Gillespie

I am not religious and hold agnostic beliefs. However, I believe that the punishment was justified.

"...the school had the right to discipline him on the grounds of using foul language and promoting “negative stereotyping that degrades or flagrantly demeans any individual or group by negatively referring to religion."

The website publishing this story is skewed towards humanistic (non-religious) beliefs, so the story is biased (the final paragraph ruins the disguise of this "news article" and reveals it to be nothing more than anti-religious propaganda). The dissenting opinions of his presentation are given generalized description, and the specific quotes are portrayed in a manner that leads a reader towards the "bible-thumping, irrational redneck" stereotype.

This entire paragraph destroyed any credibility of the article for me:

"...But it’s hard to believe school officials that the act of ripping the Bible had nothing to do with his punishment. Imagine a student tearing copies of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and calling evolutionists “simple-minded ignoramuses.” The student would receive no more than an afternoon of detention, if that. And to believe that today’s high schoolers never use inappropriate language--even slipping in an occasional curse word in a class presentation--is naïve. If Campbell’s interpretation of his presentation is accurate, none of his comments should have been perceived as threatening..."

I'm sorry... is this a news article, or an opinion piece? I hate when opinions are presented in the form of "fact". This entire paragraph is full of nonsense. Because something is "naïve" it must not be punished? I guess because we know that people sell drugs we shouldn't punish them for doing it? Because we know students get into fistfights we shouldn't punish them for doing so? Campbell's "interpretation" of his presentation cannot be accurate, because his entire presentation is a elucidation of his beliefs! Of course he'd not think his comments were "threatening".

The example of "tearing up Charles Darwin's" text is not remotely on the same level as tearing apart a Bible... but does not really matter, as it is not the issue that the student was suspended for. He was suspended for insulting practitioners of a religion "simple-minded idiots". The latter part of his presentation was full of emotion and unsubstantiated remarks. He stopped presenting his religious beliefs and began slamming other students for their beliefs.

Unfortunately, the article attempts to skew the entire incident towards "the student was suspended for tearing up a Bible".

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El_Gringo_Grande

The problem with this whole thing is there is no context.

Are shocking demonstrations like this normal at this school? Does this teacher encourage demonstrations of this kind on a regular bases. Has there been rants against other establishments? Has a supporter of a religion ever attacked secular ways and not been punished?

Now if the answer to one or more of the above questions is "yes" then the article has some merit.

If this is a pretty strict school that accepts no outbursts of any kind then the article is rubbish. (Maybe you could make a point about the school restricting the expansion of students thinking but that is about as far as you can go.)

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Buck Fush

I do believe that the boy was suspended for what the administration deemed violent behavior and not as a direct result of ripping up the bible. A lot of what he said was intended to be insulting and inflammatory and while I agree with most of it, I disagree with the presentation.


How about history? Is that considered "proof"?

"Hampered" may have been a better word to use than "Halted", but Christianity IS the pursuit of ignorance. There are MANY examples in history of scientific evidence being labeled as blasphemy. How about the book burnings? We lost a lot of knowledge there.

Switch

So what exactly was he punished for? I don't really follow the reason for punishment.

Some people were offended that he disparaged their holy book, so he should be punished? Government should not be recognizing any books as 'holy' Holy is a completely subjective view held by the religious follower.

I think this goes to show how religion influences the public and legal venue -- specifically how disparaging the dominant religion unfairly and illegally causes civil consequences.

If other people in his school form a bad opinion of him, thats fine -- but its not the place of the school (a government entity) to say that he should be punished for presenting a mildly inflammatory (yet honest) opinion that offends others. He did not commit any offensive action and made no threats. He is being discriminated against for holding the least favorable religious belief (and the most discriminated against religious belief) of agnosticism or atheism.

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ScratchMonkey

I'm an atheist, and I think this oversimplifies the situation. The Catholic Church was one of the big centers of scientific inquiry even in the time of Galileo. (He got busted mostly because he was as rude as the kid in the linked story.)

What's important to recognize is that Christianity doesn't "embrace ignorance"; rather, it doesn't embrace empiricism. It chooses to accept other means to knowledge as equally acceptable, and hence arrives at belief in things that evade empiric testing.

You have to be careful in arguing in this environment not to underestimate the intelligence of the religious. You can quickly run afoul in the quagmire of philosophy enshrouding non-empirical epistemology.

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Switch

You're giving too much credit to organized religion.

In the past they were the central distribution point for 'common knowledge' and they made every effort to control what was being put into their constituents/followers/parishioners heads. On numerous documented occasions, organized religions have sought to punish, imprison, kill, silence, exile, disparage, and otherwise harm anyone and anything that provided contrary opinions/beliefs, or anyone that espoused the process of self discovery and thought outside of a hierarchical system of church tells you --> you believe.

That said, just because the greater system may have had its own agenda contrary to being honest to its followers, there are countless individuals who belonged to churches and religious groups that acted in good faith (literally and figuratively) to provide insight for their religious dogma through reason and conjecture as a supplement to biblical texts. Many Christian scientists have departed from the status quo party line when making discoveries or observations -- unfortunately they were often shunned from their respective organizations for doing so.

