What, exactly, do they think they're going to accomplish here? How many prayers, do you suppose, were offered up during the Holocaust, and to what effect? Prayer works at exactly the same rate of effectiveness as random chance. In any event, this is really about rote conformity and entrenching Christian privilege in the public schools, paid for with everyone's tax dollars.
Who thinks of this stuff? What school district employee says to themselves, "you know what? Crafting and posting a call for prayer must surely fall under my job as..." I'm baffled because doing this *on the job* would just never occur to me. If, hypothetically, I'm a school administrator, then I got tasks to perform. Schedules to develop, implement, or follow. Resources to corral. Parents to contact if they haven't got their forms in. More regular work than my day accommodates and certainly more work than I'm being paid to do. Where the frak does even the thought of spending my workplace time to do this come from?
I get the weekly newsletter from my parents' church. As Hemant says, something like this is totes cool coming from them. The pastor's into getting the congregation to pray for others, and school is starting soon. It's a natural fit, no problemo. But stick me in a dentist's office or a H.S. front office or a law firm or any other such white collar professional situation, it would never even occur to me to look outside the parameters of the actual job to do stuff like this. And this has πππ‘βπππ π‘π ππ with my religion. Even when I was Christian this would've never occurred to me. It has to do with doing work stuff at work and personal stuff on my personal time. You know - professionalism.
It seems as though the Freedom From Religion Foundation is being taken more and more seriously in the Lone Star State. That the Burnet School District responded as quickly as they did at least suggests to me that they understand what they're up against. That said, should parents in that school district decide to get upset that the prayers were canceled, I would fully expect that other parents who do not want to see religion spread in schools will come up on the side of the FFRF. At that point, of course, it's lawyers at 20 paces.
And in that game, I'll take Dan Barker and the points.
They will always try to slip through the radar when no one is looking. It's just the nature of Christians. They must foist their beliefs by hook or by crook.
Why stop at 22 days? In the spirit of inclusiveness add a 23rd day of prayer for those instructors and staff with a taste for pederasty and simultaneously pay homage to the 23 Enigma.
If they want the community to be involved in the school district, setup a program where they can donate school supplies, or money for free and reduced lunches, or money for classroom necessities, offer to be teachers aides (this would require background checks, but those are easy to do when youβre a good person). There are many ways the community can get involved that actually does something thatβs helpful. Praying does nothing at all. In fact, it keeps folks from doing useful stuff for the school because they already prayed, isnβt that enough.
Looks like Substack fixed a common problem. When you had to edit a comment before, the comment vanished and you had to refresh the page to see the edited comment. Not now. Now the comment immediately appears in its edited form. No need to refresh.
Maybe they got a lot of complaints about that and took measures to correct it. That makes Substack far more responsive than OS.
Legitimately surprised that the district reversed so easily. Glad, of course, this should be the norm until itβs unnecessary. I bet a lawyer got wind of it. Heh.
Ahh, yes. Prayer: What Christians do to feel better without actually having to make any kind of effort to make the world a better place.
The whole point of prayer is to make the faithful feel like they've done something about an issue without having people get into the messy business of actually doing anything. It works for the Christian, who gets a nice mental 'I accomplished something' type boost to their feelings; and it works for the people in charge who don't want to make any changes that might hurt their bottom line somewhere. The whole point is nothing changes but 'everyone' feels better about the situation.
Prayer isn't intended to actually work, it's just a mechanism for making people feel better about situations they can't change. The district asking for prayer means they've given up on fixing issues they should, by rights, be correcting ASAP. Hopefully, by sending a notice they've stopped, they'll get back to work.
Perhaps, if you are convinced you cannot succeed in your job without begging for the aid of an all-powerful deity... you're in the wrong job.
Just tossing this out there.
What, exactly, do they think they're going to accomplish here? How many prayers, do you suppose, were offered up during the Holocaust, and to what effect? Prayer works at exactly the same rate of effectiveness as random chance. In any event, this is really about rote conformity and entrenching Christian privilege in the public schools, paid for with everyone's tax dollars.
