NationStates Jolt Archive

Individual religious faith and belief is a significant, valuable and rewarding asset to citizens of any culture or nation. It gives people support, something to believe in, and direction in their personal lives. Nations must acknowledge individual rights and personal freedoms. As a result, nations and governments must respect personal faith and belief by not imposing broad religious persuasions upon its citizens in any way. In the case of faith and religion, individual and personal belief structures must be respected and valued, rather than influenced by actions conceived by national or international entities. Governments must respect that the individual, rather than the collective, is more important on this issue. If passed, the legislation would OUTLAW:
1. Teaching religion in schools, acknowledging that faith is something to be learned and nurtured individually through family, friends, and peers.
2. Rewards or encouragements, financial or otherwise, from the government to specific faith-based companies or entities, acknowledging that one faith should not be treated broadly as more valuable or beneficial than another faith.
3. From a nation's leaders, any opinionated, judgmental or editorial reference to an individual religion or religious group in all cases, whether in speech, writing, or by other action.

** Glares at Rep. Belly Lint and Cheddar, but composes himself before he speaks **

For your sake, I will assume that your proposal was written with only the best intentions. However, discrimination against the Holy Empire of Gethamane is not taken lightly. You are asking us to dismantle our political and educational systems. Gethamane will not outlaw the practice of any religion, but we do have a National Religion and we will not be ashamed of that fact.

Perhaps next you should suggest that we cease teaching our National Language, and allow people to use whatever language they prefer?

As a non-member of the UN and a nation with an official merge of religion and state, the Holy Empire of Grand Hobgoblonia chortles heartily at this proposal. Besides, even if Grand Hobgoblonia were a member of the UN, how would this proposal affect it? Where do you draw the line with the word religion? Grand Hobgoblonia could just as easily strike the word "religion" from its books and continue the standard of worshipping the Monarch as a god as a matter of authoritarian policy. Well, perhaps there are other UN resolutions on that, too...

The point is, anyway, that "religion" is debatable. Certainly there are religious nations out there who would claim that Grand Hobgoblonia has no religion, simply because it does not measure up to their perspective standards. Sovreignty is more important, because every nation has its own perspective, and there is no universal justice or truth that the UN or any other organization can define.

Assertively,
Prime Minister Baragh IV,
Loyal Servant to the One True Monarch
of the Holy Empire of Grand Hobgoblonia

I agree very much with the Holy Empire of Grand Hobgoblonia. Our Empire lets our citizens practice whatever religion they please, because they should be able to beleive in whatever they want to beleive in relgiously. However, we do not promote it in schools, nor do we as a nation encourage beleiving in something specific. Emperor Storring himself beleives in that religion is something for the weaker, insecure people of the world, but lets his citizens do as they please, because he feels everyone should have at least some say in what they beleive in and what they can think. It would not bother our Empire, although it would just enhance the rules about restriction of thought.

What's with this anti religious lettuce talk? In our holy empire, we don't even have schools, those are for the fishes which live in the sea, which we don't... so we don't. If we started having schools, we'd have to have more pools, which is crazy talk 'cause then the fishes take over. We don't really like fishes here, but that's not the point, the point is that we don't have schools, so we'd have to make them in order to ban religion from them, but we were born from religion, so banning it would be silly.

Now as for not giving money to the religious system, what if we want to? Why should we not be able to give the flax we don't take from the people to the things we think deserve the flax that we don't take in the first place. Maybe we should stop supporting your trees, or maybe you should. Nature is kinda religious, just like pants. Pants are very comfortable too, so why shouldn't we give money to the people who make the pants that makes us comfortable which makes us happy which makes the world a better place, neh?

And why can't we talk about our religions if we are politicians? If I want to ramble on and on about whatever I want... uhm where was I? Anyway keep your damn schools off my land, 'cause that's where we walk, not where fish swim.
In the name of:
The Grand High Poobah of the Erisian Alliance
The Keeper of the sacred toenail clippings
The Defender of the yak

I agree with you to a point. The outlaw of teaching it in schools, however much it wouldn't matter to me, is slightly outrageous. For all UN members to have to do this, no matter what region, etc., is ridiculous.

I beleive if this were to become a bill, it would be a close decision between whether it would become an act or not. Many different people have different beleifs, however I beleive in the end it would not pass, because many people base their lives on religion one way or another, or at least believe in it. This is my last say in the matter.

Doo do doo do. National sovereignty. Doo do dee de. Choice of government. La daa de daa.

Sincerely yours,
Daniel M. Hillaker
Minister of Foreign Affairs

The outlaw of teaching it in schools, however much it wouldn't matter to me, is slightly outrageous.

This goes in line with the representative from Hobgoblonia said as well. Consider this: two children are raised to believe in a diety called God and a fat bearded elf named Chris Cringle. God can be everywhere at once at all times, according to these children. Chris Cringle spends most of the year making toys and reading children's minds, and then one night of the year decides to travel the world and drop toys in children's dirty socks or place lumps of long dead plant matter in their dirty socks.

Along comes a teacher from the country Equality for All, and says, "You can't talk about God in school, because he is a religious figure. But you can talk about this fact elf, because he is just a cultural figure."

A parent of a kid that likes God more than Chris Cringle, calls up the school and says, "Hey, if my kid can't talk about our God, then the other kids in class can't talk about Chris Cringle."

How will the teacher respond?

10kMichael

Hey...wow...a ban religious teaching thread.....haven't seen that before.

Oh..my mistake...yup, once a week since Bahgum started playing this game, and probably before. Better dust the old repetitive arguments down folks. Or we could have a different debate...how about gay rights and marriage, that's new?

