On School Prayer and the Pledge

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Very well said.

Never having been religious nor understanding why anybody capable of independent thinking about the many clear internal contradictions in religion can remain religious, prayer has always remained one of the outstanding mysteries to me as a religious activity. I assume it involves some deep personal belief that it somehow puts a person in direct contact with their personal deity. Rote recitation of a verbal formula certainly cannot do that, especially for children with no understanding of even the words or their implications in the formula. It's not just the meaninglessness of the silly ceremony that puzzles me but the conception that it has some sort of real effect on a child who has no tradition in the matter or can comprehend what the process is about. On the times in school as a child that I went through the process I never understood why God had anything to do, in The Lord's Prayer, with eating bread. I still don't.

Some prayers can serve to increase one's mental focus or dispel panic.

I like this one and use it when I need to:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.


It comes from the novel -Dune- by Frank Herbert

ruveyn

Bread is often used in a more generic sense in the Bible, to mean food in general. The line "give us this day our daily bread" in the Lord's prayer is a request for enough to eat that day.

That is not in question. What strikes me as peculiar is the lack of consideration as to the implication that one must not only be grateful to God as the giver of food but that if that responsibility is His, then the responsibility for withholding must be also His and the multitudes of poor starving totally blameless people who have been in the world since history began are also His responsibility.
That is a pretty heavy burden to lay on a deity.

I think this daily farce in the UK was a major factor in putting me off Christianity. We all had to sing hymns praising the Lord / God / Jesus and go through the motions of saying a quiet prayer and the Lords prayer out loud. Anyone who objected or who didn't sing got sent to the headmasters office for a thrashing with his cane. Jesus is love - WHACK! Christianity sucks. It has no place in schools.

Yup, that's the case here in the UK too - some Christians feel they're being 'persecuted' if other religions are given any rights.

They will happily lie about this, too. I mean, a simple example is that every Christmas here, there are stories in circulation about some council or other 'banning' Christmas, or forcing it to be given some generic non-religious name. A quick look at Snopes reveals that the vast majority of these stories are apocryphal, and the vanishingly few true cases are not down to people of other faiths at all, but some council jobsworth interpreting the rules too strictly. A quick look around the average British multi-faith community reveals that the majority of Hindus, Muslims, Jews etc. (and indeed, this pagan) are perfectly happy with Christmas and wouldn't dream of trying to ban it. Yet to hear some Christians talk, you'd think everyone else was deliberately ganging up on them. At least one rentaquote organization that turns up in the tabloids at every possible opportunity, Christian Voice, is open about wanting all other religions banned if they had their way (as well as a number of charming legal reforms such as, for example, reinstating a man's right to rape his wife).

Don't get me wrong, I deplore real persecution of the followers of any religion. But bearing in mind that Christians really are still being seriously persecuted (as in, deprived of livelihood, freedom, and in some cases their lives) in parts of the world (like India, I gather), my response would be 'Get a sense of priorities, guys'.

Growing up, I never really had no inkling of why we had to pray or what we were praying about every morning when I'd come to school. I just saw it as something "patriotic". I was sort of use to being bossed around by rules that made no sense like walking in a straight line and keeping your head up.

As I got older, it wasn't so much that I hated it, but I wanted it left out in our school community since I knew some students that had a different ideology of a god.....and I didn't really believe in a god as I wasn't really raised by an "organized" religion.

I have no problem with after school prayers or religions as long as it's not intrusive or being forced upon other people and getting in the way of education.

Absolutely correct. But rote recitation of a verbal formula is a way to subconsciously imprint an idea on someone, especially a child who doesn't understand the words involved. "This is a grownup thing - which makes me cool for participating - but I don't get it. But everyone else around me is saying it, so I'd better say it too and dare not question its validity."

Enough of this as a child produces an adult who also dares not question the validity of the rote phrases they are conditioned to say/believe.

It didn't work with me.

Ultimately didn't work with me either. For a while, but not for long. But I can see how it works with a lot of people and a majority is all the person imprinting the idea needs.

Aye, i am for the dissociation of state and religion, especially since i don't want to go back to the Middle Ages and be branded as a demon possessed knave (and end up being burned, tortured, or put in an assylum because have AS <.< ).

Also Ruveyn, some "prayers" can also be considered Mantras (when it's for self praying) and the one you quoted above more or less fits my idea of what a mantra is.

Wait a moment... aren't you in favor of high taxes to cover social programs? How is requiring people to work for public benefit materially different from forcing them to hand over large amounts of their income for the same purpose? I mean, people get that money you're taxing by working, so in effect high taxes are requiring people to do community service, just in an indirect fashion.

One could become unemployed and homeless and thus avoid paying taxes.

ruveyn

You know the evil lady who toke prayer and Bible reading out of public schools Madalyn Murray O'Hair ended up murdered>

Do you have a point? She was murdered for unrelated reasons.