Who thinks of this stuff? What school district employee says to themselves, "you know what? Crafting and posting a call for prayer must surely fall under my job as..." I'm baffled because doing this *on the job* would just never occur to me. If, hypothetically, I'm a school administrator, then I got tasks to perform. Schedules to develop, implement, or follow. Resources to corral. Parents to contact if they haven't got their forms in. More regular work than my day accommodates and certainly more work than I'm being paid to do. Where the frak does even the thought of spending my workplace time to do this come from?
I get the weekly newsletter from my parents' church. As Hemant says, something like this is totes cool coming from them. The pastor's into getting the congregation to pray for others, and school is starting soon. It's a natural fit, no problemo. But stick me in a dentist's office or a H.S. front office or a law firm or any other such white collar professional situation, it would never even occur to me to look outside the parameters of the actual job to do stuff like this. And this has πππ‘βπππ π‘π ππ with my religion. Even when I was Christian this would've never occurred to me. It has to do with doing work stuff at work and personal stuff on my personal time. You know - professionalism.
It seems as though the Freedom From Religion Foundation is being taken more and more seriously in the Lone Star State. That the Burnet School District responded as quickly as they did at least suggests to me that they understand what they're up against. That said, should parents in that school district decide to get upset that the prayers were canceled, I would fully expect that other parents who do not want to see religion spread in schools will come up on the side of the FFRF. At that point, of course, it's lawyers at 20 paces.
And in that game, I'll take Dan Barker and the points.
They will always try to slip through the radar when no one is looking. It's just the nature of Christians. They must foist their beliefs by hook or by crook.
Prayer defeated by a mildly worded letter.
Puny prayer.
βIt may be that ministers really think that their prayers do good and it may be that frogs imagine that their croaking brings spring.β
βRobert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899), βThe Great Agnosticβ, "Which Way?" (1884)
Why stop at 22 days? In the spirit of inclusiveness add a 23rd day of prayer for those instructors and staff with a taste for pederasty and simultaneously pay homage to the 23 Enigma.
If they want the community to be involved in the school district, setup a program where they can donate school supplies, or money for free and reduced lunches, or money for classroom necessities, offer to be teachers aides (this would require background checks, but those are easy to do when youβre a good person). There are many ways the community can get involved that actually does something thatβs helpful. Praying does nothing at all. In fact, it keeps folks from doing useful stuff for the school because they already prayed, isnβt that enough.
Ninety minutes? The goldfish brain of the religionists is improving!
OT - So that is what those things are!!!
https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/2023-07-12-historical-landmark.jpg
OT
Looks like Substack fixed a common problem. When you had to edit a comment before, the comment vanished and you had to refresh the page to see the edited comment. Not now. Now the comment immediately appears in its edited form. No need to refresh.
Maybe they got a lot of complaints about that and took measures to correct it. That makes Substack far more responsive than OS.
The last paragraph is great.
"most of the adults in their lives have no WILL how to fix the problems theyβve created."
Legitimately surprised that the district reversed so easily. Glad, of course, this should be the norm until itβs unnecessary. I bet a lawyer got wind of it. Heh.
Ahh, yes. Prayer: What Christians do to feel better without actually having to make any kind of effort to make the world a better place.
The whole point of prayer is to make the faithful feel like they've done something about an issue without having people get into the messy business of actually doing anything. It works for the Christian, who gets a nice mental 'I accomplished something' type boost to their feelings; and it works for the people in charge who don't want to make any changes that might hurt their bottom line somewhere. The whole point is nothing changes but 'everyone' feels better about the situation.
Prayer isn't intended to actually work, it's just a mechanism for making people feel better about situations they can't change. The district asking for prayer means they've given up on fixing issues they should, by rights, be correcting ASAP. Hopefully, by sending a notice they've stopped, they'll get back to work.