Students who are active in their church are greatly looked upon when it comes to applying for money. For some scholarships, the only people eligible must be members of a church and participate in its activities. Now, I believe I deserve a scholarship, because I am an activist in my beliefs, and I have struggled through the many consequences of being an atheist, but no such scholarships are offered locally for people like me.
…
I am a dedicated student who happens to be an atheist, but I get no acknowledgement for it, unlike my fellow religious peers. It takes more will to say I have no faith, and more effort to prove myself to be an upright citizen. I believe all schools should disband any scholarships that focus solely on religion, and they should award students who demonstrate their beliefs, no matter what they may be, more passionately.
She tells a touching story of coming out and being harassed as a result:
… My sister was the first to stray (to my knowledge) from the flock, and I was impressed by her bold move. She took a lot of flak for it, and once we started to bond, she really opened my mind to the world of atheism.
However, once school started, that was when I was tested. I am the minority at school, and I constantly have to defend myself. During the second semester of my freshman year, I was yelled at and humiliated by a teacher to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance. When I refused, and the Pledge finished, the teacher took me into another room and questioned my Americanism. Then he concluded by saying whenever the Pledge would happen, I would have to go into another classroom, by myself, and wait. It took everything I had to stop crying and muster up enough courage to take this “meeting” down to the principal’s office.
I may have won that battle, but it had many repercussions.
It may be harsh to disband any religious scholarship (assuming they are being offered by churches and not the school), but Michelle is correct in saying students should be commended for reasons other than the religious label they (or their parents) place on themselves.
Thankfully, there are a couple scholarships for atheist high school students:
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
I was just expecting a couple lines, but some of you wrote entire poems! And they were awesome. I’m only included some lines of the winning poems below, but the link provided sends you to the entire thing.
Here are the Top 5 lines… or more (with submitters)!
5|
In the week before Christmas, commercials abound
Letting us know of the sales all around
The billboards were run by the highway with care
In hopes that consumers soon would be there…
My life mate and I, seeing kids off to their bed
Decided to stay up and watch TV instead.
Then as it went on our ears burst in pain
FOX News was having its ‘War on Christmas’ again.
As the pious Christian families were kneeling in prayer
The atheists began a war on christmas, Bill-O did declare.
“They hate the sweet baby Jesus,” the right-winger host did say.
“Stop giving gifts, heathens. This is our Good ‘Ol US of A.”
Sure, we don’t mind, you can have prayers and your nativity
But we just prefer Einstein’s theory of relativity.
‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse,
We hide in silence, the creatures and I, all equally fearful,
Outside the Evangelicals swarm, they’ll give you an earful
Yowling and buzzing, a song of insect and cat,
A hideous, horrible, heinous Hillsong, if you could imagine that,
“Lord this, Lord that, baby Jebus be praised,
Believe us, The Word is Truth. You’ll be shocked and amazed!”
‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
For the mouse was dead, the children sedated,
And Santa was late, the neighborhood gated.
He got to the house, nanosecond to ten,
Dropped off the coal, in the atheists’ den.
He does this work early, to save him some stress,
The naughty were many, logistics a mess.
Congratulations to the winners! The top three will be receiving specially-made Friendly Atheist wristbands (in the color of their choice), sent to me by blog reader Shauna and her sister Danni!
…
If you’d like to win your own wristband, here is the new contest:
What will be the New Year’s Resolution for any of the “New Atheists” (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, etc.)?
Funny and creative answers will have a shot at winning.
Happy birthday to me
I don’t live in a tree
But I look like a primate
Because I am one.
And got this response from a commenter:
Happy birthday to you
I went to the zoo
I saw a fat monkey
but I didn’t think it was you because I don’t use creationist logic.
If you haven’t read her piece on atheists and anger yet, you should do it! It’s brilliant. And then, wish her well and add to the half-rhyming, pro-evolution, highly-entertaining, birthday lyrics.
A lot of threads on this blog have some great dialogues going on and I wanted to thank you if you take part in those conversations. It makes blogging worthwhile. And I also really appreciate everyone staying classy with your comments.
Well… almost everyone
For the rest of you, I hope you’ll consider joining in the conversations in 2008.
Consider this your invitation to comment. If it’s your first time commenting, I do have to “approve” you before your comment appears, but please use this thread to say hello and introduce yourself (or just say hello, period) if you’ve been reading the site without saying anything. Hopefully, this will make it easier for you to comment in the future.
I can’t believe this is a real headline: Pope’s exorcist squads will wage war on Satan.
Each bishop is to be told to have in his diocese a number of priests trained to fight demonic possession.
The initiative was revealed by 82-year-old Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican “exorcistinchief,” to the online Catholic news service Petrus.
“Thanks be to God, we have a Pope who has decided to fight the Devil head-on,” he said.
“Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a properly trained exorcist.
Stop. Now. Please.
Father Paolo Scarafoni, who lectures on the Vatican’s exorcism course, said interest in Satanism and the occult has grown as people lost faith with the church.
He added: “People suffer and think that turning to the Devil can help solve their problems. We are being bombarded by requests for exorcisms.”
Who requests that? Do you request that? I’m mad at you.
At least it can’t get any dumber, right?
The Vatican is particularly concerned that young people are being exposed to the influence of Satanic sects through rock music and the Internet.
*sigh*
I can’t understand why people still listen to the Pope, much less call him infallible.
***Update***: The Vatican denies the expansion… but they still believe in exorcisms and the devil and all that jazz… so it’s not that much better. (Thanks to Rob for pointing this out!)
American taxpayers spend nearly $100 million a year to fund the Congressional Research Service, a “think tank” that provides reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events. Yet, these reports are not made available to the public in a way that they can be easily obtained. A project of the Center for Democracy & Technology, Open CRS provides citizens access to CRS Reports that are already in the public domain and encourages Congress to provide public access to all CRS Reports.
It’s a short, easy-to-read recap of the major recent Supreme Court cases dealing with state/church separation. (Many of the cases were brought about or involved atheists.) It’s a really good resource for anyone interested.
In conclusion, in the cases that the Court has considered, the balance between non-establishment and free exercise continues to be debated on a case-by-case basis. The Court has decided somewhat similar cases differently, with the outcome turning on the details, implying that specific context may be the most determinative factor in church-state jurisprudence.
[tags]atheist, atheism, law, separation of church and state[/tags]
