I'm not Catholic but where I grew up, there was a large Catholic population. I went to a public school but a large percentage of the kids there were Catholic. At that time, the Catholics still observed the practice of not eating meat on Fridays and, so, the public school I went to always served fish on Fridays. Why? Because a lot of the kids there were Catholic and could only eat fish. You see, even though it was a public school, they made a concession because of the religious beliefs of their kids.
Now, like I said, I'm not a Catholic. There wasn't anything about my religious beliefs that prevented me from eating meat on Fridays. I would have preferred a cheese burger over the fish. If I wanted, I could have had a fit about it. My parents could have hired a lawyer and sued the school over some violation of the separation of church and state. But I didn't do any of these things. Even though I was very young, I understood the concept of tolerance. I shut up and ate the fish.
Tolerance then meant something different than it does now. What liberals call “tolerance” now means not offending anyone. More precisely, "tolerance" means not offending liberals. If I were to pray out loud, for example, I'm being intolerant because an atheist might be offended. I suspect that if that attitude prevailed when I was young, the Catholics would not have been tolerated. The minority atheists would not have been tolerant at all. They would have protested having to eat fish.
This intolerant doctrine of “tolerance” is now the norm in schools. What do schools do now to accommodate the religious beliefs of their students? We no longer have the example of serving fish on Fridays. We do, however, have a sizable percentage of kids who believe in Biblical creation. What accommodations are made for them? Of course, I don't expect public schools to teach Genesis but couldn't they at least show a little respect for their students' beliefs? How about teachers not calling a belief in creation, “superstitious nonsense”? How about not using science books that describe creationism as, “the biblical myth that the universe was created by the Judeo-Christian God in 7 days”? How about not banning from college any home-schooled kids who used a creation based curriculum? Couldn't these things be seen as just a touch intolerant?
Again, I'm not asking schools to teach creation. It would just be nice to see a little of this tolerance I keep hearing about.
3 comments:
Where I went to school there was a good number of Jewish kids and while I'm not sure if they did Kosher, but I know they sold a lot of bagels and such. And I think they usually sold fish on Fridays, since there were also many Catholics. I mean, that was only a dozen or a bit more years ago, but hardly the distant past.
I'll agree that describing creationism as a myth seems petty, but I'm curious why it was mentioned at all. Creationism isn't science, it's a religious belief.
But, I will say that you must realize hypocrisy works both ways. If you make these complaints, you can't accuse liberals of being whiners and sensitive. As for myself, I just consider each on its own merits.
Carvin,
It's not even so much that they call creation a myth. Like I said in my post, some colleges won't even accept students who were taught creation. Isn't liberalism supposed to be about tolerance? I guess that means, be tolerant except for people who believe creation.
Schools don't have to teach creation. But can't schools make any accommodation for a belief held by about ½ of their students?
God bless!
RKBentley
I investigated the case. I find it impossible to disagree with the conclusion that the judge came to. The plaintiff's claim that it is a violation of a person's right to force them to believe a certain thing is quite contradicted by the science books they used which tell students that they can only believe a certain thing. Far more insulting to me is the idea, that the one book explicitly states, is that Christians must believe an exact thing. Especially something not even part of the Nicene Creed, and certainly open to interpretation.
By definition, these books do not teach science. They merely talk about it. The reality is, science is not a matter of belief, it is a process by which to understand the world around us. It can not suffer beliefs and creeds, as it makes science impossible. Questions must be asked, and nothing can be assumed.
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