The Day they Kicked God out of Schools

[Rev. Rye]

Here's an old video from the AFA. It's an oldie, but good for a dissection.

Dear God:
Why didn’t you save the school children at: Moses Lake , Washington; Bethel , Alaska; Pearl , Mississippi; West Paducah, Kentucky; Stamps, Arkansas; Jonesboro, Arkansas; Edinborough, Pennsylvania; Fayetteville, Tennessee; Springfield, Oregon; Richmond, Virginia; Littleton, Colorado; Taber, Alberta, Canada; Conyers, Georgia; Deming, New Mexico; Fort Gibson, Oklahoma; Santee, California; El Cajon, California; Blacksburg, Virginia?

Concerned Student

Dear Concerned Student:
I am not allowed in schools.
Sincerely, God

I've heard this thing before: I even remember reading it on Snopes. Of course, isn't God supposed to be omnipresent? If this is true, shouldn't any edict against him be pointless to enforce? But it doesn't end here. This is only the start:

How did this get started?...
Let's see, I think it started when Madeline Murray O'Hair complained she didn't want any prayer in our schools.
And we said, OK..

Because singling people out for not believing in Jehovah is the only thing keeping society from reverting to a state of Bellum omnium contra omnes, even if it is in direct defiance of the first amendment.
And, for that matter, contrary to popular belief, prayer is allowed in schools as long as the faculty isn't leading prayers and the students' prayers aren't disrupting class.

Then, someone said you better not read the Bible in school, the Bible that says "thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbors as yourself,"
And we said, OK...

After all, it's not like there's other things that can teach those particular values, and it's not like parents who believe that their children's upbringing hinges upon prayer and reading the Bible still have the option of doing so at home with no legal repercussions whatsoever unless they turn out to be harming their kids, oh wait, yes they can.

Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children when they misbehaved because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem.
And we said,
an expert should know what he's talking about so we won't spank them anymore..

In the interest of fairness, I have included a quote from Dr. Spock's last book about this old canard.

The Permissive Label: A couple weeks after my indictment [for 'conspiracy to counsel, aid and abet resistance to the military draft'], I was accused by Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, a well-known New York clergyman and author who supported the Vietnam War, of corrupting an entire generation. In a sermon widely reported in the press, Reverend Peale blamed me for all the lack of patriotism, lack of responsibility, and lack of discipline of the young people who opposed the war. All these failings, he said, were due to my having told their parents to give them "instant gratification" as babies. I was showered with blame in dozens of editorials and columns from primarily conservative newspapers all over the country heartily agreeing with Peale's assertions. Many parents have since stopped me on the street or in airports to thank me for helping them to raise fine children, and they've often added, "I don't see any instant gratification in Baby and Child Care" I answer that they're right--I've always advised parents to give their children firm, clear leadership and to ask for cooperation and politeness in return. On the other hand I've also received letters from conservative mothers saying, in effect, "Thank God I've never used your horrible book. That's why my children take baths, wear clean clothes and get good grades in school." Since I received the first accusation twenty-two years after Baby and Child Care was originally published--and since those who write about how harmful my book is invariably assure me they've never used it--I think it's clear that the hostility is to my politics rather than my pediatric advice. And though I've been denying the accusation for twenty-five years, one of the first questions I get from many reporters and interviewers is, "Doctor Spock, are you still permissive?" You can't catch up with a false accusation.

Back to the video, there's another thread entirely about the subject of violence on kids, but the current wisdom is that keeping the punishment psychological is best on the condition that it is applied consistently.

Then someone said teachers and principals better not discipline our children when they misbehave And the school administrators said no faculty member in this school better touch a student when they misbehave because we don't want any bad publicity,
and we surely don't want to be sued.
And we accepted their reasoning...

And, seriously, discipline isn't just physical. If memory serves, most schools still do detentions to punish unruly kids, and it tends to work better than just beating them to a bloody pulp, and, what's more, it doesn't give the kids a legitimate reason to hate you years later, when they're in prison.

Then someone said, let's let our daughters have abortions if they want, and they won't even have to tell their parents.
And we said, that's a grand idea..
Then some wise school board member said, since boys will be boys and they're going to do it anyway, let's give our sons all the condoms they want, so they can have all the fun they desire, and we won't have to tell their parents they got them at school.
And we said, that's another great idea...

Conservatives miss the point here. The point of handing condoms out in school and doing away with parenal consent laws about abortion is not to encourage sex, but to ensure that few teens have their lives ruined by an unwanted pregnancy or, to a lesser extent, an STD.

