Our God-Forsaken Schools

What is truly detestable about the state of public schools in this country is how far they have strayed from their historical roots. Most of the schools in this country, as well as many of the prestigious Ivy League universities were founded for the sole purpose of educating the populace in the Scriptures. Noah Webster, one of our nation’s leading educators, said, "In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed...No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people." When you read the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, you will find that its principles of personal responsibility, self government, and liberty cannot be separated from the moral and spiritual principles of the Bible.

Sorry you had to do all that typing for nothing, because you completely missed my point. My article wasn’t about school shootings, it was about OFFICIALLY rejecting God by prohibiting OFFICIAL sanction of prayer and Bible reading in our schools. You’re not really foolish enough to suggest that our education system and our society is better off now than in 1962 are you? I didn’t think so. So how are all those court decisions taking God out of the public arena working out for us?

It’s also a darn shame you missed the entire point of the article. Are you really suggesting we’re better off now in our schools and our society than we were in 1962? If you are, you are completely clueless. If you agree that we’re not, then what do you attribute to the decline? There’s no question, like the article said, that this decline is a moral problem, not a political one. Morality is at the root of every problem we have. And causation of moral problems? Let’s see ... yeah, that might have something to do with rejecting God and doing things our own way.

You prove my point over again - only with the blessings of the ACLU. More godlessness.

All those murders - NONE were a mass murder but by and large singular deaths. thanks for proving my point - again.

Sucking from Freethought.blog - atheist source. What kind of “Christian” are you. Certainly not the normal kind judging from your love of atheism and its tenants.

Murder rate nationally is about the same as it was in 1962.
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It is hard to compare 1962 with today since in 1962 the sophisticated system of rescue and trauma center care did not exist. More people died from their wounds in 1962 and more survive today. What would have been a murder in 1952 is today merely a very serious injury.

In 1903 in State of Nebraska v. Scheve (which reads very much like the 1962 and following decisions from the Supreme Court) school prayer and the institutional exercise of religion was banned. In 1962 the Alabama law mandating religious reading was impacted by the Supreme Court (and susequent Supreme Court decisions). So for Nebraska nothing changed and for Alabama your point about the causal link between violence and removal of prayer should hold. Here are the statistics:
1960 Alabama - Violent crime rate 187, In 2011 420 (note the murder rate dropped from 12.4 to 6.3.
1960 Nebraska - Violent crime rate 42, In 2011 253

Note that in Alabama the crime rate went up 2.2x while it went up 6.0x times in Nebraska.

I am not saying we are better off. I am saying that the Supreme Court decisions of the early 1960s has nothing to do with violent crime today (or at least that any claim that it does is not backed by statistical evidence in so many different ways - by state, by country, by year, by status before or after the Supreme Court decision). Causation is a much higher bar to prove than correlation, and no one who claims that the Supreme Court decisions have the 1960s have led to greater violence rates have even proved the correlation (and I have presented evidence that proves no correlation exists). Once you jump over the correlation bar, then we can discuss causation.

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