No Subject

[Douglas <dougwils@moscow.com>]

Dear visionaries,

I was gone for just one day and missed a bunch of interesting
stuff.

1. John Harrell's point about atheism was a good one, although I would
have preferred the phrase "dogmatic agnosticism," which amounts
to the same thing. God's existence may not be explicitly denied, but the
children are taught by precept and example that if He exists, that
existence is irrelevant to what we are doing here in this
classroom.

2. The fact that some kids still graduate as Christians, Buddhists,
skateboarders, whatever, is beside the point. The thing that virtually
all of them have still come to share is that one's "religious"
beliefs are a sort of condiment to be added to the neutral porridge of
the "facts," which everyone agrees on. The condiments are to be
added, flavoring to each one's choice, in the privacy of one's own
head.

3. But public "religion" (ultimate corporate commitments) is
still a necessity. So whenever we do anything all together, the question
that we should always raise is this: by what standard? To use a
modern phrase to describe what is going on here, the Enlightenment has
provided virtually everyone with a "plausibility structure,"
within which most of us function. This includes the vast majority of
those Christians who are still functioning within the government school
structure. But in this discussion, we are talking about the porridge, and
our respondents are talking about the condiments.

4. And this ubiquitous plausibility structure makes it difficult for
respondents to understand Doug Jones point about coercion. We are not
talking about fees to make the fire trucks go, or funding for the
asphalt. We are talking about a totalizing world and life view that is
funded from the public treasury. America's government schools are her
established religion. Having one is a necessity, which I do not begrudge
it in itself. All societies have an established religion. But I do object
to the stubborn refusal of modern Americans to admit that this is what
they are doing. And of course, I object to the fact that when they
established a religion, they picked the wrong one. But I do the same
thing I would do as a Christian in Saudi Arabia, which is get along as
best I can.

5. And last, I wanted to reiterate a point that I do not believe anyone
has responded to yet. We are discussing/debating here in this
forum. But the context of our debate is the fact the ultimate nature of
these world view commitments became obvious to many Christians about
twenty years ago. The ramifications of the decisions they made then are
just now becoming obvious in a practical and budgetary way in the
Moscow School Destruct. But the theological foundation of all this
appears to be impossible for Enlightenment apologists to comprehend. And
this makes it hard for you to engage -- your ultimate religion (the
porridge, not the condiments) is apparent to your competitors, but not to
yourselves.

6. I really appreciate the opportunity to have this discussion.