Then some of our top elected officials said it doesn't matter what we do in private as long as we do our jobs.
And we said, it doesn't matter what anybody, including the President, does in private as long as we have jobs and the economy is good....

This reminds me of the old story about Lincoln. Somebody wrote to him telling him that, since Grant was a notorious drunk, he should be sacked from his job of fighting the Confederacy. Lincoln's response was to ask around for Grant's favorite brand of drink so he could give it to his generals. Of course, they're not talking about General Grant, no, they're talking about Ex-President Clittin'. I mean, seriously, if I were married to a woman like Hillary, I'd bang any aide I could find, too. I can't help but think of any of the many other examples of Republican sex scandals. Take your pick of your favourite one, and insert it here.

And someone else took that appreciation a step further and published pictures of nude children and then stepped further still by making them available on the Internet.
And we said, everyone's entitled to free speech....

WHEN? When the fuck did this happen? I really want to know!

And the entertainment industry said, let's make TV shows and movies that promote profanity, violence and illicit sex.. And let's record music that encourages rape, drugs, murder, suicide, and satanic themes...
And we said,
it's just entertainment and it has no adverse effect and nobody takes it seriously anyway, so go right ahead.

To quote Mike Judge: "I don't think the government should come in and say that all books, movies, and so on should be kid-friendly. You've got to have stuff for adults—you can't have the whole country watching Barney. Once you make that distinction, you can't go blame the person who made this stuff that's for grown-ups, because "My kid saw it and it's your fault." That's kind of ridiculous."
Oh, and, P.S., all those things he said that modern media "promotes," seem to run rampant throughout the Bible.
Rape: Genesis 34. David Plotz's The Good Book opens with a story of the author's rediscovery of this particular chapter.
Drugs: You read Revelation and try to imagine John of Patmos writing something like that sober, and certainly in the days before anybody could have the works of people like David Lynch, Frank Zappa, William S. Burroughs, Dusan Makavejev, and Captain Beefheart (among many others) at their fingertips.
Profanity: Well, the King James Version of the Bible talks about "piss" and "teats," but that's just the way people talked in 1611.
Murder/Violence: Here's a post which talks about all the times that God personally kills people in the Bible. Judging by this, God must have as much blood on his hands as Adolf Hitler, if the Bible is to be believed.
Suicide: The book of 1 Samuel culminates in the king of Israel's suicide.
Satanic Themes: To take a quote from EntertheJabberwock's dissection of "Moving on Up,":

They never once stop to take a good critical look at the Bible and analyze it from the perspective of real morality. A moral God wouldn’t hand out infinite punishments. A moral God wouldn’t condemn people to such infinite punishments simply by virtue of being born a human. A moral God wouldn’t arbitrarily restrict the minds of the first two people he creates so that they aren’t aware of good and bad, and then become infuriated with them when they disobey him and become no longer retarded. A moral God wouldn’t ask a man to kill his son for no reason, and then stop him at the last minute “as a test”. A moral God wouldn’t completely destroy a man’s life and family just to prove a point to Satan. In fact, I can’t think of a single instance in which God demonstrates that he’s actually good. At least, without being a total asshole shortly afterward. It seems to me the real villain of the Bible… is God.

Oh, and here's the end:

Now we're asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don't know right from wrong, and why it doesn't bother them to kill strangers, classmates or even themselves.
Undoubtedly, if we thought about it long and hard enough, we could figure it out. I'm sure it has a great deal to do with...
"WE REAP WHAT WE SOW,"

Spider Jerusalem said it better:
Why are your kids selling themselves on the streets? Because you completely fucked up the job of raising them.
Don't you see? The problem is not because of the fact that society evolves, or even the fact that the Bible isn't promoted in schools. It's just that parents just don't give a fuck.

[Minimalist]

Dear Concerned Student:
I am not allowed in schools.
Sincerely, God

Some "god."

Sounds like a whiny cunt.

[Justtristo]

Dear Concerned Student:
I am not allowed in schools.
Sincerely, God

Some "god."

Sounds like a whiny cunt.

God has certainly passed his prime, when he was destroying nearly all land life through drowning them or sending ten awful plagues on the people of Egypt. He nowadays just wants (in the form of his 'son' Jesus) to appear on pieces of food.

[The Grand Nudger]

Not true, it's rumored that he fixes professional sporting events. I suspect that he's a compulsive gambler.