethical, etc. I do not believe that all non-Christians are dishonest, unethical, etc. I resent having such statements attributed to me. I do not believe that Christians in this country are persecuted in the same way as Christians in the first century. I do not believe that Pamela Troy wants to throw me in jail, or put me in a mental institution. I do not want to put Pamela Troy in jail or in a mental institution. As for prayer in public schools, has it occurred to anyone that I may have been lied to as well? I did not invent the notion that the Supreme Court ruling made all public school prayer illegal. In fact, I have heard already that it did not. Not being a lawyer, and not having the time or the resources to research the case myself, I have to rely on what others tell me. (So do most other people, I expect. Why does that make me a liar?) I have noted that certain people have called for a "Constitutional amendment to restore voluntary prayer" to the public schools, which implies to me that it is currently illegal. Why is it that those who say that are necessarily liars? I do believe that it is at least as likely for people to come to power in this country who want to repress Christians as for people to come to power to repress non-Christians. It is probably more likely, in my opinion. As for Pam's questions, I do not know what will happen if the "Moral Majority" gains more power. At this point, it may be a waste of time for me to say anything, since whatever I say will be interpreted in the light of the anger I caused. But I might as well try. First, my opinion of certain historical events (Please do not infer my opinion on historical events not mentioned). I think it was immoral for the Roman government (Nero, et al.) to persecute Christians (and anybody else they persecuted. One must make disclaimers at all points, I guess). I also am willing to believe that some of the early Christians behaved in such a way that they brought some of the persecution on themselves, thought this does not excuse the Romans (oh, now I will be accused of maligning all Romans). I think it was immoral for the perpetrators of what has become known as the Inquisition to do what they did. I also think that it was un-Christian. (Yet another disclaimer: I am not saying that anyone said it was). I think it was immoral for the perpetrators of the Salem witch trials to do what they did. I also think that it was un-Christian. (Same disclaimer). Why am I talking about history? As a background to what I have to say about the present. I do not think witchcraft is right. If I did, I would engage in it myself. Although I probably shouldn't even make these statements either, since I don't know what exactly you mean by "witchcraft." I have known two people who claimed that they were witches, but what they meant by "witch" and what Pam means by "witch" may be entirely different things. Even though I do not think witchcraft is right, I also do not think it is right (or even possible) to attempt to prevent it through legislation. Concerning my statement about putting Christians in mental institutions: That's what happens in Russia, and I think that it is possible that it will happen in America as well (that will require several disclaimers: 1) Not all Christians in Russia are put in mental instituions. 2) Some who are not Christians are also put in mental institutions. 3) What is called a mental institution in Russia bears no resemblance to what is called a mental institution in America. 4) I am not saying that all non-Christians are communists or socialists. 5) I am not saying that all communists or socialists want to put Christians (or anyone else) in a mental institution). 6) I am not saying that I know of any specific person who wishes to do that.) All I'm saying is that for any given group of people A, there is no doubt another group B who would like to gain power and repress group A. Conversely, I suppose anyone who gained power would set about repressing someone, even if that was not their original intent. I think I would like to repress murderers, rapists, and thieves. I expect that I have now offended everyone who wasn't offended before, without assuaging anyone who was previously offended. Oh well, c'est la vie. Gary Samuelson
smb@ulysses.UUCP (10/12/83)
From: garys@bunkerb.UUCP Newsgroups: net.religion Message-ID: <252@bunkerb.UUCP> Date: Wed, 12-Oct-83 10:43:58 EDT As for prayer in public schools, has it occurred to anyone that I may have been lied to as well? I did not invent the notion that the Supreme Court ruling made all public school prayer illegal. In fact, I have heard already that it did not. Not being a lawyer, and not having the time or the resources to research the case myself, I have to rely on what others tell me. (So do most other people, I expect. Why does that make me a liar?) I have noted that certain people have called for a "Constitutional amendment to restore voluntary prayer" to the public schools, which implies to me that it is currently illegal. Why is it that those who say that are necessarily liars? It is fairly clear that some people, at some level, are engaged in a deliberate distortion of the truth. In this category I would include those proponents of the "voluntary prayer amendment" who are members of the U.S. Congress -- for example, Jesse Helms. He has certainly heard often enough what the Supreme Court ruling actually said and meant. There are enough lawyers on his staff who could have told him. He and others have never- theless *lied* by deliberately omitting the adjective "organized" from their pronouncements on school prayer. As has been pointed out by others, the Supreme Court has banned organized prayer of any form in the schools. They never said anything about private prayer, at any time or any place. What was their reasoning? First of all, at the time these cases originally arose, the prayers were not even voluntary. Bruce Smith has posted stories about what his experiences; I can tell similar stories about my elementary school days. (Mind you, I went to school in New York. In a school where 90% of the student body and 90% of the faculty were Jewish, wanna make any guesses about how much sensitivity there was to this?) Quite simply, pre-1963 school prayers were Christian, and in particular were Protestant. There was no regard for the