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REPLY #89 TO
"RELIGION" NOTE: This is an answer to some religious spam that I (along with several dozen others according to the message header) recently received in my e-mail. I have normally just deleted these, but have since come to welcome the opportunity to present rebuttals to their contents. As always, I'd like to hear any and all reader's comments on this one: (R) Subject: Fw: I agree I agree, how bout you? Mary had a little lamb, His fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went, The Lamb was sure to go. He followed her to school each day, T'wasn't even in the rule. It made the children laugh and play, To have a Lamb at school. And then the rules all changed one day, illegal it became; To bring the Lamb of God to school, Or even speak His Name. Every day got worse and worse, And days turned into years. Instead of hearing children laugh, We heard gun shots and tears. What must we do to stop the crime, That's in our schools today? Let's let the Lamb come back to school, And teach our kids to pray! If you agree, please pass it on. (MB) Before too many people start thoughtlessly jumping on this bandwagon, I'd like to remind them that we didn't start to hear about school shootings until nearly 35 years *after* the Supreme Court case that made it illegal to force Jesus upon school children in public schools. If people are going to try to link the two together, this huge time lag must be explained. Furthermore, if the absence of Jesus in public schools leads to shootings and violence, why do we never hear of a *Jewish* school in this country that suffers from those acts? For that matter, why are there no such shootings in non-Christian nations? Finally, somebody is going to have to explain last year's massacre in a Baptist Church in Texas if they are going to claim that the presence of Jesus would prevent such things. There is one cause and one cause only for the recent spate of school violence -- inadequate parental guidance that doesn't teach kids (regardless of their religious belief or non-belief) the sort of discipline that understands that violence against others is simply not acceptable. More anti-gun laws are not the answer, nor is enforced religion the answer. Most who tout the "Ten Commandments" as the ultimate solution don't even realize that there are three different sets given in the Bible. Why not post something like "The Affirmations of Humanism" instead? In fact, non-religious belief systems such as Secular Humanism would be better as an instructional tool for building morality and thinking patterns built around reason rather than dogma. And, if religion is supposed to solve the problem, there would be many superior choices to Christianity (Buddhism would probably be the best). Bottom line, folks, is that we need to apply our brains rather than our Bibles to the problem. Does anybody really think that any amount of enforced religion would have kept that 6-year old kid from shooting his classmate the other day?
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