Atheists protest prayer at School Board meeting

[CJ-Canadian]

http://www.newschief.com/article/2011042...rd-meeting




BARTOW - About 30 atheists attended the Polk School Board meeting to express their opposition to board members saying a prayer.

They called it a form of bullying and said the board members shouldn't be praying at the meetings since they are being paid with taxpayers' money.

[GassyKitten]

Bravo! If a School Board want's prayer, let them be a Parochial School Board, so as to make it official. If any member of the public government funded School Board feels a need to pray they can do it quietly, instead of making it a big official mockery of the separation of church and State.

Don't pray in our schools and we won't think in your church!

[Green]

This is just sad. People shouldn't have to have basic social conventions explained to them like this. How would they feel if a group of Jews wanted to have prayer or Muslims? They'd probably deny them and continue on with their christian bullshit. I'm in a really bad mood lately, hahaha...

[ashley.hunt60]

They think they are entitled to special rights. Just because the Christian majority has pushed around and dominated other religious minorities for too long doesn't mean they somehow get special rights.

[Tim_Kiebooms]

(30-04-2011 08:42 AM)ashley.hunt60 Wrote:  They think they are entitled to special rights. Just because the Christian majority has pushed around and dominated other religious minorities for too long doesn't mean they somehow get special rights.

This is a clear example of the dark side of democracy (not that i'm against it). The majority always wins, even if they're a bunch of deluded fools.

It's a good thing that atheists come up for themselves, cause by keeping quiet the situation would only get worse.

[GassyKitten]

I think what prompts this kind of thing, besides tradition, is an intense desire to fend off the push for secularism. I met someone on a website not long ago who claimed, as a Fundy Christian, that there was a war going on to stop the mission of secularism from wiping Christianity out of America.

He saw laws, news reports, basically that what's described in the OP as evidence of the mission to outlaw his faith.

So I think when Televangelists especially, like Hagee of Texas and others of his zeal, start a campaign to encourage his flock to fight what is perceived as that same mission, then what's traditionally happened among Public school boards is heightened as if there's a new war going on to halt freedom of religion by setting limits to where religion can be shoved down peoples throats.

It's like that old axiom about give an inch they'll take a mile. Zealous Christians believe they're the only faith on earth who have a god given right to every mile on the planet. And anyone that says otherwise are of the devil, secularists, members of the secular religion, (yeah, let that one sink in for a second!) Communists, or atheists.

It's like the modern day Crusaders! Wherever the symbol of the cross leads, no enemy can withstand the will of god. And why some government funded public school boards actually dare to have a Christian flag mounted in the room at the time of their meeting! The intention being quite clear. America is a Christian nation. Not that there aren't Fundies who already know that. And the rest of us are just of the Devil disputing the fact.

[hotrodmike]

Nice to see that school board is run by people who can't discern between fact and fiction, as evidenced by their unquestioning belief in something that flies in the face of all known science, historical evidence, and just plain logic.

Let's hope they apply a higher standard for reaching an objective conclusion by weighing all the evidence available using scientific methods and reason to the students in their schools than they impose upon themselves when it comes to believing that Jesus listens to their prayers.