RandyBrian Loc: Texas

Duh. They don't pray, of course, if they do not want to.
As I understand it, the coach goes out to pray. Some of his players join him. That is their choice. I thought you were all about being pro-choice.
A coach, or any other teacher, praying, even in class, is not the same thing as endorsing or establishing a religion.
Football teaches boys to give their best efforts and push the envelope. If any of the kids I have coached over the years were so sissified that they felt 'compelled' to join me in a prayer, I would kick them off the team foe a lack of personal strength and integrity.

RandyBrian Loc: Texas

Two utterly stupid sentences in a row!
The first one: a group huddle 'infringes' on someones 'right not to participate'??? How is that? The only mandates to participate comes from Democrats, and typically involve masks and experimental medicines. That's as stupid as saying that a yoga class infringes on my right to be a couch potato because 'I feel pressured to get up and join in.' Therefore yoga classes should not be allowed. How incredibly i***tic.
The second one: No, not 'offensive', but objectionable ONLY if the students were compelled. I know of no cases where players were called (you imply forced or coerced) to participate in prayers, to Allah or God or even Odin.
You are blithering again.

RandyBrian Loc: Texas

Robert, you clearly have no idea what freedom is. As a Christian, Jesus requires me to be concerned about how my actions and words affect others, and so I do. But please apply the 'logic' you just stated to how you live your life. How many things do you say or do daily that might influence an easily influenced person? Especially a child.
A teacher (or coach) praying in class, or on the field, with or without others joining them, does not 'influence' someone to become religious. It most CERTAINLY does not establish, or even endorse, a religion. At the most, it might open a child's eyes to additional possibilities. I thought that was what school was about. If parents want their child raised without exposure to religion, then they seem like ideal candidates for home schooling.
I wanted my children raised without exposure to swear words and obscene gestures and suggestions. Instead, I was forced to educate them and mentally inoculate them against such vile things. Maybe I should sue the schools??

RandyBrian Loc: Texas

Do the videos show him coercing or forcing those big strong football players ? How many assistant coaches did it take to overwhelm them physically and force them to their knees? If anyone joined them, they could have chosen to do so just to support the team. Actually praying is always optional.
If I was playing on a primarily Muslim soccer team, and the coach wanted to thank Allah for a safely played game, I would happily join in, bow my head, and either not pray at all, or pray to God (since I do not believe Allah exists). I would be joining in to support the team, and nothing more. Certainly there would be no endorsement of the Quran or of the Muslim faith.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

What the hell does any of this have to do with religious freedom and Christian charities?

microphor Loc: Home is TN

I don't care if he prays to his Allah, remember when New York's closed down city blocks so that muslims can kneel in the streets to pray while they're Temple or wh**ever it's called was being built. Is this any different

CounterRevolutionary

Blade Runner, do not take my post seriously. It was made in jest!

Woody has been on OPP for many years and wants socialized medicine at any cost, even if it is his own life, and religion is an obstacle to endless sex with the public financing the consequences and the hell with responsibility.

The cost of this ever bloated bureaucracy is one's life.

Please forgive my mouthing off, just whaling in the wind.

robertv3

As a third-grader I felt that I had to recite the Lord's prayer whether I believed anything about it or not. Later (after I was older and started to think about it) I felt degraded because I had not made a decision about it for myself. I thought maybe I should refuse to recite the Lord's prayer. But my experience in school is that conforming or not conforming and being either accepted or rejected is a really big important thing to a schoolkid. And schoolkids get rejected by groups of peers for all kinds of little things, but to them the rejection is a really important bad event which, often, sticks with them for a long time (years, in my school).

Separation of church and state is for a reason. At least part of the reason is that religious belief, where it happens at all, should sincerely arise in a person without any pressure to conform. The U.S. government (and state-run schools) should not show any preference toward any particular religion, nor even against atheism. Churches are a different thing; people have a right to freely gather in churches (or temples or wh**ever) for wh**ever their religions happen to be. That young children are taken by their parents to churches is inevitable, and is sometimes beneficial, but sometimes doesn't turn out well, as some of the young people grow up and find that they're being hypocritical in a religion that doesn't fit them. Some of that's inevitable in families and in churches; but government should stay out of religion.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

No problemo! I copy.