Religious parties are like political parties.... they pander to the masses for support, but are very careful about what kind of input they provide and how much free thinking they're willing to allow the common folk to do.

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That noob who crashed the chopper.
That noob who ran over the mine.
That noob who TK'd me with a sniper rifle.
That noob who hit that APC at 300m with light AT! Our APC...

Gillespie

Nah. He stood up in front of a class and gave a presentation that amounted to: "Christianity sucks. Come join my religion right now. If you don't, you're an idiot. If you believe anything else but my beliefs, you're an idiot."

His presentation is mild discrimination at its core (at least the final part of his presentation was). If he had given the presentation saying "why I don't believe in God/Christianity" and left it at that, he'd have been cool. However, he veered into the "you're an idiot for not believing what I say, so you suck" territory.

Also, agnosticism/atheism aren't religions. One is a neutral stance that neither accepts/denies the existence of a God, and the other flat-out denies the existence of a God. They deal with the concept of religion, but are belief systems that reject the idea.

Personally, of the two beliefs, agnosticism is the more logical of the two. Atheism seems nothing more than anti-establishment teen angst in its flat-out refusal to accept any possibilities of the reality of "faith". Atheists are - in effect - as bad as fundamentalist Christians in their mutual possession of extreme close-mindedness.

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MagnaCentipede

Agnosticism is not neutral. It says that humans are of and can know only the material world; it's not a matter of choosing to not accept or deny God, but a matter of being incapable of accepting or denying the existence of anything outside the material world.

Appearing neutral and neither accepting or denying is a symptom of Agnosticism, not Agnosticism itself.

And yes, Atheism is just as self-blinding as any other theistic religion.

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Gillespie

Excellent definition, and thank you for the clarification of a belief system that I share.

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Razcsak

Not necessarily. If one operates under the assumption that deities don't exist as there is no empirical evidence for them to do so, one could call oneself an atheist and still be open to the existence of deities should evidence for them surface.

Saying that "there are absolutely no gods ever and nothing will convince me otherwise" is blinding, yes.

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Kerostasis

There's actually a lot of different but slightly similar belief systems that fall under the category of agnostic/atheist. Sordavie did a good job of describing them in that Religious Survey thread a few threads down. But since I dont feel like linking, at the very least there's "I can not know if there is a God", "I do not know if there is a God", and "I'm pretty well convinced that there isn't a God". That's 3 different fundamentally different beliefs right there, and we only have 2 readily available words to describe them.

Magna Centipede's definition fits the "I cannot know" category of Agnostic. But there's also some Agnostics who are better described by "I do not know", although I don't know if they self-identify as Agnostics or prefer some other term.

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MagnaCentipede

"If one operates under the assumption..."

Operating under an assuption is only acceptable in dire emergencies, such as when you are engulfed in flame or being attacked by rabid wolves.

"that deities don't exist as there is no empirical evidence for them to do so, one could call oneself an atheist and still be open to the existence of deities should evidence for them surface."

One can self-reference as the wizard of Oz, that doesn't mean it's true. Atheism precludes being open to a diety because a- means without, -the- means diety, and -ism means order of belief. Entertainment of a potential of a diety punts you out of atheism.

This is the same crap we get from "vegetarians" who make up seventeen malformed words to describe various levels of non-vegetarian foods they tell themselves it's okay to have as long as they're annoyingly strict about other foods.

That "I do not know if there is a God" and "I'm pretty well convinced that there isn't a God" lack handy -ism words is unimportant. There's no shame in admitting that there are things you don't know; the whole of human advancement has been built on a monkey recognising he didn't know something and choosing to try to figure it out. If you must, make up a couple words like the vegetarians do. Ascientheism and Theodubitism or something. If nothing else, they're made of longness and latin so you'll sound really smart when you throw them around. Until someone Googles the words and they lead back to this post.

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Gillespie

On a random note, "Theodubitism" is a fairly-interesting FPS handle. ;P

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Razcsak

I assume I'm not about to be devoured by a giant trans-dimensional worm at any point in the near future. Likewise, I assume that a non-magnetic ball released from my hand will fall to the ground. You assume everything you see is as you see it. Assumptions are required for existence.

I can safely say that I believe that there is no god at this point in time. That doesn't mean that I am going to be so arrogant as to say that I know that a deity cannot exist under any circumstances. I don't believe you will ever find somebody who would state that they would refuse to believe in the existence of a god even when presented with incontrovertible proof. If you do, well, congratulations. You've found a purely delusional person. To argue that I am agnostic because I entertain the potential fact that a god could in fact exist is silly. Its like saying I don't believe in gravity because I entertain the idea that, in theory, what we see as gravity could be caused by invisible beings pushing everything together in a grand conspiracy to trick humanity. Its not likely, (to say the least) but it is possible.

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[tR]Greasy_mullet

If its his property then he has a right to do what he wants. Now if it was NOT his property then there would be a serious issue.

I am a follower of Christ and while what he did certainly offends me, I would fight and die for his right to do it.