You Can Now Get Months in the Pokey For Forcing Prayer in School

I found this article in the Wasthington Post:

Students, teachers and local pastors are protesting over a court case involving a northern Florida school principal and an athletic director who are facing criminal charges and up to six months in jail over their offer of a mealtime prayer.

I guess this is not the first time the school and or district has done something like this:

An ACLU official said the school district has allowed "flagrant" violations
of the First Amendment for years.

"The defendants all admitted wrongdoing," said Daniel Mach, director of litigation for its freedom of religion program. "For example, the Pace High School teachers handbook asks teachers to 'embrace every opportunity to inculcate, by precept and example, the practice of every Christian virtue.' "

The fight involving the ACLU, the school district and several devout Christian employees began last August when the ACLU sued Santa Rosa County Schools on behalf of two students who had complained privately to the group's Florida affiliate, claiming some teachers and administrators were allowing prayers at school events such as graduations, orchestrating separate religiously themed graduation services, and "proselytizing" students during class and after school.

In January, the Santa Rosa County School District settled out of court with the ACLU, agreeing to several things, including a provision to bar all school employees from promoting or sponsoring prayers during school-sponsored events; holding school events at church venues when a secular alternative was available; or promoting their religious beliefs or attempting to convert students in class or during school-sponsored events.

Well its pretty clear that the school and the district are clearly thumbing their noses at the settlement that they preciously reached with the ACLU and I’m not sure what the laws are in Florida but I would imagine that school led prayer (in class or at school functions) is not allowed. I think both the Principal and Athletic director clearly broke the law and should definitely be fired and the school should possibly even be fined but that being said six months in prison seems to be a bit ridiculous, especially when the same state just gave a man 30 days for man slaughter while driving under the influence.

Oxymoron?

I had to chuckle at this one…A reader at unreasonablefaith.com recently saw and advertisement for the Creation Museum while watching the Science Channel.

I'm sure this is the result of some bean counter not really paying attention to the commercials subject matter or just an Ad exec who has a good sense of humor.

Ahhhhhhh! He Has A Banana!

I know this will be keeping me up at nights!

Well not really... What the video fails to mention is that the banana he is holding has been genetically engineered over the last few hundred years through selective breading to become the delightful fruit it is today, in reality a wild banana really looks like this.

It looks like man was the creator of this the perfect fruit.

Happy April Fools Day!

For those of you who may not know April Fools Day has become one of the few widely known Atheist hollidays. It all started with a story (which turned out to be not ture) about a judge in Florida.

In Florida , an atheist created a case against the upcoming Easter and Passover Holy days. He hired an attorney to bring a discrimination case against Christians, Jews and observances of their holy days. The argument was that it was unfair that atheists had no such recognized days.

The case was brought before a judge. After listening to the passionate presentation by the lawyer, the judge banged his gavel declaring," Case dismissed!"

The lawyer immediately stood objecting to the ruling saying, "Your honor, how can you possibly dismiss this case? The Christians have Christmas, Easter and others. The Jews have Passover, Yom Kippur and Hanukkah, yet my Client and all other atheists have no such holidays."

The judge leaned forward in his chair saying, "But you do. Your client, counsel, is woefully ignorant."

The lawyer said, "Your Honor, we are unaware of any special observance or holiday for atheists."

The judge said, "The calendar says April 1st is April Fools Day. Psalm 14:1 states, 'The fool says in his heart, there is no God.' Thus, it is the opinion of this court, that if your client says there is no God, then he is a fool. Therefore, April 1st is his day. Court is adjourned."

The joke was originally told by Christians but Atheist just took it and ran with it. So happy April Fools Day everyone! Go out and celebrate your fools heart!

Quote of the week!

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."

Seneca the Younger

Representative Thomson explains why he wanted to Ban Dawkins from speaking at OU.

Drum roll please….

“I am trying to promote freethinking,” said Thomsen when asked about the resolution.“I strongly oppose the Department of Zoology for their unwillingness to lead our state in this discussion and not have opposing views in this matter.”

I’m scratching my head on this one…he wants to promote freethinking by censoring who can and cannot speak at the University…hmmmm does something sound odd about that to you?

I’m also not exactly sure what Representative Thomson would like for Oklahoma University’s Zoology department to do. Are they suppose to ignore all of the evidence that has been collected for the past 15 decades that supports evolution and start to make arguments of ID for the sole reason of having opposing view even if there is no scientific evidence to support it?

There is a very g00d article about this in the Oklahoma Daily.

Religion in Decline in the US?

Well atleast according to this article from Fox News:

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

We are growing!