So. Geoff: I gather you don't like the parameters of your debate topic being questioned or you dislike humor.

Oh, well. I don't find the question actually "debatable"

if you mean does it exist whether we acknowledge it or not, then yeah. Ignoring it doesn't undo it.

Glad you limited the parameters on this one to a reasonable field. :)

Geez, Respectable, in HISTORY, huh?

Okay .. Julius "Groucho" Marx because he said "Time flies like a arrow, but fruit flies like a banana." and next would be Dave Barry.

I really respect funny.

So, like reading, it's just too hard, so we'll leave them ignorant. Besides math and gym, what is left to teach without a comprehension of religious doctrine?

I suppose we could touch on English, but we'll have to burn the books and dump literature, Oh, and forget etymology! Ban anything leaning towards linguistics. We can teach science, but none of its history. It is all produced in a vacuum.

This is sad...it is really, really sad. Our kids are being cheated from any true depth or context and therefore, equate education with blandness. At the same time, they're told to treat a flag as if it holds mystic power and it's a "sin" not to cover one's heart, ritualistically, in its presence.

You're confusing teaching with promotion. They are different. Not teaching this is to turn out illiterate graduates.

Rather than think: "The Arab Nations" (who do NOT teach religious doctrine, btw, they mandate a particular belief) Think: "The Cultural Revolution".

There is a vast difference in teaching "Christ is your savior" from teaching "The Christian faith is built around Jesus, whom Christians believe to be the son of God" A subject that would be necessary to teach something like the following:

"It is this issue of the messiah which divides the Middle East. With Jews, Muslims and Christians all being Abrahamiic, they see most things the same before the introductions of Jesus and Mohammad. It is their commonality, in relation to Abraham and Canaan keeping Jews and Palestinians at war. They claim the same land as sacred and as divinely theirs."

I just happen to think that this is pretty important to understand. I don't think we gain a thing by fearing the information will "infect" the kids who'll immediately jump into the aisles and commence "speaking in tongues". Perhaps, they'll be less likey to join cults and the like with a truer view of Religion and it's extremes.

We are treating these issues as if understanding them has mystical power. One example is the stupid CE and BCE replacement for BC and AD; what in the heck do CE and BCE mean? The current era remains determined by the birth of Jesus, no matter what it's called. When kids ask "Well, what defines the current era?" are teachers supposed to answer: "Well, nothing. It is just a random thing and for no reason at all, people decided to re-start the calendar".? For one thing, that's dumb --- for another, it's an outright lie. Rewriting history to align it with what one chooses is something we vilify while doing it. I cannot grasp the reasoning.

I haven't touched on literature and the fact that we'd need to render so many works opaque that we might as well burn them. I don't believe one needs to be a Christian to appreciate Dante's Divine Comedy, and a great deal of Steinbeck's "East of Eden" is lost without the concept of Cain and Abel. "The Brothers Karamazov" deals with religious doctrine and dogma. With Dostoevsky being one of the most influential writers ever, I'm pretty much against trashing his work; I don't see how anyone benefits from it.

Unless we are determined to dispel the study of both history and literature, I don't see how we could effectively teach them without some background in various religious doctrines. Wars were, and still are, fought on the basis of religion; societies were, and are, built on the basis of religion. I don't think ignoring them causes them to go away, nor do I think lack of knowledge will offer more effective understanding of past, present and future events.

There is little to gain through ignorance, and ignorance of religious beliefs and their role in the world around us won't make us enlightened; it will make us uninformed. How is one ever more educated through virtue of knowing less? It's nonsense.

Promotion of a particular religious ideal, however, is an entirely different proposition and it is a mistake to intertwine the two as if they were the same. They are NOT, in even the vaguest sense, the same thing.

Anything involving the RIAA, and/or the MPAA and their crusade against bittorrent.

This is an issue close to the heart of the Digg, TechDirt, TechCrunch and Slashdot communities, which all have very strong opinions on Intellectual Property laws and the manner in which the two ...AA's interpret them. Where those communities go, others follow.

After all, one of the biggest Digg memes right now is "FK the RiAA".

The Office of Homeland Security --- "Voyeurs for Democracy" Division?