This is a controversial proposal, but the time has come to throw open the suggestion box on this issue. People want Prayer in Schools. But it has to be fair. It has to be fair not only to all students, but to all gods.
If there is to be Prayer in Schools then children must be forced to pray to all gods on an equal-time basis. There shall be a rotating schedule with all feast days honored and observed on a basis of strict and perfect equality, with equal time given to all past or present systems of belief irrespective of whether anyone does now or ever did take a given belief system perfectly seriously. It is, after all, the spirit of the thing that counts. The ancient Greeks - hey, maybe they didn't believe in their wild and capricious gods as literal beings! But they recognized the value of the public spirit of the thing. It is in this sense that religion can still be important to us today.
Children who refuse to pray on religious grounds shall be sent to special detention cells where they will fast and abstain as a special penance - and in extreme cases, be mortified of the flesh. This will serve them as an adequate prayer substitute, and indeed, will allow the little snots the chance to play martyr (which is so obviously what their parents want anyhow right?).
In order to give equal time to those of the Atheist faith, it will be necessary to create an Atheist God to Whom the Atheist allotment of prayers would be addressed. This Atheist God shall have the following dread attributes:
· OmniNonexistence
· OmniKnownothingness
· OmniImpotence
The Atheist God shall be addressed as either:
· Gad,
· Gosh,
· Gol,
...or else simply as "Thine Nothingness," if the adevout wish to avoid invoking any particular dread name.
And I think that's pretty DAMN fair all things considered.
If there is to be Prayer in Schools then children must be forced to pray to all gods on an equal-time basis. There shall be a rotating schedule with all feast days honored and observed on a basis of strict and perfect equality, with equal time given to all past or present systems of belief irrespective of whether anyone does now or ever did take a given belief system perfectly seriously. It is, after all, the spirit of the thing that counts. The ancient Greeks - hey, maybe they didn't believe in their wild and capricious gods as literal beings! But they recognized the value of the public spirit of the thing. It is in this sense that religion can still be important to us today.
Children who refuse to pray on religious grounds shall be sent to special detention cells where they will fast and abstain as a special penance - and in extreme cases, be mortified of the flesh. This will serve them as an adequate prayer substitute, and indeed, will allow the little snots the chance to play martyr (which is so obviously what their parents want anyhow right?).
In order to give equal time to those of the Atheist faith, it will be necessary to create an Atheist God to Whom the Atheist allotment of prayers would be addressed. This Atheist God shall have the following dread attributes:
· OmniNonexistence
· OmniKnownothingness
· OmniImpotence
The Atheist God shall be addressed as either:
· Gad,
· Gosh,
· Gol,
...or else simply as "Thine Nothingness," if the adevout wish to avoid invoking any particular dread name.
And I think that's pretty DAMN fair all things considered.
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