* Before running out of a plate glass window on the 100th floor of the U.N. building, The Rep of Komokom was heard to scream...

"Argh, national sovereignty for crying out looouuuuuddddd..."

Thud

"... I'm... okay... I think..."

* (Faints)

:wink:

- The Rep of Komokom.

The theocracy of Kais-Rovannia will not tolerate religious disobeidance of any kind, for the rule of god and thus the rule of our proclaimed rulers is unrevokable law. Religion is the corner stone of all good society even if it means sacrificing certain things for the greater good and thus must be the most essential part of education.

Although the mighty clamour of representatives fighting to apply lethal objections to your proposal can be heard from several continents away, we feel we must add our own motivations, as they come somewhat closer to yours.

We believe that spirituality is a deeply important part of life. However, we also believe that it should be a matter of personal choice and that it is just as wrong for one's family to impose it on a child as the State to do so; spirituality is too uncertain and too important for anyone else to choose for you. Accordingly, we teach all religions equally in our schools, in addition to general principles of philosophy and theology.
We also look sternly on any practise intended to indoctrinate children into a specific religion, whether it be Sunday school, circumcision of minors of either sex or associating gifts with religious festivals.

Thackeray Sung
Ministry of Personal Growth

Accordingly, we teach all religions equally in our schools


All religions? By our hasty and doubtless spurious calculations done on the back of a beermat:
-There are 126,778 nations in the NS world.
-Assuming that each one has only one unique religion (which is probably a woefully low estimate) and further assuming that you only teach each religion for 5 minutes (which is probably enough to get the basics down if you rush), it would take 633,890 minutes to teach them all.
-That works out at 10,565 hours, or about 1,321 days at 8 hours a day. If you have a standard-ish 200 days a year teaching, that's six and a half years of each Rehochipean's life spent doing nothing but learning about religion. That would explain why there's such low immigration from East Hackney to Rehochipe, anyway...

Major religions, friend. We assume that if you find the difference between Presbyterianism and Methodist that important you can go and work it out for yourself once you've chosen Christianity.

** Glances suspiciously at Rehochipe **

And how are you defining "major"?

Religions don't stand alone. They branch and exchange approaches. To say 'we teach all the sciences' doesn't mean that every science student has to study every field - they should get a firm grounding in biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics before choosing slightly more specialist subjects from these, and continue to specialise, switch disciplines, carve out new areas through their own work, and so on. Clearly any choices we make as to which basis to make these classifications on will disappoint somebody, but it's still leagues better than having your religion chosen for you.

this proposal gets a big thumb down from the DSH - it will fail to promote religous tolerance (in fact promoting intolerance), and will only bring about a generation of children moulded by their parents own religous bias.

Children should be granted the freedom to determine their own religous beliefs through learning the full facts of all religons.

Nay! My people shall worship Me! And ME ALONE!

Outlaw teaching of religion in schools? Are you mad? With barely held respect this would only breed ignorance of religion which could be damaging. Need i remind you of the Holocaust? A better route would be teach our children about all faiths, thus raising awareness and lessening the chance of offence being caused by ignorance of another's faith. An outright ban is shortsighted and a reactionary measure, in my honest opinion. We should not teach that one faith is correct, but that all faiths must be respected.
Remember, timendi cause est nescire!

Religion is one good way for preventing the citizens to look for bad things such as drugs, pornography... but also can be a way to manipulate people to risk their life because of the religion.

I think that religion should not be combined with politic because if we do so we will return to the ages in wich the Pope took the world´s destiny in his hands...

That thing confused me for a second. First I thought you had a proposal for the stuff about teaching religion in schools and I was like "this is bullcrap" then I saw the word OUTLAW, and I was like "where can I approve this proposal?" and then I kept reading and got incrimentally more confused. For the government to have any stance on religion at all would end badly. Furthermore, the kingdom of Valued Knowledge believes that a child taught evolution and going on to become a scientist is much much greater for the country than children taught Religion fundemantals and going on to be preachers. It's a ratio of about 20 to 1.

I strongly disagree with outlawing religion, especially at schools !
France has adopted the law about secularism, and it's a bad measure: Muslim scarfs and "conspicious" religious signs are (in theory) banished from schools. But I think that this measure, far from unite all French people in the Republic, only backs up the extremists who uses religion to justify their damn political claims... Instead, some schools have begun to teach religion (even in non-religious schools) in an original way: educators picked up quotations from the Bible, the Torah and the Koran and asked pupils to guess from which Book they came from... Most answers were wrong, and children became aware of the fact that these three religions had many common points, in spite of all extremist speeches. I believe that that kind of experience should be made in all schools, as children (the future adults) can learn about spirituality differantly and look at other religions with more tolerance and understanding. This would avoid terrible misunderstandings !
Further more, I believe that some Christian priests, monks, nuns, Jew rabbis or Muslim imams should go to school and share their experience, their lives, explain their choices to children, for them to have a better comprehension of religion.

We agree with the premise of this proposal but not its effects.

Our nation in composed of many tribes, of varying characteristics, religious and otherwise.

The national government espouses freedom of conscience and noninterference with religious practice.

Each tribe independently adopts its own stance toward intitutional religion.

Some have strong religious organizations, including public schools. National financial support for such schools is limited; most of the cost is supported by subscription but some supportive services are covered by tribal taxes. Of course, tax exemption for religious groups may also be seen as an unfair preference under this act, which would undermine the sustainability of these schools and other groups.

Since there are hundreds of tribes, whovere does not care for the local social structure can relocate easily and painlessly to someplace more congenial.

This proposal would upset our delicately balanced blend of individual freedoms and community cohesiveness, and result in huge tax increases as the national government would need to take over many schools and other agencies at public expense.