RandyBrian Loc: Texas

And I agree with you.......except when it is applied stupidly, and is used to trample other folks rights. Having a few moments of silence for prayer or contemplation hurts no child in any way. It encourages them to occasionally seek a quiet moment, and think about things, and yes, gives them a moment to pray if they choose. But using 'separation" to forbid teachers to pray, or refusing to allow kids to pray, or to have a Bible in their possession, or to forbid teachers to answer questions from their students, is ridiculous. None of these things can possibly be construed to be the government ENDORSING a particular religion.
A person's 'right' to NOT be exposed to religion does NOT supersede another person's right to free expression of religion.
Besides, Robert, look at how the left is indoctrinating kids continuously. I had to explain to my own daughters, and now my grandkids, that a world three quarters covered with oceans is NOT running out of water. That our farm land is NOT being filled up with landfills and garbage. And that, yes indeed, there WERE still forests in the USA. So far, I have not had to counter what Q***r's Library Time has told them, but I can sure see it coming. The schools, prompted by the government, are actively TEACHING kids that religion is fairy tales and make believe. That the theory of evolution provides all the facts about creation. IMO that IS teaching the kids religion.....that of atheism.
Your point of view would be much more valid if the government really DID practice what they preach. But they don't.

robertv3

Of your four paragraphs, the first two and fourth are pretty good. The third, no. I hadn't heard wh**ever's the latest about "water", but your explanation as seen here is so oversimplistic as to be irrelevant. You appear to overlook the difference between fresh water and salt water. Similarly, that "there are still 'forests'" doesn't mean much, when it should be obvious that extents, not merely "existence", of "forests" is at issue. As for religion, I doubt teachers in grade school are saying the words "fairy tales" and "make believe" as you attribute to them; but you ought to know that a lot in religions is not the same kind of factual as what needs to be taught in science classes.

I also take issue with your characterization that they're teaching that "the theory of evolution provides all the facts about creation". A good science teacher would tend not to say "all" in such a context. Properly presented, scientific theories, _including_ "evolution", do not imply that they are "all" there is to know. But when science teachers _do_ fall short of this proper presentation, they're no worse than so many religious people who behave as though, and sometimes proclaim, that their religion is all people needs to know. But perhaps worse (in my opinion) is your use of the word "creation" in that context, which I find rather "suspicious" in its nature (that is, I'm suspicious of it): it appears that you presume, and suppose that everybody else ought to presume, that the world was "created" by a "creator" -- this is what a great many religious people seem to say rather often. But it is not good to have such an 'a priori' assumption or presumption in science classes.

Here is what I experience: that Protestant Christians whom I've known (including some of my friends) say that the U.S. "is a Christian nation". I find that an imposition. If they had said that some percentage of people in the U.S. were Christians, I wouldn't have any problem with that, but when they say it's "a Christian nation" that appears to imply that I, and many others, who have been born and raised and lived all our lives in the U.S. and are responsible citizens, are less belonging in the U.S. than Christians are. And in the news I often see what the Left calls "xenophobia" -- some kind of prejudice or even inclination toward violence toward people who are _different_ in some way, such as in their religions.

The U.S. that I experienced while growing up was in some ways bad because of that very animosity people had toward _difference_; and my world opened up and got much better when I got to college and began meeting and being friends with _other_ kinds of people from _other_ places, cultures, and religions. In comparison, the old monoculture I grew up in is suffocating (toward people such as myself, who don't fit the conforming mold that happens to be in favor in the local group). Too much conforming and blandness is required, to be accepted and not tormented. That's not a good environment for human beings.

RandyBrian Loc: Texas

We have a difference of opinion. I think America being called a Christian nation is simply referring to the fact that our Constitution and laws are based on Christian beliefs of right and wrong. That is historically accurate.
And let me clarify something about the water. No I did not forget that the vast majority of Earth's water is salty. Desalination is expensive and messy, but well understood. ALL of our fresh water issues could be simply and quickly (in a few years) corrected by implementing technology that exists today.....but the cost would double (or more) the cost of our water. The same is true of landfills. We have the technology and engineering sk**ls, and even the existing machinery, to dig massively deep holes in mostly useless west Texas (and other places) to hold ALL the worlds trash pretty much forever. The cost would double or triple due to shipping expenses. These are NOT engineering problems or 'save the earth' problems. They are simply financial problems. My estimates are that personal costs for the average American family would go up by 150-200 dollars per month, and all of our trash and water problems would be solved.
For now, conservation is the cheaper, if temporary, solution. So why the need to lie to our kids about 'running out of water' or our landfills overflowing? Power and control, IMO. Nothing more.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States
Benjamin Franklin Morris' book was published in 1863. If you can find an original copy, it's only because you have looked in the deep recesses of university libraries where the volume is likely collecting dust on dimly lit library shelves. Organizations like the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State have done their best to ignore the content of the massive compilation of original source material found in this book. If Americans ever become aware of the facts assembled by the author in this historic encyclopedia of knowledge, arguments for a secular founding of America will turn to dust. Don't miss out on the fantastic wealth of information this 1000+ page book has in store. Your children and grandchildren are not being taught the t***h of history in public school, and this book will correct that travesty! Christian Life and Character could very well be responsible for the rediscovering of the t***h of America's foundation in Christianity. This book should be the cornerstone of any personal, professional, church or school library.