religious sensibilities of Catholics, Jews, Moslems, believers in other religions, non-believers, etc. (This statement may not be quite accurate about predominantly Mormon areas; can anyone confirm or deny this? It certainly was true of the schools I attended in New York City.) I trust that no one on the net will claim that such mandatory prayers should be reinstated. We now come to a more controversial part of the Court's rulings. They have held that the school setting is *inherently* coercive. That is, if a teacher were to say, "OK, let's pray; anyone who doesn't want to can leave for a few minutes," that would not be acceptable -- because too many students would feel compelled to participate, simply because the teacher asked them to pray, and was watching. Peer pressure is a factor as well; children hate to be different. (Some rulings do take ago into account; see below.) The Court was also concerned about abuses of voluntary prayer. The ACLU has documented (see "Civil Liberties Review", the ACLU newsletter) teachers *telling* students to pray, or saying things like "OK, class, let's pray -- and Sam, you shouldn't join in, because Jews don't pray anyway." (No, I'm not making that story up; it really happened.) Most advocates of the school prayer amendment disagree with this entire line of reasoning; they feel that as long as the amendment states that no one can be compelled to participate, individual rights are sufficiently protected. The third, and most controversial, part of the story concerns student religious groups. Briefly, the question is whether a Bible study club, for example, could be formed under school auspices, much like a debating club or a computer club. Official recognition of such clubs typically includes privileges such as use of classrooms after school, official announcements of meetings, etc. Here, the Court has ruled that for high school students and younger, given the prevailing religious attitudes such clubs still represented an improper entanglement of state and church. The possibility of abuse, or of undue pressure, seemed to them to be too great. They were also concerned with the use of public property for religious purposes. But here the Court was less rigid. They have also ruled that the same rules do not apply to publicly-funded colleges and universities. First, they have held that by college age, students are (or should be) sufficiently mature that the coercive atmosphere is not an issue. A college student is presumably able to make up his or her own mind about the desirability of prayer. Second (and here I'm not nearly as sure of my facts), I think that they recognized the traditional nature of a university as an "open shop" for students. That is, student groups of all sorts, conventional and unconventional, have traditionally been given pretty wide lattitude about use of campus facilities. (Ask yourself this: do you think most high schools would permit a student homosexual club to meet in the school building? I doubt it. But most colleges would and do. Whether you agree or not, that was the Court's reasoning.) I've tried to make the above presentation as factual as I can, though I realize that my opinion on the subject showed through. (I would welcome any corrections, incidentally.) But let me address one comment to Gary. You say that you believed others on this issue when they said that voluntary school prayer was illegal. As you claim, virtually everyone will accept statements by others on occasion. But don't you feel that it is your responsibility to listen to both sides' arguments on a controversial issue? By that I don't mean one side's description of what the other side claims; misstating or selectively stating your opponent's arguments is a standard debating tactic. The school prayer debate has been going on for 20 years; newspaper accounts of the Senate deliberations paint a pretty good picture of the opposing claims. --Steve Bellovin
david@ssc-vax.UUCP (David Norris) (11/30/83)
> STOP! Dave Decot != Laura Creighton! The first paragraph is from me, > Dave Decot, and was my only submission on this topic since the rats discussion > started. My "original article"? I never discussed rats on the network. > I was wrong to attribute an argument (that the zygotes not formed because > of homosexual activity had "rights") to you, but it seemed that you were > equating homosexuality with your violent "proposed" methods of birth control. > I was pointing out that your equation also applied to other means of birth > control if it applied to homosexuality as such a means. I am sorry if I > did not sign my article. OOPS! Sorry. It would appear that wires have been crossed here; I was responding to a "rat experiment" article which appeared earlier. We are on two different wavelengths. FORTRAN STOP End-Of-Line -- Dave Norris
rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dinsdale Piranha) (02/10/85)
At this time, I'd like to apologize to the net readership for the incredibly
voluminous responses to Gary Samuelson's almost equally voluminous responses
to my "Blast from the Past" article. Most of my articles consisted of trash,
self-defense against malicious attack, and face saving in the advent of such
attack. I intend to submit three or four brief articles summarizing new
material that I presented in my articles.
This is NOT to be construed as an apology to Gary Samuelson. Repeatedly this
man has deliberately twisted my words, uttered lies about me, told the world
what my position "really" was. Those who want to peruse the 2000 lines or so
of rebuttal are welcome to examine the times where Gary told everyone
repeatedly that I assumed that there was no deity (my many postings on many
religious issues contradict this), where he deliberately excerpted sections
of my articles to twist the context. I started out trying to answer Gary's
extended rebuttal, realizing that he was responding (again) to an article that
he had already responded to many months ago, but the more I read the more
frustrating it became to sift through both Gary's presumptiveness (he often
said things is such a way that it may have been obvious to him what point
he was making, but it certainly wasn't so obvious to me) and his word-twisting
and lies.
--
"Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I dunno."
Rich Rosen {ihnp4 | harpo}!pyuxd!rlr