Pastor Len,
Your faith is far too rational for me. I prefer something far more pie in the sky, such as an invisible supernatural creature who watches us go to the toilet, knows every last thought we have and judges us on them. I need to believe in a creature that made every last particle that swirls in the universe, that created endomorphism and raindrops and bacteriophages, and depression and murder and rape and constipation… I want to have faith in a creator that plays with his creation like a demented dog with a lizard, tormenting things till they break. Then, after setting all sorts of impossible tests, this monster will choose some to fly up to an invisible place in the ether where they’ll play harps and sing praises to it for ever and ever... while the others go down to another invisible place and be plunged into boiling oil or something like that for ever and ever…. Now that’s something worth believing in.
Do you see how your spaghetti monster is far too simplistic to ever dispossess a vengeful superman/woman/beast such as the nameless thing Christians kneel before and abase themselves to?
Mjpb -- as for Christianity espousing the values of compassion etc. get real... how do you think humans lived for the 150,000 years before your nameless super hero was invented? Morality has nothing whatever to do with any religion. Religions are always the handmaidens of power hungry, despotic rulers. They always have been and always will be

mjpb,

It was not only the Brother's and some teachers with this view. I did have it hard by fellow students who, due to what their parents told them, I was from an evil family because of divorce. A divorce which the late. Pope John Paul II recognised due to the circumstances.

When my eldest child spent one year in a Catholic Primary School(PreSchool), the staff were fantastic. The Principal asked me to attend a meeting with him which some parents called. At this meetings, a good sized group of these Catholic mums demanded that only children from homes where both parents live together and married be allowed into the school because broken families are evil. The year being, 2002.

ybgirp...

"Christians are not taught to think"....?
clearly you know little about Christian philosophical apologetics.

TurnRightTurnLeft (from the other thread)

Chaplains would not be their to teach creationism per se, but they would surely be able to provide answers to children who enquire about what the Christian teaching on 'origns' is ? Fair question.. fair answer. They don't have to ram it down their throats for goodness sake.

But there is an alternative to paid chaplains, and its already happening. 'MENTORING'. Many caring Christians are offering 1 hour a week to disadvantaged children (fractured families etc) at schools, to give them quality one on one "TIME". Its just for the child, and its aimed at helping their self esteem and confidence. How is this going? Well if you can imagine a child suddenly morphing into a cruise missile aimed directly at the Mentor when they arrive, flashing across the playground, and latching onto the mentor like an infant 'Alien' (as per the movie),...that gives you an idea. They do activities and sport, and its always on school grounds. Each Mentor has a police check and are vetted prior to acceptance into the program.
We have a lady from our fellowship already working as a Chaplain at the local primary school, and we fund it partly ourselves. The school is wrapped... and the kids love it. (oops..did I say LADY?)

The government idea is agreeable to me in principle. But like any government sponsored idea, or any 'organized' religious effort, it can be prone to corruption and abuse such as Spider intimated from his own life experience.

I got abused by a teacher also, he used to grab my cheek and shakeeeeeeee my whole head when I got maths wrong :) Then there was 'QuickDrawMcGraw' who could whip his strap out and whack me in one movement.

If it goes ahead, I think the best we can say is it will have a mixed outcome. Some wins and some losses.

Spider. Wow that is just unbelieveable. Question I would have to ask is what happened, did you say anything, was the majority against it?

Jolanda,

This school Principal knew my spiritual beliefs as did a number of the parents at the school after my wife was in the local paper after she was refused entry into a Brisbane City Council bus because she was wearing a Pentacle. This Principal was a good bloke and level headed.

This meeting which he asked me to accompany him to was a whole group demanding this. I sat there thinking...this rubbish is still happening...this Principal sat there quietly listening the whole way. When he spoke, he advised them that one third to half of the students at the school is from a broken family, and that one doing what they wanted, he asked these mums where they were going to get the new students from or half of the school staff would have to be retrenched.

I don't think these mum's heard anything past the figure of how many of the children came from broken homes. He had refused many demands from mums and became unpopular with him but he ran the ship and kept it that way.

I don’t care what religionists do in the PRIVICY of their own homes. Obviously to me its wierd and unnatural (im a normal Aussie), but hey, we live in a free world, and if they want to do their DEVIATE BELIEF THING behind clozed doors, thats their business. Theres a religionist bloke at work he's got a fish on his car that says DARWIN. I treat him the same like all teh other blokes.

But its a diffrent matter when they do it in public. These people want to PARADE THEIR BELIEVS on the street! They expect me to be happy that their lifestyle gets political representation, SPECIAL RIGHTS and government subsidies. Well, I’m not. ANd it isnt.

And the lastest is they want the government to pay for them to spread their lifestyle choises to our children. In our PUBLIC SCOOLS! With MY tax dollars! Now that, friends, is going too far.

I propose we all send a message to the government that our tax dollars are not to be used for the promotion of MINORITY LIFESTYLE CHOICES. We have to withhold 10% of our taxes, until the government comes to its census and stops subsidising lifestyles which we don’t endorse to.

Act against this THREAT to our way of life. Fight teh promotion of RELIGIONIST lifestyle. Time is runing out. Start NOW.