From the introduction by Byron Sunderland:
The standing complaint of human degeneracy remains against us. Causes have been operating--and of late years with fearful rapidity and strength--to produce a state of moral obliquity and practical atheism among us, appalling in magnitude and of alarming consequence. It has become of late quite customary to sneer at the Puritanism of our fathers, and to speak with contempt of the severity of their manners and the bigotry of their faith. This impious treatment, by the present corruptors of society, of a generation of men whose lofty principles and illustrious virtues they seem utterly unable to comprehend, is well adapted not only to arouse the deepest indignation, but also to excite the most lively concern.

There are two quarters from which these evil influences chiefly proceed. A class of men without conscience, and reckless of all moral restraint, have gained ascendancy in public favor, and assume from their prominent position to mould and direct the public sentiment of the nation. Their general influence upon the public morals has been like the wind of the desert--poisonous, withering and destructive. Another and very large class of men moving in the lower walks of life form a significant element of our American population, whose hard and vicious instincts, gratified without compunction and paraded everywhere in the most offensive manner, would seem to render them well nigh incapable of reformation. Apparently insensible to all the nobler sentiments of public morality and virtue, and ever ready to perform their congenial part in the general demoralization, they demand that all the higher classes shall pander to their depraved appetites, as the price of their patronage and support. In this reciprocal play of the baser passions the common principles of morality are daily sacrificed, and the strong and the weak join hands in carrying down the nation to the very verge of ruin.

CounterRevolutionary

Roberty3, certainly children do not need to be forced into public schools run by bullies and a unionized workforce with a socialist agenda of groupthink indoctrination. Compassion and good manners need to be taught at home, but most kids don't get those values at home or in public school today. I think public schools are obsolete.

Home schooling or hired tutors, apprenticeships, trade schools, private schools or even charter schools should be available to rich or poor, with vouchers for any family in need. Dropping a shy child into a pool of a thousand puranas is cruel. You would be astounded to realize how many of us on OPP "didn't fit in."

Kids can be damn mean, but times are changing.

Nearly a century ago (I'm dating myself), our town's public schools offered a voluntary time of silence in home-room for prayer, meditation, or finishing up homework or doodling on the desk. It was a practical solution. Many different organizations offered after school activities. My parents mandated church attendance and Sunday school; it all seemed to be so hypocritical when these kids couldn't be bothered to give you the time of day outside the door. When we graduated from High School, it was mandated we tithe to the church and join the congregation.

Guess what?

That Sunday winter night, a good likeminded friend and I were missing from the church indoctrination, having secretly slipped aside and climbed the steeple, overlooking a beautiful silent winter landscape. My good friend stuffed his pockets with frozen pigeon eggs only to be later discovered by his irate mother! It was several years later that I found a church of my liking in Boston.

ON the other hand, I think the lack of compassion amongst people today may be a pharmaceutical problem of chemical poisoning or even over-v******tion for 40 different diseases, triggering allergic reactions. The mammalian compassion center in the skull is over the ears; and lack of activity can be detected by a brain scan.

Look at the violence we have in society today. What do you think?

CounterRevolutionary

Randy Brian, consider our Declaration and Constitution were based on EXODUS and the end of human s***ery and indentured servitude, all men created equal in the eyes of the Lord.

But the limited resources: energy, water, farmland, are fictitious propaganda to spark wars. For example, "fresh water shortage."

Graphene desalinization filter patents are held by Lockheed-Martin, capable of delivering 100 times as much desalination water. More interesting, fresh water is trapped under our continent in the form of a solid, ringwoodite. We can tap into this resource with some innovation. Well springs of fresh water arise through vents in the oceanic trenches 5-7 miles deep along the continental shelf and vents between the earth's crust and mantel created by meteor strikes.

For example: Look at this video below insisting melted glaciers created the Great Lakes while the video supplies a topographical sweep of Lake Superior hiding an ancient circular crater from a meteor hit.

Creation of the Great Lakes | How the Earth Was Made (S1, E7) | Full Episode | History
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wztD2yxuyhI

The problem is not lack of resources; the problem is lack of free men to access the resources.